suddenly by a paddle, alarmed us by bounding out of the water and landing full upon the gunwale of the Canoe, splashing back again into the water and wetting us all by his curious manoeuvre.  At length in the darkness we heard the hollow roar of the great Falls of the Chaudiere sounding loud through the stillness.  It grew louder and louder as with now tiring strokes my worn-out men worked mechanically at their paddles.  The day was beginning to break.  We were close beneath the Chaudiere and alongside of Fort Francis.  The scene was wondrously beautiful.  In the indistinct light of the early dawn the cataract seemed twice its natural height, the tops of pine trees rose against the pale green of the coming day, close above the falls the bright morning star hung, diamond-like, over the rim of the descending torrent; around the air was tremulous with the rush of water, and to the north the rose-coloured streaks of the aurora were woven into the dawn.  My long solitary journey had nearly reached its close.

Very cold and cramped by the constrained position in which I had remained all night, I reached the fort, and, unbarring the gate, with my rifle knocked at the door of one of the wooden houses.  After a little, a man opened the door in the costume, scant and unpicturesque, in which he had risen from his bed.

“Is that Colonel Wolseley?” he asked.

“No,” I answered; “but that sounds well; he can’t be far off.”

“He will be in to breakfast,” was the reply.

After all, I was not much too soon.  When one has journeyed very far along such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though one had quietly taken one’s ease at an inn.  Still there were others to be consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine.

After an hour’s delay I went to the house where the men were lying down, and said to them, “The Colonel is close at hand.  It will be well for us to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive at the Fort;” so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into Rainy River two miles above the fort.

It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river makes as it flows out of the Lake.  Forcing up this rapid, we saw spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake.

The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it. can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the lake first caught my sight.  There they are!  Yes, there they were.  Coming along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant as they shot down towards the river’s source.