hideous yells terrify their prey and urge them to flight by the only open way, which is that towards the precipice, appearing to know that when the herd is once at full speed it is easily driven over the cliff, the rearmost urging on those that are before.  The wolves then descend at their leisure and feast on the mangled carcasses.  One of these animals passed close to the person who was beating the track but did not offer any violence.  We encamped at sunset after walking thirteen miles.

On the 26th we were rejoiced at passing the halfway point between Cumberland and Carlton.  The scenery of the river is less pleasing beyond this point as there is a scarcity of wood.  One of our men was despatched after a red-deer that appeared on the bank.  He contrived to approach near enough to fire twice, though without success, before the animal moved away.  After a fatiguing march of seventeen miles we put up at the Upper Nippeween, a deserted establishment, and performed the comfortable operations of shaving and washing for the first time since our departure from Cumberland, the weather having been hitherto too severe.  We passed an uncomfortable and sleepless night and agreed next morning to encamp in future in the open air as preferable to the imperfect shelter of a deserted house without doors or windows.

The morning was extremely cold but fortunately the wind was light which prevented our feeling it severely; experience indeed had taught us that the sensation of cold depends less upon the state of temperature than the force of the wind.  An attempt was made to obtain the latitude which failed in consequence of the screw that adjusts the telescope of the sextant being immovably fixed from the moisture upon it having frozen.  The instrument could not be replaced in its case before the ice was thawed by the fire in the evening.

In the course of the day we passed the confluence of the south branch of the Saskatchewan, which rises from the Rocky Mountains near the sources of the northern branch of the Missouri.  At Coles Falls, which commence a distance from the branch, we found the surface of the ice very uneven and many spots of open water.

We passed the ruins of an establishment which the traders had been compelled to abandon in consequence of the intractable conduct and pilfering habits of the Assineboine or Stone Indians; and we learned that all the residents at a post on the south branch had been cut off by the same tribe some years ago.  We travelled twelve miles today.  The wolves serenaded us through the night with a chorus of their agreeable howling but none of them ventured near the encampment.  But Mr. Back’s repose was disturbed by a more serious evil:  his buffalo robe caught fire and the shoes on his feet being contracted by the heat gave him such pain that he jumped up in the cold and ran into the snow as the only means of obtaining relief.