The frost continuing very severe, and no appearance of Indians to supply our wants, we were obliged to take off the hair from the bear skins, and roast the hide, which tastes like pork. This, with some tripe de roche boiled, was all our nourishment.[1]
Tripe de roche, or hawercoon, is a weed that grows to the rocks, of a spongy nature, and very unwholesome, causing violent pains in the bowels, and frequently occasions a flux. I am informed the traders in the Northwest, have often experienced this disorder; and some of them, in very severe weather, have been compelled to eat it for fourteen days successively, which weakened them exceedingly. When the disorder does not terminate in a flux, it occasions a violent vomiting, and sometimes spitting of blood, with acute spasms in the bowels.
After suffering great hardships, I advised my men to make marten traps, and set them in the woods as they did last winter at Lac la Mort, which supplied us occasionally, but very short of our real wants. At last a band of Indians arrived with ten slay load of meat and furs, which relieved us, and gave us fresh spirits. My men discovered them at a distance, and, though much enfeebled by severe hunger, put on their snow-shoes to meet them.
It is surprising what efforts nature makes to support
distress, and how cheerfully she struggles when the prospect
of relief is near at [119] hand; every painful recollection
of past sufferings quickly vanishes, and new
life seems to breathe through every vein. Those who live
in constant luxury, and are ignorant of the meaning of
the bread of carefulness, are strangers to the joy arising
from an unexpected supply, and sitting down to a table
————
- ↑ Tripe de roche is a lichen, which Henry calls waac in Chippewa. See Henry, Travels (Bain ed.), pp. 214, 215.—Ed.
