One of these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west and running out of food.

But Henry indignantly repudiated the suggestion.

Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by the French Canadians _tripe de roche_,[10] looking, in fact, very much like slices of tripe.

Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen.

The woman was well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an egg.