uch the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French,
you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and,
crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle
Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the
steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the
horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the
solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white
on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far
away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and
-our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie.
About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken
snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at
camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had
escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose
hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed'
forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small
winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point
some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the
Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large
camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our
steps.

On the morning of the second day out from Carlton, the guide showed
symptoms of haziness as to direction: he began to bend greatly to the
south, and at sunrise he ascended a high hill for the purpose of taking a
general survey of the surrounding country. From this hill the eye ranged
over a vast extent of landscape, and although the guide failed
altogether to correct his course, the hill-top yielded such a glorious
view of sun rising from a sea of snow into an ocean of pale green barred
with pink and crimson streaks, that I felt well repaid for the trouble of
the long ascent. When evening closed around us that day, I found myself
alone amidst a wild, weird scene. Far as the eye could reach in front and
to the right a boundless, treeless plain stretched into unseen distance;
to the left a range of steep hills rose abruptly from the plain; over all
the night was coming down. Long before sunset I had noticed a clump of
trees many miles ahead, and thought that in this solitary thicket we
would make our camp for the nig