ON THE TEAIL TO PEACE KIVER 83 



river, and decided to go on to Fort Dunvegan, and on our 

 return complete our scrip issue at the Landing ; so, partly on 

 horseback and partly by waggon, we made our way to our 

 first camp. The trail lay along and up and down the 

 immense bank of the river, debouching at one place at the 

 site of old Fort McLeod, and passing the fine St. Germain 

 farm, with as beautiful fields of yellowing wheat as one 

 would wish to see. 



Here we got an abvmdant supply of vegetables, and in this 

 ride our first taste of the Peace River mosquito — or, rather, 

 that animal got its first taste of us. It is needless to dwell 

 upon this pest. Like the fieas in Italy, it has been overdone 

 in description, and yet beggars it. 



All along the trail were old bufl^alo paths and wallows. 

 Indeed, we saw them everywhere we went on land, showing 

 how numerous those animals were in times past. In 1793 

 Sir Alexander Mackenzie describes them as grazing in great 

 numbers along these very banks, the calves frisking about 

 their dams, and moose and red deer were equally numerous. 

 In 1828 Sir George Simpson made a canoe journey to the 

 Coast by way of this river, and they were still very numerous. 

 The existing tradition is that, some sixty years ago, a winter 

 occurred of unexampled severity and depth of snow, in 

 which nearly all the herds perished, and never recovered 

 their footing on the upper river. The wood buffalo still 

 exists on Great Slave River, but, where we were, the only 

 memorials of the animal were its paths and wallows, and its 

 bones half-buried in the fertile earth. 



On the morning of the I7th we topped the crest of the 

 bank, and found ourselves at once in a magnificent prairie 

 country, which swept northward, varied by beautiful belts 

 of timber, as far as Bear Lake, to which we made a detour, 

 then westerly to Old Wives Lake — JSTootooquay Sakaigon— 

 and on to our night camp at Burnt River, twenty-two miles 

 from Dunvegan. The great prairie is as flat as a table, and 

 is the exact counterpart of Portage Plains, in Manitoba, or 



