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THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vil. 



men and their servants, so that our whole party numbered eleven> 

 persons. For the transport of this party, together with all neces- 

 sary — and some very unnecessary — baggage and supplies, we had 

 seven Red River carts, three of them belono-ino: to our fellow tra- 

 Tellers, one buck-board and sixteen horses, or Red River ponies- 

 These were used either for saddle or harness, as occasion re- 

 quired, and four or six of them were left to run loose, as spare- 

 horses, so that each horse, as a rule, would not be worked for- 

 more than half the day's journey, by which means, although tra- 

 velling almost every day for eight, nine or ten hours, all the 

 horses had time enough to feed and rest, and sore backs, sore 

 shoulders and knocked-up horses, together with the delays and 

 troubles so commonly resulting from these causes on a long jour- 

 ney, were entirely avoided. 



During the whole journey we were favoured with remarkably 

 fine weather. On the outward trip we were detained only one 

 whole day by rain, and half a day only from the same cause on the 

 homeward trip. We had a few wet nights, and snow fell on twO' 

 or three days between the 11th and the 30th of September. The 

 first frost was experienced on the 4th of September when the ther- 

 mometer at 4 a.m. registered 28° Fahrenheit. On the 6th, at 

 6 a.m. it registered 26°. The next frost occurred on the 11th of 

 September, the thermometer falling during the night to 20°;. 

 and on the 23d of September the thermometer again registered 

 12° degrees of frost. Thence forward, frosty nights were of' 

 pretty frecjuent occurrence, and on the 29th of October the steam- 

 boats on the Red River were all frozen in. These, as I was in- 

 formed, unusually early frosts, injured many if not all of the 

 wheat crops on the upper Saskatchewan, and also some of the 

 potatoes that were still in the ground. 



We met with no hair breadth escapes, no startling incidents,. 

 and no accidents or casualties of any kind worth recordino;, nor 

 did we experience any trouble or annoyance from the various- 

 parties of Indians we fell in with on the road. The only real 

 trouble which we experienced was occasioned by moscjuitoes and 

 other flies, black-flies and sand-flies. I have seen and felt the- 

 annoying attacks of these pests in various parts of the world ; the- 

 valleys of the Columbia and Fraser Rivers are noted for them, and4 

 I used to think they could not be much worse than they are in. 

 Australia and in various parts of Eastern Canada, but if any one 

 desires to know what mose^uitoes and black-flies really can be, H 



