been heard of it excepting a single rumour, and that was one of disaster.  An Indian coming from beyond Fort Francis, somewhere in the wilderness north of Lake Superior, had brought tidings to the Lake of the Woods, that forty Canadian soldiers had already been lost in one of the boiling rapids of the route.  “Not a man will get through!” was the general verdict of society, as that body was represented at Mr. Nolan’s hotel, and, truth’ to say, society seemed elated at its verdict.  All this, told to a roomful of Americans, had no very exhilarating effect upon me as I sat, unknown and unnoticed, on my portmanteau, a stranger to every one.  When our luck seems at its lowest there is only one thing to be done, and that is to go on and try again.  Things certainly looked badly, obstacles grew bigger as I got nearer to them—­but that is a way they have, and they never grow smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my plans for rapid movement.  There was no horse or conveyance of any kind to be had from Abercrombie; but I discovered in the course of questions that the captain of the “International” steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a week before, and was expected to return to Abercrombie by the next stage, two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart for his steamboat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul.  Now the boat “International” was lying at a part of the Red River known as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of this horse and cart of the captain’s, it became a question of the very greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that a Red River cart is a very limited conveyance, and a Red River horse, as we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of impossibilities.  To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it-by the stage back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud.  This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Abercrombie, which for many reasons was a matter for congratulation, and put me in a position to intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie.  So-on the 13th of July I left Nolan’s hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary house which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler’s log-hut which stood out upon the level sea of grass and was visible miles and miles before one reached it.  Here had rested one of those unquiet birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude