Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 7).djvu/196

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superintending Providence was in all this? These poor fellows staid with us the greater part of two days, and gave us at their departure about two pounds of venison. We were really sorry to lose them.

"On the same day, after the Indians had left us, a very large wolf came prowling about our hut, when {189} John Day, with great exertions and good luck, shot the ferocious animal dead; and to this fortunate hit I think we owed our lives. The flesh of the wolf we cut up and dried, and laid it by for some future emergency, and in the mean time feasted upon the skin; nor did we throw away the bones, but pounded them between stones, and with some roots made a kind of broth, which, in our present circumstances, we found very good. After we had recovered our strength a little, and were able to walk, we betook ourselves to the mountains in search of game; and, when unsuccessful in the chase, we had recourse to our dried wolf. For two months we wandered about, barely sustaining life with our utmost exertions. All this time we kept travelling to and fro, until we happened, by mere chance, to fall on the Umatallow River; and then following it, we made the Columbia about a mile above this place, on the 15th day of April, according to our reckoning. Our clothes being all torn and worn out, we suffered severely from cold; but on reaching this place, the Indians were very kind to us. This man," pointing to an old grey-headed Indian, called Yeck-a-tap-am, "in particular treated us like a father. After resting ourselves for two days with the good old man and his people, we set off, following the current, in the delusive hope of being able to reach our friends at the mouth of the Columbia, as the Indians gave us to understand that white