The Indians who had been waiting for some days the passing of the herd, would attack them from up and down the river in their canoes, shooting them with arrows, spearing and axing the poor frightened brutes in the water till the lower waters were covered with floating carcasses. Much meat and many skins were spoiled for the want of quick attention. After the battle the Indians gorged themselves to such a state of repletion, that it rendered them unfit for exertion, but a just God frequently punished them during the bitter weather of the following winter by starvation, and whole families succumbed for want of the very food they so wantonly wasted in the autumn. The Hudson's Bay Company had a post years ago on Lake Mis-a-ka-ma right on the tableland between Ungava bay and the Canadian Labrador coast, for the trading of deer skins, both dressed and in the parchment state. One year the skins were in such numbers that the boats of the brigade could not carry the whole to the coast, and bales of them had to be wintered over to the next year. The Labrador has been for many years the base of supplies for fish and rabbit districts, where the natives have no deer to make moccasins, mitts and shirts, and the parchment for their snowshoe knitting. These deer skins take a round about route to reach their destination, being in the first place shipped from Ungava, or Nigolette, to London, and after passing the winter in London, are reshipped to Montreal, via the St. Lawrence, and from that depot sent with the new outfit to posts that have requisitioned them the previous year. One would think with the introduction of flour, pork and other imported provisions that the slaughter would be a thing of the past, but the killing goes on as before, and now only the skin is taken, the meat remaining to rot. CHAPTER IX. OFFICERS' ALLOWANCES. To readers of H-T-T descriptions of modes of living in by-gone days will, no doubt, be as interesting as actual hunting or trapping. I therefore submit a reminiscence of days in the early sixties, gone never to return. Transport then to the far inland posts was so tedious and costly that it was impossible to freight heavy stuff so far away, and the employees of the company had to live on what the company in which they were stationed produced. However, a scale of allowances of a few delicacies were allowed, and these were made up every year at the depot of each district, and were for one year. The laborers or common people about the post got nothing in the way of imported provisions, except when at the hard work of tripping. The officers' scale was as follows, be he a married man or a single man, it made no difference. Their several grades were as follows: Chief Factor, Chief Trader, Chief Clerk, Apprentice Clerk, Post Master.