Fort Ellice to Qu'Appelle Fort.

The afternoon was far advanced when we left Fort Ellice. Owing to the amount of our stores and baggage it had become clear that further means of conveyance were required, especially if hunting trophies dropped in by and by to make up extra weight; so we borrowed a couple of carts from the Fort and hired the same number of Company's horses. We also supplied ourselves with two needful things that had been omitted - a spade and a scythe.

At the same time Mr. McKay did us a good turn by lending us a handsome black pointer named "Pointer," - brother to that same Blucher who so gallantly chased the bear near the river of Red Lake. He proved to be the most useful animal, being a good retriever and water dog, besides possessing the accomplishments denoted by his name. We camped about twelve miles from Fort Ellice, among swampy richly-grassed prairies, dotted with many detached "islands" of poplar which rose dark and high amid the expansive sea of plain.

June 28th - Pierre Numme is a quaint-looking oldish man, with a dark, bony, French-Indian face, and long black hair. He wears leather trousers, which have become like varnished mahogany from stains and hard usage, a blue cotton shirt, and a dark-blue woollen, mushroom-topped, lowland Scotch bonnet, such as I remember common in Forfarshire in my boyhood, but it has red and white chequers round the headpiece, and Pierre has added a glazed leather peak. His eyes are weak, so he wears huge goggles made of wire and glass, which have a strange effect, throwing a dash of the pedantic into his rough and hunter-like appearance. He seems a good-natured fellow and is said to bear a high character.

'There were thunder showers during the night and morning, and towards afternoon steady rain began, so we made an early halt. McKay took advantage of an adjacent oak grove to lay in a supply of spare axletrees. It interested me to see how cleverly the men brought the rough logs into shape with no finer tool than the edge of the axe.

For my part, I read Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," and passed a tolerable afternoon despite the rain. 'This open-air life suits me well, though, when one considers it bit by bit, it does not seem so very charming. Long wearisome riding, indifferent monotonous eating, no sport to speak of, hard bed upon the ground, hot sun, wet, no companion of my class; nevertheless I am happier than I have been for years.

June 29th. - As we went on our way in the early morning we met a Cree Indian and his wife travelling by themselves, with a dog drawing their effects in a little cariole. He was a chief's son and showed us with evident pride a letter to his father from the superintendent of Qu'Appelle Fort, full of praises of the highly estimable parent. At leave-taking, I gave him a present of tobacco, and we parted on the most cordial terms.

After dinner I set up a target, to see if I were in good shooting after such long disuse, and made some tolerable hits with my favourite Purdey; then passing the rifle on to McKay, he took two shots and beat me with the second, which struck very close to the bull's-eye. Old Numme now looked out his weapon, a gun I had got for him at Fort Ellice, - one of the regular "trade" articles, flint-locked, thin-metalled, and priced at but a few shillings over a pound in the Company's tariff.

Putting up a piece of canvas considerably larger than a house door, Pierre withdrew some thirty paces and blazed away, but without the slightest result. By no means discouraged, the persevering fellow immediately set to work to improve his gun. He filed and hammered at the barrel, and twisted it about with his hands, finally, he thrust a long stick down it, then placing the projecting end between the cart-wheel spokes, levered with might and main till he thought the tube was sufficiently straight. Absurd as all this seemed, it improved the gun, which, being of the same pattern as those bought by the Indians and rendered serviceable by similar rough doctoring, was in time likely to become a fairly useful weapon, at any rate for extremely short ranges.

We found a most pleasant situation for our evening halt, encamping ourselves on the summit of a warm dry knoll, carpeted with fragrant wild thyme. At dusk a wolf made his appearance and sneaked slowly past at the foot of the hillock, taking care, however, to keep himself more than a hundred yards from the tents. Catching up my rifle, I fired a hasty shot at him. I could hardly see the point sight through the growing darkness, but the ball struck hard upon him somewhere and rolled him over; nevertheless, he staggered feet again and limped towards the thicket he had come from. There was a general rush to secure him, the dogs of course foremost, but Pointer showed none of his brother's pluck, and Hector proved no hero, so with two or three snarls and snaps the wolf put them to rout, and fairly made his escape.

