grassy hill in which the fort is built. It
is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its
own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so
pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over those great grassy uplands.

On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses
for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as
nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had
now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once
more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore
of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria,
a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which
the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake
Winnipeg. The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a
loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony,
jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who
will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was
the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr.
Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River. This youngster
employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was
driving--thus "Rouge!" would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and
Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip;
"Noir!" he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be
within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation
of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon
their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention
of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked. One
horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially
selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing
obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French
semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet,
and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather
think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the
grudges that he owed to the man. Be that as it may, Jean l'Hereux got
many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges
which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.

On the night of the 21st November we re