They will rather pass several days without eating than touch the meat thus entrusted to their charge, even when there exists a prospect of replacing it.
(*Footnote.

Since these remarks were written the union of the rival Companies has enabled the gentlemen who have now the management of the fur trade to take some decided steps for the religious instruction and improvement of the natives and half-breed Indians, which have been more particularly referred to in the introduction.) The hospitality of the Crees is unbounded.

They afford a certain asylum to the half-breed children when deserted by their unnatural white fathers; and the infirm, and indeed every individual in an encampment, share the provisions of a successful hunter as long as they last.

Fond too as a Cree is of spiritous liquors he is not happy unless all his neighbours partake with him.

It is not easy however to say what share ostentation may have in the apparent munificence in the latter article; for when an Indian, by a good hunt, is enabled to treat the others with a keg of rum he becomes the chief of the night, assumes no little stateliness of manner, and is treated with deference by those who regale at his expense.