Fort Edmonton to Fort Pitt.

October 17th. - All our arrangements being completed, we embarked in Mr. Christie's own new and roomy boat, "The Golden Era," which he had obligingly lent us for the voyage, and by noon were fairly on our way down the broad current of the Saskatchewan River. I felt depressed, almost sorrowful, on leaving Edmonton, where I had been made more than comfortable, through the constant attentions and hospitalities of my kind entertainers, and but little could be gathered from the aspect of nature to chase away gloom and raise one's spirits to cheerfulness. Bright as shone the sun the cold was most cruelly severe, and there was something very melancholy, although not wanting in poetic charm, in the monotonous, incessant flight of legions of ducks, which swiftly and steadily winged their way down the river, pursuing their accustomed easterly course in search of more warm and genial habitations. But travellers view things practically; so those who were not rowing brought out their guns, and immense blazing at the ducks went on; seven only, however, were actually secured, for the birds flew high and wild, and those that we merely wounded could seldom be recovered.

At nightfall, we drew into the shore and kindled our fire on a dry, sandy beach: then, after supper, we made a very pleasant companionable party, all sitting together round the blazing logs, as was our custom before the arrival of the Saskatchewan men. My party now consisted of McKay, McBeath, Matheson, Short, Toma and Duncan, who formed an excellent crew for the Golden Era. Whisky, alas! had deserted us, preferring ignoble ease at the Fort to our good society: soon would he regret his short-sighted selfishness, when compelled to the old toilsome sleigh-work under the tormentor's lash.

October 18th. - 'Heavy snowstorm at night. Sleet and snow, with high north-west wind, continued till late in the afternoon. It was awfully cold. Took an oar for a couple of hours to warm myself; pretty hard work tugging at those eighteen-foot poles called oars. The river begins to freeze.'

October 19th. - 'Cold intense: ground covered with snow. The intensity of the cold nearly destroys one's vitality; several times I felt as if going to faint. . . . The river is very nearly frozen over: unless a change comes tonight we shall be ice-bound, and have to walk a hundred miles or more to Fort Pitt, where the horses ought to be.'

October 20th. - 'Snow in the night, frost in the day. River blocked with great masses of ice: boat closed in.'

October 21st. 'Seeing no prospect of escape, we sent off Matheson and Short to bring the horses from Port Pitt. Worked hard all morning with the men clearing away the snow from the camp, and making everything tidy, as we shall have to stay here some time.'

In the afternoon the men cleared out the Golden Era, and freed it of snow: I amused myself cutting logs for the fire. . . . An aurora borealis in the region of Ursa Major.'

October 22d. 'Intensely cold night; blankets sprinkled with hoar-frost, notwithstanding the shelter of the tent; could not put my head out from under the buffalo robe without positive pain.' I shall probably have to stay more than a week in this wretched place. Nevertheless, I should be a fool to grumble, though longing to make progress on my homeward way, so many proofs have I had that Providence orders all for the best. For example, at Edmonton we learned that the Blackfeet have become very hostile, so that Captain Palliser with difficulty escaped from them, owing his safety only to the efforts of Munroe, his interpreter (brother to my Munroe), who dissuaded them from an intended attack. Having got an idea that the Government was going to take their land from them and that the Expedition was sent to survey it with that view, they vowed to murder any white men who entered their territories; thus, if the failure of provisions had not obliged me to give up my plan of crossing the plains from Bow Fort to Fort Carlton, we should have incurred great danger, being certain to have met with these treacherous savages. The horses would have been taken, and probably our rifles and other property: some of my people even think we should have been murdered, but that I doubt, though an Indian war party is not over-scrupulous.

I walked a few miles with my rifle and saw tracks of small deer. The snow is about [? Nine] inches deep.'

