rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes. Many a night
afterwards I lay down to sleep beside these men and their brethren--many
a night by lake-shore, by torrent's edge, and far out amidst the
measureless meadows of the West--but "custom stales" even nature's
infinite variety, and through many wild bivouacs my memory still wanders
back to that first night out by the shore of Lake Winnipeg.

At break of day we launched the canoe again and pursued our course for
the mouth of the Winnipeg River. The lake which yesterday was all
sunshine, to-day looked black and overcast--thunder-clouds hung angrily
around the horizon, and it seemed as though Winnipeg was anxious to give
a sample of her rough ways before she had done with us. While the morning
was yet young we made a portage--that is, we carried the canoe and its
stores across a neck of land, saving thereby a long paddle round a
projecting cape. The portage was through a marshy tract covered with long
grass and rushes. While the men are busily engaged in carrying across the
boat and stores, I will introduce them to the reader. They were four in
number, and were named as follows:-Joseph Monkman, cook and interpreter;
William Prince, full Indian; Thomas Smith, ditto; Thomas Hope, ci-devant
schoolmaster, and now self-constituted steersman. The three first were
good men. Prince, in particular, was a splendid canoe-man in dangerous
water. But Hope possessed the greatest capacity for eating and talking of
any man I ever met. He could devour quantities of pemmican any number of
times during the day, and be hungry still. What he taught during the
period when he was schoolmaster I have never been able to find out, but
he was popularly supposed at the mission to be a very good Christian. He
had a marked disinclination to hard or continued toil, although he would
impress an on looker with a sense of unremitting exertion. This he
achieved by divesting himself of his shirt and using his paddle, as Alp
used his sword, "with right arm bare." A fifth Indian was added to the
canoe soon after crossing the portage.

A couple of Indian lodges stood on the shore along which we were
coasting. We put in towards these lodges to ask information, and found
them to belong to Samuel Henderson, full Swampy Indian. Samuel, who spoke
excellent English, at once volunteered to come with me as a guide to the
Winnipeg River; but I declined to engage him until I had a report of his
capability for the duty from the Hudson Bay officer in charge of Fort
Alexander, a fort now only a few miles distant. Samuel at once launched
his canoe, said "Good-bye" to his wife and nine children, and started
after us for the fort, where, on the advice of the officer, I finally
engaged him.

CHAPTER TEN.

The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a Rapid--A Camp--No
Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat Portage--A far-fetched
Islington--"Like Pemmican".

WE entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at midday and paddled up to
Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance. Here
I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg, getting a
fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five o'clock in
the evening started on my journey Up the river. Eight miles above the
fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the twilight. In
surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume of the Winnipeg
was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its waters with the
lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which stood well out into
the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.

The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us, dark and
solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept
the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky
blackness the rushing water, white with foam-above, the rifted
thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the
thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a
rough shelter with cross-poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling themselves
together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the storm.

I was ninety miles from Fort Garry, and as yet no tidings of the
Expedition.

A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without
meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place
her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations.
To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it
descends 360 feet in a distance of 160 miles, that it is full of eddies
and whirlpools, of every variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts,
that it expands into lonely pine edged lakes and far-reaching
island-studded bays, that its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished
rocks, that its vast solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly
active--to say all this is but to tell in bare items of fact the
narrative of its beauty. For the Winnipeg by the multiplicity of its
perils and the ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the
description of civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized
travel. It seems part of the savage-fitted alone for him and for his
ways, useless to carry the burden of man's labour, but useful to shelter
the wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its
shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through
the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways!
To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one
would of a high-mettled charger which will do any thing if he be rightly
handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To
shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of the Barriere, to carry his canoe
down the whirling eddies of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush
of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the
whirlpool below the Chute-à-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a
skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in
the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness
of skill, not to be found except after generations of practice. For
hundreds of years the Indian has lived amidst these rapids; they have
been the playthings of his boyhood, the realities of his life, the
instinctive habit of his old age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the
dog is to the Esquimaux, what the camel is to those who journey across
Arabian deserts, so is the canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore
yields him from first to last the materials-he requires for its
construction: cedar for the slender ribs, birch-bark to cover them,
juniper to stitch together the separate pieces, red pine to give resin
for the seams and crevices. By the lake or river shore, close to his
wigwam, the boat is built;

"And the forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the
tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the
larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in
autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."

It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances over
land from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load it
down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters him
by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land is
unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in
it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots
his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing
torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water.

For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees
are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends
its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the
rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the
winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the
north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and
with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and
the wavy, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its
long icy sleep.

Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes
like an arrow.

The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
moments of keenest enjoyment, every thing was new and strange, and each
hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian
scenery.

The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays when
the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on the
water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns would
be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while one
remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its
sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the
centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away
from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no
difficult matter: start at five o'clock a.m., halt for breakfast at seven
o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away at two
o'clock, paddle until sunset at 7:30; that was the work of each day. But
how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and circumstance
between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost at every hour
of the long summer day the great Winnipeg revealed some new phase of
beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I have
already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the Woods to
Lake Winnipeg, 160 miles, makes a descent of 360 feet. This descent is
effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of terraces at
various distances from each other; in other words, the river forms
innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by rapids and
perpendicular falls of varying altitude, thus when the voyageur has
lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and launched it again
above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted two-and-twenty feet
of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages will give him a total
rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles. (How cold does the bare
narration of these facts appear beside their actual realization in a
small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we can picture one of these
many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of falling water, and we see, upon
rounding some pine-clad island or ledge of rock, a tumbling mass of foam
and spray studded with projecting rocks and flanked by dark wooded
shores; above we can see nothing, but below the waters, maddened by their
wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap in angry whirlpools. It is as
wild a scene of crag and wood and water as the eye can gaze upon, but we
look upon it not for its beauty, because there is no time for that, but
because it is an enemy that must be conquered. Now mark how these Indians
steal upon this enemy before he is aware of it. The immense volume of
water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools at the foot of the fall,
rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer water; this rush produces
along the shores of the river a counter or back-current which flows up
sometimes close to the foot of the fall, along this back-water the canoe
is carefully steered, being often not six feet from the opposing rush in
the central river, but the back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and
the canoe, if it followed this back-current, would inevitably end in the
same place; for a minute there is no paddling, the bow paddle and the
steersman alone keeping the boat in her proper direction as she drifts
rapidly up the current. Amongst the crew not a word is spoken, but every
man knows what he has to do and will be ready when the moment comes; and
now the moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of
water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth
green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a
strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down
into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has
been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often
only the choice of the whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very
edge of the eddy there is one loud shout given by the bow paddle, and the
canoe shoots full into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the
united strength of the entire crew--the men work for their very lives,
and the boat breasts across the river with her head turned full toward
the falls; the waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over
the gunwale, the Indians shout as they dip their paddles like lightning
into the foam, and the stranger to such a scene holds his breath amidst
this war of man against nature. Ha! the struggle is useless, they cannot
force her against such a torrent, we are close to the rocks and the foam;
but see, she is driven down by the current in spite of those wild fast
strokes. The dead strength of such a rushing flood must prevail. Yes, it
is true, the canoe has been driven back; but behold, almost in a second
the whole thing is done-we float suddenly beneath a little rocky isle on
the foot of the cataract. We have crossed the river in the face of the
fall, and the portage landing is over this rock, while three yards out on
either side the torrent foams its headlong course. Of the skill necessary
to perform such things it is useless to speak. A single false stroke, and
the whole thing would have failed; driven headlong down the torrent,
another attempt would have to be made to gain this rock-protected spot,
but now we lie secure here; spray all around us, for the rush of the
river is on either side and you can touch it with an outstretched paddle.
The Indians rest on their paddles and laugh; their long hair has escaped
from its-fastening through their exertion, and they retie it while they
rest. One is already standing upon the wet slippery rock holding the
canoe in its place, then the others get out. The freight is carried up
piece by piece and deposited on the flat surface some ten feet above;
that done, the canoe is lifted out very gently, for a single blow against
this hard granite boulder would shiver and splinter the frail birch-bark
covering; they raise her very carefully up the steep face of the cliff
and rest again on the top. What a view there is from this coigne of
vantage! We are on the lip of the fall, on each side it makes its plunge,
and below we mark at leisure the torrent we have just braved; above, it
is smooth water, and away ahead we see the foam of another rapid. The
rock on which we stand has been worn smooth by the washing of the water
during countless ages, and from a cleft or fissure there springs a
pine-tree or a rustling aspen. We have crossed the Petit Roches, and our
course is onward still.

Through many scenes like this we held our way during the last days of
July. The weather was beautiful; now and then a thunder-storm would roll
along during the night, but the morning sun rising clear and bright would
almost tempt one to believe that it had been a dream, if the pools of
water in the hollows of the rocks and the dampness of blanket or
oil-cloth had not proved the sun a humbug. Our general distance each day
would be about thirty-two miles, with an average of six portages. At
sunset we made our camp on some rocky isle or shelving shore, one or two
cut wood, another got the cooking things ready, a fourth gummed the seams
of the canoe, a fifth cut shavings from a dry stick for the fire--for
myself, I generally took a plunge in the cool delicious water--and soon
the supper hissed in the pans, the kettle steamed from its suspending
stick, and the evening meal was eaten with appetites such as only the
voyageur can understand.

