188 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE BY LAND. 



heard of tliem since their departure, two montlis 

 before. 



Mr. Pembrun told us that be bad found gold in 

 a small stream near Jasper House, baying been con- 

 firmed in bis discovery by Perry, tbe miner, a 

 celebrated character in the western gold regions, the 

 story of whose adventurous life he related to us. 

 Perry was a ''down-east" Yankee, and at the time 

 of the gold fever in California, crossed the jDlains 

 and Rocky Mountains alone. His means being too 

 limited to enable him to purchase horses, he put all 

 his effects in a wheelbarrow, which he trundled 

 before him over the 2,000 miles to Sacramento. 

 Tiring of California, he returned to the Eastern 

 States, but on the discovery of gold on the Fraser 

 E-iver, resolved to try a miner's life once more. His 

 sole property on reaching Breckenridge, on the Red 

 River, consisted of a gun, a little ammunition, and 

 the clothes he wore. He borrowed an axe, hewed a 

 rough canoe out of a log, and paddled down the 

 river to Fort Garry, 600 miles. From thence he 

 proceeded on foot to Carlton, 500 miles further, sup- 

 porting himself by his gun. At Edmonton he joined 

 the party of miners about to cross the mountains, 

 and succeeded in reaching British Columbia, having 

 travelled about the same distance he had formerly 

 done with his wheelbarrow. 



This story brought out another from Mr. Har- 

 disty, of an episode in frontier life at Fort Benton, 

 a trading post of the American Fur Company, on 

 the Missouri, in the country of the Blackfeet. One 



