better people than these, more affectionate, affable, or mild."

"At this moment," writes an American officer only ten years back, "it is
certain a man can go about throughout the Blackfoot territory without
molestation, except in the contingency of being mistaken at night for an
Indian." No, they are-fast going, and soon they will be all gone, but in
after-times men will judge more justly the poor wild creatures whom
to-day we kill and vilify; men will go back again to those old books of
travel, or to those pages of "Hiawatha" and "Mohican," to find that far
away from the border-land of civilization the wild red man, if more of
the savage, was infinitely less of the brute than was the white ruffian
who destroyed him.

I quitted the camp at Battle River on the 17th November, with a large
band of horses and a young Cree brave who had volunteered his services
for some reason of his own which he did not think necessary to impart to
us. The usual crowd of squaws, braves in buffalo robes, naked children,
and howling dogs assembled to see us start. The Cree led the way mounted
on a ragged-looking pony, then came the baggage-sleds, and I brought up
the rear on a tall horse belonging to the Company. Thus we held our way
in a north-west direction over high-rolling plains along the north bank
of the Saskatchewan towards Fort Pitt.

On the morning of the 18th we got away from our camping thicket of
poplars long before the break of day. There was no track to guide us, but
the Cree went straight as an arrow over hill and dale and frozen lake.
The hour that preceded the dawn was brilliant with the flash and glow of
meteors across the North-western sky. I lagged so far behind to watch
them that when day broke I found myself alone, miles from the party. The
Cree kept the pace so well that it took me some hours before I again
Caught sight of them. After a hard ride of six-and-thirty miles, we
halted for dinner on the banks of English Creek. Close beside our
camping-place a large clump of spruce-pine stood in dull contrast to the
snowy surface. They looked like old friends to me--friends of the
Winnipeg and the now distant Lake of the Woods; for from Red River to
English Creek, a distance of 750 miles, I-had seen but a solitary
pine-tree. After a short dinner We resumed our rapid way, forcing the
pace with a view of making Fort Pitt by night-fall. A French half-breed
declared he knew a short cut across the hills of the Red Deer, a wild