Then when the shadows of the night had fallen around and all was silent,
save the river's tide against the rocks, we would stretch our blankets on
the springy moss of the crag and lie down to sleep with only the stars
for a roof.

Happy, happy days were these--days the memory of which goes very far into
the future, growing brighter as we journey farther away from them, for
the scenes through which our course was laid were such as speak in
whispers, only when we have left them--the whispers of the pine-tree, the
music of running water, the stillness of great lonely lakes.

On the evening of the fifth day from leaving Fort Alexander we reached
the foot of the Rat Portage, the twenty-seventh, and last, upon the
Winnipeg River; above this portage stretched the Lake of the Woods, which
here poured its waters through a deep rock-bound gorge with tremendous
force. During the five days we had only encountered two solitary Indians;
they knew nothing whatever about the Expedition, and, after a short
parley and a present of tea and flour, we pushed on. About midday on the
fourth day we halted at the Mission of the White Dog, a spot which some
more than heathen missionary had named Islington in a moment of virtuous
cockneyism. What could have tempted him to commit this act of desecration
it is needless to ask.

Islington on the Winnipeg! O religious Gilpin, hadst thou fallen a prey
to savage Cannibalism, not even Sidney Smith's farewell aspiration would
have saved the savage who devoured you, you must have killed him.

The Mission of the White Dog had been the scene of Thomas Hope's most
brilliant triumphs in the role of schoolmaster, and the youthful
Ojibbeways of the place had formerly belonged to the band of hope. For
some days past Thomas had been labouring under depression, his power of
devouring pemmican had, it is true, remained unimpaired, but in one or
two trying moments of toil, in rapids and portages, he had been found
miserably wanting; he had, in fact, shown many indications of utter
uselessness; he had also begun to entertain gloomy apprehensions of what
the French would do to him when they caught him on the Lake of the Woods,
and although he endeavoured frequently to prove that under certain
circumstances the French would have no chance whatever against him, yet,
as these circumstances were from the nature of things never likely to
occur, necessitating, in the first instance, a presumption that Thomas
would show fight, he failed to convince not only his hearers, but
himself, that he was not in a very bad way. At the White Dog Mission he
was, so to speak, on his own hearth, and was doubtless desirous of
showing me that his claims to the rank of interpreter were well founded.
No tidings whatever had reached the few huts of the Indians at the White
Dog; the women and children, who now formed the sole inhabitants, went
but little out of the neighbourhood, and the men had been away for many
days in the forest, hunting and fishing. Thus, through the whole course
of the Winnipeg, from lake to lake, I could glean no tale or tidings of
the great Ogima or of his myriad warriors. It was quite dark when we
reached, on the evening of the 30th July, the northern edge of the Lake
of the Woods and paddled across its placid waters to the Hudson Bay
Company's post at the Rat Portage. An arrival of a canoe with six
strangers is no ordinary event at one of these remote posts which the
great fur company have built at long intervals over their immense
territory. Out came the denizens of a few Indian lodges, out came the
people of the fort and the clerk in charge of it. My first question was
about the Expedition, but here, as elsewhere, no tidings had been heard
of it. Other tidings were however forthcoming which struck terror into
the heart of Hope. Suspicious canoes had been seen for-some days past
amongst the many islands of the lake; strange men had come to the fort at
night, and strange fires had been seen on the islands-the French were out
on the lake. The officer in charge of the post was absent at the time of
my visit, but I had met him at Fort Alexander, and he had anticipated my
wants in a letter which I myself carried to his son. I now determined to
strain every effort to cross with rapidity the Lake of the Woods and
ascend the Rainy River to the next post of the Company, Fort Francis,
distant from Rat Portage about 1400 miles, for there I felt sure that I
must learn tidings of the Expedition and bring my long solitary journey
to a close. But the Lake of the Woods is an immense sheet of water lying
1000 feet above the sea level, and subject to violent gales which lash
its bosom into angry billows. To be detained upon some island,
storm-bound amidst the lake, %would never have answered, so I ordered a
large keeled boat to be got ready by midday it only required a few
trifling repairs of sail and oars, but a great feast had to be gone
through in which my pemmican and flour were destined to play a very
prominent part. As the word pemmican is one which may figure frequently
in these pages, a few words explanatory of it may be useful. Pemmican,
the favourite food of the Indian and the half-breed voyageur, can be made
from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of
buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by
fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky
substance; in this state it is put into a large bag made from the hide of
the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by
melted fat being poured over it-the quantity of fat is nearly half the
total weight, forty pounds of fat going to fifty pounds of "beat meat;"
the best pemmican generally has added to it ten pounds of berries and
sugar, the whole composition forming the most solid description of food
that man can make. If any person should feel inclined to ask, "What does
pemmicau taste like?" I can only reply, "Like pemmican," there is
nothing else in the world that bears to it the slightest resemblance.
-Can I say any thing that Will give the reader an idea of its sufficing
quality? Yes, I think I can. A dog that will eat from four to six pounds
of raw fish a day when sleighing, will only devour two pounds: of
pemmican, if he be fed upon that food; yet I have seen Indians and
half-breeds eat four pounds of it in a single day-but this is
anticipating. Pemmican can be prepared in many ways, and it is not easy
to decide which method is the least objectionable. There is rubeiboo and
richot, and pemmican plain and pemmican raw, this last method being the
one most in vogue amongst voyageurs; but the richot, to me, seemed the
best; mixed with a little flour and fried in a pan, pemmican in this form
can be eaten, provided the appetite be sharp and there is nothing else to
be had--this last consideration is, however, of importance.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A close
Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The Officer
commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.

The feast having been concluded (I believe it had gone on all night, and
was protracted far into the morning), the sails and oars were suddenly
reported ready, and about midday on the 31st July we stood away from the
Portages du Rat into the Lake of the Woods. I had added another man to
my crew, which now numbered seven hands, the last accession was a French
half-breed, named Morrisseau. Thomas Hope had possessed himself of a
flint gun, with which he was to do desperate things should we fall in
with the French scouts upon the lake. The boat in which I now found
myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of
freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and
also possessed of powerful sweeps, which were worked by the men in
standing positions, the rise of the oar after each stroke making the
oarsman sink back upon the thwarts only to resume again his upright
attitude for the next dip of the heavy sweep.

This is the regular Hudson Bay Mackinaw boat, used for the carrying
trade of the great Fur Company on every river from the Bay of Hudson to
the Polar Ocean. It looks a big, heavy, lumbering affair, but it can sail
well before a wind, and will do good work with the oars too.

That portion of the Lake of the Woods through which we now steered our
way was a perfect maze and network of island and narrow channel; a light
breeze from the north favoured us, and we passed gently along the rocky
islet shores through unruffled water. In all directions there opened out
innumerable channels, some narrow and winding, others straight and open,
but all lying'-between shores clothed with a rich and luxuriant
vegetation; shores that curved and twisted into mimic bays and tiny
promontories, that rose in rocky masses abruptly from the water, that
sloped down to meet the lake in gently swelling undulations, that seemed,
in fine, to present in the compass of a single glance every varying
feature of island scenery. Looking through these rich labyrinths of tree
and moss-covered rock, it was difficult to imagine that winter could ever
-stamp its frozen image upon such a soft summer scene. The air was balmy
with the scented things which grow profusely upon the islands; the water
was warm, almost tepid, and yet despite of this the winter frost would
cover the lake with five feet of ice, and the thick brushwood of the
islands would lie hidden during many months beneath great depths of snow.