June 30th. - We had now come to a glorious plain. The sandy soil was covered with short, crisp grass, perfect for riding over, had it not been for the treacherous badger earth, which spread themselves into great honeycombs of half-hidden holes, undermining the lesser elevations and forming absolute pitfalls for a galloping horse.

Numme thought we might find cabrees here, so I mounted the Bichon, while he, to my surprise, chose mouse-like little Mouldy, and we set off together in search of the antelopes. After riding four miles we saw a buck, but could not get near him. We then observed five others, does and young ones, and as fresh meat was much wanted, I determined to go after them despite the evident poorness of the lot. Creeping behind a bank, I got within range of the largest one. Her haunch was straight to me, but they had taken alarm and were in the act of starting on their swift flight over the boundless prairie, so I had no choice but to shoot at once, without much thought of aim; luckily the ball went high, and dropped her lifeless with a broken neck.

Pierre cut her up like a juggler doing a conjuring trick. One moment, an antelope stretched along the turf, - the next, nothing there but a paunch and a ghastly back-bone, - the next, Numme in his saddle blandly triumphant, enshrined amidst nicely-cut joints and limbs and strips of flesh, hung around him in the tidiest fashion; no London butcher's shop more severely trims in its pink-and-white array.

The cabree is the only antelope in America. It is a pretty, buff-coloured creature, less than a fallow deer, and very lightly formed, in appearance something between a deer, an antelope, and a goat. The males have black horns, strong and thick for a few inches from the head, then dividing, - the front half projected forward in a short triangular point, the other half much longer and turned backwards in a hook, like the horn of a chamois; hence the animal's name - Antilope furcifer, or Prong-horned Antelope. They are shy and wary, and too swift to be approached on horseback.

* We had a long ride back to the carts, for the men had taken a wrong turn and diverged considerably towards the river Qu'Appelle. Feeling tired after so much riding under the fierce sun-rays that beat on those shade-less sandy plains, I got into the wagon and travelled in that manner till we halted for the night at the Wolf Hills, a low, rather thickly wooded range that separates two open prairies.

It began to blow hard, and about 10 o'clock a tremendous thunderstorm broke over us, with torrents of rain at intervals. Whenever the rain ceased the mosquitoes bit furiously, and drove the horses nearly to madness. Several times that night the men had to quit their sheltering tent to keep up the smoke-fires under lee of which our poor beasts found refuge from their persecutors.

July 2nd. - Yesterday afternoon we passed along an elevated "black earth" prairie, camping at Great Creek, - a broad valley whose sides consist of round bluffs perhaps 100 feet in height, flat on the top, and divided by deep ravines; but after breakfast today we came to plains of a sandy character, also at an elevated level, and traversed them till we reached a very pretty lake, which, I was told, formed one of a series that was connected with the River Qu'Appelle. It is named the Lake of the Valley. In size it seemed somewhere about a hundred acres, its banks were low and unwooded, its shores composed of sand and pebbles. Farther on it is connected with a narrow, river-like piece of water, with steep wooded banks, which runs out of the Great Creek.

After this I rode forward on Waupoose, and went to the summit of a bluff, whence there was an extensive view over a level prairie, bounded by a stretch of woodland in the distance.

No life was visible except a solitary wolf - or fox - running across the plain. Not a buffalo to be seen, though for the last two days, we had been constantly finding the skulls and bones of former herds. McKay, however, discovered a few pigeons in a little grove and shot two or three of them.

