ent more infinite
variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
brought forth the flowers.

October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.

On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
space!

I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active