be taken out altogether from the harness and left
to his fate on the river. "And this," I said to myself, "is dog-driving;
this inhuman thrashing and varied cursing, this frantic howling of dogs,
this bitter, terrible cold is the long-talked of mode of winter travel!"
To say that I was disgusted and stunned by the prospect of such work for
hundreds of Miles would be-only to speak a portion of what I felt. Was
the cold always to be so crushing? were the dogs always to be the same
wretched creatures? Fortunately, no; but it was only when I reached
Victoria that night, long after dark, that I learned that the day had
been very exceptionally severe, and that my dogs were unusually miserable
ones.

As at Edmonton so in the fort at Victoria the small-pox had again broken
out; in spite of cold and frost the infection still lurked in many
places, and in none more fatally than in this little settlement where,
during the autumn, it had wrought so much havoc among the scanty
community. In this distant settlement I spent the few days of Christmas;
the weather had become suddenly milder, although the thermometer still
stood below zero.

Small-pox had not been the only evil from which Victoria had suffered
during the year which was about to close; the Sircies had made many raids
upon it during the summer, stealing-down the sheltering banks of a small
creek which entered the Saskatchewan at the opposite side, and then
swimming the broad river during the night and lying hidden at day in the
high corn-fields of the mission. Incredible though it may appear, they
continued this practice at a time when they were being; swept away by the
small-pox; their bodies were found in one instance dead upon the bank of
the river they had crossed by swimming when the fever of the disease had
been at its height. Those who live their lives quietly at home, who sleep
in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of
what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test. With us,
to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with
the casual illnesses of our civilization: when he lies down it is to
sleep for a few hours, or-for ever. Thus these Sircies had literally kept
the war-trail till they died. When the corn-fields were being cut around
the mission, the reapers found unmistakable traces of how these wild men
had kept the field undaunted by disease. Long black hair was found where
it had fallen from th