Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/237

Rh direction they almost invariably follow. On one occasion I witnessed an extraordinary instance of affection in these timid creatures. Having brought down a fine doe at some distance, I was running forward to dispatch her with my knife, when a handsome young buck bounded up, and raised his fallen favourite with his antlers. She went a few paces, and fell; again he raised her, and continued wheeling around her, till a second ball—for hunger is ruthless—laid him dead at her side. Until the month of December we were living literally from hand to mouth, though all, except the men absolutely required to keep the houses in firewood, were distributed at the fisheries and in the various native camps. The excessive cold at length drove the deer towards the shelter of the woods, where the hunters were more successful. The climate of the elevated unsheltered region to the eastward of Fort Confidence is far more severe than that of the borders of the lake. The winds, too, are more violent; and a bright starlight night is often succeeded by a tempest of snow-drift. From the top of a hill in this quarter I discovered an unknown arm of the lake, which I had afterwards melancholy cause to examine. In a southerly direction the interior of the country is very hilly, but, except on the higher