Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 6).djvu/369

 to the places where they perished: it is thus that the shade of Palinurus rejoiced in the regions below, at learning from the mouth of the Sibyl, {306} that the promontory near which he was drowned would henceforth be called by his name: gaudet cognomine terra. The rapid and the point of land where the accident I have described took place, will bear, and bears already, probably, the name of Lapensée.[176]

On the 26th, a part of our people embarked in the three canoes which remained, and the others followed the banks of the river on foot. We saw in several places some veins of bituminous coal, on the banks between the surface of the water and that of the plain, say thirty feet below the latter; the veins had a dip of about 25°. We tried some and found it to burn well. We halted in the evening near a small stream, where we constructed some rafts, to carry all our people.

On the 27th, I went forward in the little canoe {307} of skins, with the two hunters. We soon killed an elk, which we skinned and suspended the hide, besmeared with blood, from the branch of a tree at the extremity of a point, in order that the people behind, as they came up, might perceive and take in the fruit of our chase. After fortifying ourselves with a little food, we continued to glide down, and encamped for the night near a thick wood where our hunters, from the tracks they observed, had hopes of encountering and capturing some bears. This hope was not realized.

On the 28th, a little after quitting camp, we killed a