district; and the Company's officers find little difficulty in hiring the young men as occasional

labourers.

The case is otherwise with the Chippeways, who live within the Company's territories. The vicinity of the rival United States Fur Company's establishments; the vigorous competition which is carried on between them and the Hudson's Bay Company, in prosecution of which spirituous liquors are dispensed by both parties liberally to the natives; and the abundance of Folle avoine on Rainy River and the River Winipeg, with the plentiful supply of sturgeon obtained from these waters, rendering the natives independent of either party, have had a demoralising effect, and neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic missionaries have been able to make any impression upon them. One party of these Indians, from whom we purchased a supply of sturgeon on Rainy River, are briefly characterised in my notes, made on the spot, as being "fat, saucy, dirty, and odorous.” A Roman Catholic church, erected some years ago on the banks of the Winipeg, has been abandoned, with the clearing around it, on account of the want of success of the priest in his endeavours to convert the natives; and neither the Hudson's Bay Company nor the United States people have been able to extinguish the deadly feud existing between the

Chippeways and Sioux, nor to restrain their war parties.

Very recently the Chippeways of Lake Superior, through some oversight in the Canadian government in not making arrangements with them at the proper time, organised a war party against the mining village of Mica Bay, containing more than a hundred male inhabitants. In passing through Lake Superior we were pleased with the flourishing appearance of this village, containing many nicely white-washed houses, grouped in terraces on the steep bank of the lake. The mines were worked by a company, under a grant from the Canadian legislature, who, at the same period, made many other similar grants of mining localities on the lake, without previously purchasing the Indian rights. As the game is nearly extinct on the borders of the lake, the natives subsist chiefly by the fisheries; and the vicinity of the mining establishments was likely to be beneficial to them rather than injurious, by providing a market for their fish. But when they beheld party after party of white men crowding to their lands, eager to take possession of their lots by erecting buildings, and inquisitively examining every cliff, they acquired exaggerated ideas of the value of their rocks. For two summers they descended in large bodies to Saut Ste. Marie, expecting payment, and,

being disappointed, thought they were trifled with. They determined, therefore, in council, to bring matters to a crisis by expelling the aggressors, and, in the autumn of 1849, made a descent upon Mica Bay, and drove away the miners and their families. To repel this attack a regiment was ordered up from Canada, at an expense which would have paid the Indians again and again: but a small part of the force only reached Mica Bay, to find the Chippeways gone; the rest were driven back to Saut Ste. Marie by stormy weather, not without very severe suffering, leading, I have been informed, to loss of life.

CHAP. III.

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PINE ISLAND LAKE.. -SILURIAN STRATA.— -STURGEON RIVER. — PROGRESS OF SPRING.-BEAVER LAKE.-ISLE À LA CROSSE BRIGADE. — RIDGE RIVER.-NATIVE SCHOOLMASTER AND HIS FAMILY. TWO KINDS OF STURGEON.-NATIVE MEDICINES. BALD EAGLES. -PELICANS. -BLACK-BELLIED AND CAYENNE TERNS. -CRANES.-FROG PORTAGE. -- MISSINIPI OR CHURCHILL RIVER. -ITS LAKE-LIKE CHARACTER. POISONOUS PLANTS AND NATIVE MEDICINES.-ATHABASCA BRIGADE.SAND-FLY LAKE. THE COUNTRY CHANGES ITS ASPECT. -BULL-DOG FLY. ISLE À LA CROSSE LAKE.ITS ALTITUDE ABOVE THE SEA. - LENGTH OF THE MISSINIPI. ISLE À LA CROSSE FORT. ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSION. -DEEP RIVER.-CANADA LYNX.BUFFALO LAKE. -METHY RIVER AND LAKE.—MURRAIN AMONG BURBOT OR LA LOCHE. -A MINK. - METHY JOIN MR. BELL AND HIS PARTY.

THE HORSES.

PORTAGE.

WE left Cumberland House at 4 A. M., on the 14th of June, but had not passed above three miles through Pine Island Lake, before we were compelled to seek shelter on a small island by a violent thunder storm, bringing with it torrents of rain. The rain moderating after a few hours, we resumed our voyage; but the high wind continuing and raising the waves, our progress was slow, and the day's voyage did not exceed twenty-two miles. In the part of the lake where we encamped the limestone (silurian*) rises, in successive outcrops,

Some fragments of large Orthocerata, and a specimen of Receptaculites neptunii, point to the bird's-eye and Trenton

to the height of thirty feet above the water, the strike of the beds being about south-west by west, and north-east by east, or at right angles to the general line of direction of the gneiss and granite formation, which lies to the eastward. Many boulders of granite and trap rocks are scattered over the surface of the ground, far beyond the reach of any modern means of transport.

Thunder and heavy rain detained us in our encampment the whole of the following day; but some improvement in the weather taking place at midnight, we embarked, and at one in the morning of the 16th entered Sturgeon River, named by the voyagers, on account of its many bad rapids, "La Rivière Maligne." We made two portages, and an hour after noon reached Beaver Lake. The entire

limestones as occurring in this neighbourhood. Mr. Woodward says of the latter specimen, "The only wood-cut in the New York State Surveys at all resembling your engine-turned fossil, is a very rude representation of part of a circular disk, with radiating and concentric (not engine) turned lines. It is called Uphanteria chemungensis, and is supposed to be a marine plant (p. 183. Vanuxem). A fossil much like yours is figured by De France in the Dictionaire des Sciences Naturelles under the name of Receptaculites neptuni, from Chimay, in the Pays Bas. This is certainly of the same genus. De Blainville also describes it in his Actinologie at the end of the corals, but offers no opinion respecting its affinities. I should compare it with Eschadites Konigi of Murchison's upper silurian, but that was originally spherical and hollow."