ther times to unload, and launch them over the
rocks, and carry the goods upon their backs, or rather suspended in
slings from their heads, a considerable distance, over some of the
portages. The weather was frequently very cold, with snow and rain; and
our progress was so slow and mortifying, particularly up Hill River,
that the boats' crews were heard to execrate the man who first found
out such a way into the interior.

The blasphemy of the men, in the difficulties they had to encounter,
was truly painful to me. I had hoped better things of the Scotch, from
their known moral and enlightened education; but their horrid imprecations
proved a degeneracy of character in an Indian country. This I lamented
to find was too generally the case with Europeans, particularly so in
their barbarous treatment of women. They do not admit them as their
companions, nor do they allow them to eat at their tables, but degrade
them _merely_ as slaves to their arbitrary inclinations; while the
children grow up wild and uncultivated as the heathen.

The scenery throughout the passage is dull and monotonous (excepting a
few points in some of the small lakes, which are picturesque), till you
reach the Company's post, Norway House; when a fine body of water
bursts upon your view in Lake Winipeg. We found the voyage, from the
Factory to this point, so sombre and dreary, that the sight of a horse
grazing on the bank greatly exhilarated us, in the association of the
idea that we were approaching some human habitation. Our provisions
being short, we recruited our stock at this post; and I obtained
another boy for education, reported to me as the orphan son of a
deceased Indian and a half-caste woman; and taught him the prayer which
the other used morning and evening, and which he soon learned:--"_Great
Father, bless me, through Jesus Christ._" May a gracious God hear
their cry, and raise them up as heralds of his salvation in this truly
benighted and barbarous part of the world.

It often grieved me, in our hurried passage, to see the men employed in
taking the goods over the carrying places, or in rowing, during the
Sabbath. I contemplated the delight with which thousands in England
enjoyed the privileges of this sacred day, and welcomed divine
ordinances. In reading, meditation, and prayer, however, my soul was
not forsaken of God, and I gladly embraced an opportunity of calling
those more immediately around me to join in reading the scripture