The Great Lone Land Part 15

To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry Became now the chief object of my life. I lightened my baggage as much as possible, dispensing with many comforts of clothing and equipment, and on the morn ing of the 23rd January started for c.u.mberland. I will not dwell on the seven days that now ensued, or how from long before dawn to verge of evening we toiled down the great silent river. It was the close of January, the very depth of winter. With heads bent down to meet the crushing blast, we plodded on, oft times as silent as the river and the forest, from whose bosom no sound ever came, no ripple ever broke, no bird, no beast, no human face, but ever the same great forest-fringed river whose majestic turns bent always to the north-east. To tell, day after day, the extreme of cold that now seldom varied would be to inflict on the reader a tiresome record; and, in truth, there would be no use in attempting it; 40 below zero means so many things impossible to picture or to describe, that it would be a hopeless task to enter upon its delineation. After one has gone through the list of all those things that freeze; after one has spoken of the knife which burns the hand that would touch its blade, the tea that freezes while it is being dlrunk, there still remains a sense of having said nothing; a sense which may perhaps be better understood by saying that 40 degrees below zero means just one thing more than all these items--it means death, in a period whose duration would expire in the hours of a winter's daylight, if there was no fire or means of making it on the track.

Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus, doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at c.u.mberland, I Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles on the long road upon which I was travelling.

On the 29th January we reached the sh.o.r.e of Pine Island Lake, and saw in our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds, marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"

a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and the men from c.u.mberland had taken away the body a few hours before.

Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange ant.i.thesis appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor Joe Miller conferred on me--the dog-sled that had carried his body had made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it to the Fort of c.u.mberland.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

c.u.mberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of Dogs--The great Marsh--Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a Medicine-man-- Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his Boots--We reach the Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.

c.u.mBERLAND HOUSE, the oldest post of the Company in the interior, stands on the south sh.o.r.e of Pine Island Lake; the waters of which seek the Saskatchewan by two channels--Tearing River and Big-stone River. These two rivers form, together with the Saskatchewan and the lake, a large island, upon which stands c.u.mberland. Time moves slowly at such places as c.u.mberland, and change is almost unknown. To-day it is the same as it was 100 years ago. An old list of goods sent to c.u.mberland, from England in 1783 had precisely the same items as one of 1870. Strouds, cotton, beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still traded for marten and musquash. In its day c.u.mberland has had distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The graveyard and the funeral had few of those accessories of the modern mortuary which are supposed to be the characteristics of civilized sorrow. There was no mute, no c.r.a.pe, no parade--nothing of that imposing array of hat-bands and horses by which man, even' in the face of the mighty mystery, seeks still to glorify the miserable conceits of life; but the silent snow-laden pine-trees, the few words of prayer read in the flickering light of the lantern, the hush of nature and of night, made accessions full as fitting, as all the m.u.f.fled music and c.r.a.ped sorrow of church and city.

At c.u.mberland I beheld for the first time a genuine train of dogs. There was no mistake about them in shape or form, from fore-goer to hindermost hauler. Two of them were the pure Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed, fox-headed, long-furred, clean-legged animals whose ears, sharp-pointed and erect, sprung from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair; Pomeranians multiplied by four; the other two were a curious compound of Esquimaux and Athabascan, with hair so long that eyes were scarcely 'visible. I had suffered so long from the wretched condition and description of the dogs of the Hudson Bay Company, that I determined to become the possessor of those animals, and, although I had to pay considerably more than had ever been previously demanded as the price of a train of dogs in the North, I was still glad, to get them at any figure. Five hundred miles yet lay between me and Red River-five hundred miles of marsh and frozen lakes, the delta of the Saskatchewan and the great Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba.

It was the last day of January when I got away from c.u.mberland with this fine train of dogs and another 2 serviceable set which belonged to a Swampy Indian named Bear, who had agreed to accompany me to Red River.