As we glided along through this beautiful scene the men kept a sharp
look-out for the suspicious craft whose presence had caused such alarm at
the Portage-du-Rat. We saw no trace of man or canoe, and nothing broke
the stillness of the evening except the splash of a sturgeon in the
lonely bays. About sunset we put ashore upon a large rock for supper.
While it was being prepared I tried to count the islands around. From a
projecting point I could see island upon island to the number of over a
hundred--the wild cherry, the plum, the wild rose, the raspberry,
intermixed with ferns and mosses in vast variety, covered every spot
around me, and from rock and crevice the pine and the poplar hung their
branches over the water. As the breeze still blew fitfully from the north
we again embarked and held our way through the winding channels--at times
these channels would grow wider only again to close together; but there
was no current, and the large high sail moved us slowly through the
water. When it became dark a fire suddenly appeared on an island some
distance ahead. Thomas Hope grasped his flint gun and seemed to think the
supreme moment had at length arrived. During the evening I could tell by
the gestures and looks of the men that the mysterious rovers formed the
chief subject of conversation, and our latest accession painted so
vividly their various suspicious movements, that Thomas was more than
ever convinced his hour was at hand. Great then was the excitement when
the fire was observed upon the island, and greater still when I told
Samuel to steer full towards it. As we approached we could distinguish
figures moving to and fro between us and the bright flame, but when we
had got within a few hundred yards of the spot the light was suddenly
extinguished, and the ledge of rock upon which it had been burning became
wrapped in darkness. We hailed, but there was no reply. Whoever had been
around the fire had vanished through the trees; launching their canoe
upon the other side of the island, they had paddled away through the
intricate labyrinth scared by our sudden appearance in front of their
lonely bivouac. This apparent confirmation of his worst fears in no way
served to reanimate the spirits of Hope, and though shortly after he lay
down with the other men in the bottom of the boat, it was not without
misgivings as to the events which lay before him in the darkness. One man
only remained up to steer, for it was my intention to run as long as the
breeze, faint though it was, lasted. I had been asleep about half an hour
when I felt my arm quickly pulled, and, looking up, beheld Samuel bending
over me, while with one hand he steered the boat. "Here they are," he
whispered, "here they are." I looked over the gunwale and under the sail
and beheld right on the course we were steering two bright fires burning
close to the water's edge. We were running down a channel which seemed to
narrow to a strait between two islands, and presently a third fire came
into view on the other side of the strait, showing distinctly the narrow
pass towards which we were steering, it did not appear to be more than
twenty feet across it, and, from its exceeding narrowness and the
position of the fires, it seemed as though the place had really been
selected to dispute our outward passage. We were not more than two
hundred yards from the strait and the breeze was holding well into it.
What was to be done? Samuel was for putting the helm up; but that would
Have been useless, because we were already in the channel, and to run on
shore would only place us still more in the power of our enemies, if
enemies they were, so I told him to hold his course and run right through
the narrow pass. The other men had sprung quickly from their blankets,
and Thomas was the picture of terror. When he saw that I was about to run
the boat through the strait, he instantly made up his mind to shape for
himself a different course. Abandoning his flint musket to any body who
would take it, he clambered like a monkey on to the gunwale, with the
evident intention of dropping noiselessly into the water, and seeking, by
swimming on shore, a safety which he deemed denied to him on board. Never
shall I forget his face as he was pulled back into the boat; nor is it
easy to describe the sudden revulsion of feeling which possessed him
when: a dozen different fires breaking into view showed at once that the
forest was on fire, and that the imaginary bivouac of the French was only
the flames of burning brushwood. Samuel laughed over his mistake, but
Thomas looked on it in no laughing light, and, seizing his gun, stoutly
maintained that had it really been the French they would have learnt a
terrible lesson from the united volleys of the fourteen-shooter and his
flint musket.

The Lake of the Woods covers a very large extent of country. In length it
measures about seventy miles, and its greatest breadth is about the same
distance; its shores are but little known, and it is only the Indian who
can steer with accuracy through its labyrinthine channels. In its
southern portion it spreads out into a vast expanse of open water, the
surface of which is lashed by tempests into high-running seas.

In the early days of the French fur trade it yielded large stores of
beaver and of martens, but it has long ceased to be rich in furs. Its
shores and islands will be found to abound in minerals whenever
civilization reaches them.

Among the Indians the lake holds high place as the favourite haunt of the
Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone
from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of
ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly
by lightning, the islands which abound in lizards although these reptiles
are scarce elsewhere--all these make the Lake of the Woods a region
abounding in Indian legend and superstition. There are isles upon which
he will not dare to venture, because the evil spirit has chosen them;
there are promontories upon which offerings must be made to the Manitou
when the canoe drifts by their lonely shores; and there are spots watched
over by the great Kennebic, or Serpent, who is jealous of the treasures
which they contain. But all these things are too long to dwell upon now;
I must haste along my way.

On the second morning after leaving Rat Portage we began to leave behind
the thickly-studded islands and to get out into the open waters. A
thunder-storm had swept the lake during the night, but the morning was
calm, and the heavy sweeps were not able to make much way. Suddenly,
while we were halted for breakfast, the wind veered round to the
north-west and promised us a rapid passage across the Grande Traverse to
the mouth of Rainy River. Embarking hastily, we set sail for a strait
known as the Grassy Portage, which the high stage of water in the lake
enabled us to run through without touching ground. Beyond this strait
there stretched away a vast expanse of water over which the white-capped
waves were running in high billows from the west. It soon became so rough
that we had to take on board the small canoe which I had brought with me
from Rat Portage in case of accident, and which was towing astern. On we
swept over the high-rolling billows with a double reef in the lug-sail.
Before us, far away, rose a rocky promontory, the extreme point of which
we had to weather in order to make the mouth of Rainy River. Keeping the
boat as close to the wind as she would go, we reeled on over the tumbling
seas. Our lee-way was very great, and for some time it seemed doubtful if
we would clear the point; as we neared it we saw that there was a
tremendous sea running against the rock, the white sprays shooting far up
into the air When the rollers struck against it. The wind had now
freshened to a gale and the boat laboured much, constantly shipping
sprays. At last we were abreast of the rocks, close hauled, and yet only
a hundred yards from the breakers. Suddenly the wind veered a little, or
the heavy swell which was running caught us, for we began to drift
quickly down into the mass of breakers. The men were all huddled together
in the bottom of the boat, and for a moment or two nothing could be done.
"Out with the sweeps!" I roared. All was confusion; the long sweeps got
foul of each other, and for a second every thing went wrong. At last
three sweeps were got to work, but they could do nothing against such a
sea. We were close to the rocks, so close that one began to make
preparations for doing something--one didn't well know what--when we
should strike. Two more oars were out, and for an instant we hung in
suspense as to the result. How they did pull! it was the old paddle-work
forcing the rapid again; and it told; in spite of wave and wind, we were
round the point, but it was only by a shade. An hour later we were
running through a vast expanse of marsh and reeds into the mouth of Rainy
River; the Lake of the Woods was passed, and now before me Lay eighty
miles of the Rivière-de-la-Pluie.

A friend of mine once, describing the scenery of the Falls of the Cauvery
in India, wrote that "below the falls there was an island round which
there was water on every side:" this mode of description, so very true
and yet so very simple in its character, may fairly-be applied to Rainy
River; one may safely say that it is a river, and that it has banks on
Either side of it; if one adds that the banks are rich, fertile, and well
wooded, the description will be complete--such was the river up which I
now steered to meet the Expedition. The Expedition, where was it? An
Indian whom we met on the lake knew nothing about it; perhaps on the
river we should hear some tidings. About five miles from the mouth of
Rainy River there was a small out-station of the Hudson Bay Company kept
by a man named Morrisseau, a brother of my boatman. As we approached this
little post it was announced to us by an Indian that Morrisseau had that
morning lost a child. It was a place so wretched looking that its name
of Hungery Hall seemed well adapted to it.

When the boat touched the shore the father of the dead child came out of
the hut, and shook hands with every one in solemn silence; when he came
to his brother he kissed him, and the brother in his turn went up the
bank and kissed a number of Indian women who were standing round; there
was not a word spoken by any one; after awhile they all went into the
hut in which the little body lay, and remained some time inside. In its
way, I don't ever recollect seeing a more solemn exhibition of grief
than this complete silence in the presence of death; there was no
question asked, no sign given, and the silence of the dead seemed to
have descended upon the living. In a little time several Indians
appeared, and I questioned them as to the Expedition; had they seen or
heard of it?

"Yes, there was one young man who had seen with his own eyes the great
army of the white braves."

"Where?" I asked.

"Where the road slants down into the lake, was the interpreted reply.

"What were they like?" I asked again, half incredulous after so many
disappointments.

He thought for awhile: "They were like the locusts," he answered, "they
came on one after the other." There could be no mistake about it, he had
seen British soldiers.

The chief of the party now came forward, and asked what I had got to say
to the Indians; that he would like to hear me make a speech; that they
wanted to know why all these men were coming through their country. To
make a speech! it was a curious request. I was leaning with my back
against the mast, and the Indians were seated in a line on the bank;
every thing looked so miserable around, that I thought I might for once
play the part of Chadband, and improve the occasion, and, as a speech was
expected of me, make it. So I said, "Tell this old chief that I am sorry
he is poor and hungry; but let him look around, the land on which he sits
is rich and fertile, why does he not cut down the trees that cover it,
and plant in their places potatoes and corn? then he will have food in
the winter when the moose is scarce and the sturgeon cannot be caught."
He did not seem to relish my speech, but said nothing. I gave a few plugs
of tobacco all round, and we shoved out again into the river. "Where the
road comes down to the lake" the Indian had seen the troops; where was
that spot? No easy matter to decide, for lakes are so numerous in this
land of the North-west that the springs of the earth seem to have found
vent there. Before sunset we fell in with another Indian; he was alone in
a canoe, which he paddled close along shore out of the reach of the
strong breeze which was sweeping us fast up the river. While he was yet a
long way off, Samuel declared that he had recently left Fort Francis, and
therefore would bring us news from that place. "How can you tell at this
distance that he has come from the fort?" I asked. "Because his shirt
looks bright," he answered. And so it was; he had left the fort on the
previous day and run seventy miles; he was old Monkman's Indian returning
after having left that hardy voyageur at Fort Francis.

