ans, who
live on the outskirts of the Colony. Further and further they have been
compelled to go, until at our visit no buffalo could be found within a
hundred miles at nearest.

The hunt is just over as we reach the Settlement, and every day carts
come in laden with the buffalo meat, hides, and pemmican. The prairie,
back from the river, by Fort Garry, is dotted with carts, lodges and
tents. Many are living in rude shelters formed of the carts themselves,
placed back to back, and the sides secured by hides.

These carts illustrate well the primitive nature and the isolation of
the Colony. They are the vehicles in universal use, and are built on the
general pattern of our one-horse tip-carts, though they do not tip, and
not a scrap of iron enters into them. They are without springs, of
course, and rawhide and wooden pins serve to keep together the pieces
out of which they are constructed. As they have no tires, and the
section of the wheel part or crowd together, according to the moisture,
a train of these carts bringing in the products of the hunt is a strange
sight. Each cart has its own peculiar creak, hoarse and grating, and
waggles its own individual waggle, graceless and shaky, on the uneven
ground. To add to its oddity, the shafts are heavy, straight beams,
between which is harnessed an ox, the harness of rawhide (shaga-nappi)
without buckles.

Everybody makes for himself what he wishes in this undifferentiated
Settlement. We return in tatters. Not a tailor, nor anything approaching
the description of one, exists here, and a week's search is needed to
discover such a being as a shoemaker. A single store in the Hudson's Bay
post at each of the two forts, twenty miles apart, supplies the goods of
the outside world, and the purchaser must furnish the receptacle for
carriage. For small goods this invariably consists, as far as we can
see, of a red bandanna handkerchief, so that purchases have to be small
and frequent; not all of one sort, however, for the native can readily
tie up his tea in one corner, his sugar and buttons in two others, and
still have one left for normal uses. How many handkerchiefs a day are
put to use may be judged from the fact that the average sale of tea at
Upper Fort Garry is four large boxes daily--all, be it remembered,
brought by ship to Hudson Bay, and thence by batteaux and portage to the
Red River.

The caravan by which we and a number of others were carried back to
civilization w