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 lon