280 Sport aiid Life. 



a cradle, or, rather, into a papoose-board, on which babies are 

 strapped for transportation when the mother makes horseback 

 journeys. 



Death, as we shall see, did not lag far behind the primitive 

 cradle. The police force, who had previously garrisoned a post in 

 the swamps of the North-West Territory, where mountain fever, 

 which is nothing but a form of typhoid, was a frequent visitor, had 

 brought with them the germs, and soon an epidemic of it was 

 raging in the otherwise extremely healthy Upper Kootenay country. 

 Two of their men, returning from a long ride to Golden, were 

 suddenly taken ill while resting themselves near our mill. Within 

 a couple of hours they were so bad that I sent one of my men to 

 the headquarters of the force about fifty miles off, where they were 

 erecting a regular post, the present Fort Steele, for the Indian 

 troubles did not promise to be over just yet. The man rode the 

 night through, and next evening one of the police freight waggons 

 drawn by four steaming horses was back, though not with the doctor, 

 whose assistance was so urgently needed. The sergeant in charge 

 of the conveyance had orders to bring the men to the fort, for the 

 doctor had his hands full there, and could not possibly leave, and 

 civilian doctor there was none nearer than Donald, four days' 

 journey off. I felt very loth to let the sick men leave, for they 

 seemed as bad as they could be. But the sergeant would hear 

 of no delay, so, after giving them strong doses of anodyne, the 

 poor fellows were lifted into the waggon-bed, a layer of fir 

 branches, which I placed underneath them, softening a little the 

 terrible jolting in a springless waggon driven at a trot through 

 the woods over stumps, and roots, and through waterholes. 



It was raining heavily at the time, and as the driver had for- 

 gotten to bring the canvas waggon cover, the doctor's instructions 

 to the sergeant to bring with him as much inch lumber as he 

 could find room for were acted upon, by lashing a sort of roof 

 over the waggon-bed in which the sick men lay. Death is 

 habitually taken in a lighter vein by western men than it is 

 among more civilised surroundings, where accidents are rare, but 



