They Examined Minutely The Spot Of Encampment To Form A Judgment Of The Number Of Canoes That Had Preceded Them; And They Advanced, Armed, And With Great Caution, Through The Woods.

Their fears however on this occasion were fortunately groundless.

By noon on the 12th, the boats and their cargoes having been conveyed across the portage, we embarked and pursued our course. The Saskatchewan becomes wider above the Grand Rapid and the scenery improves. The banks are high, composed of white clay and limestone, and their summits are richly clothed with a variety of firs, poplars, birches and willows. The current runs with great rapidity and the channel is in many places intricate and dangerous from broken ridges of rock jutting into the stream. We pitched our tents at the entrance of Cross Lake, having advanced only five miles and a half.

CROSS, CEDAR AND PINE ISLAND LAKES.

Cross Lake is extensive, running towards the north-east it is said for forty miles. We crossed it at a narrow part and, pulling through several winding channels formed by a group of islands, entered Cedar Lake which, next to Lake Winnipeg, is the largest sheet of fresh water we had hitherto seen. Ducks and geese resort hither in immense flocks in the spring and autumn. These birds are now beginning to go off owing to its muddy shores having become quite hard through the nightly frosts. At this place the Aurora Borealis was extremely brilliant in the night, its coruscations darting at times over the whole sky and assuming various prismatic tints of which the violet and yellow were predominant.

After pulling, on the 14th, seven miles and a quarter on the lake, a violent wind drove us for shelter to a small island, or rather a ridge of rolled stones thrown up by the frequent storms which agitate this lake. The weather did not moderate the whole day and we were obliged to pass the night on this exposed spot. The delay however enabled us to obtain some lunar observations. The wind having subsided we left our resting place the following morning, crossed the remainder of the lake, and in the afternoon arrived at Muddy Lake which is very appropriately named as it consists merely of a few channels winding amongst extensive mudbanks which are overflowed during the spring floods. We landed at an Indian tent which contained two numerous families amounting to thirty souls. These poor creatures were badly clothed and reduced to a miserable condition by the whooping-cough and measles. At the time of our arrival they were busy in preparing a sweating-house for the sick. This is a remedy which they consider, with the addition of singing and drumming, to be the grand specific for all diseases. Our companions having obtained some geese in exchange for rum and tobacco, we proceeded a few more miles and encamped on Devil's Drum Island, having come during the day twenty miles and a half. A second party of Indians were encamped on an adjoining island, a situation chosen for the purpose of killing geese and ducks.

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