“They walked a considerable distance on the eighth day; and at four o’clock on the ninth discerned the tracks of two men and a dog. They now imagined the long-wished for settlement at hand. With renewed spirit and alacrity, therefore, they pushed onward, indulging by the way the pleasing reflection, that the issue of the newly-discovered track would ere long terminate their woes, and bring them to enjoy once more the unspeakable pleasure of human society. Judge, then, what must have been their feelings, when, towards evening, they were brought to the very spot on which they had lain five nights before! Hope now no longer shed her delusive rays into their hearts; and they neither had a thought, nor felt a desire, to prolong a miserable existence. They sat down, therefore, without making a fire, and formed a resolution that night to end both their miseries and their lives. The tears trickled down their haggard cheeks, as they gazed upon each other’s altered countenance; and the chief dread which both felt was, that the one should die before his companion, and leave the survivor to expire unpitied and unseen. Another reflection added poignancy to their sufferings; and that was, the idea of being devoured, after death, by the ravenous monsters of the wilderness. Howay, however, with some degree of fortitude endeavoured to compose himself, trusting that, ’though, after his skin, wolves should destroy his mortal body, yet in his flesh should he see God; whom he should see for himself, and his eyes should behold, and not another.’ But Nowlan, though sixty-four winters had furrowed his cheeks, had very little notion of a future state,—his perishable body alone engrossed his attention. Educated, or rather reared, in this land of impiety and infidelity, his ideas of the Deity and of his attributes were little calculated to elevate his views from the miseries of this world to the felicities of another and a better. He had scarcely ever heard the sound of the gospel, and knew nothing of its offers of mercy. In this world he had no longer any interest; and about the eternal concerns of the next he was wholly ignorant, and seemed utterly unconcerned. How deplorable the situation of such a being! Better for him had he never been born! With bright and well-founded prospects of a blissful immortality, a man may rejoice in the midst of tribulations, if possible still more acute; but, without these powerful consolations in a dying hour, he must sink in despair beneath the accumulated weight of misery and remorse.