e embankments had been completed, but on which work had,
for some reason, been stopped to await a more prosperous season.
Here was our first experience of towns on paper. From the tone in
which the drivers talked of the places where we were to stop over
night one might have supposed that villages, if not cities, were
plentiful along our track. One example of a town at that time will
be enough. The principal place on our route, judging from the talk,
was Breckenridge. We would reach it at the end of the fourth day,
where we anticipated a pleasant change after camping out in our tent
for three nights. It was after dark before we arrived, and we looked
eagerly for signs of the town we were approaching.

The team at length stopped in front of an object which, on careful
examination in the darkness, appeared to be the most primitive
structure imaginable. It had no foundations, and if it had a
wall at all, it was not more than two or three feet in height.
Imagine the roof taken off a house forty feet long and twenty feet
wide and laid down on the ground, and you have the hotel and only
building, unless perhaps a stable, in Breckenridge at that time.
The entrance was at one end. Going in, a chimney was seen in the
middle of the building. The floor was little more than the bare
ground. On each side of the door, by the flickering light of a fire,
we saw what looked like two immense boxes. A second glance showed
that these boxes seemed to be filled with human heads and legs.
They were, in fact, the beds of the inhabitants of Breckenridge.
Beds for the arriving travelers, if they existed at all, which I do
not distinctly remember, were in the back of the house. I think the
other members of the party occupied that portion. I simply spread
my blanket out on the hearth in front of the fire, wrapped up,
and slept as soundly as if the bed was the softest of a regal palace.

At Fort Garry we were received by Governor McTavish, with whom Captain
Davis had had some correspondence on the subject of our expedition,
and who gave us letters to the "factors" of the Hudson Bay Company
scattered along our route. We found that the rest of our journey
would have to be made in a birch bark canoe. One of the finest craft
of this class was loaned us by the governor. It had been, at some
former time, the special yacht of himself or some visiting notable.
It was manned by eight half-breeds, men whose physical endurance I
have never see