84 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWEN EXPEDITION. 



will draw 300 lbs. forty miles a day for ten or twelve 

 days in succession if well fed, and the road is tolerably 

 good, over a level country. A winter road, it may be here 

 remarked, is nothing more than a cariole or sledge track 

 caused by the passage of this primitive kind of vehicle 

 over the snow, and is liable to be obliterated by every 

 fresh fall. A cariole is constructed of a very thin board, 

 ten feet long and twelve or fourteen inches broad, turned 

 up at one end in the form of half a circle, like the bow 

 of an Ojibway canoe. To this board a high cradle, like 

 the body of a small carriage, is attached, about eighteen 

 inches from the end of the board or floor. The frame- 

 work is covered with buffalo skin parchment, and painted 

 or decorated according to taste. The inside is lined with 

 a blanket or buffalo robe, and when the traveller is seated 

 in his cariole, with outstretched legs, he is only separated 

 from the snow by the thin plank which forms the floor. 

 A sledge is nothing more -than a thin board ten or twelve 

 feet long, twelve inches broad, and turned up at one end. 

 The baggage is attached to it by means of buffalo thongs, 

 and two or three dogs are harnessed to this simple vehicle 

 with the same materials. The dogs attached to a 

 cariole are generally decorated with collars, from which 

 beadwork and tassels are suspended together with a string 

 of small bells. When a train is in motion the driver runs 

 behind the cariole or sledge, guiding it by means of a 

 loop fastened to each corner of the floor ; when tired or 

 anxious to ride he sits on the small box containing the 

 traveler's baggage, which is fastened to the projecting 

 floor in rear of the cariole, or else he stands on it if no 

 box is attached. A winter road is uniformly of the 

 breadth of the floor of the cariole, rarely exceeding fifteen 

 inches, and of a depth proportioned to the quantity of 

 snow which has fallen. In making a new road where 



