This is the kind of enjoyment they experience for the most part in winter; for in summer they are able to support themselves, and to obtain provisions so as not to be assailed by such extreme hunger, the rivers abounding in fish, while birds and wild animals fill the country about. The soil is very good and well adapted for tillage, if they would but take pains to plant Indian corn, as all their neighbors do, the Algonquins, Ochastaiguins, [321] and Iroquois, who are not attacked by such extremes of hunger, which they provide against by their carefulness and foresight, so that they live happily in comparison with the Montagnais, Canadians, and Souriquois along the seacoast. This is in the main their wretched manner of life. The snow and ice last three months there, from January to the 8th of April, when it is nearly all melted: at the latest, it is only seldom that any is seen at the end of the latter month at our settlement. It is remarkable that so much snow and ice as there is on the river, and which is from two to three fathoms thick, is all melted in less than twelve days. From Tadoussac to Gaspé, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, and the Great Bay, the snow and ice continue in most places until the end of May, at which time the entire entrance of the great river is sealed with ice; although at Quebec there is none at all, showing a strange difference for one hundred and twenty leagues in longitude, for the entrance to the river is in latitude 49° 50' to 51°, and our settlement [322] in 46° 40'. ENDNOTES: