34 DEPARTURE FROM BRANDON HOUSE. 



Before I left this post, I married two of the 

 Company's servants, and baptized ten or twelve 

 children. As their parents could read, I dis- 

 tributed some Bibles and Testaments, with 

 some Religious Tracts among them. On the 

 24th, we set off for Qu'appelle, but not without 

 the kind attention of the officer, in adding two 

 armed servants to our party, from the expecta- 

 tion that we might fall in with a tribe of Stone 

 Indians, who had been threatening him, and 

 had acted in a turbulent manner at the post a 

 few days before. In the course of the afternoon, 

 we saw a band of buffaloes, which fled from us 

 with considerable rapidity. Though an animal 

 apparently of a very unweildy make, and as 

 large as a Devonshire ox, they were soon out 

 of our sight in a laboured canter. In the 

 evening our encampment was surrounded by 

 wolves, which serenaded us with their melan- 

 choly howling throughout the night : and when 

 I first put my head from under the buffaloe 

 robe in the morning, our encampment pre- 

 sented a truly wild and striking scene ; — the 

 guns were resting against a tree, and pistols with 

 powder horns were hanging on its branches ; 

 one of the men had just recruited the fire, and 

 was cooking a small piece of buffaloe meat on 

 the point of a stick, while the others were 



