or trip men,
who constituted these brigades. Dark and swarthy they were, with
beardless faces, and long black hair that rested on their shoulders.
From remote and different regions had they come. Here were brigades
from the Assiniboine, Red River, Cumberland, and the Saskatchewan
region. Many of the boatmen were of the Metis--half-French and Indian;
and they spoke a language that was a mixture of both, with some English
intermixed that was not always the most polite.

From the mighty Saskatchewan had come down that great river for a
thousand miles, and then onward for several hundred more, brigades that
had, in addition to the furs and robes of that land, large supplies of
dried meat and tallow, and many bags of the famous food called pemmican,
obtained from the great herds of buffalo that still, in those days, like
the cattle on a thousand hills, thundered through the land and grazed on
its rich pasturage and drank from its beautiful streams. The men of
these Saskatchewan brigades were warriors who had often been in conflict
with hostile tribes, and could tell exciting stories of scalping
parties, and the fierce conflict for their lives when beleaguered by
some relentless foes. Some of them bore on face or scalp the marks of
the wounds received in close tomahawk encounter, and, for the gift of a
pocketknife or gaudy handkerchief from our eager boys, rehearsed with
all due enlargement the story of the fierce encounter with superior
numbers of their bitterest enemies, how they had so gloriously
triumphed, but had not come off unscathed, as these great scars did
testify.

Thus excited and interested did the boys wander from one encampment of
these brigades to another. The word had early gone out from the chief
factor, Mr McTavish, that these boys were his special friends, and as
such were to be treated with consideration by all. This was quite
sufficient to insure them a welcome everywhere, and so they acquired a
good deal of general information, as they became acquainted with people
from places, of which they had heard but little, and from others of some
regions until then to them unknown.

In addition to those already referred to, there were brigades from Lac-
la-Puie, the Lake of the Woods, Cumberland House, Athabasca, and Swan
River, and other places many hundreds of miles away.

As each brigade arrived it formed its own encampment separate from the
others. Here the fires of dry logs were built on the gro