FOURTH EXPLORATION, 1880 



171 



the men were just as shortsighted as he was, because we had 

 plenty of moisture with us if we only had sense to use it. I asked 

 him to bring in a tin of tomatoes and he opened it and we had as 

 much food and drink as we required. I deliberately kept this 

 from the men as a punishment for their folly. 



We turned north at four in the morning and, about noon, 

 reached a trail that was running at right angles to our path. On 

 examining the map, we saw that it was the trail leading from Qu' 

 Appelle to Moose Jaw and, shortly after, a party came along and 

 we learned that Moose Jaw lay to the west of us and that the 

 hills we saw in front of us were on the opposite side of Moose 

 Jaw Creek. We at once headed for the creek and had great 

 difficulty in getting the horses out of the carts before they ran 

 down the hill into the creek and it was laughable to see them drink- 

 ing until they were tired and then roll over in the stream, they 

 were so pleased with themselves. We had learned our lesson, but 

 we were none the worse for our want of water. 



Next morning we followed the trail to Moose Jaw, or rather 

 to where Moose Jaw stands today. Our next object being Old 

 Wives Lakes, we proceeded westward up the trail that went in 

 that direction. The trail led us to the north end of Old Wives 

 Lakes and my next point was to reach the eastern end of the Cy- 

 press Hills. We now took a line for this point and, on Saturday 

 evening, reached a large lake called at this time Bullrush Lake. 

 Here we camped over Sunday and, the lake being deep, we con- 

 sidered it held fish and we got out our lines and, in the morning, 

 found that each line had a lizard attached to it, but no fish. Some 

 of the men later bathed in the lake and, after they came on shore, 

 they had to be scraped to get rid of the leeches. 



After crossing Swift Current Creek, we headed for the east 

 end of the Cypress Hills. When we reached there, we found that 

 they rose in front to over four hundred feet and, as the face of 

 the Hills was not too steep, we were able to reach the summit 

 with the horses and carts. The view from the summit was a very 

 wide one as there was nothing to obstruct our view to the east, 

 north and south. We travelled for a number of days along the 

 summit of the hills, which always rose higher as we proceeded 



