THE OJIBWAYS OF PRAIEIE POKTAGE. 281 



bable that in process of time it would also become a rich 

 and extensive prairie country, with its present beach dis- 

 tinctly visible as its old boundary. Indeed, the surface 

 of the country between the Big Eidge, the Assinniboine, 

 and Eed Eiver, is similar in gently undulating outline to 

 the succession of undrained marshes, ridges, and bogs 

 which exist between the west coast of Lake Manitobah 

 and the older ridge, pointing to a very gradual but 

 constant drainage of this region after a long period of 

 submergence. 



We reached Prairie Portage in the evening, where we 

 joined the main party. The Assinniboine at Lane's Post 

 (June 16th) is about 120 feet broad, and its turbid 

 water flows at the rate of 1^ miles per hour. A few 

 miles west of Lane's Post, the saline efflorescence, before 

 noticed as occurring in patches on the prairies and form- 

 ing small barren areas, is no more to be seen ; it consists 

 of chloride of sodium and sulphate of magnesia, with a 

 little chloride of calcium. The first grasshoppers were 

 observed this year at Lane's Post ; they were a brood 

 from the eggs deposited by a swarm which alighted on 

 the White Horse Plain in September last. 



At Prairie Portage we found an Ojibway encampment 

 in which were some of the refractory personages who 

 had hitherto resisted the humane and unceasing efforts 

 of Archdeacon Cochrane to christianize them. Anions 

 the various methods tried by the archdeacon to induce 

 these wanderers to settle and farm, — the first preliminary 

 to the progress of Christianity among wild Indians, — that 

 of presenting the most docile with an ox and plough and 

 teaching them to use it, was the least successful. At the 

 first good opportunity, or during a time of scarcity, the 

 ox and plough would be sold to the highest bidder for 

 very much less than it cost. A promise to add another 



