r-legged brutes find it different. On the Bloody Portage we
overtook five teams of oxen which had been more than twelve hours trying
to make sixteen miles and were bleeding profusely from the fly-bites.
Finally two of them succumbed and a relief team had to be sent out from
Fort Smith. Moose in the North, maddened by the "bull-dogs," often jump
over precipices and river-banks, as the Scriptural swine did when _they_
were possessed of devils.

Johnny-Come-Lately from dear old Lunnon reading in a Western paper, "The
deer are chased into the water by the bull-dogs," ruminates audibly,
"Chase the de-ah into the wa-tah with bull-dogs! How interesting! Jolly
resourceful beggars, these Colonials." A literary scientist sending out
copy from the North wrote, "My two greatest troubles are mosquitoes and
bull-dogs," which the intelligent proof-reader amended into, "My two
greatest troubles are mosquitoes and bull-frogs."

Bringing in our daily treasure-trove of flowers we can scarcely realise
that at Fort Smith we are in latitude 60 deg. North, the northern boundary
of the Province of Alberta and in the same latitude as St. Petersburg.
One day we gathered careopsis, pretty painted-cups, the dandelion in
seed, shinleaf (_Pyrola elliptica_), our old friend yarrow, and
golden-rod. Another day brought to the blotting-pads great bunches of
goldenrod, a pink anemone, harebells of a more delicate blue than we had
ever seen before, the flower of the wolf-berry, fireweed, and
ladies'-tresses. The third day we identified the bear-berry or
kinnikinic-tobacco (_Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)_ with its astringent
leaves, and that dear friend of lower latitudes and far-away days, the
pink lady-slipper. The last time we had seen it was in a school-room in
far-off Vancouver Island where in early April the children had brought
it in, drooping in their hot little fists. This same evening, watching a
night-hawk careering in mid-air by the rapids of the Slave and enjoying
its easy grace in twisting and doubling as with hoarse cry it fell and
rose again, we were fortunate in literally running to ground its nest.

[Illustration: A Transport between Fort Smith and Smith's Landing]

[Illustration: Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company]

Fort Smith, as places go in this country, is an infant in age, having
been established only thirty-four years. Resting on the edge of the high
bank of the Slave, it enjoys an eternal outlook on those wonderfu