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XXXVIil A GENERAL HISTORY

about our military eftablifhments. The ammunition which they receive
is employed to kill game, in order to procure rum in return, though their
families may be in a ftarving condition: hence it is, that, in confequence
of flothful and diffolute lives, their numbers are in a very perceptible

ftate of diminution.

From the Detour to the ifland of Michilimakinac, at the confluence of
the Lakes Huron and Michigan, in latitude 45. 54. North is about forty-
miles. To keep the direét courfe to Lake Superior, the north fhore
from the river Teffalon fhould be followed ; crofling to the North-Weit
end of St. Jofeph, and paffing between it and the adjacent iflands, which
makes a diftance of fifty miles to the fall of St. Mary, at the foot of
which, upon the South fhore, there is a village, formerly a place of great
refort for the inhabitants of Lake Superior, and confequently of confi-
derable trade: it is now, however, dwindled to nothing, and reduced
to about thirty families, of the Algonquin nation, who are one half of
the year ftarving, and the other half intoxicated, and ten or twelve Ca-
nadians, who have been in the Indian country from an early period of
life, and intermarried with the natives who have brought them families.
Their inducement to fettle there, was the great quantity of white fifh
that are to be taken in and about the falls, with very little trouble, par-
ticularly in the autumn, when that fifh leaves the lakes, and comes to
the running and fhallow waters to {pawn. ‘Thefe, when falt can be pro-
cured, are pickled juft as the froft fets in, and prove very good food with
potatoes, which they have of late cultivated with fuccefs. The natives
live chiefly on this fifh, which they hang up by the tails, and preferve
throughout the winter, or at leaft as long as they laft; for whatever

quantity