But nothing I heard here equalled in grotesque
circumstances occurrences, whose truth I can vouch for, many years
ago on the Saskatchewan River. In 1874, if I remember aright, a great
spring freshet in the North Branch was accompanied by a tremendous
ice-jam, which backed the water up, and flooded the river bank so
suddenly that many Indians were drowned. On an island below Prince
Albert, a woman, to save her life, had to climb a neighbouring tree,
and gave birth to a child amongst the branches. The jam broke, and,
wonderful to say, both mother and child got down to firm ground
alive. Another case, even more gruesome, happened on the Lower
Saskatchewan not so many years ago. A woman and her husband were
hastening on snowshoes from their winter camp to the river, in order
to share in the usual Christmas bounty and festivities at the
Hudson's Bay Company's post. The woman was seized with incipient
labour, and darting from her husband, with whom she had been
quarrelling on the way, pushed on, and, in a frozen marsh, amongst
bulrushes, on a bitterly cold night, was delivered of a child.
Grumous as she was, she picked herself up, and, with incredible
nerve, walked ten miles to the Pas, carrying her live infant with
her, wrapped in a rabbit-skin robe.] It was not in February, but in
_Meeksuo p?©sim_, "The month when the eagles return"; not in August,
but in Oghp??ho p?©sim, "The month when birds begin to fly.
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