ON THE TRAIL TO PEACE RIVER 83

river, and decided to go on to Fort Dunvegan, and on our
return complete our scrip issue at the Landing; 80, partly om
horseback and partly by waggon, we made our way to our
frst eamp. The trail lay slong and up and down the
immense bank of the river, debouching at one place at the
site of old Fort MeLeod, and passing the fine St. Germain
farm, with as beautiful flelds of vellowing wheat as one
would wish to see,

Here we got an abundant supply of vegetables, and in this
ride our first taste of the Peace River miosquito—or, rather,
that animal got its first taste of us. It is needless to dwell
upon this pest. Like the fleas in Ttalv, it has been overdone
in description, and yet beggars it.

All along the trail were old buffalo paths and wallows.
Indeed, we saw them everywhere we went on land, showing
bow numerous those animals were in times past. In 1799
Sir Alesander Mackenzie deseribes them as grazing in great
mumbers along these very banks, the calves frisking abent
their dams, and moose and red deer were equally numerous.
in 1828 Sir George Simpson made a canoe journey to the
Coast bv way of this river, and they were still verv numerous.
The existing tradition is that, some sixty years ago, a winter
eceurred of umexampled severity and depth of snow, in
which nearly all the herds perished, and never recovered
their footing on the upper river. The wood buffalo aril
exists on Great Slave River, but, where we were, the only
memorials of the animal were its paths and wallows, and its
bones half-buried in the fertile earth.

On the morming of the 17th we topped the crest of the
bank, and found ourselres af omee In a magnificent prairie
econntry, which swept northward, varied by beautiful belts
of timber, as far as Bear Lake, to which we made a detour,
then westerly to Old Wives Lake—~Nootodquay Sakaigon—
and on to onr night camp at Burnt River, twenty-two miles
from Dunvegan. The great prairie is as flat as a table, and
is the exact counterpart of Pertage Plains, in Manitoba, or