Bear was the son of the old man whose evolutions with the three pegs had caused so much commotion among the Indians at Red River on the occasion of my visit to Fort Garry eight months earlier. He was now to be my close companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place here to antic.i.p.ate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a voyageur, snow-sh.o.e.r and camp-maker a place second to none in the long list of my employees. Soon after quitting c.u.mberland we struck the Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great region of marsh and swamp. During five days our course lay through vast expanses of stiff frozen reeds, whose corn-like stalks rattled harshly against the parchment sides of the cariole as the dog-trains wound along through their snow-covered roots. Bleak and dreary beyond expression stretched this region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. The cold remained all the time at about the same degree--20 below zero. The camps were generally poor and miserable ones. Stunted willow is the chief timber of the region, and fortunate did we deem ourselves when at nightfall a low line of willows would rise above the sea of reeds to bid us seek its shelter for the night. The snow became deeper as we proceeded. At the Pasquia three feet lay level over the country, and the dogs sank deep as they toiled along. Through this great marsh the Saskatchewan winds in tortuous course, its flooded level in summer scarce lower than the alluvial sh.o.r.es that line it. The bends made by the river would have been too long to follow, so we held a straight track through the marsh, cutting the points as we travelled. It was difficult to imagine that this many-channelled, marsh-lined river could be the same n.o.ble stream whose mountain birth I had beheld far away in the Rocky Mountains, and whose central course had lain for so many miles through the bold precipitous bank of the Western prairies.

On the 7th February we emerged from this desolate region of lake and swamp, and saw before us in the twilight a ridge covered with dense woods. It was the west sh.o.r.e of the Cedar Lake, and on the wooded promontory towards which we steered some Indian sturgeon-fishers had pitched their lodges. But I had not got thus far without much trouble and vexatious resistance. Of the three men from c.u.mberland, one had utterly knocked up, and the other two had turned mutinous. What cared they for my anxiety to push on for Red River? What did it matter if the whole world was at war? Nay, must I not be the rankest of impostors; for if there was war away beyond the big sea, was that not the very reason why any man possessing a particle of sense should take his time over the journey, and be in no hurry to get back again to his house?

One night I reached the post of Moose Lake a few hours before daybreak, having been induced to make the flank march by representations of the wonderful train of dogs at that station, and being anxious to obtain them in addition to my own: It is almost needless to remark that these dogs had no existence except in the imagination of Bear and his companion. Arrived at Moose Lake (one of the most desolate spots-I had'

ever looked upon), I found out that the dog-trick was not the only one my men intended playing upon me, for a message was sent in by Bear to the effect that his dogs were unable to stand the hard travel of the past week, and that he could no longer accompany me. Here was a pleasant prospect--stranded on the wild sh.o.r.es of the Moose Lake with one train of dogs, deserted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.

I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there; for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious inst.i.tution is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly a.s.sured that the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the wooded sh.o.r.es of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.

The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine, and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"

I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the "Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery, but its eight-by-ten of superficial s.p.a.ce held some eighteen persons, the greater number of whom were greasy with the oil of the sturgeon. Meantime a supper of sturgeon had been prepared for me, and great was the excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appet.i.te; but even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon in the eyes of such a whale as Chicag.

Glad to escape from the suffocating hole, I emptied my fire-bag of tobacco among the group and got out into the cold night-air. What a change! Over the silent snow-sheeted lake, over the dark isles and the cedar sh.o.r.es, the moon was shining amidst a deep blue sky. Around were grouped a few birch-bark wigwams. My four dogs, now well known and trusty friends, were holding high carnival over the heads and tails of Chicag's feast. In one of the wigwams, detached from the rest, sat a very old man wrapped in a tattered blanket. He was splitting wood into little pieces, and feeding a small fire in the centre of the lodge, while he chattered to himself all the time. The place was clean, and as I watched the little old fellow at his work I decided to make my bed in his lodge. He was no other than Parisiboy, the medicine-man of the camp, the quaintest little old savage I had ever encountered. Two small white mongrels alone shared his wigwam. "See," he said, "I have no one with me but these two dogs."

