1 78	THE YUKON TERRITORY.
a week. I soon found, by calculation, that we must be very careful with our flour, and was obliged to weigh out the daily allowance, — a pound each, not a very large piece of such damp brown bread. I allowed each three pounds of sugar per month, and a pound of tea for all hands. In this way I managed to make our supply last, although we were often on short commons. Fish, rabbits, and grouse were unusually scarce, and often entirely deficient. No deer visit Nulato during the winter.
I had saved a small piece of frozen deer meat for Christmas, which found us without other supplies in the storehouse. Christmas morning I bought two white grouse, and sent Johnny out to shoot another, which he fortunately succeeded in doing. With these, some berry pies, and some sweetened short-cake, I made
Yukon grouse-snare.
out a pretty fair dinner, and invited Pavloff and Yagor to eat it with me, each bringing his own cup, plate, and spoon, as my stock did not set the table. It was a lonely Christmas compared with the last, or with any I had ever spent before. It was impossible to help thinking of the dear ones at home, of the Christmas-trees and festivities they were enjoying, and equally impossible to doubt that they were thinking of us as we were of them, though many thousand miles away.
New-Year's day brought cold weather, forty-eight below zero. My hunters were unsuccessful, and our dinner was reduced to fish soup, cranberry pie, bread, and tea. My family consisted of Johnny, two Indian boys, and Kurilla. I sent the boys out setting snares for grouse and rabbits. These were occasionally successful, and eked out our slender bill of fare. The snares are