36 



to find exposed on river bank seams of coal eighteen feet in 

 thickness. These were first described by Dr. George Dawson 

 though others had visited them. A reminiscence comes to us 

 in connection with the Souris coal beds. In 1874 or there- 

 about, when the Boundary Commission had led to the coal be- 

 ing well-known, a company of Winnipeg gentlemen agreed to 

 enter on possession of the lands on the Souris. The writer well 

 remembers the offer being made of a share in the enterprise, 

 and the land was taken up by a number of gentlemen. It was 

 however on account of the difficulty of development, ultimately 

 abandoned. It was a few years later that the first president 

 of the Hudson's Bay Railway with a body of men, actually 

 mined a quantity of coal from these beds and floated down the 

 Souris in the spring in a barge, but found it of far inferior 

 quality to what we now obtain from the Gait and Saskatchewan 

 mines. Coming down the valley of the Souris to a point some 

 or four miles from the Souris river and about three north of the 

 boundary is seen the 



HILIv OF THE MURDERED SCOUT. 



The prairie here is very level. At this point in what seems an 

 old river bed similar to what is known further to the east as the 

 "Blind Souris" begins the "Riviere des Lacs," forming a long 

 and very singular lake. The legend of the "Hill of the murder- 

 ed Scout," is that in the year 1830 the Assiniboines or Stoney 

 Indians were at war with the Sioux. An Assiniboine brave 

 cautiously climbed the hill or butte to espy the Sioux encamp- 

 ment on the other side when he came upon a Sioux warrior ly- 

 ing asleep in his buffalo robe on the summit of the butte. To 

 seize a granite boulder and kill the sleeping enemy was the 

 work of an instant, and in memory of his triumph the victor 

 dug in the gravelly soil the figure of a man stretched at full 

 length upon the ground, and also hollowed out the marks of his 

 own footprints. Lying in the hollow representing the van- 

 quished enemy's head so late as 1873 was still to be seen a red 

 granite stone some eight inches long, with which this much 

 vaunted deed of Indian daring had been accomplished. No sac- 

 religious hand would remove that stone from its place as a 

 memorial. The Souris river takes its rise and receives a num- 

 ber of its tributaries from the south from a most remarkable 

 chain of elevations on the western prairies known as the 



MISSOURI COTEAU. 



This continued singular physical feature of the western prairie 

 runs from northwest to southeast, and is from two to three hun- 



