We remained over Sunday at the fort. Father held service, and Monday morning saw us away, mounted on fresh horses, which had been provided by the gentlemen in charge of the fort.
Our course was now more northerly, and the country increased in interest as we travelled. Away in the distance to the south and west, we caught glimpses of the winding valley of the big river. Around us, on every hand, were beautiful lakes with lawn-like banks; gems of prairie with beautiful clumps of spruce and poplar, and birch and willow artistically intersecting them; great hills, and broad valleys, and gently rippling streams; a cloudless sky; an atmosphere surcharged with ozone above us; good horses under us; father, and guide, and myself all thoroughly optimistic in thought and outlook. No wonder that I, in the full tide of strength, and health, and youth, was fairly intoxicated amid such surroundings! Father was only a little more sober or a little less "drunk" than I was.
We were travelling steadily and fast, and amused ourselves by locating farms and homesteads, and villages and centres of population, and running imaginary railroads through the country as we trotted and cantered from early morn until night, through those never-to-be-forgotten lovely August days of 1862.
For food we had pemmican and dried meat.
Occasionally we shot chickens or ducks, but the distance we had to travel and the limited time father had at his command forbade us doing much shooting while pemmican or dried meat lasted.
We rode over the Two Hills; we galloped along the sandy beach of Sandy Lake; we saw Frog Lake away to the right; a few miles farther on we crossed Frog Creek, then Moose Creek, then the Dog Rump.
Here I missed my first bear. He was down in a deep ravine, almost under me, and, as is usual with a "tenderfoot" at such a time, I shot over him, and as my gun was a single-barrelled muzzle-loader, the bear had plenty of time to disappear into the thick brush down the ravine. We had no time to follow him.
On we went, over hills and across broad plains, thickly swarded with pea-vine and rich grasses, passing Egg Lake to the left.
Early the third day we came to Saddle Lake, on the north side of which we found a camp of Cree Indians.
Some of these belonged to White-fish Lake, and were nominally Christians. Others were wood and plain Indians, still pagan, and without any settled home, but all glad to see us. Most of the leading men and hunters had gone across the river and out on to the plains for a hunt.