the reach of the emigrant, become the scene of numerous settlements.  As I stood in twilight looking down on the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and man’s labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of plain and forest.  At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and the park-like country.  The land of the prairie Indian and the buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter before us.

As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan and established forts along its banks.  It is generally held that their most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans, at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error, and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton.  One of the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des Prairies had originally been a French post.  Nothing proves more conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact that it was only at this date—­1774—­that the Hudson Bay Company took possession of it.

During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river.  The descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of Champlain and Frontinac.  Here are the concluding words of a speech addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary station near the junction of the Saskatchewan: 

“You have spoken of your Great Spirit,” said the Indian; “you have told us He died for all men—­for the red tribes of the West as for the white tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other towards the setting sun?”

“Well, it is true.”

“And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point out where His children should live?” What a curious compound must be the man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a savage!