How I managed to survive is beyond me; but I know that often and often, at first, I meditated suicide.

The only thing that saved me during that period from taking my own life was the fact that I quickly became too stupefied and bestial, what of my suffering and degradation.

Half-frozen, half-starved, undergoing untold misery and hardship, beaten many and many a time into insensibility, I became the sheerest animal.
"On looking back much of it seems a dream.

There are gaps which my memory cannot fill.

I have vague recollections of being lashed to a sled and dragged from camp to camp and tribe to tribe.