I was now making my way back to Edmonton, with the intention of there exchanging my horses for dogs, and then endeavouring to make the return journey to Red River upon the ice of the River Saskatchewan.  Dog travelling was a novelty.  The cold had more than reached the limit at which the saddle is a safe mode of travel, and the horses suffered so much in pawing away the snow to get within reach of the grass lying underneath, that I longed to exchange them for the train of dogs, the painted cariole, and little baggage-sled.  It took me four days to complete the arrangements necessary for my new journey; and, on the afternoon of the 20th December, I set out upon a long journey, with dogs, down the valley of the Saskatchewan.  I little thought then of the distance before me; of the intense cold through which I was destined to travel during two entire months of most rigorous winter; how day by day the frost was to harden, the snow to deepen, all nature to sink more completely under the breath of the ice-king.  And it was well that all this was hidden from me at the time, or perhaps I should have been tempted to remain during the winter at Edmonton, until the spring had set free once more the rushing waters of the Saskatchewan.

Behold me then on the 20th of December starting from Edmonton with three trains of dogs—­one to carry myself, the other two to drag provisions, baggage, and blankets and all the usual paraphernalia of winter travel.  The cold which, with the exception of a few nights severe frost, had been so long-delayed now seemed determined to atone for lost time by becoming suddenly intense.  On the night of the 21st December we reached, just at dusk, a magnificent clump of large pine-trees on the right bank of the river.  During the afternoon the temperature had fallen below zero; a keen wind blew along-the frozen river, and the dogs and men were glad to clamber up the steep clayey bank into the thick shelter of the pine bluff’, amidst whose dark-green recesses a huge fire was quickly alight.  While here we sit in the ruddy blaze:  of immense dry pine logs it will be well to say a few words on dogs and dog driving.

Dogs in the territories of the North-west have but one function—­to haul.  Pointer, setter, lurcher, foxhound, greyhound, Indian mongrel, miserable cur or beautiful Esquimaux, all alike are destined to pull a sled of some kind or other during, the months of snow and ice:  all are destined to howl under the driver’s lash; to tug wildly at the moose-skin collar; to drag until they can drag no more, and then to die.  At what age a dog is put to haul I could never satisfactorily ascertain, but I have seen dogs doing some kind of hauling long be fore the peculiar expression of the puppy had left their countenances.  Speaking now with the experience of nearly fifty days of dog travelling, and the knowledge of some twenty different trains of dogs of all sizes, ages, and degrees, watching them closely on the track and in the camp