192 PERMANENTLY APPOINTED TO GOVERNMENT 



and we both stopped on a little mound and we found ourselves 

 surrounded by thousands of snakes, which were twined around 

 the trees and stumps and each other and about a foot of the body 

 of each protruded, and so it was all heads, with the mouths open, 

 which showed, and they were all hissing at the same time. I 

 need scarcely say that it was almost too much for me and I never 

 saw such a sight before nor since. They were all garter snakes. 

 They were going into winter quarters. 



After being at Livingstone for a few days and examining the 

 country, I made arrangements to cross the fourteen miles that 

 lay between Livingstone and Fort Pelly. I hired a wagon which 

 took over the two boats and the men walked. At Fort Pelly, we 

 were now on the Assiniboine and, from it, we intended to go down 

 to Winnipeg. After a few days at Pelly, we made our arrange- 

 ments and obtained some provisions and started on our way to 

 Fort Ellice, three hundred miles to the east. We found the 

 Assiniboine exceedingly crooked, but, as we were going down 

 stream, we cared little for our slow passage. Once in a while 

 we would enter a small rapid and the boys used to cheer and try 

 to go faster than the rapid would carry them. They seemed to 

 think of the rapids they had been ascending all summer. 



One afternoon, the canoe was ahead of my boat and they 

 passed around the bend and, after that, I heard a shot and, as I 

 came around the bend, behold, my nephew, Davie, was up to 

 his neck in the river. We asked what had happened and he said 

 that they were hunting for his gun. He said there was a number 

 of pigeons in a tree on the bank and he shot at them. He was 

 sitting on a box in the canoe, and fired at the pigeons in the tree, 

 and the recoil of the gun caused him to lose his balance and he 

 tumbled headlong into the river, taking his gun with him. By 

 good luck, the river only took him up to his neck and, when we 

 saw him, he was using his feet on the bottom to locate the gun, 

 which he found and then dived and brought it up. I mentioned 

 that the river was very crooked and quite narrow and, as we came 

 down, we found two fair sized trees had fallen across and blocked 

 the way for the boats. While the men were cutting the trees, I 

 walked down the bank for a few yards and, through a clump of 



