ached the shore of the Eggo Lake,
and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the
following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite
camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest
fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper
Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations
farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you
meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle
Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you
letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they
lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have
found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after
a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling
individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of
"What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a
personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question,
might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could
obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never
been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might
perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his
peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person
had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and
his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no
existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury,
it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we
halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who
approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this
day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition
to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of
Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This
individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch
as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of
the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia.
But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was
destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.

"You have got Louis B