Saskatchewan.

On the 18th we finished our drive over a like beautiful prairie,
slightly rolling, dotted with similar clumps of timber like a
great park, and carpeted with ripe strawberries and flowers,
including the wild mignonette, the lupin, and the phlox.

Descending a very long and crooked ravine, we reached the river
flat at last, upon which is situated Fort Dunvegan, called after
the stronghold of the McLeods of Skye, but alas! with no McCrimmon
to welcome us with his echoing pipes! Chief-factor McDonald, in
his scanty journal of Sir George Simpson's canoe voyage in 1828
from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific, does not give the date at
which this post was established, but mentions its abandonment
in 1823, owing to the murder of a Mr. Hughes and four men at
Fort St. John by the Beaver Indians. It had been re-established
by Chief-trader Campbell. Simpson, Mr. McDonald, and Mr.
McGillivray, who had embarked at Fort Chipewyan, where Sir
George himself had served his clerkship, spent a day at Dunvegan
in August, resting and getting fresh supplies. The warring
traders had united in 1821, and this voyage was undertaken in
order to harmonize the Indians, who, from the bay to the coast,
particularly across the mountains, had become fierce partisans
of one or other of the great companies.

Sir George had his McCrimmon with him in the shape of his piper,
Colin Fraser, who played and paraded before the Indians most
impressively in full Highland costume. Deer and buffalo were
numerous in the region, and, during the day, thirteen sacks of
pemmican were made for the party from materials stored at the fort.
Simpson was famous in those days for his swift journeys with his
celebrated Iroquois canoemen. They were made by _Canot du Maitre_ as
it was called, the largest bark canoe made by the Indians, carrying
about six tons and a crew of sixteen paddlers, and which ascended as
far as Fort William. Thence further progress was made in the much
smaller "North Canoes" to all points west of Lake Superior. This
particular journey of nearly 3,200 miles, made almost entirely by
canoe, was completed from York Factory to Fort Langley, near the
mouth of Fraser River, in sixty-five days of actual paddling, an
average of about fifty miles a day, nearly all up stream.

Only two buildings of the old fort remained at the time of our
visit, both in a ruinous condition. The old fireplaces and the
roofs of spruce bark, a covering much used in the cou