Fort
Edmonton. There had been floods and all the company's rafts had been
carried away. But the ox-carts were poled across by means of a big
York boat; and the travellers were welcomed inside the fort.

The arrival of the Overlanders is remembered at Edmonton by some
old-timers even to this day. Salvoes of welcome were fired from the
fort cannon by a half-breed shooting his musket into the touch-hole of
the big gun. Concerts were given, with bagpipes, concertinas, flutes,
drums, and fiddles, in honour of the far-travellers. Pemmican-bags
were replenished from the company's stores.

Miners often uttered loud complaints against the charges made by the
fur-traders for provisions, forgetting what it cost to pack these
provisions in by dog-train and canoe. If the Hudson's Bay officials at
Fort Garry and {62} Edmonton had withheld their help, the Overlanders
would have perished before they reached the Rockies. Though the miner
did everything to destroy the fur trade--started fires which ravaged
the hunter's forest haunts, put up saloons which demoralized the
Indians, built wagon-roads where aforetime wandered only the shy
creatures of the wilds--though the miner heralded the doom of the fur
trade--yet with an unvarying courtesy, from Fort Garry to the Rockies,
the Hudson's Bay men helped the Overlanders.

The majority of the travellers now changed oxen and carts for
pack-horses and _travois_, contrivances consisting of two poles, within
which the horses were attached, and a rude sledge. A few continued
with oxen, and these oxen were to save their lives in the mountains.

[Illustration: Washing gold on the Saskatchewan. From a photograph.]

The farther the Overlanders now plunged into the wilderness, the more
they were pestered by the husky-dogs that roamed in howling hordes
round the outskirts of the forts. The story is told of several
prospectors of this time, who slept soundly in their tent after a day's
exhausting tramp, and awoke to find that their boots, bacon, rope, and
clothes had been devoured by the ravenous dogs. They {63} asked the
trader's permission to sleep inside the fort.

'Why?' asked the amused trader. 'Why, now, when the huskies have
chewed all you own but your instruments? You are locking the stable
door after your horse has been stolen.'

'No,' answered the prospectors. 'If those husky-dogs last night could
devour all our camp kit without disturbing us, to-night they might
swallow us