This was really his station. For years the minutes of yonder eastern Conference read: "Thomas Woolsey, Edmonton House, Rocky Mountains." Though these places were over two hundred miles apart then, the Hudson's Bay Company's officers and men came to Edmonton generally for the New Year, and this was the missionary's opportunity of reaching these outposts through these men.
Our party now was made up of Mr. Woolsey, Mr. O. B., and Williston, William, Neils and myself. Gladstone had left some time since.
Leaving Mr. O. B. to keep the house warm, and William and Neils to saw lumber, the rest of us started for Edmonton, Williston driving the baggage train, and myself the cariole in which Mr. Woolsey rode.
We left long before daylight the Monday morning before Christmas, which came on Thursday that year. We had about four inches of snow to make the road through. This was hardly enough for good sleighing, but where there was prairie or ice, our dogs had good footing and made good time.
Down the slope of country to Smoking Lake, and then along the full length of the lake we went; then straight across country, over logs and round the windings of the dim bridle-path for the Wah-suh-uh-de-now, or "Bay in the Hills" (which would bring us to the Saskatchewan River), to which place we came about daylight, having already made a good thirty-five miles of our journey. Mr. Woolsey had slept and snored most of the way. What cared he for precipitous banks, or tortuous trails, or the long hours of night! With sublime faith in his guide, he lay like a log.
"Little he recked if we let him sleep on
In the sleigh where his driver had wound him."
After coming down the big hill into the valley at a break-neck pace, we came to the almost perpendicular bank of the stream, still seventy-five or eighty feet high, and here I roused Mr. Woolsey, and asked him to climb down, while Williston and I took the dogs off and let the cariole and sled down as easily as we could.
Once down, we got Mr. Woolsey in again, and away we went up the river at a good smart run, my leader taking the way from point to point, and around the rapids and open water at the word. For another five miles we kept on, and stopped for breakfast before sunrise opposite Sucker Creek.
To jerk these dogs out of their collars is the first thing. This gives them a chance to roll and run about, and supple up after the long pull of the morning. Then we make a big fire and cut some brush to put down in front of it; then help Mr. Woolsey out of his cariole, and next boil the kettle, and roast our dried meat and eat. Then after a short prayer, and while the "Amen" is still on our lips, we hitch up the dogs, tie the sleigh, help Mr. Woolsey into the cariole, tuck and wrap him in, and "Marse!" Away jump my dogs once more, and their bells ring out in the clear morning frost, and are echoed up and down the valley as we ascend, for even over the ice the ascension is very perceptible.
On we went, steadily making those long stretches of river which are between Sucker Creek and the Vermilion. As we proceeded, we left the snow, and the ice became glare and very difficult to run on, especially when one had to constantly steady the cariole to keep it from upsetting in the drift ice, or from swinging into the open channel, where the current was too strong for ice to make.