o be taken from us.

In the evening we arrived at Strathcona, and found it thronged with
people celebrating the day. Crossing the river to Edmonton, we
got rooms with some difficulty in one of its crowded hotels, but
happily awoke next morning refreshed and ready to view the town.
It is needless to describe what has been so often described.
Enough to say Edmonton is one of the doors to the great North,
an outfitter of its traders, an emporium of its furs. And
there is something more to be said. It has an old fort, or,
rather, portions of one, for the vandalism which has let disappear
another, and still more historic, stronghold, is manifest here as
well. And truly, what savage scenes have been enacted on this
very spot! What strife in the days of the rival companies!
Edmonton is a city still marked by the fine savour of the
"Old-Timers," who meet once a year to renew associations, and
for some fleeting but glorious hours recall the past on the
great river. Age is thinning them out, and by and by the
remainder man will shake his "few, sad, last gray hairs,"
and slip out, too. But the tradition of him, it is to be hoped,
will live, and bind his memory forever to the soil he trod,
when all this Western world was a wilderness, each primitive
settlement a happy family, each unit an unsophisticated,
hospitable soul.

To our mortification we found that our supplies, seasonably shipped
at Winnipeg, would not arrive for several days; a delay, to begin
with, which seemed to prefigure all our subsequent hindrances.
Then rain set in, and it was the afternoon of the 29th before Mr.
Round could get us off. Once under way, however, with our thirteen
waggons, there was no trouble save from their heavy loads, which
could not be moved faster than a walk. Our first camp was at
Sturgeon River--the Namao Sepe of the Crees--a fine stream in a
defile of hills clothed with poplar and spruce, the former not
quite in leaf, for the spring was backward, though seeding and
growth in the Edmonton District was much ahead of Manitoba. The
river flat was dotted with clumps of russet-leaved willows, to
the north of which our waggons were ranged, and soon the quickly
pitched tents, fires and sizzling fry-pans filled even the
tenderfoot with a sense of comfort.

Next morning our route lay through a line of low, broken hills,
with scattered woods, largely burnt and blown down by the wind; a
desolate tract, which enclosed, to our left, the Lily Lake--