fellow, by
name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
brother has introduced into the We