308 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



trifles, in superstitious expectation that it would influence 

 their Manitou to give them buffaloes and a good hunt. 

 During Mr. West's journey, now forty years since, buffalo 

 were very numerous in the winter months on this part of 

 the Assinniboine, and many bands of the race of Indians 

 bearing that name made this part of the country their 

 winter quarters. Mr. West saw an Indian corpse staged 

 about ten feet from the ground, at a short distance from 

 Brandon House, a provision post now abandoned by the 

 Hudson's Bay Company. 



We arrived at the Assinniboine about ten miles south- 

 east of the Two Creeks, after passing through a rolling 

 prairie of light sandy soil, and in many places covered 

 with boulders. Small "hummocks"* of aspens, and clumps 

 of partially burnt willows, were the only remaining re- 

 presentatives of an extensive aspen forest which formerly 

 covered the country between Boss Creek and the Assinni- 

 boine. So great had been the change during twenty years 

 in the general aspect of this region that our old hunter, 

 who had undertaken to guide us in a straight line across 

 the prairie from Eed Deer's Head Eiver, confessed that he 

 did not " know the country" when within ten miles of the 

 Assinniboine ; he nevertheless declared his conviction that 

 we should strike the river at the point to which he had 

 promised to lead us. He had not visited it for twenty 

 years, and during that interval the timber, which formerly 

 consisted of aspens and willows, had nearly all disappeared. 

 The old man was correct ; the face of the country had 

 changed, the aspen forest had been burnt, and no vestige, 

 beyond the scattered hummocks and burnt willow 

 clumps, remained ; his " instinct," as he termed it, and that 

 singular facility which practised prairie wanderers possess, 



* A half-breed expression. 