The curs thus alluded to felt themselves bound to prove that they were cognizant of the fact by shoving forward their noses one on each side of old Parisiboy, an impertinence on their part which led to their sudden expulsion by being pitched headlong out of the door. Parisiboy now commenced a lengthened exposition of his woes. "His blanket was old and full of holes, through which the cold found easy entrance. He was a very great medicine-man, but he was very poor, and tea was a luxury which he seldom tasted." I put a handful of tea into his little kettle, and his bright eyes twinkled with delight under their s.h.a.ggy brows. "I never go to sleep," he continued; "it is too cold to go to sleep; I sit up all night splitting wood and smoking and keeping the fire alight; if I had tea I would never lie down at all." As I made my bed he continued to sing to himself, chatter and laugh with a peculiar low chuckle, watching me all the time. His first brew of tea was quickly made; hot and strong, he poured it into a cup, and drank it with evident delight; then in went more water on the leaves and down on the fire again went the little kettle.' But I was not permitted to lie down without interruption. Chicag headed a deputation of his brethren, and grew loud over the recital of his grievances. Between the sturgeon and the Company he appeared to think himself victim, but I was unable to gather whether the balance of ill-treatment lay on the side of the fish or of the corporation. Finally I got rid of the lot, and crept into my bag. Parisiboy sat at the other side of the fire, grinning and chuckling and sipping his tea. All night long I heard through my fitful sleep his harsh chuckle and his song.

Whenever I opened my eyes, there was the little old man in the same att.i.tude, crouching over the fire, which he sedulously kept alight. How many brews of tea he made, I can't say; but when daylight came he was still at the work, and as I replenished the kettle the old leaves seemed well-nigh bleached by continued boilings.

That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its sh.o.r.es.

The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake from those of Lake Winnipegoosis. From one lake to the other is a distance of about four miles. Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis, when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of the latter lake. These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than its neighbour the Winnipegoosis. The question is one of considerable interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line of communication between the waters of Red River and those of Saskatchewan.

It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until the sky alone bounded the prospect. But there were many islands scattered over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay. On one of these islands we camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms. This Lake Winnipegoosis, or the "Small Sea,'" is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120 miles in length and some 30 in width. Its sh.o.r.es and islands are densely wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern sh.o.r.es he beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.

This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line between civilization and savagery. Within the limit of the oak lies the country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which my steps have wandered so far. Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal Lake, I pa.s.sed across the belt of forest which. Lies between the two lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day's journey to the Waterhen River. This river carries the surplus water of Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba. For another hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the sh.o.r.es.

Along the whole line of the western sh.o.r.es of these lakes the bold ridges of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water. These four mountain ranges never exceed an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea.

They are wooded to the summits, and long ages ago their rugged cliffs formed, doubtless, a fitting sh.o.r.e-line to that great lake whose fresh-water billows were nursed in a s.p.a.ce twice larger than even Superior itself can boast of; but, as has been stated in an earlier chapter, that inland ocean has long since shrunken into the narrower limits of Winnipeg, Winnipegoosis, and Manitoba-the Great Sea, the Little Sea, and the Straits of the G.o.d.

I have not dwelt upon the days of travel during which we pa.s.sed down the length of these lakes. From the camp of Chicag I had driven my own train of dogs; with Bear the sole companion of the journey. Nor were these days on the great lakes by any means the dullest of the journey, Cerf Volant, Tigre, Cariboo, and Muskeymote gave ample occupation to their driver.

Long before Manitoba was reached they had learnt a new lesson-that men were not all cruel to dogs in camp or on the road. It is true that in the learning of that lesson some little difficulty was occasioned by the sudden loosening and disruption of ideas implanted by generations of cruelty in the dog-mind of my train. It is true that Muskeymote, in particular, long held aloof from offers of friendship, and then suddenly pa.s.sed from the excess of caution to the extreme of imprudence, imagining, doubtless, that the millennium had at length arrived, and that dogs were henceforth no more to haul. But Muskeymote was soon set right upon that point, and showed no inclination to repeat his mistake.

Then there was Cerf Volant, that most perfect Esquimaux. Cerf Volant entered readily into friendship, upon an under-standing of an additional half-fish at supper every evening. No alderman ever loved his turtle better than did Cerf Volant love his white fish; but I rather think that the white fish was better earned than the turtle--however we will let that be matter of opinion. Having satisfied his hunger, which, by the way, is a luxury only allowed to the hauling-dog once a day, Cerf Volant would generally establish himself in close proximity to my feet, frequently on the top of the bag, from which coigne of vantage he would exchange fierce growls with any dog who had the temerity to approach us.

