98 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



there, and related to him all the known circumstances of 

 his death as I had received them from the half-breeds 

 and Indians of Eed Lake, and then learned that the Eev. 

 Laurenz Lautiger was an Austrian, a man well skilled in 

 many languages, pious, devoted and most enthusiastic in 

 his endeavours to christianize the Ojibways of Eed Lake. 

 He had not been long in the country or he would have 

 had the experience necessary to guide him on such a 

 night as that in which he met with his untimely fate. At 

 the hour of his death we must have been encamped on 

 Eed Lake Eiver, about fifty miles from the station, having 

 made an early camp in consequence of the piercing cold. 

 My thermometer in the woods showed twenty-two degrees 

 below zero just before I rolled myself in my buffalo robe 

 for the night ; but as we had selected close woods for our 

 night's resting-place, it is not improbable that the tempe- 

 rature on the exposed ice of Eed Lake was as low as 

 thirty below zero. 



Our course from Eed Lake lay through the woods 

 bordering Eed Lake Eiver. We traversed three very 

 picturesque sheets of frozen water, and then arrived at 

 Opashkwa Lake, which lies at the foot of the dividing 

 ridge constituting the height of land, the waters on one 

 side flowing into Hudson's Bay, on the other into the 

 Gulf of Mexico. After passing this natural boundary we 

 crossed Turtle Lake, and numerous dilatations of Turtle 

 Eiver abounding in wild rice, and camped on the evening 

 of the 10th December close to the borders of Cass Lake, 

 and near a cluster of Indian wigwams. Shortly after 

 midnight our dogs began to bark furiously, and the 

 Indian camp seemed suddenly to receive an unusual in- 

 flux of visitors. Cline came to me and whispered, "Monk- 

 man's come." At daybreak on the following morning I 

 recognized Monkman's clogs fraternizing with Cline's, and 



