302 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



fifteen feet high, and when viewed from the river, 

 bears a strong resemblance to a Burmese village. 

 As yon ascend the bank to enter the post, you are 

 surrounded by a pack of the leanest - looking and 

 most cur -like dogs, who are always quarrelling 

 amongst themselves, and have starvation written 

 on their countenances, as well as evidenced by their 

 bone-protruding flanks. They are to the Indians, or 

 the dwellers in the backwoods, during winter, what 

 canoes are to them in summer. These dogs drag 

 their tra/ineaux, or toboygins as they are indifferently 

 called, and are capable of lengthened exertions over 

 snow-tracks where no horse could travel. In summer 

 they are turned loose about the post, and pick up 

 enough to eat as best they can among the Indians 

 encamped around it ; but in winter they are regu- 

 larly fed upon fish. 



The gentleman in charge of Rat Portage had been 

 there for thirteen years, without having had, during 

 that period, any further glimpse of civilisation than 

 what could be obtained at some of the other posts. 

 He was a half-breed married to a squaw. It is next 

 to impossible that any man could lead such a solitary 

 life and still retain the intelligence and enlargement 

 of ideas imparted by even an ordinary country-school 

 education. Men's minds are too prone to assimilate 

 with the minds of those with whom they are ex- 

 clusively associated, to retain, after a series of years 

 spent amongst ignorant heathens, many traces of 



