ish half-breed were getting the horses and
baggage-sleds over the river. We made signs to them to camp in the
valley, and we ourselves turned our tired horses towards the west,
determined at all hazards to reach the fort that night. The Frenchman led
the way riding, the Hudson Bay officer followed in a horse-sled, I
brought up the rear on horseback. Soon it got quite dark, and we held on
over a rough and bushless plateau seamed with deep gullies into which we
descended at hap hazard forcing our weary horses with difficulty up the
opposite sides. The night got later and later, and still no sign of Fort
Pitt; riding in rear I was able to mark the course taken by our guide,
and it soon struck me that he was steering wrong; our correct course lay
west, but he seemed to be heading gradually to the North, and finally,
began to veer even towards the East. I called out to the Hudson Bay man
that I had serious doubts as to Daniel's knowledge of the track, but I
was assured that all was correct. Still we went on, and still no sign of
fort or river. At length the Frenchman suddenly pulled Up and asked us to
halt while he rode on and surveyed the country, because he had lost the
track, and didn't know where he had got to. Here was a pleasant prospect!
without food, fire, or covering, out on the bleak plains, with the
thermometer at 20 degrees of frost! After some time the Frenchman
returned and declared that he had altogether lost his way, and that there
was nothing for it but to camp where we were, and wait for daylight to
proceed. I looked around in the darkness. The ridge on which we stood was
bare and bleak, with the snow drifted off into the valleys. A few
miserable stunted willows were the only signs of vegetation, and the wind
whistling through their ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as
man could look at. I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men
who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in
the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been
pursuing. My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent
resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled
with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire,
or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might
reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying
himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.

Watching th