illness, and on this evening, not feeling all right, I drew the cork while the Cree was away with the horses, and drank a little with my companion.  Before we had quite finished, the Cree returned to camp, and at once declared that he smelt grog.  He became very lively at this discovery.  We had taken the precaution to rinse out the cup that had held the spirit, but he nevertheless commenced a series of brewing which appeared to give him infinite satisfaction.  Two or three times did he fill the empty cup with water and drain it to the bottom, laughing and rolling his head each time with delight, and in order to be sure that he had got the right one he proceeded in the same manner with every cup we possessed; then he confided to Battenotte that he had not tasted grog for a long time before, the last occasion being one on which he had divested himself of his shirt and buffalo robe, in other words, gone naked, in order to obtain the coveted fire-water.

The weather had now become beautifully mild, and on the 23rd of November the thermometer did not show even one degree of frost.  As we approached the neighbourhood of the White Earth River the aspect of the country became very striking:  groves of spruce and pine crowned the ridges; rich, well-watered valleys lay between, deep in the long white grass of the autumn.  The track wound in and out through groves and wooded declivities, and all nature looked bright and beautiful.  Some of the ascents from the river bottoms were so steep that the united efforts of Battenotte and the Cree were powerless to induce Rouge or Noir, or even Jean l’Hcreux, to draw the cart to the summit.  But the Cree was equal to the occasion.  With a piece of shanganappi he fastened L’Hereux’s tail to the shafts of the cart-shafts which had already between them the redoubted Noir.  This new method of harnessing had a marked effect upon L’Hereux; he strained and hauled with a persistency and vigour which I feared must prove fatal to the permanency of his tail in that portion of his body in which nature had located it, but happily such was not the case, and by the united efforts of all parties the summit was reached.

I only remained one day at Victoria, and the 25th of November found me again en route for Edmonton.  Our Cree had, however, disappeared.  One night when he was eating his supper with his scalping-knife—­a knife, by the way, with which he had taken, he informed us, three Black feet scalps —­I asked him why he had come away with us from Battle River.  Because he wanted to get rid of his wife, of whom he was tired, he replied.  He had come off without saying any thing to her.  “And what will happen to the wife?” I asked.  “Oh, she will marry another brave when she finds me gone,” he answered, laughing at the idea.  I did not enter into the previous domestic events which had led to this separation, but I presume they were of a nature similar to those which are not altogether unknown in more civilized society, and I make no hesitation