got up upon it; when I, snapping an uncharged pistol close to the powder, set it on fire; and those that were upon the timber were scorched with it, and six or seven of them fell, or rather jumped in among us, with the force and fright of the fire; we dispatched these in an instant, and the rest were so frighted with the light, which the night, for now it was very near dark, made more terrible, that they drew back a little.

Upon which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we gave a shout; upon this the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near twenty lame ones, which we found struggling on the ground, and fell a-cutting them with our swords, which answered our expectation; for the crying and howling they made were better understood by their fellows; so that they fled and left us.

We had, first and last, killed about three score of them; and had it been daylight, we had killed many more.  The field of battle being thus cleared, we made forward again; for we had still near a league to go.  We heard the ravenous creatures howl and yell in the woods as we went, several times; and sometimes we fancied we saw some of them, but the snow dazzling our eyes, we were not certain; so in about an hour more we came to the town, where we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright, and all in arms; for it seems, that, the night before, the wolves and some bears had broken into that village, and put them in a terrible fright; and they were obliged to keep guard night and day, but especially in the night, to preserve their cattle, and indeed their people.

The next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs so swelled with the rankling of his two wounds, that he could go no farther; so we were obliged to take a new guide there, and go to Tholouse, where we found a warm climate, a fruitful pleasant country, and no snow, no wolves, or any thing like them; but when we told our story at Tholouse, they told us it was nothing but what was ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains, especially when the snow lay on the ground; but they inquired much what kind of a guide we had gotten, that would venture to bring us that way in such a severe season; and told us, it was very much we were not all devoured.  When we told them how we placed ourselves, and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceedingly, and told us it was fifty to one but we had been all destroyed; for it was the sight of the horses that made the wolves so furious, seeing their prey; and that at other times they are really afraid of a gun; but they being excessive hungry, and raging on that account, the eagerness to come at the horses had made them senseless of danger; and that if we had not by the continued fire, and at last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it had been great odds but that we had been torn to pieces; whereas, had we been content to have sat still on horseback, and fired as horsemen, they would not have taken the horses so much for their own, when men were on their backs, as otherwise; and withal they told us, that at last, if we had stood all together, and left our horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them, that we might have come off safe, especially having our fire-arms in our hands, and being so many in number.