potatoes. When we have eaten our supply of them our plates are changed & we make a finish on bread & butter. For dinner we have a greater variety. First we are always treated to a dish of soup, which is very good. Every kind of vegitable in use is taken & choped fine & put into water with a little rice & boiled to a soup. The tammatoes are a promanant article. Usually some fowl meat duck or any kind, is cut fine & added if it has been roasted once it is just as good, (so the cook says) then spiced to the taste. After our soup dishes are removed, then comes a variety of meats, to prove our tastes. After selecting & tasting, change plates & try another if we choose so at every new dish have a clean plate. Roast duck is an every day dish, boiled pork, tripe & sometimes trotters, fresh Salmon or Sturgeon, yea to numerous to mention. When these are set aside a rice pudding or an apple pie is next introduced. After this melons next make their appearance, some times grapes & last of all cheese, bread or biscuit & butter is produced to complet the whole. But there is one article on the table I have not yet mentioned & of which I never partake, That is wine The gentlemen frequently drink toasts[1] to each other but never give us the opportunity of refusing for they know we belong to the tetotal Society. We have many talks about drinking wine, but no one joins our society. They have a Temprance Society here & at the Wallamut, formed by Mr Lee. Our tea is very plain, bread & butter, good tea plenty of milk & sugar.
"30th—We are invited to a ride as often as once a week for exercise, & generally ride all the afternoon. Today Mrs McLaughlin rode with us. She keeps her old habit of riding gentleman fashion. This is the universal costom of Indian women generally, they have saddles with high backs & fronts We have been recommended to use these saddles as being a more easy way of riding but have never seen the necessity of changing our fashion. I sing about an hour every evening with the children, teaching them new tunes at the request of Doct
- ↑ At the gentlemen's table in the large dining hall. The women residing or visiting at the fort were not served at this table with the men. The food was cooked in an adjoining building and carried into the dining hall.
