towards miners, and never hesitate to attack them, nor is the miner slow to retaliate; indeed he has been too frequently the aggressor, and the records of gold discovery are full of horrible atrocities committed upon the red man.  It has only been in the neighbourhood of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company that continued washing for gold could be carried on.  In the neighbourhood of Edmonton from three to twelve dollars of gold have frequently been “washed” in a single day by one man; but the miner is not satisfied with what he calls “dirt washing,” and craves for the more exciting work in the dry diggings where, if the “strike” is good, the yield is sometimes enormous.  The difficulty of procuring provisions or supplies of any kind has also prevented “prospecting” parties from examining the head-waters of the numerous streams which form the sources of the North and South Saskatchewan.  It is not the high price of provisions that deters the miner from penetrating these regions, but the absolute impossibility of procuring any.  Notwithstanding the many difficulties which I have enumerated, a very determined effort will in all probability be made, during the coming summer, to examine the head-waters of the North Branch of the Saskatchewan.  A party of miners, four in number, crossed the mountains late in the autumn of 1870, and are now wintering between Edmonton and the Mountain House, having laid in large supplies for the coming season.  These men speak with confidence of the existence of rich diggings in some portion of the country lying within the outer range of the mountains.  From conversations which I have held with these men, as well as with others who have partly investigated the country, I am of opinion that there exists a very strong probability of the discovery of gold-fields in the Upper Saskatchewan at no distant period.  Should this opinion be well founded, the effect which it will have upon the whole Western territory will be of the utmost consequence.

Despite the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of such discoveries, or the plains or passes leading to them, a general influx of miners will take place into the Saskatchewan, and in their track will come the waggon or pack-horse of the merchant from the towns of Benton or Kootenais, or Helena.  It is impossible to say what effect such an influx of strangers would have upon the plain Indians; but of one fact we may rest assured, namely, that should these tribes exhibit their usual spirit of robbery and murder they would quickly be exterminated by the miners.

Every where throughout the Pacific States and along the central territories of America, as well as in our own colony of British Columbia, a war of extermination has arisen, under such circum stances, between the miners and the savages, and there is good reason to suppose that similar results would follow contact with the proverbially hostile tribe of Blackfeet Indians.

Having in the foregoing remarks reviewed the various elements which compose the scanty but widely extended population of the Saskatchewan, outside the circle of the Hudson Bay Company, I have now to refer to that body, as far as it is connected with the present condition of affairs in the Saskatchewan.