means irksome lives. Books, music, cards and
dances serve to while away spare time, and an occasional wedding,
lasting, as it generally does, for several days, stirs the little
community to its core. But sport, in a region abounding with game
of all kinds, is the great time-killer, giving the longed-for
excitement, and contributing as well to the daily bill of fare the
very choicest of human food. Such a life is indeed to be envied
rather than commiserated, and we met with few, if any, who cared to
leave it. But such posts are the "plums" of the service, and are few
and far between. At many of the solitary outposts life has a very
different colour. ["At an outpost," says Mr. Bleasdell Cameron,
"where a clerk is alone with his Indian servant, the life is
wearisome to a degree, and privation not infrequently adds to the
hardship of it. Supplies may run short, and in any case he is
expected to stock himself with fish, taken in nets from the lake,
near which his post is situated, for his table and his dogs, as well
as to augment his larder by the expert and diligent use of his gun.
Rare instances have occurred where, through accident, supplies had
not reached the far-out posts for which they were intended, and the
men had literally died of starvation. Out of a York boat's crew,
which was taking up the annual supplies for a post far up among
the Rocky Mountains, on a branch of the Mackenzie River, two or
three men were drowned, and the ice beginning to take, the boat was
obliged to put back to the district headquarters. The three men
at the outpost were left for some weeks without the supplies, and
when, after winter had set in, and it became possible to reach them
with dog trains, and provisions were at length sent them, two were
found dead in the post, while the third man was living by himself in
a small hut some distance from the fort buildings. The explanation
he gave was that he had removed to where there was a chance of
keeping himself alive by snaring rabbits, which were more plentiful
than at the post. But a suggestion of cannibalism surrounded the
affair, for only the bones of his companions were found, and they
were in the open chimney-place. Nothing was done, however, and I
myself saw the survivor many times in after years."]

At dinner Mr. Wilson told us of a very curious circumstance the
previous fall, at the Loon River, some eighty miles south of
Vermilion--something, indeed, that very much resembled volcanic