80 



WILD FOWL, 



reached me, which was in circulation, upon 

 strong grounds of suspicion, that a most deli- 

 berate and barbarous murder had been com- 

 mitted by one of the half-breeds on a Canadian 

 freeman. He was supposed to have been insti- 

 gated to the bloody deed by a woman he lived 

 with, and whom he received from the Canadian 

 for so many buffaloes as provision. Evidence 

 however was wanting, it was thought, that would 

 justify his being sent down to Montreal, or to 

 England for trial, to convict him there ; as there 

 was no criminal jurisdiction established within 

 the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company. 



March 25. — The thaw has come on unex- 

 pectedly early, and caused many of the hunters 

 to return from the plains with scarcely any pro- 

 visions. There were a few tame buffaloes that 

 had been reared in the colony, which have been 

 slaughtered, and to save as much seed corn as 

 possible, the allowance of grain is given out to 

 the settlers with the most rigid economy by 

 the Charge d' Affaires. There was a general 

 shout to day in the Settlement at the sight of 

 some swans and geese, as the sure harbingers of 

 Spring, and of immense flocks of wild fowl, that 

 bend their course in the Spring to the north, as 

 in the fall of the year they fly to the south. It 

 was indeed a cheerful sight, as nearly all the 