Sunday, October 23rd. - 'Passed an uncomfortable night, feverish, and suffering from a bad cold in the head and throat. Weather continues to be frosty and intensely cold: the river is quite frozen over. Much depressed at the thought of staying another week in this miserable place, and, after that, two months' hard travelling to Fort Garry in snow and wretchedness. This detention completely upsets all plans. My travels hitherto have often been wearisome enough, but formerly I had hope and novelty for consolers. Now, all chance of sport is at an end.

October 24th. - 'Last night was cloudy, the wind changed to south, and there was very little frost. I am better today, and so is McKay, who is suffering from an attack of the same kind. It seems to be the Edmonton illness, which for some weeks has been laying up so many people there,- severe affection of the stomach, feverishness and cough, - rather an influenza than a cold. He remarked, justly I think, that such an illness sooner leaves a man living in. the open air than one shut up in a house.'

One of the great luxuries in this change of weather is the deliverance from having one's bedding frozen wherever the breath touches it; it is unpleasant to pass the night with a collar of ice around one's neck, and a sprinkling of icicles on one's pillow. Blankets are poor protectors from cold compared to buffalo robes, one robe being more than equal to three good blankets, but I doubt if any quantity of coverings could keep a chilly person warm on these bitter nights. Be that as it may, I find that even disturbed sleep in the open air (or under a tent, which is much the same) refreshes more than the most dreamless slumbers on soft beds in heated rooms. [That is, in the long run, it is so, though not always, nor even generally, on any single occasion.]

'McKay and McBeath went out shooting, but saw nothing, and found the country, at any distance from the river, so swampy as to be almost impassable. . . . - 'Finished a second reading of Bulwer's My Novel, a work in regard to which the author may well show his pride, by giving it such a title, implying his readiness to rest his fame as a novelist upon it - but what work does not lay itself open to criticism? 'I would ask, - Whence is Randal Leslie supposed to derive his powerful, though evil, genius? His father is a hopeless idiot, whose own father appears to have been of the same sort, and whose mother was a Hazelden, which is saying enough. Randal's mother is a restless fool, and neither the Montfydgets nor the Daudles could have transmitted any valuable qualities through her to her progeny. In like manner, Nora Avenel seems unaccountable in such a family as that she springs from, and even if we imagine her genius to have developed itself from some germs in the parents' minds, we are at a loss to find her brother and sister, Richard and Jane, so absolutely her opposites in character. I am convinced that in real life there is always a connecting chain, slender though it be, bringing the minds of near relations into some sort of inner unison, however great their external differences may seem.

'Another remark - Does not the author over-push the notion of partially blemishing some of his higher characters in order that they may not seem unnaturally perfect? Parson Dale's evil tempers at whist (unacknowledged and unrepented of), however common and trivial the fault, are so forcibly depicted as to injure the effect of his subsequent holy exhortations. Riccabocca's grotesqueness is so dwelt on, that we vainly try to think of him as an Italian patrician of the sublimest type when his honours are finally restored. Harley's schemes of vengeance are pushed so far as permanently to affect our belief in his natural generosity and his devices become so crafty that his former frankness is made to look as if it had been mere indolence. Leonard is first such an awkward milksop that nothing can ever raise him in our respect, - let him be a poet and orator, or lover, we cannot separate him from our memories of a loutish cub well thrashed by Randal Leslie. Hazeldean is so stupid, so pompous, so tyrannical, that his good-heartedness and active benevolence melt into the clouds, and "Prize Ox," the name he so much resented, seems his most appropriate designation - if one supposes the beast more stirring and irascible than fat cattle generally are.

