-workers; summer and winter they follow the camps, suffering great
privations. They are indefatigable in their efforts to make converts, but
their converts," he adds, "have never heard of the Holy Ghost." "The man
of sin "--which of us is without it? To these French missionaries at
Grand Lac I was the bearer of terrible tidings. I carried to them the
story of Sedan, the overwhelming rush of armed Germany into the heart of
France, the closing of the high-schooled hordes of Teuton savagery around
Paris; all that was hard home news to: hear. Fate had leant heavily upon
their little congregation; out of 900 souls more than 300 had perished of
small-pox up to the date of my arrival, and others were still sick in the
huts along the lake. Well might the bishop and his priests bow their
heads in the midst of such manifold tribulations of death and disaster.

By the last day of November my preparations for further travel into the
regions lying west of Edmonton were completed, and at midday on the 1st
December I set out for the Rocky Mountain House. This station, the most
Western and southern held by the Hudson Bay Company in the Saskatchewan,
is distant from Edmonton about 180 miles by horse trail, and 211 miles by
river. I was provided with five fresh horses, two good guides, and I
carried letters to merchants in the United States, should fortune permit
me to push through the great stretch of Blackfoot country lying on the
northern borders of the American territory; for it was my intention to
leave the Mountain House as soon as possible, and to endeavour to cross
by rapid marches the 400 miles of plains to some of the mining cities of
Montana or Idaho; the principal difficulty lay, however, in the
reluctance of men to come with me into the country of the Blackfeet. At
Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high
wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid
specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke
the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his
relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought
when asked to be my guide.

"It is a work of peril," he said, "to pass the Blackfoot country all'
pitching along the foot of the mountains; they will see our trail in the
snow, follow it, and steal our horses, or perhaps worse still. At another
time I would attempt it, but death has been too heavy upon my friends,
and I