"Unfortunate!" exclaims the
Father, "possessed of a whale! That's the difference between _Le Petit
Cochon_ and Jonah." Sucking Pig said he would join the Church if the
priest would rid him of the tape-worm. But we must use the words of
Petitot himself, for they are too delicious to lose. "Christmas night,
1865, after midnight mass, _Le Petit Cochon,_ carefully purged, both as
to body and soul, by an emetic, two purgatives, and a good confession,
content as a King, received holy baptism. I gave him the name of Noel."
In starvation times, guests were not appreciated. Robert Campbell of the
H.B. Company, writing from Fort Halkett in 1840, says, "God grant that
the time of privation may soon end, and that I may not see a soul from
below till the snow disappears." These days of the early forties when
England was engaged with the Chartist risings at home and her Chinese
wars abroad, were surely parlous times up on this edge of empire. The
Fort Simpson journals of February 4, 1843, record, "The _Cannibal_, with
young _Noir_, and others of the party of _Laman_, arrived this evening
in the last stage of existence, being compelled by starvation to eat all
their furs.
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