AN APRIL HIKE 31 



on that selfsame hill and also admired in his own 

 savage way. It was good to see and hear them 

 all again : these wanderers of a mighty continent, 

 back again to their beloved Northland. This 

 has been the most impelling motive behind the 

 day's sixteen-mile tramp; for this I had come. 



Down at the east end of the hills is a little spot 

 where in days gone by — so say the flints and 

 pottery in the sand — stood many tepees of the 

 red-man; and it was here that I intended to 

 camp. To the eastward stretched a mile of rush- 

 trimmed marshes, and beyond this the white, 

 wintry lake; southward lay a prairie flat with 

 blue ponds of snow-water glistening in the hol- 

 lows; to the westward stretched the sand-hills; 

 altogether it was a lonely spot, speaking of the 

 romance of the plainland on every side. What 

 scenes were here but forty years gone by, when 

 the skin lodges of the Crees stood plentifully in 

 the hills; what buffalo herds crossed that flat be 

 low, to slake their thirst down at the lake-shore; 

 what carcasses, arrow-pierced, dotted the same 

 flat, after the fierce onset from the hills; what 

 flocks of water-fowl — hundreds and thousands, 

 where now are pitiable tens and scores — inhab- 

 ited the marshes! 