'Violante stands out magnificently on the canvas: there is nothing to interfere with our delight in her noble qualities. What author but Bulwer is able to raise up such an image of the female character of the grandest type, perfect in beauty, in refinement, in genius, in love? And Audley Egerton, who but a master of the art could have created him? Why, Oh why, after the death of his second wife - wife married for money - did he retire to the country for a few weeks, and come back to town "with a new wrinkle on his brow"? Such an improbable, incongruous sentimentalism goes far to make him ridiculous altogether. ' Shakespeare often indicates faults in his higher characters, when misfortunes have to overtake them, lest Heaven might otherwise be thought too severe towards a worthy and dutiful child; he also generally indicates virtues in his baser characters, that they may be men, not monsters; but he does not present these paradoxes so forcibly as to distract attention from the leading idea. For example on the one hand, Desdemona's want of filial duty; Ophelia's weakness and readiness to act as a spy on her lover; Cordelia's pride; Juliet's unbounded passion; - on the other hand, Falstaff's jovial good nature; Lady Macbeth's wifely and motherly feelings, and her deep remorse; [even Shylock can cherish a past love, and bear a warm heart for those of his own nation; even Caliban has a dash of goodness in him, some rough poetic fancy, some power of veneration and attachment].'

[Sir Walter Scott errs constantly in sinking his heroes too low to be quite re-elevated to their proper height. Certain sorts of meanness or baseness are so opposite to the character of a gentleman, not to say, hero, that to attribute them to any personage who is meant to be an object of respect or esteem, or even to make the unjust imputation of them rest on him too heavily and long, robs him beyond the retrieval of our sympathy, and wounds our imagination in the tenderest part.

Nothing can redeem Waverley from the contempt he has so fully merited as a pitiful turncoat; Kenneth, in The Talisman, can never lose some traces of the low defaulter's stigma for quitting the standard he was placed to guard; Glenvarloch, in The Fortunes of Nigel, is lowered forever by being disgraced at court as a petty, sparrow-hawking gambler; Mordaunt, in The Pirate, is crushed to the earth by Cleveland's superior force and his own wretched love vacillations; - in short, Sir Walter's heroes are most often put into such foul shades, and kept there so long, that they never recover their brightness, - their souls smell of the dungeon to the last.]

October 25th. 'The wind is high and in a new quarter, the sun shines once more. The mildness of the westerly wind has affected the weather; the snow is melting, the ice, though more than half a foot thick, begins to break, and the rising water piles it up in heaps and runs swiftly in narrow channels. A few birds, who have found out our feeding times and make them their own, are singing in a subdued way, and a spring feeling pervades all nature.'

October 26th. -'The night has been rather cold. The sun shines as it did yesterday, but there is frost in the air. Took my rifle and walked a few miles up the river, but saw no game. We have been here a week today; the tediousness is awful.'

'I have been reading the second and third parts of "Henry VI." Would that one could know how much truth there is in Shakespeare's version of history? A great poet dealing with historical themes assumes a mighty responsibility, for generations untold will be led by his genius to accept his views of the past. Where one man reads history a hundred read poetry, and not only believe in the poet's accuracy but hate those who bring facts tending to cast doubt on it.

'Did great men in the Middle Ages, or in Shakespeare's own day, really curse and revile one another as he represents, or were they content to "use daggers" without "speaking'' them, as folk do now? Theatres have always required their poets as well as their artists to scene-paint audaciously, for the sake of dull or distant eyes.

'The silent, self-contained man who bears down the world by sheer force of will displayed in deeds, not words, who, passionless a statue, makes the passions of others his ministering sprites, seems to be of modern creation in fiction. The writers of old were too objective to trouble themselves with a sort of character that did so much with so little show, effects seeming to them more valuable than causes. Modern French romanticists particularly delight in these impassible heroes. They often represent Englishmen in such guise. I doubt if they are right; for though, as compared with foreigners, the Briton works silently and powerfully, yet the very characteristic of his strength is its freedom from that self-consciousness which your romantic inscrutable being of indomitable will. Possesses in the uttermost degree. The English like work that is done under right impulses from without, and neither much spoken of nor thought over previously to its execution; the French more esteem work meditated and announced beforehand, which the worker can therefore claim as his own creation, instead of disclaiming all merit in it, as being a mere gift of circumstance or fortune.'