We halted for dinner not far from Qu'Appelle Fort and afterwards occupied ourselves with some more target practice. At 120 yards, Short made a beautiful shot with his double-barreled flint gun - which was of a class but slightly superior to Numme's single-barrel, striking very close to a bull's-eye little larger than a half-crown piece. He was said to be equally Skillful with the bow: they told me that he could beat any Indian with that weapon, being even able to put an arrow into a bird hovering on the wing. The noise of our shooting was heard at the Fort, and presently an Indian, riding a black horse plenteously bedaubed with "white mud" (pipe-clay), came galloping up to reconnoitre us. Readily satisfied as to the character of the party, he stayed with us a while and regaled himself with meat and tobacco, then returned to announce our approach; and when soon afterwards we continued our march, we almost immediately found ourselves given a body of horsemen, who were awaiting us on the rise of eminence at no great distance from the track. They turned out to be Mr. Cardinal - the superintendent of the "Fort", and five or six young Indians in their best array, glorious in paint and ornaments and fantastic apparel.

The most striking figure among them was a Cree, who wore a beautiful white robe of dressed skin, bordered with a vermilion and black pattern that seemed to be meant for rows of calumets. They were all well mounted, and rode with ease and spirit, and not without a certain grace, - though they crouched very strangely, like wild beasts dropped down from trees. One young man amused me with the frank artlessness of his vanity.

Happening to see that I was looking at him, he immediately began to show off in the most undisguised manner, stirring up his fiery steed to all sorts of antics, the rider, meanwhile, ostentatiously at his ease, and eyeing me with good-humoured little smiles of ineffable self-complacency. As soon as we arrived at the Fort, Mr. Cardinal took me into a good-sized room, which we had hardly entered when several old Indians came in and joined us. They belonged to a party of Ojibway's who were waiting here for a short time before following the main body of their tribe to the plains.

Nothing could exceed the politeness of these Indians, as they seated themselves quietly around the room and smoked their pipes with gentleman-like deliberation, - though with more than common enjoyment, for they had been weeks without the comforts of tobacco, owing to the total failure of the stores at the Fort. There was plenty of conversation as well as smoking, but none of it was of the slightest interest so far as I could make out. My rifle took their fancy exceedingly; they seemed never tired of looking at it, passing it from hand to hand with many admiring speeches.

"We formed our camp about a mile from Fort Qu'Appelle, hoping to be a little out of reach of visitors, but before we were well settled the Indians came thronging in. There were twenty-four men in all, mostly Ojibway's. One of the party, however, a young man of pleasant appearance named "Les Prairies," was the son of "Fox," a well-known chief of the Plains Cree, and others of the same tribe were there also. They were the best-looking Indians I had yet seen, - 'very civil, sitting or lying quietly round our fire, and touching nothing.' I sent them a couple of spans of tobacco a-piece, and double that quantity to each of the two head-men. One of the latter presently came forward and thanked me for my gifts, at the same time offering a dressed buffalo skin of no great value. He lingered awhile, then grumblingly told McKay that he expected more tobacco in return. McKay, to whom I had left all these arrangements, immediately answered that we were not traders, and gave him back the skin.

The Indians stayed very late: I thought we should never get rid of them. Many of the women seated themselves a little distance off and watched us with unwearying interest. Babies, in little painted cradles, were carried by some among their number. Their dress consisted of a tunic which left the neck and arms bare, a robe above it and leggings beneath.

The men were similarly attired, though no two were exactly alike; Les Prairies and another Cree had noticeably better clothes than the rest. One of the headmen appeared in a curious cap of badger-skin, - perhaps in allusion to his name, "Pointed-cap." After our visitors left us wolves came prowling about, but I could not succeed in getting a shot at these cautious marauders. For reasons of their own, which I never happened to ascertain, the Ojibway "danced" a scalp all night, and long banished sleep by their monotonous incessant drumming.

Sunday, July 2nd. - The Indians, I was told, were much ashamed of the conduct of the head man who had offered us the skin and then resumed his gift, and blamed him exceedingly, being afraid that I would not now visit their camp and bestow on them some ammunition according to promise. Of course, I meant to make no difference in any way.

