in, on a high flat about two miles below the Burnt Rapid.
Though a tough spot to get up to, the flat proved to be a prime
place for our camp, with plenty of dead fallen and standing timber,
and soon four or five "long fires" were blazing, a substantial
supper discussed, and comfort succeeded misery. The next day
(Sunday) was much enjoyed as a day of rest, the half-breeds at
their beloved games, the officials writing letters. The weather
was variable; the clouds broke and gathered by turns, with slight
rain towards evening, and then it cleared. As a night camp it was
picturesque, the full moon in the south gleaming over the turbid
water, and the boatmen lounging around the files like so many
brigands.

Next morning we surmounted the Brule Rapid--Pusitao Powestik--short
but powerful, with a sharp pointed rock at its head, very
troublesome to get around. Above this rapid the bank consists
of a solid, vertical rampart of red sandstone, its base and top
and every crack and crevice clothed with a rich vegetation--a
most beautiful and striking scene, forming a gigantic amphitheatre,
concentred by the seeming closing-in of the left bank at Point
Brule upon the long straight line of sandstone wall on the right.
Nothing finer, indeed, could be imagined in all this remarkable
river's remarkable scenery than this impressive view, not from
jutting peaks, for the sky-line of the banks runs parallel with
the water, but from the antique grandeur of their sweep and
apparent junction.

That afternoon we rounded Point Brule, a high, bold cliff of
sandstone with three "lop-sticks" upon its top. The Indian's
lop-stick, called by the Cree piskootenusk, is a sort of living
talisman which he connects in some mysterious way with his own fate,
and which he will often go many miles out of his direct course to
visit. Even white men fall in with the fetish, and one of the three
we saw was called "Lambert's lop-stick." I myself had one made for
me by Gros Oreilles, the Saulteau Chief, nearly forty years ago, in
the forest east of Pointe du Chene, in what is now Manitoba. They
are made by stripping a tall spruce tree of a deep ring of branches,
leaving the top and bottom ones intact. The tree seems to thrive all
the same, and is a very noticeable, and not infrequent, object
throughout the whole Thickwood Indian country.

Just opposite the cliff referred to, the Little Buffalo, a swift
creek, enters between two bold shoulders of hills, and on its