October 27th. - 'Frost again at night, followed by a mild day with bright sun; the ice melting and cracking. McKay walked eight miles down the river and reports that about three miles from this, at a bend between steep banks, the ice is packed into a dam, below which the stream is open for as far as he could see. It is provoking to think that had we gone on half an hour longer at the time we were stopped, our imprisonment would have ended some days ago. There is no way either to break the dam or take the boat to the clear water below it. . . McKay made a draught-board, and a set of men for the game.'

October 28th and 29th. - Mild, sunny spring-like days. The ice cracking very much upstream.

Sunday, October 30th. - 'Another Sunday at this dreary place. We had hoped to be set free ere this. Never have I passed such a wearisome time. Each day is like the other. I rise soon after the sun, then breakfast on cold ham, then read or think till midday, then dine on beef either fresh or dried, then read or think till dusk (about half-past four o'clock, I suppose, my watch is not going); then the lovely star Capella appears, and I look at it and think of many things; then Cassiopeia begins to shine, and soon all the stars are in their places, each reminding me of some dear friend with whom I associate it. Then comes supper - cold ham and tea; then a long time of restless thinking, till Aldebaran and the Pleiades have passed the large tent [opposite mine], and the Pointers lean from east to west, and Arcturus is below the horizon; and then to bed, "to sleep, perchance to dream," perchance to toss wearily from side to side for many a tedious hour.'

October 31st. 'Took my rifle, and walked some five or six miles down the river. Found everything as McKay had reported on Thursday - ice closing the stream for about three miles below our camp, and then a clear channel as far as the eye can reach. Saw no game and no fresh tracks, and got very tired walking in the deep snow.'

November 1st. - 'Deliverance at last, - thank God! Almost in despair; and too weary to read, or do anything, I lay down about midday and tried to sleep, but my drowsiness was quickly dispelled by the welcome sound of a shot, soon followed by another, and, in a few minutes, Matheson, Kline, Macdonald (a Company's man), and Komenakoos) a famous Indian hunter), came riding in, bringing with them sixteen horses from Fort Pitt.'

Matheson and Short had had a severe journey on foot, through snow knee-deep for most of the way. The frozen crust had cut nearly all the skin off Short's legs below the knees, causing him great suffering. They did not reach Fort Pitt till the sixth day, and during the last three days had no food.' [Yet (as it was afterwards told me) these gallant fellows made no complaints of hunger on arriving at the Fort but talked in the most cheerful manner about other things until asked by Mr. Chastellain if they would have something to eat. They kept themselves warm at night, by partly moving their fire after it had burned an hour or two, and lying down in the ashes as soon as the place was sufficiently cooled.]

'It seems that we are not more than a day's march from Edmonton, being twenty miles above the in-fall of White Mud Creek, a considerable stream that joins the river on this, its northern, side. 'Truly if hope deferred makes the heart sick, hope satisfied cures the sickness. Before our friends arrived I felt actually ill, but their coming gave me the best appetite for dinner I have had for many a weary day.'

November 2nd. - 'During the night there was a change in the beautiful weather of the last ten days, and an east wind brought snow in its stead. We started at 10 A.M. in the face of a storm and rode for some hours against snow and bitter wind. In the afternoon the snow left off, but the cold continued. We camped a few miles beyond White Mud Creek; it was an uncomfortable camp, for shifting winds blew the smoke continually into my tent. The river is quite closed near this - [the open water seen by McKay and myself did not extend very far.]'

November 3rd - 'Started at daybreak and rode till ten o'clock. Agonizingly cold yesterday and today; our beards were hung with icicles; we might have sat for portraits of the Genius of winter. Rather less cold in the afternoon, perhaps we felt it less, having fed. Camped near a considerable piece of water called by the Indians "The Spot-on-a-Saddle Lake." At sunset, it began snowing again. 'During the height of the cold the thought occurred to me - Why am I enduring this? For pleasure - was the only reply, and the idea seemed so absurd that I laughed myself warm. Then as circulation returned, I remembered that I was taking a lesson in that most valuable of human studies - the art of Endurance: an art the poor learn perforce, and the rich do well to teach themselves - though truly they have their own trials too, in a different fashion.

