should fortune permit me to push through the great stretch of Blackfoot country lying on the northern borders of the American territory; for it was my intention to leave the Mountain House as soon as possible, and to endeavour to cross by rapid marches the 400 miles of plains to some of the mining cities of Montana or Idaho; the principal difficulty lay, however, in the reluctance of men to come with me into the country of the Blackfeet.  At Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey.  He was a splendid specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought when asked to be my guide.

“It is a work of peril,” he said, “to pass the Blackfoot country all’ pitching along the foot of the mountains; they will see our trail in the snow, follow it, and steal our horses, or perhaps worse still.  At another time I would attempt it, but death has been too heavy upon my friends, and I don’t feel that I can go.”

It was still possible, however, that at the Mountain House I might find a guide ready to attempt the journey, and my kind host at Edmonton provided me with letters to facilitate my procuring all supplies from his subordinate officer at that station.  Thus fully accoutred and prepared to meet the now rapidly increasing severity of the winter, I started on the 1st December for the mountains.  It-was a bright, beautiful day.  I was alone with my two retainers; before me lay an uncertain future, but so many curious scenes had been passed in safety during the last six months of my life, that I recked little of what was before me, drawing a kind of blind confidence from the thought that so much could not have been in vain.  Crossing the now fast-frozen Saskatchewan, we ascended the southern bank and entered upon a rich country watered with many streams and wooded with park-like clumps of aspen and pine.  My two retainers were first-rate fellows.  One spoke English very fairly:  he was a brother of the bright-eyed little beauty at Fort Pitt.  The other, Paul Foyale, was a thick, stout-set man, a good voyageur, and excellent-in camp.  Both were noted travellers, and both had suffered severely in the epidemic of the small-pox.  Paul had lost his wife and child, and Rowland’s children had all had the disease, but had recovered.  As for any idea about taking infection from men coming out of places where that infection existed, that would have been the merest foolishness; at least, Paul and Rowland thought so, and as they were destined to be my close companions for some days, cooking for me, tying up my blankets, and sleeping beside me, it was just as well to put a good face upon the matter and trust once more to the glorious doctrine of chance.  Besides, they were really such good fellows, princes among voyayeurs, that, small-pox or no small-pox, they