A VISIT FROM " DRIVER." 43 



before making another, and when there is a crust and you do 

 go on the surface, the jar is so great that you are even sooner 

 tired five miles an hour being fast travelling. 



The snow-shoes we used in the North were very different 

 from those used in Canada, as ours had the ends much more 

 turned up and ended in a point, while in Canada they turn up 

 very little and are rounded in front. Ours, too, were very 

 much longer, many of them being over five feet in length. 



It is very amusing to see a beginner, who has fallen with 

 his snow-shoes on, trying to get up ; his hands find no firm 

 resting-place in the deep snow, and his face is buried in it, 

 while the points of his snow-shoes stick in, so that he cannot 

 turn himself over ; and it is only after he has pounded so long 

 at the snow that he has made it solid, that he can manage 

 to raise himself far enough to remove the snow-shoes and 

 get up. 



I had a visit from an old Indian trader called " Driver " 

 about this time. I had seen him in Fort Garry and had told 

 him of my intention to winter somewhere near Carlton; so 

 hearing of me from some Indians, he had come out of his way 

 to pay me a visit. He had been an Indian trader all his life, 

 and had done well at it, in spite of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 who had tried to starve him out many times. 



He told me that no man could oppose them in the North, 

 being too far from his base of supplies, but that down here he 

 did as he liked. He had once sold the forbidden whiskey just 

 outside the gates of Carlton, but then he had a number of 

 rough men with him, and could not be meddled with. 



On another occasion he had penetrated into the heart of 

 Athabasca with a trading outfit worth about eight hundred 