I often think of the story of an officer who was so anxious to harden himself before a campaign against the Caffres, that he used to leave his comfortable quarters and sleep uncovered in the open air during the worst of weather the end was, that when marching orders came he was too rheumatic to go with his regiment. So, in life, we are apt to doctor our souls so much with medicines of our own mixing, that when Providence gives us our regular allowance of affliction-physic we have not vigour enough to swallow it with resignation or benefit by its power and sink into despondency, instead of finding our strength "renewed like the eagle's".

'Nevertheless, that training of the soul of which bodily fasts were the symbol, that rending of hearts of which rending of garments was the type, is an unquestionable duty - only not too much of it, for any sake!'

November 4th. - 'Fine day - turned cold in the evening. Made a good march, starting before sunrise, and camping long after sunset.'

November 5th. - 'Intensely cold morning, an east wind driving particles of frozen snow against our faces. Certainly, I shall "remember, remember, the 5th of November," for such cold I never felt in my life. It got a little better in the afternoon. The sun was shining brightly all day in a cloudless sky, but his beams seemed as cold as the icy wind. [We had nothing better than our autumn clothing - about what one would wear on a cool October day at home - for, expecting to get to Fort Carlton before the cold began, we had meant to make our winter outfit there. We were all dressed, in fact, in our Rocky Mountains' garb, except that I had a tweed overcoat to cover my leather hunting shirt.] Crossed Moose Creek, at the mouth of which one of the Company's boats lies icebound; then Frog River, near which we camped. Komenakoos, staying back, saw ten red deer {wapiti) which had passed in front of us [unobserved, owing to the nature of the ground].'

Sunday, November 6th. - The weather became milder. the sky clouded over, and there was a little snow. Passed through a very undulating country, abounding in lakes, and halted for breakfast near "The Two Mountains," about fifteen miles from Fort Pitt. Leaving the rest to come on more slowly, I rode forward with McKay and Macdonald, wishing to make my arrival in good time. A short way from the Fort we found Mr. Chastellain, the superintendent, accompanied by Mr. Isbister and a number of men with dog sleds, waiting near the track beside a large fire: they invited us to halt for our midday meal, and we dined together on some excellent whitefish, of which they had just procured twelve hundred from a fishery on a neighbouring lake.

After this, we proceeded to the Fort, where everything was most hospitably done for our entertainment.

November 7th. - We found it necessary to remain for this entire day, getting winter clothing, and attending to various preparations for the long journey that yet lay before us.

'There is a great scarcity of provisions here; the Indians bring in nothing, and the buffalo are far off. Unless some change is made, the Saskatchewan district will become worse than useless to the Company, for neither food nor furs come this way now, while there are about fifty men employed at Edmonton, twenty-five here and twenty-five at Carlton. It seems to me that they ought to turn cattle-keepers on a great scale. One difficulty is, that the Indians, and others, are continually setting fire to the plains, consuming all the winter stock of hay, - as was the case this year. Also, the buffalo are decreasing, while the Indians are becoming more numerous, and would probably steal and kill the Company's cattle. They are said, however, to be rather afraid of a domestic ox, thinking it what the Scotch call "uncanny," or, to use their own term, "medicine," - that is, something mysterious, if not devilish. Formerly there were about ninety cattle at this place, but both here and at the other Forts they have been losing great numbers, besides being obliged to kill many for food.

'The horses at all the Forts are also dying off rapidly, from a disease which I suppose to be pleura - there is the greatest scarcity. There is a great scarcity of men too, - wages have lately had to be raised.'

'Farming seems precarious here; barley, for instance, does not grow above a foot high, and will not ripen; nothing, in fact, thrives but vegetables. At Edmonton, however, wheat as well as barley ripens.

