On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort.  The snow had now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once more taken into use for the baggage.  Still keeping along the north shore of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria, a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake Winnipeg.  The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony, jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River.  This youngster employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was driving—­thus “Rouge!” would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip; “Noir!” he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked.  One horse, rejoicing in the title of “Jean l’Hereux,” seemed specially selected for this mode of treatment.  He was a brute of surpassing obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet, and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the grudges that he owed to the man.  Be that as it may, Jean l’Hereux got many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.

On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake, and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens.  About midday on the following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest fish.  Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations farther west.  Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour.  “If you meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle Lake,” said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, “they may give you letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have found them by the time you get there.”