Meat was its staple.

They had wild duck, wild goose, wild turkey, deer, elk, beaver tail, and a half dozen kinds of fish; but the great delicacy was buffalo hump cooked in a peculiar way--that is, served up in the hide of a buffalo from which the hair had been singed off, and baked in an earthen oven.

Ross, who had learned it from the Indians, showed them how to do this, and they agreed that none of them had ever before tasted so fine a dish.

When the dinner was over, Henry and Paul had to answer many questions about their wanderings, and they were quite willing to do so, feeling at the moment a due sense of their own importance.
A shade passed over the faces of some of the men at the mention of the Indians, whom Henry and Paul had seen, but Ross agreed with Henry that they were surely of the South, going home from a hunting trip, and so they were soon forgotten.
Henry's work after their return included an occasional hunting excursion, as game was always needed.

His love of the wilderness did not decrease when thus he ranged through it and began to understand its ways.