Page:The Columbia river , or, Scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown (Volume 1).djvu/264



I have hitherto principally subsisted on horse-flesh. I cannot say it agrees with me, for it nearly produced a dysentery. I have had plenty of pork, rice, arrow-root, flour, taro-root, tea, and coffee; no sugar. With such a variety of bonnes choses you will say I ought not to complain; but want of society has destroyed my relish for luxuries, and the only articles I taste above par are souchong and molasses. What a contrast between the manner I spent last year and this! In the first, with all the pride of a newly created subaltern, occasionally fighting the Yankees à la mode du pays; and anon, sporting my silver wings between some admiring paysanne along the frontiers. Then what a glorious winter in Montreal, with captured Jonathans, triumphant Britons, astonished Indians, gaping habitans, agitated beauties; balls, routs, dinners, suppers; parades, drums beating, colours flying, with all the other 'pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!'—but 'Othello's occupation's gone!' and here I am, with a shivering guard of poor islanders, buried in snow, sipping molasses, smoking tobacco, and masticating horse-flesh!—But I am sick of the contrast."

On the 24th of April Messrs. David Stuart