The spot to which her pious care was devoted
contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
(belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
boil them a kettle of fish roes.
"He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones.
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