f English, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the next
door was a woman busy in washing, who spoke a little English. "The old
man out there," she said, in answer to our questions, "can paddle canoe,
but he is very drunk, he can not do it to-day."

"Is there nobody else," we asked, "who will take us down the falls?"

"I don't know; the Indians all drunk to-day."

"Why is that? why are they all drunk to-day?"

"Oh, the whisky," answered the woman, giving us to understand, that when
an Indian could get whisky, he got drunk as a matter of course.

By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with the
customary "_bon jour_" manifested a curiosity to know the nature of our
errand. The woman explained it to him in English.

"Oh, messieurs, je vous servirai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French;
"I go, I go."

We told him that we doubted whether he was quite sober enough.

"Oh, messieurs, je suis parfaitement capable--first rate, first rate."

We shook him off as soon as we could, but not till after he had time to
propose that we should wait till the next day, and to utter the maxim,
"Whisky, good--too much whisky, no good."

In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we found
two men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pilot us over
the rapids. They took one of the canoes which lay in a little inlet close
at hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream in
the edge of the rapids. Arriving at the head of the rapids, they took in
our party, which consisted of five, and we began the descent. At each end
of the canoe sat a half-breed, with a paddle, to guide it while the
current drew us rapidly down among the agitated waters. It was surprising
with what dexterity they kept us in the smoothest part of the water,
seeming to know the way down as well as if it had been a beaten path in
the fields.

At one time we would seem to be directly approaching a rock against which
the waves were dashing, at another to be descending into a hollow of the
waters in which our canoe would be inevitably filled, but a single stroke
of the paddle given by the man at the prow put us safely by the seeming
danger. So rapid was the descent, that almost as soon as we descried the
apparent peril, it was passed. In less than ten minutes, as it seemed to
me, we had left the roar of the rapids behind us, and were gliding over
the smooth water at their foot.

In the afternoon