e head of some brave in the lairs from which he had
watched the horses of his enemies; the ruling passion had been strong in
death. In the end, the much-coveted horses were carried off by the few
survivors, and the mission had to bewail the loss of some of its best
steeds. One, a mare belonging to the missionary himself, had returned to
her home after an absence of a few days, but she carried in her flank a
couple of Sircie arrows. She had broken away from the band, and the
braves had sent their arrows after her in an attempt to kill what they
could not keep. To add to the-misfortunes of the settlement, the buffalo
were far out in the great plains; so between disease, war, and famine,
Victoria had had a hard time of it.

In the farmyard of the mission-house there lay-a curious block of metal
of immense weight'; it was ringed,-deeply indented, and polished on the
outer edges of the indentations by the wear and friction of many years.
Its history was a curious one. Longer than any man could say, it had lain
on the summit of a hill far out in the southern prairies. It had been a
medicine-stone of surpassing virtue among the Indians over a vast
territory. No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity
without paying a visit to this great-medicine: it was said to be
increasing yearly in weight. Old men remembered having heard old men say
that they had once lifted it easily from the ground. Now no single man
could carry it. And it was no wonder that this metallic stone should be a
Manito-stone and an object of intense veneration to the Indian; it had
come down from heaven; it did not belong to the earth, but had descended
out of the sky; it was, in fact an aerolite. Not very long before my,
visit this curious stone had been removed from the hill upon which it had
so long rested and brought to the Mission of Victoria by some person from
that place: When the Indians found that it had been taken away, they
were loud in the expression of their regret. The old medicine men
declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes and that war,
disease, and dearth of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the
Saskatchewan. This was not a prophecy made after the occurrence of the
plague of small-pox, for in a magazine published by the Wesleyan Society
in Canada there appears a letter from the missionary, setting forth the
predictions of the medicine-men a year prior to my visit. The letter
concludes with an expression of than