94 Bird-Nesting 



CHAPTER XIV. 



EAVING Rush Lake and going westward, the rail- 

 way skirts the base of the Cypress Hills for many 

 miles, following what seems to be a broad valley 

 and crossing many clear little streams making 

 their way from the hills northward to the Sas- 

 katchewan. At Maple Creek we see the red coats of the 

 mounted police, who are looking after a large encamp- 

 ment of Indians near by ; the Indians are represented on the 

 station platform by braves of high and low degree, squaws, 

 and papooses, mostly bent on trading pipes and trinkets 

 for tobacco or silver ; a picturesque-looking lot, but dirty 

 withal. Leaving the station, we catch sight of their encamp- 

 ment a mile away tall, conical tepees of well smoked cloths 

 or skins ; Indians in blankets of brilliant colours, hundreds of 

 ponies feeding in the rich grasses, a line of graceful trees in 

 the background, seemingly more beautiful than ever because 

 of their rarity, all making, with the dark Cypress Hills rising 

 in the distance, a picture most novel and striking. Two hours 

 later we descend to the valley of the South Saskatchewan, 

 and soon arrive at Medicine Hat. The broad aud beautiful 

 Saskatchewan river affords steamboat navigation a long way 

 above, and for a thousand miles below Medicine Hat. Cross- 

 ing the river on a long iron bridge, we ascend to the high 

 prairie, now a rich pasture, dotted with lakelets which swarm 

 with pelicans, gulls, plovers, ducks and geese. Everywhere 

 the flower-sprinkled sward is marked by the deep, narrow 

 trails of the buffalo, and the saucer-like hollows where the 

 shaggy monsters used to wallow, and strewing the plains in 

 all directions are the whitened skulls of these noble animals, 

 now so nearly extinct. The bones are now being gathered 

 and are used extensively for sugar refining, and we see great 

 piles of bones and skulls at intervals along [the railway sid- 