None of our dogs were harness-eaters, a circ.u.mstance that saved us the nightly trouble of placing harness and cariole in the branches of a tree.

On one or two occasions Muskeymote, however, ate his boots. "Boots!" the reader will exclaim; "how came Muskeymote to possess boots? We have heard of a puss in boots, but a dog, that is something new." Nevertheless Muskeymote had his boots, and ate them, too. This is how a dog is put in boots. When the day is very cold--I don't mean in your reading of that word, reader, but in its North-west sense--when the morning, then, comes very cold, the dogs travel fast, the drivers run to try and restore the circulation, and noses and cheeks which grow white beneath the bitter blast are rubbed with snow caught-quickly from the ground without pausing in the rapid stride; on such mornings, and they are by no means uncommon, the particles of snow which adhere to the feet of the dog form sharp icicles between his toes, which grow larger and larger as he travels. A nowing old hauler will stop every now and then, and tear out these icicles with his teeth, but a young dog plods wearily along leaving his footprints in crimson stains upon the snow behind him. When he comes into camp, he lies down and licks his poor wounded feet, but the rest is only for a short time, and the next start makes them worse than before. Now comes the time for boots. The dog-boot is simply a fingerless glove drawn on over the toes and foot, and tied by a running string of leather round the wrist or ankle of the animal; the boot itself is either made of leather or strong white cloth. Thus protected, the dog will travel for days and days with wounded feet, and get no worse, in fact he will frequently recover while still on the journey. Now Muskeymote, being a young dog, had not attained to that degree of wisdom which induces older dogs to drag the icicles from their toes, and consequently Muskeymote had to be duly booted every morning--a cold operation it was too, and many a run had I to make to the fire while it was being performed, holding my hands into the blaze for a moment and then back again to the dog. Upon arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet, and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with mocca.s.sins of the men, to dry.

It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.

The night-camps along the lakes were all good ones; it took some time to clear away the deep snow and to reach the ground, but wood for fire and young spruce tops for bedding were plenty, and fifteen minutes axe work sufficed to fell as many trees as our fire needed for night and morning.

From wooded point to wooded point we journeyed on over the frozen lakes; the snow lying packed into the crevices and uneven places of the ice formed a compact level surface, upon which the dogs scarce marked the impress of their feet, and the sleds and cariole bounded briskly after the train, jumping the little wavelets of hardened snow to the merry jingling of innumerable bells. On snow such as this dogs will make a run of forty miles in a day, and keep that pace for many days in succession, but in the soft snow of the woods or the river thirty miles will form a fair day's work for continuous travel.

On the night of the 19th of February we made our last camp on the ridge to the south of Lake Manitoba, fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without a feeling of regret was the old work gone through for the last time--the old work of tree-cutting, and fire-making, and supper-frying, and dog-feeding. Once more I had reached those confines of civilization on whose limits four months earlier I had made my first camp on the shivering Prairie of the Lonely Grave; then the long journey lay before me, now the unnumbered scenes of nigh 3000 miles of travel were spread out in that picture which memory sees in the embers of slow-burning fires, when the night-wind speaks in dreamy tones to the willow branches and waving gra.s.ses. And if there be those among my readers who can il comprehend such feelings, seeing only in this return the escape from savagery to civilization--from the wild Indian to the Anglo-American, from the life of toil and hardship to that of rest and comfort-then words would be useless to throw light upon the matter, or to better enable such men to understand that it was possible to look back with keen regret to the wild days of the forest and the prairie. Natures, no matter how we may mould them beneath the uniform pressure of the great machine called civilization, are not all alike, and many men's minds echo in some shape or other the voice of the Kirghis woman, which says, "Man must keep moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are in movement: it is but the dead and the earth that remain in one place."