'Had I the power, I should be inclined to make a strong colony along the Saskatchewan, of Englishmen and Scotchmen, with their wives, and introduce the system of stock-feeding, as in Australia. The Company should retain their privileges in the district so long as necessary to establish such a colony, which ought to be free or nearly so, and perhaps, in recompense, might have their charter renewed and made more stringent as to the other districts.' [This, it will be remembered, was written in 1859.]

Fort Pitt stands in a country which is very frequently the scene of Indian warfare, placed as it is between the territories of the Blackfeet and the Cree, and the Fort itself often becomes the centre of hostilities, war parties lying in wait for one another in its immediate neighbourhood. Mr. Chastellain told me of an incident of this kind that occurred very close to the Fort. 'A hundred Cree's surrounded a small pine clump, in which twenty Blackfoot horse-stealers had concealed themselves. They watched them the whole night, with fires burning; but just before sunrise a short fog sprang up, and all the Blackfeet crept out of their hiding place and escaped, except one man who had been wounded in the previous fight. The Cree found him lying on his back, with an arrow fixed in his bow, ready to die game. They cut him into bits and came back with his limbs hanging about their horses as ornaments. Mr. Christie recovered one of the unfortunate fellow's arms from the dogs who were eating it and had it decently buried.

'All these Indians kill women and children in war-time, sparing none; but they never torture their prisoners as the Delawares and Iroquois of old did. I have made many inquiries on this point, and have always heard the same.'

The Blackfeet, taken as a body, are among the most numerous and powerful of the nations that live wholly or partly in British North America. Their confederacy consists of five distinct tribes - Blackfeet (proper), Piegans, Blood Indians, and Fall Indians (or Grosventres, who live on the Missouri), these being of the same race, and the Sarcee's, a small but very brave and very mischievous band, who are of altogether different race and language, being a party of Chipewyan's (a people quite distinct from the Chippewa's or Ojibway's) who joined the confederacy not many years ago.* [In March 1870 it was stated in the newspapers that smallpox having carried off most of the Piegans, the American troops had surrounded their village, and massacred every soul in it, killing men, women, and children, to the number of l73. Previous to the terrible outbreak of smallpox, which carried off such multitudes, the Blackfoot confederacy was believed to comprise from 12,000 to 14,000 people, all included.]

'This powerful confederacy is completely surrounded by enemies, with whom there is always some pretext for warfare. On the north, the Cree and Stonies continually force hostilities, for the sake of stealing the Blackfoot horses, which are far better than their own; while, in the south, the Blackfeet make war on the Crows and Flatheads for a similar reason. The Crows, I am told, are the only Indians brave enough to attack a camp openly by day. . . . 'The Blackfeet far surpass the Cree's in cleanliness and fineness of apparel. Mr. Chastellain gave me a beautiful specimen of a Blood Indian woman's dress, made from prepared skins of the mountain-sheep, and richly embroidered with blue and white beads. Such dresses are now seldom to be met with. An Indian, trading here one day, stripped his wife of this tunic-formed outer garment and sold it on the spot for rum.

'This is a strange country. A good horse is often to be bought for a gallon of rum; and yet not only strangers like myself, but people of the place, will give £20, £30, even £40, for a buffalo-runner of repute. Here, at Fort Pitt, some of the men who own horses have asked me £25 for only moderately good ones, and that sort of price I learn they have often obtained from others.'

[It was from Mr. Chastellain that I heard the following anecdote, illustrative of the strength and ferocity of the grizzly bear: whether he himself or another person was the eyewitness referred to I do not remember, but I know that he vouched for the absolute truth of the story. A certain hunter was proceeding to stalk four buffalo bulls, which he had observed quietly feeding at the outskirts of a little wood. While, however, he was yet hardly within range of them, another actor appeared on the scene, a grizzly of the largest size, who, quitting the covert that had concealed him, advanced very deliberately towards the nearest of the four buffaloes.

