ets, surrounded with gold and silver tinsel
hat-cords. A few, however, despising coats, travelled in blue and white
striped shirts, and trusted to their thickly-matted hair to guard them
from the rain and sun. They were truly a wild yet handsome set of men;
and no one, when gazing on their happy faces as they lay or stood in
careless attitudes round the fires, puffing clouds of smoke from their
ever-burning pipes, would have believed that these men had left their
wives and families but the week before, to start on a five months'
voyage of the most harassing description, fraught with the dangers of
the boiling cataracts and foaming rapids of the interior.

They stopped at Norway House on their way, to receive the outfit of
goods for the Indian trade of Athabasca (one of the interior districts);
and were then to start for Portage la Loche, a place where the whole
cargoes are carried on the men's shoulders overland for twelve miles to
the head-waters of another river, where the traders from the northern
posts come to meet them, and, taking the goods, give in exchange the
"returns" in furs of the district.

Next came old Mr Mottle, with his brigade of five boats from Isle a la
Crosse, one of the interior districts; and soon another set of
camp-fires burned on the green, and the clerks' house received another
occupant. After them came the Red River brigades in quick succession:
careful, funny, uproarious Mr Mott, on his way to York for goods
expected by the ship (for you must know Mr Mott keeps a store in Red
River, and is a man of some importance in the colony); and grasping,
comical, close-fisted Mr Macdear; and quiet Mr Sink--all passing
onwards to the sea, rendering Norway House quite lively for a time, and
then leaving it silent. But not for long, as the Saskatchewan brigade,
under the charge of chief trader Harrit and young Mr Polly, suddenly
arrived, and filled the whole country with noise and uproar. The
Saskatchewan brigade is the largest and most noisy that halts at Norway
House. It generally numbers from fifteen to twenty boats, filled with
the wildest men in the service. They come from the prairies and Rocky
Mountains, and are consequently brimful of stories of the buffalo hunt,
attacks upon grizzly bears, and wild Indians--some of them interesting
and true enough, but most of them either tremendous exaggerations, or
altogether inventions of their own wild fancies. Soon after, the light
canoes arrived fr