ed; and, if any of them exhibit during the winter, some incipient
symptoms of the complaint, the annual summer voyage to the sea-coast
generally effects a cure. The natives who confine themselves to snow
water in the winter, and drink of the small rivulets which flow through
the plains in the summer, are exempt from the attacks of this disease.

"These facts are curious, inasmuch as they militate against the
generally-received opinion that the disease is caused by drinking
snow-water; an opinion which seems to have originated from bronchocele
being endemial to sub-alpine districts.

"The Saskatchawan, at Edmonton, is clear in the winter, and also in the
summer, except during the May and July floods. The distance from the
Rocky Mountains (which I suppose to be of primitive formation,) is
upwards of one hundred and thirty miles. The neighbouring plains are
alluvial, the soil is calcareous, and contains numerous travelled
fragments of limestone. At a considerable distance below Edmonton, the
river, continuing its course through the plains, becomes turbid, and
acquires a white colour. In this state it is drunk by the inmates of
Carlton House, where the disease is known only by name. It is said that
the inhabitants of Rocky Mountain House, sixty miles nearer the source
of the river are more severely affected than those at Edmonton. The same
disease occurs near the sources of the Elk and Peace Rivers; but, in
those parts of the country which are distant from the Rocky Mountain
Chain, it is unknown, although melted snow forms the only drink of the
natives for nine months of the year.

"A residence of a single year at Edmonton is sufficient to render a
family bronchocelous. Many of the goitres acquire great size. Burnt
sponge has been tried, and found to remove the disease, but an exposure
to the same cause immediately reproduces it.

"A great proportion of the children of women who have goitres, are born
idiots, with large heads, and the other distinguishing marks of
_cretins_. I could not learn whether it was necessary that both parents
should have goitres, to produce cretin children: indeed the want of
chastity in the half-breed women would be a bar to the deduction of any
inference on this head."

_February 8_.--Having recovered from the swellings and pains which our
late march from Cumberland had occasioned, we prepared for the
commencement of our journey to Isle a la Crosse, and requisitions were
made on both the est