Not a soldier of the Expedition had yet reached the fort, nor did any man
know where they were.

On again; another sun set and another sun rose, and we were still running
up the Rainy River before a strong north wind which fell away towards
evening. At sundown of the 3rd August I calculated that some four and
twenty miles must yet lie between me and that fort at which, I felt
convinced, some distinct tidings must reach me of the progress of the
invading column. I was already 180 miles beyond the spot where I had
counted upon falling in with them. I was nearly 400 miles from Fort
Garry.

Towards evening on the 3rd it fell a dead calm, and the heavy boat could
make but little progress against the strong running current of the river,
so I bethought me of the little birch-bark canoe which I had brought from
Rat Portage; it was a very tiny one, but that was no hindrance to the
work I now\ required of it. We had been sailing all day, so my men were
fresh. At supper I proposed that Samuel, Monkman, and William Prince
should come on with me during the night, that we would leave Thomas Hope
in command of the big boat and push on for the fort in the light canoe,
taking with us only sufficient food for one meal. The three men at once
assented, and Thomas was delighted at the prospect of one last grand feed
all to himself, besides the great honour of being promoted to the rank
and dignity of Captain of the boat. So we got the little craft out, and
having gummed her all over, started once more on our upward way just as
the shadows of the night began to close around the river. We were four in
number, quite as many as the canoe could carry; she was very low in the
water and, owing to some damage received in the rough waves of the Lake
of the Woods, soon began to leak badly. Once we put ashore to gum and
pitch her seams again, but still the water oozed in and we were wet. What
was to be done? with these delays we never could hope to reach the fort
by daybreak, and something told me instinctively, that unless I did get
there that night I would find the Expedition already arrived. Just at
that moment we descried smoke rising amidst the trees on the right shore,
and soon saw the poles of Indian lodges. The men said they were very bad
Indians. firom the American side--the left shore of Rainy River is
American territory--but the chance of a bad Indian was better than the
certainty of a bad canoe, and we stopped at the camp. A lot of half-naked
redskins came out of the trees, and the pow-wow commenced. I gave them
all tobacco, and then asked if they would give me a good canoe in
exchange for my bad one, telling them that I would give them a present
next day at the fort if one or two amongst them would come up there.
After a short parley they assented, and a beautiful canoe was brought out
and placed on the water. They also gave us a supply of dried sturgeon,
and, again shaking hands all round, we departed on our way.

This time there was no mistake, the canoe proved as dry as a bottle, and
we paddled bravely on through the mists of night. About midnight we
halted for supper, making a fire amidst the long wet grass, over which we
fried the sturgeon and boiled our kettle; then we went on again through
the small hours of the morning. At times I could see on the right the
mouths of large rivers which flowed from the west: it is down these
rivers that the American Indians come to fish for sturgeon in the Rainy
River. For nearly 200 miles the country is still theirs, and the
Pillager and Red Lake branches of the Ojibbeway nation yet hold their
hunting-grounds in the vast swamps of North Minnesota.

These Indians have a bad reputation, as the name of Pillager implies, and
my Red River men were anxious to avoid falling in with them. Once during
the night, opposite the mouth of one of the rivers opening to the west,
we saw the lodges of a large party on our left; with paddles that were
never lifted out of the water, we glided noiselessly by, as silently as a
wild duck would cleave the current. Once again during the long night a
large sturgeon, struck suddenly by a paddle, alarmed us by bounding out
of the water and landing full upon the gunwale of the Canoe, splashing
back again into the water and wetting us all by his curious manoeuvre. At
length in the darkness we heard the hollow roar of the great Falls of the
Chaudiere sounding loud through the stillness. It grew louder and louder
as with now tiring strokes my worn-out men worked mechanically at their
paddles. The day was beginning to break. We were close beneath the
Chaudiere and alongside of Fort Francis. The scene was wondrously
beautiful. In the indistinct light of the early dawn the cataract seemed
twice its natural height, the tops of pine trees rose against the pale
green of the coming day, close above the falls the bright morning star
hung, diamond-like, over the rim of the descending torrent; around the
air was tremulous with the rush of water, and to the north the
rose-coloured streaks of the aurora were woven into the dawn. My long
solitary journey had nearly reached its close.

Very cold and cramped by the constrained position in which I had remained
all night, I reached the fort, and, unbarring the gate, with my rifle
knocked at the door of one of the wooden houses. After a little, a man
opened the door in the costume, scant and unpicturesque, in which he had
risen from his bed.

"Is that Colonel Wolseley?" he asked.

"No," I answered; "but that sounds well; he can't be far off."

"He will be in to breakfast," was the reply.

After all, I was not much too soon. When one has journeyed very far along
such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily
expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant
point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being
found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though
one had quietly taken one's ease at an inn. Still there were others to be
consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours
of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine.

After an hour's delay I went to the house where the men were lying down,
and said to them, "The Colonel is close at hand. It will be well for us
to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive
at the Fort;" so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above
the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into
Rainy River two miles above the fort.

It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river
makes as it flows out of the Lake. Forcing up this rapid, we saw
spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake.

The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it.
can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object
will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the
eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the
lake first caught my sight. There they are! Yes, there they were. Coming
along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west
canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant
as they shot down towards the river's source.

Beyond, in the expanse of the lake, a boat or two showed far and faint.
We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the
head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the
centre sat a figure in uniform with forage-cap on head, and I could see
that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved
a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and commenced to
dip down its rushing waters. Quitting the rock, I got again into my
canoe, and we shoved off into the current. Thus running down the rapid
the two canoes drew together, until at its foot they were only a few
paces apart.

Then the officer in the large canoe, recognizing a face he had last seen
three months before in the hotel at Toronto, called out, "Where on earth
have you dropped from?" and with a "Fort Garry, twelve days out, sir," I
was in his boat.

The officer whose canoe thus led the advance into Rainy River was no
other than the commander of the Expeditionary Force. During the period
which had elapsed since that force had landed at Thunder Bay on the
shore of Lake Superior, he had toiled with untiring energy to overcome
the many obstacles which opposed the progress of the troops through the
rock-bound fastnesses of the North. But there are men whose perseverance
hardens, whose energy quickens beneath difficulties and delay, whose
genius, like some spring bent back upon its base, only gathers strength
from resistance. These men are the natural soldiers of the world; and
fortunate is it for those who carry swords and rifles and are dressed in
uniform when such men are allowed to lead them, for with such men as
leaders the following, if it be British, will be all right--nay, if it be
of any nationality on the earth, it will be all right too. Marches will
be made beneath suns which by every rule of known experience ought to
prove fatal to nine-tenths of those who are exposed to them, rivers will
be crossed, deserts will be traversed, and mountain passes will be
pierced, and the men who cross and traverse and pierce them will only
marvel that doubt or distrust should ever have entered into their minds
as to the feasibility of the undertaking. The man who led the little army
across the Northern wilderness towards Red River was well fitted in
every respect for the work which was to be done. He was young in years
but he was old in service; the highest professional training had
developed to the utmost his ability, while it had left unimpaired the
natural instinctive faculty of doing a thing from oneself, which the
knowledge of a given rule for a given action so frequently destroys. Nor
was it only by his energy, perseverance, and professional training that
Wolseley was fitted to lead men upon the very exceptional service now
required from them. Officers and soldiers will always follow when those
three qualities are combined in the man who leads them; but they will
follow with delight the man who, to these qualities, unites a happy
aptitude for command, which is neither taught nor learned, but which is
instinctively possessed.

Let us look back a little upon the track of this Expedition. Through a
vast wilderness of wood and rock and water, extending for more than 600
miles, 1200 men, carrying with them all the appliances of modern war, had
to force their way.

The region through which they travelled was utterly destitute of food,
except such as the wild game afforded to the few scattered Indians; and
even that source was so limited that whole families of the Ojibbeways had
perished of starvation, and cases of cannibalism had been frequent
amongst them. Once cut adrift from Lake Superior, no chance remained for
food until the distant settlement of Red River had been reached. Nor was
it at all certain that even there supplies could be obtained, periods of
great distress had occurred in the settlement itself; and the disturbed
state into which its affairs had lately fallen in no way promised to give
greater habits of agricultural industry to a people who were proverbially
roving in their tastes. It became necessary, therefore, in piercing this
wilderness to take with the Expedition three month's supply of food, and
the magnitude of the undertaking will be somewhat under stood by the
outside world when this fact is borne in mind.

Of course it would have been a simple matter if the-boats which carried
the men and their supplies had been able to sail through an unbroken
channel into the bosom of Lake Winnipeg; but through that long 600 miles
of lake and river and winding creek, the rocky declivities of cataracts
and the wild wooded shores of rapids had to be traversed, and full
forty-seven times between lake and lake had boats, stores, and
ammunition, had cannon, rifles, sails, and oars to be lifted from the
water, borne across long ridges of rock and swamp and forest, and placed
again upon the northward rolling river. But other difficulties had to be
overcome which delayed at the outset the movements of the Expedition. A
road, leading from Lake Superior to the height by land (42 miles), had
been rendered utterly impassable by fires which swept the forest and
rains which descended for days in continuous torrents. A considerable
portion of this road had also to be opened out in order to carry the
communication through to Lake Shebandowan close to the height of land.

