Original - North Central Michigan College Library

day and night. While the women collectedthe sap, boiled it, and completed the sugar, themen were not less busy in cutting wood, makingfires, and in hunting and fishing in part ofour supply of food.The earlier part of the spring isthat bestadapted to making maple sugar. The sapruns only in the day; and it will not run unlessthere has been a frost the night before.Whenin the morning there is a clear sun and the nighthas left ice of the thickness of a dollar thegreatest quantity is produced.On the twenty-fifth of April our labor ended,and we returned to the fort, carrying withus as we found by the scales, sixteen hundredweightof sugar. We had besides thirty-sixgallons of syrup; and during our stay in thewoods we certainly consumed three hundredweight.Though, as I have said, we huntedand fished, yet sugar was our principal foodduring the whole month of April. I haveknown Indians to live wholly upon the sameand become fat.On the day of our return to the fort therearrived an English gentleman, Sir Robert47D overs, on a voyage of curiosity. I accompaniedthis gentleman on his return to Michilimackinac,which we reached on the twentiethof May. My intention was to remain47 Sir Robert Davers of Suffolk, England, came toAmerica, apparently in the spring of 1761 on a tour ofobservation. He was at Detroit in the spring of 1762,70