the Saskatchowan—he is in company with
the brigade of boats—and are at Carlton
station. Mr. Rundell, a worthy missionary
from Edmonton, three or four hundred miles
further up stream, was waiting to return
with the boats. The missionary, probably
unmarried, lived in the wilderness, with a
pet cat for his companion; and since if he
left her at home there was much danger
of her being eaten in his absence, he had
brought puss with him, and he had to take
her back. Now Mr. Rundell agreed with
the artist and another gentleman to ride to
Edmonton on horseback, as being a shorter
and a pleasanter way than journeying by
boat. The horses were fresh, the Indians
collected round them were loud in their
leave–takings, and Mr. Rundell, being an
especial favourite, was more especially
surrounded. His horse plunged, and his cat,
whom he had proposed to himself to carry in
his riding–cloak, tied by four feet of string
to the pummel of his saddle, was bewildered
by the shaking, and sprang out, utterly
astonishing the Indians by the miraculous
suddenness of her appearance. The string
did not allow her to touch ground, puss hung
therefore against the fore legs of the horse,
which she attacked with all her claws. The
horse plunged violently, and at last threw
the missionary over his head, while the
cat's life was saved by the breaking of her
tether. The Indians screeched and yelled
with delight, for they soon understood the
nature of the accident; and pussey, having
emphatically declared her incompetence to
ride on horseback, was left behind as a boat
passenger. Edmonton was not reached until
a few serious difficulties had been overcome.
Mr. Rundell, left behind upon the road, was
caught in a great hurricane, and almost
involved in a devouring prairie fire. It was
only by great exertion that he could succeed
in putting the river between it and him.
The Indians, when a prairie fire approaches,
oppose fire to fire. They burn the grass
immediately behind themselves, and run
before its smoke. When the great tide of
flame reaches the spot already in ashes, it is
checked for want of fuel. The Indian has
fire and water to contend with, and contends.
An Iroquois, belonging to the company with
which the artist travelled, during intense
frost fell into deep water. Five minutes
after he had been extricated from the river
his clothes were stiff with ice. He was
asked whether he was not cold, and replied,
My clothes are cold, but I am not.

Of the hurricane that blew across the
Rocky Mountains, which the voyagers reached
very late in the season, it is enough to say
that the huge forest waved under it as if it
were a field of corn. The soil over the rock
is thin, and the roots of the trees lie on the
surface with their fibres closely interlaced.
The great trees hold together by the roots,
yielding together to the wind, and rocking to
sleep the traveller who lies under their
shelter with the rise and fall of their great
living net–work. A boat, which nine men
could not carry very easily, was blown out of
the water to a distance of fifteen feet from
the water side. Through such weather three
men, who had landed for a walk on the south
side of the river, and whom it had been
impossible to reach again by the boat,
travelled for three days and three nights
without food and shelter. One of them had
not even taken his coat with him when he
jumped on shore. They huddled together at
night to escape being frozen to death, and
arrived at Jasper's House, which is at the
point of ascent on the east side of the
mountains, in a wretched plight. The winter
journey over the mountains, made a month
later than usual, had its perils, and involved
some suffering from the intensest cold. The
snow was only nine or ten feet deep. It had
been in other years ten or fifteen feet high.
Its old level was shown by the stumps of
trees cut off for camp fires, at what had been
the surface of the ground, so many feet above
the heads of Mr. Kane and his companions.
In making a camp–fire over ten or a dozen
feet of snow, it is necessary to get five or six
logs of green timber eighteen or twenty feet
in length, and to lay these down side by side
to form a fireplace. The green timber does
not burn through in a single night. The fire
upon it melts the snow immediately beneath,
and forms a deep hole, with a puddle at the
bottom, across which the green logs are long
enough to stretch, so that the fire–place is
maintained in its position by the snow on
either side. One night, upon the mountains,
Mr. Kane was awakened by a mighty shouting,
and found that an Indian, who had gone
to sleep with his feet too close to the campfire,
had slid down into the hole beneath it,
his bed having melted from under him while
he was asleep.

Across the Rocky Mountains and down
the Columbia was the way to Fort
Vancouver; and from Fort Vancouver there
were expeditions made in search of subjects
for the pencil, including journeys over a part
of the soil of British Columbia, now being
occupied by the gold–diggers, and a residence
of two months at Victoria, in Vancouver's
Island, the port that is now expected to
become the great British metropolis on the
Pacific.

Of the Indians who now inhabit these
parts of the world, Mr. Kane gives very full
and curious accounts. Many of them are
Flathead tribes. Their infants are placed at
birth on a firm strip of birch bark, and, by
gradual pressure with a pad under another
piece of bark, the brainpan is flattened across
the forehead and pressed up to a point at
the crown of the head. The pressure,
maintained for about a twelvemonth, does not
seem to hurt the child, which cries whenever
the cords are loosened, but is quiet when