Untitled - Libr@rsi

1651 -52J RELATION OF 1630-S1 51
carry it and to say it for the soul of the deceased, at
least on Feast-days and Sundays. But let us resume
the continuation of our journey.
After remaining some days at the place
of this
first gathering, I embarked, in company with thirty-
five canoes, to go to another assembly, about twenty-
five leagues thence. We had no other provisions
than the produce of our fishing. A piece of fish,
weighing nine or ten ounces, was our usual allowance
for a day,— that is to say, it was our bread, our
meat, our entrees, our dessert, our everything. The
broth in which [108] the fish had been boiled was
our beverage. Not that the fishing was not sometimes
more plentiful, but frequently also we had to
be satisfied with five or six ounces a day, and sometimes
less. It is true that nature is content with
little, and that God sustained our bodies as well as
our souls in this deprivation of all things.
On the day after embarking, we encountered horrible
waterfalls,— among others, one in a place where
the river, after rolling over many rocky levels, falls
suddenly as if into an abyss, like a stone trough or
cradle, hundreds of feet long. In this cradle the
river boils so that, if you throw a stick therein, it
remains there a long time without ;
reappearing then
[109] it suddenly shoots up, to the height of two
pikes, forty or fifty paces from the place where you
have thrown it. To avoid these falls, we carried our
canoes and our baggage over high mountains, by a
narrow path on the edge of a precipice and at ; every
moment there was but a step between us and death.
On the third day, we reached our destination, and
were saluted with a general discharge of all the firearms.
After the Captain had delivered his harangue