For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been
employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the
Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven
weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary
difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of
boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the 4th of August, just three
weeks after that departure, the silent shores of the Rainy River beheld
the advance of these pioneer boats who thus far had "marched on without
impediment."

The evening of the day that witnessed my arrival at Fort Francis saw also
my departure from it; and before the sun had set I was already far down
the Rainy River. But I was no longer the solitary white man; and no
longer the camp-fire had around it the swarthy faces of the Swampies. The
woods were noisy with many tongues; the night was bright with the glare
of many fires. The Indians, frightened by such a concourse of braves, had
fled into the woods, and the roofless poles of their wigwams alone marked
the camping-places where but the evening before I had seen the red man
monarch of all he surveyed. The word had gone forth from the commander to
push on with all speed for Red River, and I was now with the advanced
portion of the 60th Rifles en route for the Lake of the Woods. Of my old
friends the Swampies only one remained with me, the others had been kept
at Fort Francis to be distributed amongst the various brigades of boats
as guides to the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River; even Thomas Hope
had got a promise of a brigade-in the mean time pork was abundant; and
between pride and pork what more could even Hope desire?

In two days we entered the Lake of the Woods, and hoisting sail stood out
across the waters. Never before had these lonely islands witnessed such a
sight as they now beheld. Seventeen large boats close hauled to a
splendid breeze swept in a great scattered mass through the high running
seas, dashing the foam from their bows as they dipped and rose under
their large lug-sails. Samuel Henderson led the way, proud of his new
position, and looked upon by the soldiers of his boat as the very acme
of an Indian. How the poor fellows enjoyed that day! no oar, no portage
no galling weight over rocky ledges, nothing but a grand day's racing
over the immense lake. They smoked-all day, balancing themselves on the
weather-side to steadv the boats as they keeled over into the heavy seas.
I think they would have-given even Mr. Riel that day a pipeful of
tobacco; but Heaven help him if they: had caught him two days later on
the portages of the Winnipeg! he would have had a hard time of it.

There has been some Hungarian poet, I think, who has found a theme for
his genius in the glories of the _private soldier. He had been a soldier
himself, and he knew the wealth of the mine hidden in the unknown and
unthought of Rank and File. It is a pity that the knowledge of that
wealth should not be more widely circulated.

Who are the Rank and File? They are the poor wild birds whose country
has cast them off, and who repay her by offering their lives for her
glory; the men who take the shilling, who drink, who drill, who march to
music, who fill the graveyards of Asia; the men who stand sentry at the
gates of world-famous fortresses, who are old when their elder brothers
are still young, who are bronzed and burned by fierce suns, who sail
over seas packed in great masses, who watch at night over lonely
magazines, who shout, "Who comes there?" through the darkness, who dig
in trenches, who are blown to pieces in mines, who are torn by shot and
shell, who have carried the flag of England into every land, who have
made her name famous through the nations, who are the nation's pride in
her hour of peril and her plaything-in her hour of prosperity--these
are the rank and file. We are a curious nation; until lately we bought
our rank, as we buy our mutton, in a market; and we found officers and
gentlemen where other nations would have found thieves and swindlers.
Until lately we flogged our files with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and found
heroes by treating men like dogs. But to return to the rank and file.

The regiment-which had been selected for the work of piercing these
solitudes of the American continent had peculiar claims for that service.
In bygone times it had been composed exclusively of Americans, and there
was not an Expedition through all the wars which England waged against
France in the New World in which the 60th, or "Royal Americans," had not
taken a prominent part. When Munro yielded to Montcalm the fort of
William Henry, when Wolfe reeled back from Montmorenci and stormed
Abraham, when Pontiac swept the forts from Lake Superior to the Ohio, the
60th, or Royal Americans, had ever been foremost in the struggle. Weeded
now of their weak and sickly men, they formed a picked 'body, numbering
350 soldiers, of whom any nation on earth might well be proud. They were
fit to do anything and to go any where; and if a fear lurked in the minds
of any of them, it was that Mr. Riel would not show fight. Well led, and
officered by men who shared with them every thing, from the portage-strap
to a roll of tobacco, there was complete confidence from the highest to
the lowest. To be wet seemed to be the normal condition of man, and to
carry a pork-barrel weighing 200 pounds over a rocky portage was but
constitutional and exhilarating exercise--such were the men with whom, on
the evening of the 8th of August, I once more reached the neighbourhood'
of the Rat Portage. In a little bay between many islands the flotilla
halted just before entering the reach which led to the portage. Paddling
on in front with Samuel in my little canoe, we came suddenly upon four
large Hudson Bay boats with full crews of Red River half-breeds and
Indians-they were on their way to meet the Expedition, with the object of
rendering what assistance they could to the troops in the descent of the
Winnipeg river. They had begun, to despair of ever falling in with it,
and great was the excitement at the sudden meeting; the flint-gun was at
once discharged into the air, and the shrill shouts began to echo through
the islands. But the excitement on the side of the Expedition was quite
as keen. The sudden shots and the wild shouts made the men in the boats
in rear imagine that the fun was really about to begin, and that a
skirmish through the wooded isles would be the evening's work. The
mistake was quickly discovered. They were glad of course to meet their
Red River friends; but somehow, I fancy, the feeling, of joy would
certainly not have been lessened had the boats held the dusky adherents
of the Provisional Government.

On the following morning the seventeen boats commenced the descent of the
Winnipeg river, while I remained at the Portage-du-Rat to await the
arrival of the chief of the Expedition from Fort Francis. Each succeeding
day brought a fresh brigade of boats under the guidance of one of my late
canoe-men; and finally Thomas Hope came along,-seemingly enjoying life to
the utmost--pork was plentiful, and as for the French there was no need
to dream of them, and he could sleep in peace in the midst of fifty white
soldiers. During six days I remained at the little Hudson Bay Company's
post at the Rat Portage, making short excursions into the surrounding
lakes and rivers, fishing below the rapids of the Great Chute; and in the
evenings listening to the Indian stories of the lake as told by my worthy
host, Mr. Macpherson, a great portion of whose life had been spent in the
vicinity.

One day I went some distance away from the fort to fish at the foot of
one of the great rapids formed by the Winnipeg River as it runs from the
Lake of the Woods. We carried our canoe over two or three portages, and
at length reached the chosen spot. In the centre of the river an Indian
was floating quietly in his canoe, casting every now and then a large
hook baited with a bit of fish into the water. My bait consisted of a
bright spinning piece of metal, which I had got in one of the American
cities on my way through Minnesota. Its effect upon the fish of this
lonely region was marvellous; they had never before been exposed to such
a fascinating affair, and they rushed at it with avidity. Civilization on
the rocks had certainly a better time of it, as far as catching fish
went, than barbarism in the canoe. With the shining thing we killed three
for the Indian's one. My companion, who was working the spinning bait
while I sat on the rock, casually observed, pointing to the Indian, "He's
a Windigo."

"A what?" I asked.

"A Windigo."

"What is that?"

"A man that has eaten other men."

"Has this man eaten other men?"

"Yes; a long time ago he and his band were starving, and they killed and
ate forty other Indians who were starving with them. They lived through
the winter on them, and in the spring he had to fly from Lake Superior
because the others wanted to kill him in revenge; and so he came here,
and he now lives alone near this place."

The Windigo soon paddled over to us, and I had a good opportunity of
studying his appearance. He was a stout, low-sized savage, with coarse
and repulsive features, and eyes fixed sideways in his head like a
Tartar's. We had left our canoe some distance away, and my companion
asked him to put us across to an island. The Windigo at once consented:
we got into his canoe, and he ferried us over. I don't know the name of
the island upon which he landed us, and very likely it has got no name,
but in my mind, at least, the rock and the Windigo will always be
associated with that celebrated individual of our early days, the King
of the Cannibal Islands. The Windigo looked with wonder at the spinning
bait, seeming to regard it as a "great medicine;" perhaps if he had
possessed such a thing he would never have been forced by hunger to
become a Windigo.

Of the bravery of the Lake of the Woods Ojibbeway I did not form a very
high estimate. Two instances related to me by Mr. Macpherson will suffice
to show that opinion to have been well founded. Since the days when the
Bird of Ages dwelt on the Coteau-des-Prairies the Ojibbeway and the Sioux
have warred against each other; but as the Ojibbeway dwelt chiefly in the
woods and the Sioux are denizens of the great plains, the actual war
carried on between them has not beena unusually destructive. The
Ojibbeways dislike to go far into the open plains; the Sioux hesitate to
pierce the dark depths of the forest, and the war is generally confined
to the border land, where the forest begins to merge into the plains.
Every now and again, however, it becomes necessary to go through the
form of a war-party, and the young men depart upon the war-path against
their hereditary enemies. To kill a Sioux and take his scalp then becomes
the great object of existence. Fortunate is the brave who can return to
the camp bearing with him the coveted trophy. Far and near spreads the
glorious news that a Sioux scalp has been taken, and for many a night the
camps are noisy with the shouts and revels of the scalp dance from
Winnipeg to Rainy Lake. It matters little whether it be the scalp of a
man, a woman, or a child; provided it be a scalp it is all right. There
is the record of the two last war-paths from the Lake of the Woods.

