Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/256

226 morning, returning with meat from M'Tavish Bay. Spite of their deer-skin robes and capots, their faces bore palpable marks of the weather; and, when they reached the house, not a man was able to unlash his sledge till he had first thoroughly warmed his shivering frame.

The winds were no less constant and piercing than during the preceding months, but blew more frequently from the westward. In the early part of the month our last fishery on the south side of the island entirely failed; and, after supplying for a time with meat-rations the men who were stationed there, they were withdrawn, and appointed to other duties. Lines were re-set in the strait, but their produce did not even repay the baits employed, and they were again taken up. Fortunately our Chipewyan hunters and the native Indians vied with each other in amassing reindeer and musk-ox flesh; and our six sledges of dogs, with each a driver, were almost continually employed, bringing to Fort Confidence the means of existence. Le Babillard, an Indian frequently mentioned in the narrative of Franklin's last expedition, now approached with his party from the southward, and opened a communication with us. About the same time two young Indians arrived with news from Forts Norman and Good Hope. They were full of a