Fort Pitt stands on the left or north shore of the Saskatchewan River, which is here more than four hundred yards in width. On the opposite shore immense bare, bleak hills raise their wind-swept heads seven hundred feet above the river level. A few pine-trees show their tops some distance away to the north, but no other trace of wood is to be seen in that vast amphitheatre of dry grassy hill in which the fort is built. It is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over those great grassy uplands.
On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria, a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake Winnipeg. The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony, jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River. This youngster employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was driving--thus "Rouge!" would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip; "Noir!" he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked. One horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet, and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the grudges that he owed to the man. Be that as it may, Jean l'Hereux got many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.
On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake, and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of "What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question, might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury, it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia. But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.
"You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see," said the Hudson Bay officer in charge.
"Yes," I replied.
"Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?"
"Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it."
"Did he say he had had it himself?"
"No."
"Well, he had," continued ny host, "only a month ago, and the coat and trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he lay all the time he had it," was the pleasant reply.