There are many who have seen a prisoned lark sitting on its perch, looking listlessly through the bars, from some brick wall against which its cage was hung; but at times, when the spring comes round, and a bit of gra.s.sy earth is put into the narrow cage, and, in spite of smoke and mist, the blue sky looks a moment on the foul face of the city, the little prisoner dreams himself free, and, with eyes fixed on the blue sky and feet clasping the tiny turf of green sod, he pours forth into the dirty street those notes which nature taught him in the never-to-be-forgotten days of boundless freedom. So I have seen an Indian, far down in Canada, listlessly watching the vista of a broad river whose waters and whose sh.o.r.es once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners of our civilization. He who has once tasted the unworded freedom of the Western wilds must ever feel a sense of constraint within the boundaries of civilized life. The Russian is not the only man who has the Tartar close underneath his skin. That Indian idea of the earth being free to all men catches quick and lasting hold of the imagination--the mind widens out to grasp the reality of the lone s.p.a.ce and cannot shrink again to suit the requirements of fenced divisions. There is a strange fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land.

It is time to close. It was my lot to shift the scene of life with curious rapidity. In a shorter s.p.a.ce of time than it had taken to traverse the length of the Saskatchewan, I stood by the banks of that river whose proud city had just paid the price of conquest in blood and ruin--yet I witnessed a still heavier ransom than that paid to German robbers. I saw the blank windows of the Tuileries red with the light of flames fed from five hundred years of history, and the flagged courtyard of La Roquette running deep in the blood of Frenchmen spilt by France, while the common enemy smoked and laughed, leaning on the ramparts of St.

Denis.

APPENDIX.'.

GOVERNOR ARCHIBALD'S INSTRUCTIONS.

Fort Garry, 10th October, 1870.

W. F. Butler, Esq., 69th Regiment.

SIR,--Adverting to the interviews between his honour the Lieutenant-Governor and yourself on the subject of the proposed mission to the Saskatchewan, I have it now in command to acquaint you with the objects his honour has in view in asking you to undertake the mission, and also to define the duties he desires you to perform.

In the first place, I am to say that representations have been made from various quarters that within the last two years much disorder has prevailed in the settlements along the line of the Saskatchewan, and that the local authorities are utterly powerless for the protection of life and property within that region. It is a.s.serted to be absolutely necessary for the protection, not only of the Hudson Bay Company's Forts, but for the safety of the settlements along the river, that a small body of troops should be sent to some of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company, to a.s.sist the local authorities in the maintenance of peace and order.

I am to enclose you a copy of a communication on this subject from Donald A. Smith, Esq., the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and also. an extract of a letter from W. J. Christie, Esq., a chief factor stationed at Fort Carlton, which will give you some of the facts which have been adduced to show the representations to be well grounded.

The statements made in these papers come from the officers of the Hudson Bay Company, whose views may be supposed to be in some measure affected by their pecuniary interests.

It is the desire of the Lieutenant-Governor that you should examine the matter entirely from an independent point of view, giving his honour for the benefit of the Government of Canada your views of the state of matters on the Saskatchewan in reference to the necessity of troops being sent there, basing your report upon what you shall find by actual examination.

You will be expected to report upon the whole question of the existing state of affairs in that territory, and to state your views on what may be necessary to be done in the interest of peace and order.

Secondly, 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 considered 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 pa.s.s, and with any clergyman or other intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts.

You will also ascertain, as far as in your power, the number of Indians on the line between Red River and the Rocky Mountains; the different nations and tribes into which they are divided and the particular locality inhabited, and the language spoken, and also the names of the princ.i.p.al chiefs of each tribe.

In doing this you will be careful to obtain the information without in any manner leading the Indians to suppose you are acting under authority, or inducing them to form any expectations based on your inquiries.

You will also be expected to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature of the trade in furs conducted upon the Saskatchewan, the number and nationality of the persons employed in what has been called the Free Trade there, and what portion of the supplies, if any, come from the United States territory, and what portion of the furs are sent thither; and generally to make such inquiries as to the source of trade in that region as may enable the Lieutenant-Governor to form an accurate idea of the commerce of the Saskatchewan.

You are to report from time to time as you proceed westward, and forward your communications by such opportunities as may occur. The Lieutenant-Governor will rely upon your executing this mission with all reasonable despatch.

(Signed) S. W. HILL, P. Secretary.