Our first occupation that morning was to leave supplies of tobacco with Mr. Cardinal for himself and his people. I then walked to the Indian camp, accompanied by McKay, who on all such occasions acted as my interpreter. "Spots-in-the-sky" (the head man who had not behaved badly) as a matter of right received our first visit. His tent, like all the rest in that encampment, was a conical structure of buffalo- skins, enclosing a circular space of moderate dimensions. Several women and children - none of whom were pretty - were seated on the ground, also two or three young men, one of them industriously at work in making triangular arrowheads of sheet iron to fix into a set of light wooden shafts which he had already prepared.

After due handshaking, old "Spots," in the politest manner invited me to seat myself on a buffalo robe at the further side from the door. He then treated us to a long oration, full of rather suggestive acknowledgments of my former liberality, and reproaches against the other head-man for his shabby and unseemly conduct; which being concluded, I made a short reply to the ancient orator, and McKay then handed him some powder and ball to distribute to his people as he thought fit. He seemed gratified and expressed his thanks with genial warmth and friendliness. After this I took my departure, not forgetting to give some tobacco to the women for their particular use, as otherwise, they were likely to have come off badly.

We next went to call on Pointed - cap, the rival head-man. Did not stay long under his roof, however, for he was far less talkative and agreeable than Spots, and enough exhibited his discontent with my present of ammunition, though the supply was the same as that which had been so well received in the other tent. Nevertheless, I thought it best not to seem aware that any want of cordiality existed; so I was careful to make no change in my manner, and when I rose to take leave they all behaved with the utmost respect and politeness.

In Pointed-cap's tent, there were two young wives with their babies and two or three girls, - all of them equally devoid of good looks. There were also several young men. I saw no curiosities either there or at Spot's home, nothing indeed worth remark except the arrow-making already mentioned.

In the evening Les Prairies and a man handsomely dressed in the Cree fashion visited me. From the latter, I obtained a curious whip, which had its handle and wrist-loop ornamented with mink and fisher fur, and its thong double-lashed towards the point and strung round with pieces of copper, - receiving it in exchange for a flannel shirt, a case in which both sides had the best of the bargain.

I requested him, and Les Prairies, and the Cree who wore the painted robe, to come to me next morning for a private present of ammunition; which they did not fail to do. Old Spots also appeared to claim a knife I had promised him.

[Having much sympathy with the Indians, I felt sorry to have disappointed even an old grumbler like Pointed Cap. But in this case, I acted entirely under McKay's advice, having to consider the likelihood of an early meeting with great camps of the Cree's, and perhaps of the Assiniboine's, or even the Blackfeet, whom it would need all my available resources to propitiate, especially as I intended a lengthened absence from the Forts, where alone one could procure fresh supplies. These Ojibway, indeed, had but little claim, being so small a party, and rather beyond the bounds of their proper territory.]

Nearly all these Indians were painted with vermilion, which decidedly became them, heightening the richness of their swarthy skins and jetty locks, and adding lustre to their searching glances; one young warrior, however, had chosen to mask his face in a veil of sickly yellow, relieved by scarlet spots and streaks encircling both his eyes. It was hard to refrain from laughter at the sight of so extraordinary a figure. Certainly, thought I, this is the incarnate god of bile, if such a deity there be in any of the paradises.

A dog happening to pass drawing a "train" after the common Indian fashion, I was amused to see the astonishment of my little Vermont ponies, unaccustomed to such sights at home. With pricked ears and starting eyes, they trotted after the marvellous object and followed it wherever it went, at length the dog managed to slip away and make his escape from their inconvenient attentions.

Last night the wind was exceedingly high and boisterous, and it continued so during all the day, but it fell towards evening, and there was a singularly lovely sunset. I sat at my tent door till daylight faded into darkness, now gazing at the splendour of the sun as he floated, all gorgeous in strong, orange hues, amidst the opaline tinting of the delicate light-grey clouds, now looking on the pages of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida:"- ah! with what different scenes did my memory come to link the noblest passages of that drama.