other day without giving up. From the conversation I had with him,
before we started on the following morning, I found that he had no
knowledge of our situation on the extensive lake before us, and
supposed that the Red River lay to the north, while I thought, from the
course of the sun, that it was to the south, and insisted upon his
taking that direction, which we did accordingly; and after a laborious
and rather anxious day's toil, we saw some points of small and
scattered willow bushes, like those which I knew to be near the
entrance of the river. This providentially proved to be the case,
otherwise our trials must have been great; the driver having become
nearly snow-blind, and incapable of driving the dogs, and the weather
becoming more intensely cold and stormy. It may easily be conceived
what our feelings were, in recovering a right track, after wandering
for several days upon an icy lake, among the intricate and similar
appearances of numerous and small islands of pine. They were those, I
trust, of sincere gratitude to God; and I often thought what a wretched
wanderer was man in a guilty world, without the light of Christianity
to guide, and its principle to direct his steps. Infidelity draws a
veil around him, and shrouds all in darkness as to a future life. All,
all is uncertainty before him, as the tempest-tossed mariner without a
compass, and the wearied wandering traveller without a chart or guide.
Let me then prize the scriptures more, which have "God for their
author, truth unmingled with error for their subject, and salvation for
their end." They are the fountains of interminable happiness, where he
who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, may be satisfied; and when
received in principle and in love, are a sure and unerring guide,
through a wilderness of toil and suffering, to the habitations of the
blessed, "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

As we passed along the river towards the Settlement, we met an
intoxicated Indian, who had been drinking at the grave of his child,
whom he had buried in the fall of the year. In going to the spot, I
found that all the snow and the grass had been removed, and that a
number of Indians, with Pigewis, had encircled the place where the body
had been deposited; and, as is their custom, they smoked the calumet,
wept, and sacrificed a little of what they possessed to the departed
spirit of the child. They do this, under the idea that the deceased may
want