The universal passion for dress is strangely illustrated in the Western Indian.  His ideal of perfection is the English costume of some forty years ago.  The tall chimney-pot hat with round narrow brim, the coat with high collar going up over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow.  All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all beholders.  Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago in England.  The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up.  For this most ridiculous-looking costume a Blackfeet chief will readily exchange his beautifully-dressed deerskin Indian shirt embroidered with porcupine quills and ornamented with the raven locks of his enemies—­his head-dress of ermine skins, his flowing buffalo robe:  a dress in which he looks every inch a savage king for one in which he looks every inch a foolish savage.  But the new dress does not long survive—­bit by bit it is found unsuited to the wild work which its:  owner has to perform; and although it never loses the high estimate originally set upon it, it, nevertheless, is discarded by virtue of the many inconveniences arising out of running buffalo in’a tall beaver,-or fighting in a tail coat against Crees.

During the days spent in the Mountain House I enjoyed the society of the most enterprising and best informed missionary in the Indian countries-M. la Combe.  This gentleman, a native of Lower Canada, has devoted himself for more than twenty years to the Blackfeet and Crees of the far-West, sharing their sufferings, their hunts, their summer journeys, and their winter camps—­sharing even, unwillingly, their war forays and night assaults.  The devotion which he has evinced towards these poor wild warriors has not been thrown away upon them, and Peere la Combe is the only man who can pass and repass from Blackfoot camp to Cree camp with perfect impunity when these long-lasting enemies are at war.  On one occasion he was camped with a small party of Blackfeet south of the.  Red Deer River.  It was night, and the lodges were silent and dark, all save one, the lodge of the chief, who had invited the black-robe to his tent for the night and was conversing with him as they lay on the buffalo robes, while the fire in the centre of the lodge burned clear and bright.  Every thing was quiet, and no thought of war-party or lurking enemy was entertained.  Suddenly a small dog put his head into the lodge.  A dog is such an ordinary and inevitable nuisance in the camp of the Indians, that the missionary never even noticed the partial intrusion.  Not so the Indian; he hissed out, “It is a Cree dog.  We are surprised! run!” then, catching his gun in one hand and dragging his wife by the other, he darted from his