as a promising one,
with much gold-bearing quartz in sight, but the cost of provisions
and the extreme difficulty of development under the circumstances
held it back.

There being but a few half-breeds here, we crossed the river, and
decided to go on to Fort Dunvegan, and on our return complete our
scrip issue at the Landing; so, partly on horseback and partly by
waggon, we made our way to our first camp. The trail lay along
and up and down the immense bank of the river, debouching at one
place at the site of old Fort McLeod, and passing the fine St.
Germain farm, with as beautiful fields of yellowing wheat as one
would wish to see.

Here we got an abundant supply of vegetables, and in this ride our
first taste of the Peace River mosquito--or, rather, that animal
got its first taste of us. It is needless to dwell upon this pest.
Like the fleas in Italy, it has been overdone in description,
and yet beggars it.

All along the trail were old buffalo paths and willows. Indeed, we
saw them everywhere we went on land, showing how numerous those
animals were in times past. In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie describes
them as grazing in great numbers along these very banks, the calves
frisking about their dams, and moose and red deer were equally
numerous. In 1828 Sir George Simpson made a canoe journey to the
Coast by way of this river, and they were still very numerous. The
existing tradition is that, some sixty years ago, a winter occurred
of unexampled severity and depth of snow, in which nearly all the
herds perished, and never recovered their footing on the upper river.
The wood buffalo still exists on Great Slave River, but, where we
were, the only memorials of the animal were its paths and wallows,
and its bones half-buried in the fertile earth.

On the morning of the 17th we topped the crest of the bank, and
found ourselves at once in a magnificent prairie country, which
swept northward, varied by beautiful belts of timber, as far as
Bear Lake, to which we made a detour, then westerly to Old Wives
Lake--Nootooquay Sakaigon--and on to our night camp at Burnt
River, twenty-two miles from Dunvegan. The great prairie is as
flat as a table, and is the exact counterpart of Portage Plains,
in Manitoba, or a number of them, with the addition of belts and
beautiful islands of timber, the soil being a loamy clay, unmistakably
fertile. Nothing could excel the beauty of this region, not even
the fairest portions of Manitoba or