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128 JOHN RUTHERFORD Thus left alone among these savages, and taught by the murder of his comrade on how slight a tenure he held his own life, exposed as he was every moment to the chance of in some way or other provoking their capricious cruelty, Rutherford, it may be thought, must have felt his protracted detention growing every day more insupportable. One of the greatest inconveniences which he now began to feel arose from the wearing out of his clothes, which he patched and tacked as well as he could for some time, but at last, after he had been about three years in the country, they would hold together no longer. All that he had to wear, therefore, was a white flax mat, which was given to him by the chief, and which, being thrown over his shoulders, came as low as his knees. This, he says, was his only garment, and he was compelled to go both bareheaded and barefooted, having neither hat, shoes, nor stockings. His life, meanwhile, seems to have been varied by few incidents deserving of being recorded, and we are left to suppose that he spent his time principally in shooting and fishing, as before. For the first sixteen months of his residence at the village, he kept a reckoning of days by notches on a stick; but when he afterwards moved about with the chiefs, he neglected this mode of tracing the progress of time. “At last, it happened one day,” the narrative proceeds, “while we were all assembled at a