Thirty Ojibbeways set out one fine day for the plains to war against the
Sioux, they followed the line of the Rosseaui river, and soon emerged
from the forest. Before them lay a camp of Sioux. The thirty braves,
hidden in the thickets, looked at the camp of their enemies; but the more
they looked the less they liked it. They called a council of
deliberation; it was unanimously resolved to retire to the Lake of the
Woods: but surely they must bring back a scalp, the women would laugh at
them! What was to be done? At length the difficulty was solved. Close by
there was a newly-made grave, a squaw had died and been buried. Excellent
idea; one scalp was as good as another. So the braves dug up the buried
squaw-, took the scalp, and departed for Rat Portage. There was a great
dance, and it was decided that each and every one of the thirty
Ojibbeways deserved well of his nation.

But the second instance is still more revolting. A very brave Indian
departed alone from the Lake of the Woods to war against the Sioux; he
wandered about, hiding in the thickets by day and coming forth at night.
One evening, being nearly starved, he saw the smoke of a wigwam; he went
towards it, and found that it was inhabited only by women and
children, of whom there were four altogether. He went up and asked for
food; they invited him to enter the lodge; they set before him the best
food they had got, and they laid a buffalo robe for his bed in the
warmest corner of the wigwam. When night came, all slept; when midnight
came the Ojibbeway quietly arose from his couch, killed the two women,
killed the two children, and departed for the Lake of the Woods with
four scalps. Oh, he was a very brave Indian, and his name went far
through the forest! I know somebody who would have gone very far to see
him hanged.

Late on the evening of the 14th August the commander of the Expedition
arrived from Fort Francis at the Portage-du-Rat. He had attempted to
cross the Lake of the Woods in a gig manned by soldiers, the weather
being too tempestuous to allow the canoe to put out, and had lost his way
in the vast maze of islands already spoken of. As we had received
intelligence at the Portage-du-Rat of his having set out from the other
side of the lake, and as hour after hour passed without bringing his boat
in sight, I got the canoe ready and, with two Indians, started to light a
beacon-fire on the top of the Devil's Rock, one of the haunted islands of
the lake, which towered high over the surrounding isles. We had not
proceeded far, however, before we fell in with the missing gig bearing
down for the portage under the guidance of an Indian who had been picked
up en route.

On the following day I received orders to start at once for Fort
Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg River to engage guides for the
brigades of boats which had still to come--two regiments of Canadian
Militia. And here let us not-forget the men who, following in the
footsteps of the regular troops, were now only a few marches behind their
more fortunate comrades. To the lot of these two regiments of Canadian
Volunteers fell the same hard toil of oar and portage which we have
already described. The men composing these regiments were stout athletic
fellows, eager for service, tired of citizen life, and only needing the
toil of a campaign to weld them into as tough and resolute a body of men
as ever leader could desire.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal Mail--Grilling a
Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary Bivouac--The
President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular Troops.

I TOOK a very small canoe, manned by three Indians--father and two
sons--and, with provisions for three days, commenced the descent of the
river of rapids. How we shot down the hissing waters in that tiny craft!
How fast we left the wooded shores behind us, and saw the-lonely isles
flit by as the powerful current swept us like a leaf upon its bosom!

It was late of the afternoon of the 15th August when I left for the last
time the Lake of the Woods. Next night our camp was made below the
Eagle's Nest, seventy miles from the Portage-du-Rat. A wild storm burst
upon us at night-fall, and our bivouac was a damp and dreary one. The
Indians lay under the canoe; I sheltered as best I could beneath a huge
pine-tree. My oil-cloth was only four feet in length-a shortcoming on the
part of its feet which caused mine to suffer much discomfort. Besides, I
had Her Majesty's royal mail to keep dry, and, with the limited liability
of my oil-cloth in the matter of length, that became no easy task--two
bags of letters and papers, home letters and papers, too, for the
Expedition. They had been flung into my: canoe when leaving Rat Portage,
and I had spent the first day in-sorting them as we swept along, and now
they were getting wet in spite of every effort to the contrary. I made
one bag into a pillow, but the rain came through the big pine-tree,
splashing down through the branches, putting out my fire and drenching
mail-bags and blankets.

Daylight came at last, but still the rain hissed down, making it no easy
matter to boil our kettle and fry our bit of pork. Then we put out for
the day's work on the river. How bleak and wretched it all was! After a
while we found it was impossible to make head against the storm of wind
and rain which swept the water, and we had to put back to the shelter of
our miserable camp. About seven o'clock the wind fell, and we set out
again. Soon the sun came forth drying and warming us all over. All day we
paddled on, passing in succession the grand Chute-à-Jacquot, the Three
Portages-des-Bois, the Slave Falls, and the dangerous rapids of the
Barrière. The Slave Falls! who that has ever beheld that superb rush of
water will forget it? Glorious, glorious Winnipeg! it may be that with
these eyes of mine I shall never see thee again, for thou liest far out
of the track of life, and man mars not thy beauty with ways of civilized
travel; but I shall often see thee in imagination, and thy rocks and thy
waters shall murmur in memory for life.

That night, the 17th of August, we made our camp on a little island close
to the Otter Falls. It came a night of ceaseless rain, and again the
mail-bags underwent a drenching. The old Indian cleared a space in the
dripping vegetation, and made me a rude shelter with branches woven
together; but the rain beat through, and drenched body, bag, and baggage.
And yet how easy it all was, and how sound one slept! simply because one
had to do it; that one consideration is the greatest expounder of the
possible. I could not speak a word to my Indians, but we got on by signs,
and seldom found the want of speech--"ugh, ugh" and "caween," yes and no,
answered for any difficulty. To make a fire and a camp, to boil a kettle
and fry a bit of meat are the home works of the Indian. His life is one
long picnic, and it matters as little to him whether sun or rain, snow or
biting frost, warm, drench, cover, or freeze him, as it does to the
moose or the reindeer that share his forest life and yield him often his
forest fare. Upon examining the letters in-the morning the interior of
the bags presented such a pulpy and generally deplorable appearance that
I was obliged to stop at one of the Seven Portages for the purpose of
drying Her Majesty's mail. With this object we made a large fire, and
placing cross-sticks above proceeded to toast and grill the dripping
papers. The Indians sat around, turning the letters with little sticks as
if they were baking cakes or frying sturgeon. Under their skilful
treatment the pulpy mats soon attained the consistency, and in many
instances the legibility, of a smoked herring, but as they had before
presented a very fishy appearance that was not of much consequence.

This day was bright and fine. Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying
the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we
overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less
than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is
very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would
stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and
the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning
but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected
with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian war. Thus the great
Slave Fall tells by its name the fate of two Sioux captives taken in some
foray by the Ojibbeway; lashed together in a canoe, they were the only
men who ever ran the Great Chute. The rocks around were black with the
figures of the Ojibbeways, whose wild triumphant yells were hushed by the
roar of the cataract; but the torture was a short one; the mighty rush,
the wild leap, and the happy hunting-ground, where even Ojibbeways cease
from troubling and Sioux warriors are at rest, had been reached. In
Mackenzie's journal the fall called Galet-du-Bonnet is said to have been
named by the Canadian voyageurs, from the fact that the Indians were in
the habit of crowning the highest rock above the portage with wreaths of
flowers and branches of trees. The Grand Portage, which is three quarters
of a mile in length, is the great test of the strength of the Indian and
half-breed; but, if Mackenzie speaks correctly, the voyageur has much
degenerated since the early days of the fur trade, for he writes that
seven pieces, weighing each ninety pounds, were carried over the Grand
Portage by an Indian in one trip, 630 pounds borne three quarters of a mile
by one man--the loads look big enough still, but 250 pounds is considered
excessive now. These loads are carried in a manner which allows the whole
strength of the body to be put into the work. A broad leather strap is
placed round the forehead, the ends of the strap passing back over the
shoulders support the pieces which, thus carried, lie along-the spine
from the small of the back to the crown of the head. When fully loaded,
the voyageur stands with his body bent forward, and with one hand
steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.

In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a
backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and
again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off
some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her
steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a
thousand horses: for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no
mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and
"wave-worn precipice" there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine
itself pours forth. The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the
most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they
appear to the stranger. Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the
midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape
seems impossible. The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can
save it--there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself
provides it. Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that
rock. There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides
than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away
with redoubled speed. No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool
and twisting billow.