The bull was too proud to flee from a single opponent, - it is not their habit to flee except from man, - he lowered his head and prepared to receive the attack: the conflict was over in a moment; with one sweep of his paw, the grizzly broke the enormous neck of his antagonist, and laid him lifeless on the ground.

Meanwhile, the other bulls had remained as spectators, taking no part in the conflict, and showing no signs of excitement or alarm.

The grizzly having made an end of one of his foes, now boldly advanced to the next: the same scene took place as before, and the second bull lay broken-necked a few yards from his defeated companion.

A third time the grizzly advanced to the attack: for the third time a similar result followed. There was now but one bull left. He was younger than the others, and his horns were consequently still long, and sharp at the points, instead of being worn and blunted through rooting in the earth during the fervours of many seasons. Though smaller than his companions, he met the savage grizzly with equal resolution: there was a more protracted grapple; then the bull fell dead with a broken neck, like the other vanquished three, but the bear, instead of looking about for further conquests, now dragged himself off, a miserable object, with his bowels all trailing on the ground, protruding through a huge and mortal rent inflicted by the horns of the buffalo. He had but just strength to crawl into the neighbouring bushes, and there he very shortly afterwards died.

I forget whether it was at this Fort, or elsewhere, that I was told another curious anecdote, in which the grizzly bear was largely concerned.

Two Indians, Cree's or Ojibway's most likely, were so suddenly surprised by a bear, that, after ineffectually discharging their guns, no course presented itself but to take refuge in the nearest tree, in far too great haste to carry up their weapons with them.

The tree, as it happened, was a mere high naked pole, with only one lateral branch of sufficient size to support the weight of a man. Even for that, it was hardly sufficient; so when the Indian who went up first had seated himself on this single perch, the other remained beneath him in the most miserable position, only preserved from the grip of the monster that kept close watch below, - for grizzlies cannot climb timber, - by clinging round the tree-stem with all the power of which his arms and knees were capable. Such a state of things, it was plain, could not long continue; the poor fellow soon found his strength relaxing, and, as he grew weaker and weaker, the thoughts of his approaching fate, and of his young family left him helpless and destitute - for these people often love their wives and children very tenderly, - so worked upon his mind that he burst out into tears and lamentations, while the other Indian looked scornfully down upon him from his place of safety above.

The fatal moment came, and the wretched man's strength gave way, closing his eyes he abandoned himself to his fate, as his body went hurtling rapidly through the air. Now, as it chanced, at that very instant the grizzly was in so exact a line beneath, that our friend, instead of dashing upon the hard ground, plunged right upon the animal's back, a catastrophe which so astonished the bear that away he rushed in a panic, as hard as his legs could carry him. Finding that the enemy had no intention of returning, the second Indian after a time descended, and, reclaiming their guns, the two proceeded together to the encampment where they both had their home. As they were on the way, the unlucky hunter, filled with alarm in anticipating the ridicule he would meet with his weakness under the prospect of death proclaimed to the tribe, exerted himself in the most munificent offers to his companion, in the hope of purchasing his silence; and he did at length succeed in extracting a promise of secrecy, but only by the sacrifice of everything he possessed in the world of the slightest luxury or value.

Stripped of all but the bare necessaries of life, the poor fellow could yet be happy - his self-respect was saved. But, as might be imagined, the man who could take so base advantage of a friend's misfortune was not likely to prove a trustworthy guardian of the secret he had sworn to preserve. Not many months afterwards, this worthless villain, as he came staggering through the camp in one of his accustomed fits of drunkenness, began loudly to proclaim the story of his friend's disgrace, and hold him up to the bitterest contempt and ridicule. The outraged Indian went straight into his tent and armed himself with a loaded gun, then returning to the place where the knave was uttering his scandals, he took aim at him in sight of all the people, and shot him through his traitorous heart.]