getting 3 lbs. of beef for its daily sustenance!  The old Orkney men of the Hudson Bay Company servants must have seen in such a ration the realization of the poet’s lines, “O Caledonia, stern and wild!  Meet nurse for a poetic child,” etc.  All these people at Fort Pitt were idle, and therefore were not capable of eating as much as if they had been on the plains.  The wild hills that surround Fort Pitt are frequently the scenes of Indian ambush and attack, and on more than one occasion the fort itself has been captured by the Blackfeet.  The region in which Fort Pitt stands is a favourite camping-ground of the Crees, and the Blackfeet cannot be persuaded that the people of the fort are not the active friends and allies of their enemies in fact, Fort Pitt and Carlton are looked upon by them as places belonging to another company altogether from the one which rules at the Mountain House and at Edmonton.  “If it was the same company,” they-say, “how could they give our enemies, the Crees, guns and powder; for do they not give us guns and powder too?” This mode of argument, which refuses to recognize that species of neutrality so dear to the English heart, is eminently calculated to lay Fort Pitt open to Blackfeet raid.  It is only a few years since the place was plundered by a large band, but the general forbearance displayed by the Indians on that occasion is nevertheless remarkable.  Here is the story: 

One morning the people in the fort beheld a small party of Blackfeet on a high hill at the opposite side of the Saskatchewan.  The usual flag carried by the chief was waved to denote a wish to trade, and accordingly the officer in charge pushed off in his boat to meet and hold converse with the party.  When he reached the other side he found the chief and a few men drawn up to receive him.

“Are there Crees around the fort?” asked the chief.

“No,” replied the trader; “there are none with us.”

“You speak with a forked tongue,” answered the Blackfoot—­dividing his fingers as he spoke to indicate that the-other was speaking falsely.

Just at that moment something caught the traders eye in the bushes along the river bank; he looked again and saw, close alongside, the willows swarming with naked Blackfeet.  He made one spring back into his boat, and called to his men to shove off; but it was too late.  In an instant two hundred braves rose out of the grass and willows and rushed into the water; they caught the boat and brought her back to the shore; then, filling her as full as she would hold with men, they pushed off for the other side.  To put as good a face upon matters as possible, the trader commenced a trade, and at first the batch that had crossed, about forty in number, kept quiet enough, but some-of their number took the boat back again to the south shore and brought over the entire band; then the wild work commenced, bolts and bars were broken open, the trading-shop was quickly cleared