On the night of the 20th of August the whole of the regular troops of the
Expedition and the general commanding it and his staff had reached Fort
Alexander, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Some accidents had
occurred, and many had been the "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no
life had been lost; and from the 600 miles of wilderness there emerged
400 soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous
toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and
whose appearance and physique--browned, tanned, and powerful told: of the
glorious climate of these Northern solitudes, It was near sunset when the
large canoe touched the wooden pier opposite the Fort Alexander and the
commander of the Expedition stepped on shore to meet his men, assembled
for the first time together since Lake Superior's distant sea had been
left behind. It-was a meeting not devoid of those associations which make
such things memorable, and the cheer which went up from the soldiers who
lined the steep bank to bid him welcome had in it a note of that sympathy
which binds men together by the inward consciousness of difficulties
shared in common and dangers--successfully overcome together. Next day
the united fleet put out into Lake Winnipeg; and steered for the lonely
shores of the Island of Elks, the solitary island of the southern portion
of the lake. In a broad, curving, sandy bay the boats found that night a
shelter; a hundred fires threw their lights far into the lake, and
bugle-calls startled echoes that assuredly had never been rouse before by
notes so strange. Sailing in a wide scattered mass before a favouring
breeze, the fleet reached about noon the following day the mouth of the
Red River, the river whose name was the name of the Expedition, and whose
shores had so long been looked forward to as a haven of rest from portage
and oar labour. There it was at last, seeking through its many mouths the
waters of the lake. And now our course lay up along the reed fringed
river and sluggish current to where the tree-tops began to rise over the
low marsh-land-up to where my old friends the Indians had pitched their
camp and given me the parting salute on the morning of my departure just
one month before. It was dusk when we reached the Indian Settlement and
made a camp upon the opposite shore, and darkness had quite set in when I
reached the mission-house, some three miles higher up. My old friend the
Archdeacon was glad indeed to welcome me back. News from the settlement
there was none--news from the outside world there was plenty. "A great
battle had been fought near the Rhine," the old man said, "and the French
had been disastrously defeated."

Another day of rowing, poling, tracking, and sailing, and evening closed
over the Expedition, camped within six miles of Fort Garry; but all
through the day the river banks were enlivened with people shouting
welcome to the soldiers, and church bells rang out peals of gladness as
the boats passed by. This was through the English and Scotch Settlement,
the people of which had long grown weary of the tyranny of the Dictator
Riel. Riel--why, we have almost forgotten him altogether during these
weeks on the Winnipeg! Nevertheless, he-had still held his own within the
walls of Fort Garry, and still played to a constantly decreasing audience
the part of the Little Napoleon.

During this day, the 23rd August, vague rumours reached us of terrible
things to be done by the warlike President. He would suddenly appear with
his guns from the woods? he would blow up the fort when the troops had
taken possession--he would die in the ruins. These and many other
schemes of a similar description were to be enacted by the Dictator in
the last extremity of his despair. I had spent the day in the saddle,
scouring the woods on the right bank of the river in advance of the
fleet, while on the left shore a company of the 60th, partly mounted,
moved on also in advance of the leading boats. But neither Riel nor his
followers appeared to dispute-the upward passage of the flotilla, and the
woods through which I rode were silent and deserted. Early in the morning
a horse had been lent to me by an individual rejoicing in the classical
name of Tacitus Struthers. Tacitus had also assisted me to swim the steed
across the Red River in order to gain the right shore, and, having done
so, took leave of me with oft-repeated injunctions to preserve from harm
the horse and his accoutrements, "For," said Tacitus, "that horse is a
racer." Well, I suppose it must have been that fact that made the horse
race all day through the thickets and oak woods of the right shore, but I
rather fancy my spurs had something to say to it too.

When night again fell, the whole force had reached a spot six-miles from
the rebel fort, and camp was formed for the last time on the west bank
of the river. And what a night and storm then broke upon the Red River
Expedition! till the tents flapped and fell and the drenched soldiers
shiv'ered shelterless, waiting for the dawn. The occupants of tents which
stood the pelting of the pitiless storm were no better off than those
outside; the surface of the ground became ankle-deep in mud and water,
and the men lay in pools during the last hours of the night. At length a
dismal daylight dawned over the dreary scene, and the upward course was
resumed. Still the rain came down in torrents, and, with water above,
below, and around, the Expedition neared its destination. If the steed of
Tacitus had had a hard day, the night had been less severe upon him than
upon his rider. I had procured him an excellent stable at the other side
of the river, and upon recrossing again in the morning I found him as
ready to race as his owner could desire. Poor beast, he was a most
miserable-looking animal, though belying his attenuated appearance by his
performance. The only race which his generally forlorn aspect justified
one in believing him capable of running was a race, and a hard one, for
existence; but for all that he went well, and Tacitus himself might have
envied the classical outline of his Roman nose.

About two miles north of Fort Garry the Red River makes a sharp bend to
the east and, again turning round to the west, forms a projecting point
or neck of land known as Point Douglas. This spot is famous in Red River
history as the scene of the battle, before referred to in these pages,
where the voyageurs and French half-breeds of the North west Fur Company
attacked the retainers of the Hudson Bay, some time in 1813, and
succeeded in putting to death by various methods of half-Indian warfare
the governor of the rival company and about a score of his followers. At
this point, where the usually abrupt bank of the Red River was less
steep, the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance
upon Fort Garry. The preliminary arrangements were soon completed, and
the little army, with its two brass guns trundling along behind Red River
carts, commenced its march across the mud-soaked prairie. How unspeakably
dreary it all looked! the bridge, the wretched village, the crumbling
fort, the vast level prairie, water soaked, draped in mist, and pressed
down by low-lying clouds. To me the ground was not new--the bridge was
the spot where only a month before I had passed the half reed sentry in
my midnight march to the Lower Fort. Other things had changed since then
besides the weather.

Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force
drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the
flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed
through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible
about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary
one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the
skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west
face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps
of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his
horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals
and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who
seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson
Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave
men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long
polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in
advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with
unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the
members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the
American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision
the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and
their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered
hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of
retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the
bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On
the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and
from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns
told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the
grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the
highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously
expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be
too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed
to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted
that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red
River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our
European ideas of that virtue.

That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by
his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine
on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth
much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps
an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to
depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear
to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W.
B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the
Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred.
Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the
more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance,
he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and
indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property
and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at
once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save
America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for
which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel
council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much.
He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his
virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the
rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members
of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the
approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound
of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the
troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by
the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory
language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel
government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government
House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt
of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea.
A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed
the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village
produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in
the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors
were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as
though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had
been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any
kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but
the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost
to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water
sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it
was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system,
that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched
upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I
regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the
general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from
the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to
their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden
revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power,
would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or
two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of
the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to
rights.

Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long
return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had
arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what
work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly
intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was
a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at
the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept
quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of
that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his
chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken
Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling
in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely
back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run
a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques
Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person
of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude,
peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At
length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of
September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the
torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander
also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River
Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the
United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was
mistaken, for it was only about to begin.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An
Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations--
Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine
River--Rossette.

One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long
prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of
which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my
last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its
close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before
a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores
of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives:
the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves
prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.

So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the
quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of
my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old
associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every
feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and
trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be
gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the
moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one
sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would
be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my
hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of
ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind,
running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea:
I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times
the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely
excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and
walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some
guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the
north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in
the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky
prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the
star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a
long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west
it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the
west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call
chance, and dreamers destiny?

A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina,
whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had
induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of
September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the
Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the
boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known
member of the Canadian bench.

"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.

"To Canada."

"Why?"

"Because there is nothing more to be done."

"Oh, you must come back."

"Why so?"

"Because we have a lot of despatches to send to Ottawa, and the mail is
not safe. Come back now and you will be here again in ten days time."

Go back again on the steam-boat and come up next trip--would I?

There are many men who pride themselves upon their fixity of purpose, and
a lot of similar fixidities and steadiness; but I don't. I know of
nothing so fixed as the mole, so obstinate as the mule, or so steady as
a stone wall, but I don't particularly care about making their general
characteristics the rule of my life; and so I decided to go back to Fort
Garry, just as I would have decided to start for the North Pole had the
occasion offered.

Early in the second week of October I once more drew nigh the hallowed
precincts of Fort Garry.

"I am so glad you have returned," said the governor, Mr. Archibald, when
I met him on the evening of my arrival, "because I want to ask you if you
will undertake a much longer journey than any thing you have yet done. I
am going to ask you if you will accept a mission to the Saskatchewan
Valley and through the Indian countries of the West. Take a couple of
days to think over it, and let me know your decision."

"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have
already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."

This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his
breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.

And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my
wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly,
and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of
mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast
stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the
central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title
for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and
ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend
into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction,
through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming
greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and
start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of
miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends
towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours
its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river
rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns
once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh,
sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a
rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake
Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its
birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale,
meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called
by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the
Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not
the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red
River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the
rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller
stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the
waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line
and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.

So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How
shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great,
boundless, solitary waste of verdure?

