September 14.

This morning, the officers being assembled round a small fire, Perrault presented each of us with a small piece of meat which he had saved from his allowance.  It was received with great thankfulness, and such an act of self-denial and kindness being totally unexpected in a Canadian voyager filled our eyes with tears.  In directing our course to a river issuing from the lake we met Credit who communicated the joyful intelligence of his having killed two deer in the morning.  We instantly halted and, having shared the deer that was nearest to us, prepared breakfast.  After which the other deer was sent for and we went down to the river, which was about three hundred yards wide and flowed with great velocity through a broken rocky channel.  Having searched for a part where the current was most smooth, the canoe was placed in the water at the head of a rapid, and St. Germain, Solomon Belanger, and I embarked in order to cross.  We went from the shore very well, but in mid-channel the canoe became difficult to manage under our burden as the breeze was fresh.  The current drove us to the edge of the rapid, when Belanger unluckily applied his paddle to avert the apparent danger of being forced down it, and lost his balance.  The canoe was overset in consequence in the middle of the rapid.  We fortunately kept hold of it until we touched a rock where the water did not reach higher than our waists; here we kept our footing, notwithstanding the strength of the current, until the water was emptied out of the canoe.  Belanger then held the canoe steady whilst St. Germain placed me in it and afterwards embarked himself in a very dexterous manner.  It was impossible however to embark Belanger, as the canoe would have been hurried down the rapid the moment he should have raised his foot from the rock on which he stood.  We were therefore compelled to leave him in his perilous situation.  We had not gone twenty yards before the canoe, striking on a sunken rock, went down.  The place being shallow we were again enabled to empty it and the third attempt brought us to the shore.  In the meantime Belanger was suffering extremely, immersed to his middle in the centre of a rapid, the temperature of which was very little above the freezing-point, and the upper part of his body covered with wet clothes, exposed in a temperature not much above zero to a strong breeze.  He called piteously for relief and St. Germain on his return endeavoured to embark him but in vain.  The canoe was hurried down the rapid and when he landed he was rendered by the cold incapable of further exertion and Adam attempted to embark Belanger but found it impossible.  An attempt was next made to carry out to him a line made of the slings of the men’s loads.  This also failed, the current acting so strongly upon it as to prevent the canoe from steering and it was finally broken and carried down the stream.  At length when Belanger’s strength seemed almost exhausted the canoe reached him with a small cord