the sky; it was, in fact an aerolite.  Not very long before my, visit this curious stone had been removed from the hill upon which it had so long rested and brought to the Mission of Victoria by some person from that place:  When the Indians found that it had been taken away, they were loud in the expression of their regret.  The old medicine men declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes and that war, disease, and dearth of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the Saskatchewan.  This was not a prophecy made after the occurrence of the plague of small-pox, for in a magazine published by the Wesleyan Society in Canada there appears a letter from the missionary, setting forth the predictions of the medicine-men a year prior to my visit.  The letter concludes with an expression of thanks that their evil prognostications had not been attended with success.  But a few months later brought all the three evils upon the Indians; and never, probably, since the first trader had reached the country had so many afflictions of war, famine, and plague fallen upon the Crees and the Blackfeet as during the year which succeeded the useless removal of their Manito-stone from the lone hill-top upon which the skies had cast it.

I spent the evening of Christmas Day in the house of the missionary.  Two of his daughters sang very sweetly to the music of a small melodian.  Both song and strain were sad—­sadder, perhaps, than the words or music could make them; for the recollection of the two absent ones, whose newly-made graves, covered with their first snow, lay close outside, mingled with the hymn and deepened the melancholy of the music.

On the day after Christmas Day I left Victoria, with three trains of dogs, bound for Fort Pitt.  This time the drivers were all English half-breeds, and that tongue was chiefly used to accelerate the dogs.  The temperature had risen considerably, and the snow was soft and clammy, making the “hauling” heavy upon the dogs.  For my own use I had a very excellent train, but the other two were of the useless class.` As before, the beatings were incessant, and I witnessed the first example of a very common occurrence in dog-driving—­I beheld the operation known as “sending a dog to Rome.”  This consists simply of striking him over the head with a large stick until he falls perfectly senseless to the ground; after a little he revives, and, with memory of the awful blows that took his consciousness away full upon him, he pulls franticly at his load.  Oftentimes a dog is “sent to Rome” because he will not allow the driver to arrange some hitch in the harness; then, while he is insensible, the necessary alteration is carried out, and when the dog recovers he receives a terrible lash of the whip to set him going again.  The half-breeds are a race easily offended, prone to sulk if reproved; but at the risk of causing delay and inconvenience I had to interfere’ with a peremptory order that “sending to Rome”