After a progress of about five miles, I found I had very materially widened the distance between myself and Zach, who, encumbered by the baggage, and by the spring snow which each moment accumulated in wet heavy cakes upon his snow-shoes, was now a good mile in my rear. This I was surprised at, as he generally outwalked me, even when carrying on his back a heavy load, with perhaps a canoe on his head, cocked-hat fashion, as he was often obliged to do in our fishing-excursions to the northern lakes. It now occurred to me, however, that I had incautiously left the brandy- flask in his charge, and when he came up with me I gathered from his fishy eye, and the thick dribblings of his macaronic gibberish,--which was compounded of sundry Indian dialects and French-Canadian _patois_, coarsely ground up with bits of broken English,--that the modern Circe, who changes men into beasts, had wrought her spells upon him; a circumstance at which I was terribly annoyed, as foreboding an ignominious entry into the city by back-lane and sally-port, instead of my long- anticipated triumphal progress up St. Louis Street, bearded in splendor, bristling with knife and rifle, and followed by my wild Indian _coureur- des-bois_, drawing my antlered trophies after him upon the _tobaugan_ as upon a festival car. "Kaween nishishin! kaw-ween!" howled the big monster, in his mixed-pickle macaronio,--"je me sens saisi du mal-aux-raquettes, je ne pouvons plus. Why you go so dam fast, when hot sun he make snow for tire, eh? Sacr-r-ré raquettes! il me semble qu'ils se grossissent de plus en plus à chaque démarche. Stop for smoke, eh?--v'là! good place for camp away there, kitchee hogeemaus endaut, big chief's house may-be!" grinned he, as he indicated with Indian instinct and a wavering finger a structure of some kind that peered through the fog at a short distance on our left.