[BURPEE] YORK FACTORY TO THE BLACKFEET COUNTRY 329 
15. Thursday. Travelled 8 Miles West; saw several herds of 
Buffalo. 
16. Friday. Travelled 15 Miles W.b.N. Level land, with Birch, 
Cherry and Nut-trees; passed a lake of Salt water; saw two Buffalo 
and two Horses; killed 6 Waskesew . 
17. Saturday. Travelled 8 Miles W.N.W. Crossed a large hill 
full of Shrubs, and fine berries like unto black currants. Started a 
Hare, of size and color like those. in England. Indians killed 4 
Waskesew. 
18. Sunday. Travelled none. The Young Men hunting, killed 
several Moose. I dressed a lame man’s leg. He gave me a Moose nose, 
which is a delicate dish, for my trouble. At this place, a mineral spring 
as cold as ice. 
19. Monday. Travelled 10 Miles W.S.W. in Muscuty plains; fine 
land, no woods; several salt-water Lakes; have passed but 4 places of 
fresh water, these five days past. 
20. Tuesday. Travelled 15 Miles North; then came to Wapesek- 
copet River.t It is large; the banks are high; on which grow Birch, 
Poplar, Hazle, Elder, Fir, etc.; killed 5 Waskesew. 
21. Wednesday. The Indian Men made temporary Canoes of Wil- 
lows, covered with parchment Moose skins? The Women gathered 


1South Saskatchewan. Hendry crossed some distance above present town 
of Saskatoon, at or near Clark Crossing. Descriptive notes on Fleming’s 
1858 map agree with Hendry’s narrative,—“ precipitous clay bluffs 100 feet 
high. Groves of poplar and birch.” 
?Cocking made use of a similar device. Aug. 28rd, 1872, he crossed 
the Saskatchewan in ‘‘ temporary Canoes with bended sticks, & covered 
with parchment skins.” John Fleming notes the presence of the same novel 
craft on the Saskatchewan as late as 1858, and attributes their use to the 
searcity of birchbark for canoes in the region through which the north and 
south branches flow. “These great prairie-rivers,’ he says, (Narrative 
of Canadian Red River Expedition, etc., I, 442), “are generally crossed and 
often descended in ‘bull-boats, or ‘parchment canoes,’ by the Indians, for 
great distances. These bull-boats are made of one or two buffalo skins, 
stretched on a light frame, stitched together, and the seams covered with 
tallow and ashes. Hunters and trappers frequently set out from Fort a la 
Corne, on horseback or on foot, to the Moose Woods or the great prairies 
on the South Saskatchewan, and return in bull-boats laden with dried meat 
and skins, both craft and cargo being the proceeds of their hunt.” Catlin 
found the same boats in use among the Minatarees on the Upper Missouri. 
He describes it (‘“ North American Indians,” I, 195) as ‘a skin-canoe (more 
familiarly called in this country, a bull-boat) made in the form of a large 
tub, of a buffalo skin, stretched on a frame of willow boughs.” Catlin and 
two companions entered one of them, and an athletic squaw swam across 
