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