Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/239

FORT CONFIDENCE. the frame of a kitchen erected behind, but we were unable to complete it till the following year, when an observatory was also built. Our men's house was thirty feet long and eighteen broad, and, with the store, formed three sides of a little quadrangle fronting the south. The whole was habitable in a month after our arrival; but, from the smallness of the timber, and the difficulty of procuring enough of the frozen earth to cover the light roofe, our dwelling was miserably cold, the wind and snow having in many places free ingress. The men's quarters were rather more comfortable.

On the evening of the 6th of December a few families of Dog-ribs arrived, in the utmost consternation, from the bay discovered by me to the eastward. They had seen strange tracks of round snow-shoes and the smoke of distant fires, and, abandoning everything, had fled for their lives—burrowing at night under the snow; supposing that either the Esquimaux or Copper Indians had invaded their lands. The first idea that occurred to us was, that it might be some of Captain Back's party from Repulse Bay, who had been overtaken by winter on the coast, and were now wandering in quest of food and shelter. This opinion was communicated to the Indians, and three of the young men reluctantly P