The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed
from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson,
played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The
coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate;
but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose
shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the
much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of
Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the
description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an
ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of
Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the
shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of
sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite
variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
brought forth the flowers.

October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.

On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
space!

I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by
name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the
most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too
legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where
the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination.
Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and
the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should
flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square
plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more
despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them.
They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white
man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold,
and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men
who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years
these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this
disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the
same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had
remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by
hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before
it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The
camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a
perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and
far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and
bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.

The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest
attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the
Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan,
attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees.
The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of
death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles
north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September
the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west
tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees,
half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines
had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of
the disease.

"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what
tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now
prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you
can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease.
You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be
deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment
of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper
treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief
officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other
intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran
this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many
curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of
physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became
the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of
the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had
consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At
length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect
them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight
cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a
remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to
visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to
him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited
printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have
already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of
Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but
much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the
snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of
the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is
a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the
mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November
delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which
made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature
of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie,
the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed
the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and
struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering
one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine
of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave
of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away
by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered
for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly
put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any
person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox
brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A
French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the
black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its
lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the
solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally
through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the
wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to
resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me,
nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach
the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of
civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a
cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts
of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the
spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many
nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little
camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there
stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a
terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So,
lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt
as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved
that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark
immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of
the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose
lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term
of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to
fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories,
for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better
never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who
have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a
sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more
substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the
prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into
strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the
other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all
the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra
incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into
the solitudes.

The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
unceasing travel; clear, bright days of mellow sunshine followed by
nights of sharp frost which almost imperceptibly made stronger the icy
covering of the pools and carried farther and farther out into the
running streams the edging of ice which so soon was destined to cover
completely the river and the rill. Our route lay along the left bank of
the Assineboine, but at a considerable distance from the river, whose
winding course could be marked at times by the dark oak woods that
fringed it. Far away to the south rose the outline of the Blue Hills of
the Souris, and to the north the Riding Mountains lay faintly upon the
horizon. The country was no longer level, fine rolling hills stretched
away before us over which the wind came with a keenness that made our
prairie-fare seem delicious at the close of a hard day's toil. 36, 22,
24, 20; such were the readings of my thermometer as each morning I looked
at it by the fire-light as we arose from our blankets-before the dawn and
shivered in the keen hoarfrost while the kettle was being boiled.
Perceptibly getting colder, but still clear and fine, and with every
Breeze laden with healthy and invigorating freshness, for four days we
journeyed without seeing man or beast; but on the morning of the fifth
day, while camped in a thicket on the right of the trail, we heard the
noise of horses passing near us. A few hours afterwards we passed a small
band of Salteaux encamped farther on; and later in the day overtook a
half-breed trader on his way to the Missouri to trade with the Sioux.
This was a celebrated &French half breed named Chaumon Rossette. Chaumon
had been undergoing a severe course of drink since he had left the
settlement some ten days earlier, and his haggard eyes and swollen
features revealed the incessant orgies of his travels. He had as
companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
two clear and beautiful lakes.

"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"

"Oui, Captain."

"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."

"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."

Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
Missouri.

On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
the fort. I had ridden that distance in five days and two hours.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort Ellice--Quick
Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A Snow-storm--The
South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of poor
Blackie--Carlton.

IT may have occurred to some reader to ask, What is this company whose
name so often appears upon these pages? Who are the men composing it, and
what are the objects it has in view? You have glanced at its early
history, its rivalries, and its discoveries, but now, now at this present
time, while our giant rush of life roars and surges along, what is the
work done by this Company of Adventurers trading into the Bay of Hudson?
Let us see if we can answer. Of the two great monopolies which the
impecuniosity of Charles II. gave birth to, the Hudson Bay Company alone
survives, but to-day the monopoly is one of fact, and not of law. All men
are now free to come and go, to trade and sell and gather furs in the
great Northern territory, but distance and climate raise more formidable
barriers against strangers than law or protection could devise. Bold
would be the trader who would carry his goods to the far away Mackenzie
River; intrepid would be the voyageur who sought a profit from the lonely
shores of the great Bear Lake. Locked in their fastnesses of ice and
distance, these remote and friendless solitudes of the North must long
remain, as they are at present, the great fur preserve of the Hudson Bay
Company. Dwellers within the limits of European states can ill comprehend
the vastness of territory over which this Fur Company holds sway. I say
holds sway, for the north of North America is still as much in the
possession of the Company, despite all cession of title to Canada, as
Crusoe was the monarch of his island, or the man must be the owner of the
moon. From Pembina on Red River to Fort Anderson on the Mackenzie is as
great a distance as from London to Mecca. From the King's Posts to the
Pelly Banks is farther than from Paris to Samarcand, and yet today
throughout that immense region the Company is king. And what a king! no
monarch rules his subjects with half the power of this Fur Company. It
clothes, feeds, and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From
the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and
through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot
than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate
shores of the great_ Slave Lake. _Twice in the year news comes from the
outside world-news many, many months old--news borne by men and dogs
through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down
the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket
that covers the wild Indian in his cold camp has been woven in a Whitney
loom; that knife is from Sheffield; that string of beads from Birmingham.
Let us follow the ships that sail annually from the Thames bound for the
supply of this vast region. It is early in June when she gets clear of
the Nore; it is mid-June when the Orkneys and Stornaway are left behind;
it is August when the frozen Straits of Hudson are pierced; and the end
of the month has been reached when the ship comes to anchor off the
sand-barred mouth of the Nelson River. For one year-the stores that she has
brought lie in the warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they
reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the
Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days
of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs
and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at
four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames
and the gun in the pine woods of the Mackenzie are two widely different
articles. The old rough flint, whose bent barrel the Indians will often
straighten between the cleft of a tree or the crevice of a rock, has been
made precious by the labour of many men; by the trackless wastes through
which it has been carried; by winter-famine of those who have to vend it;
by the years which elapse between its departure from the work shop and
the return of that skin of sable or silver-fox for which it has been
bartered. They are short-sighted men who hold that because the flint-gun
and the sable possess such different values in London, these articles
should also possess their relative values in North America, and argue
from this that the Hudson Bay Company treat the Indians unfairly; they
are short-sighted men, I say, and know not of what they speak. That old
rough flint has often cost more to put in the hands of that Dogrib hunter
than the best finished central fire of Boss or Purdey. But that is not
all that has to be said about the trade of this Company. Free trade may
be an admirable institution for some nations-making them, amongst other
things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means
follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian.
Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade
has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the
earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks,
and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine,
and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease,
small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears
and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an
institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these
things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no
reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or,
for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the
principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of
men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or
for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a
future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters
and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who
takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy
all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself,
second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get
them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may
take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have
been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of
the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there
has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the
wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.

I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in
costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and
hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of
buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and
immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for
before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that
were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain over
which, for three hundred miles, there lay no fort or house of any kind.

Bidding adieu to my host, a young Scotch gentleman, at Fort Ellice, my
little party turned once more towards the North-west and, fording the
Qu'Appelle five miles above its confluence with the Assineboine, struck
out into a lovely country. It was the last day of October and almost the
last of the Indian summer. Clear and distinct lay the blue sky upon the
quiet sun-lit prairie. The horses trotted briskly on under the charge of
an English half-breed named Daniel. Pierre Diome had returned to Red
River, and Daniel was to bear me company as far as Carlton on the North
Saskatchewan. My five horses were now beginning to show the effect of
their incessant work, but it was only in appearance, and the distance
travelled each day was increased instead of diminished as we journeyed
on. I would not have believed it possible that horses could travel the
daily distance which mine did without breaking down altogether under it,
still less would it have appeared possible upon the food which they had
to eat. We had neither hay nor oats to give them; there was nothing-but
the dry grass of the prairie, and no time to eat that but the cold frosty
hours of the night. Still we seldom travelled less than fifty miles
a-day, stopping only for one hour at midday, and going on again until
night began to wrap her mantle around the shivering prairie. My horse was
a wonderful animal; day after day would I fear that his game little limbs
were growing weary, and that soon he must give out; but no, not a bit of
it; his black coat roughened and his flanks grew a little leaner, but
still he went on as gamely and as pluckily as ever. Often during the long
day I would dismount and walk along leading him by the bridle, while the
other two men and the six horses jogged on far in advance; when they had
disappeared altogether behind some distant ridge of the prairie my little
horse would commence to look anxiously around, whinnying and trying to
get along after his comrades; and then how gamely he trotted on when I
remounted, watching out for the first sign of his friends again, far-away
little specks on the great wilds before us. When the camping place would
be reached at nightfall the first care went to the horse. To remove
saddle, bridle, and saddle-cloth, to untie the strip of soft buffalo
leather from his neck and twist it well around his fore-legs, for the
purpose of hobbling, was the work of only a few minutes, and then poor
Blackie hobbled away to find over the darkening expanse his night's
provender. Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea
had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some
frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in
the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the
heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter
spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South
Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about
in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always