s that darken the sky and have no fear of
man. Between Lake Winnipeg and Cumberland Lake one can literally paddle
for a week and barely find a dry spot big enough for a tent among the
myriad lakes and swamps and river channels overwashing the dank goose
grass. Through these swamps runs the limestone cliff known as the
Pasquia Hills--a blue lift of the swampy sky-line in a wooded ridge. On
this ridge is the Pas fort. All the romance of the most romantic era in
the West clings to the banks of the Saskatchewan--'Kis-sis-kat-chewan
Sepie'--swift angrily-flowing waters, as the Indians call it, with its
countless unmapped lakes and its countless unmapped islands. Up and down
its broad current from time immemorial flitted the war canoes of the
Cree, like birds of prey, to plunder the Blackfeet, or 'Horse Indians.'
Between these high, steep banks came the voyageurs of the old fur
companies--'ti-aing-ti-aing' in monotonous sing-song day and night,
tracking the clumsy York boats up-stream all the way from tide water to
within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Up these waters, with rapids so
numerous that one loses count of them, came doughty traders of the
Company with the swiftest paddlers the West has ever known. The
gentleman in cocked hat and silk-lined overcape, with knee-buckled
breeches and ruffles at wrist and throat, had a habit of tucking his
sleeves up and dipping his hand in the water over the gunnels. If the
ripple did not rise from knuckles to elbows, he forced speed with a
shout of 'Up-up, my men! Up-up!' and gave orders for the regale to go
round, or for the crews to shift, or for the Highland piper to set the
bagpipes skirling.

Hither, then, came Hendry from the Bay, the first Englishman to ascend
the Saskatchewan. 'The mosquitoes are intolerable,' he writes. 'We came
to the French house. Two Frenchmen came to the water side and invited me
into their house. One told me his master and men had gone down to
Montreal with furs and that he must detain me till his return; but
Little Bear, my Indian leader, only smiled and said, "They dare not."'

Somewhere between the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan,
Hendry's Assiniboines met Indians on horseback, the Blackfeet, or
'Archithinues,' as he calls them. The Blackfeet Indians tell us to-day
that the Assiniboines and Crees used to meet the Blackfeet to exchange
the trade of the Bay at Wetaskiwin, 'the Hills of Peace.' This exactly
agrees with the itinerary, describ