_Hunter._ I think it will be better to tell you about that, and other dances, the next time you visit me; for I want to read to you a short account, which I have here, of a poor Indian woman of the Dog-ribbed tribe. I have not said much of Indian women, and I want you to feel kindly towards them. It was Hearne, who went with a party from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean, many years ago, who fell in with the poor woman. _Basil._ Oh, yes; let us hear all about her; and you can tell us of the dances when we come again. _Hunter._ Now, then, I will begin. One day in January, when they were hunting, they saw the track of a strange snow-shoe, which they followed, and at a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a young woman sitting alone. On examination, she proved to be one of the Dog-ribbed Indians, who had been taken prisoner by another tribe, in the summer of 1770; and, in the following summer, when the Indians that took her prisoner were near this place, she had escaped from them, intending to return to her own country. But the distance being so great, and having, after she was taken prisoner, been carried in a canoe the whole way, the turnings and windings of the rivers and lakes were so numerous that she forgot the track; so she built the hut in which she was found, to protect her from the weather during the winter, and here she had resided from the first setting-in of the fall. _Brian._ What, all by herself! How lonely she must have been! _Hunter._ From her account of the moons passed since her escape, it appeared that she had been nearly seven months without seeing a human face; during all which time she had supplied herself very well, by snaring partridges, rabbits and squirrels: she had also killed two or three beavers, and some porcupines. She did not seem to have been in want, and had a small stock of provisions by her when she was discovered. She was in good health and condition, and one of the finest of Indian women. _Austin._ I should have been afraid that other Indians would have come and killed her.