The chances are that he might never have been found and thus have perished, had a quieting effect on him for some days but the old restlessness got hold of him again, and he had to be away hunting up fresh trouble. This time he had a companion and they went in a canoe to hunt ducks. His companion (a half-breed) debarked on the river bank to crawl up to some birds and placed an injunction on Ralson to remain quietly seated in the canoe. When the half-breed returned to the river bank it was to find the canoe upset and Ralson sitting on the shore dripping wet. On comparing notes it was found a rifle I had lent him was at that precise moment at the bottom of the river in about ten feet of water. It would never do to return to the post and report this mishap and the loss of the gun, so Ralson undressed and began to dive for its recovery. Robert, the man, told me, when describing the adventure, that he never laughed so much in his life as when sitting on the bank and watching Ralson making desperate and repeated efforts to recover the weapon. He was finally successful and exacted a cast iron promise from Robert not to inform the people at the post. A promise which Robert promptly broke. An accident, however, which almost cost him his life, altho after he was safe at the post, caused us considerable merriment, came about in this way, and I expect he will remember it as long as he lives, if yet alive. We were sending an express canoe from the post to the nearest point on the frontier to mail dispatches to headquarters. The distance is about fifty miles over lakes, rivers and portages. The usual time for such a trip was three days for the round trip. Ralson begged to accompany the men, partly for an outing and partly to see the frontier village of Luqueville. Their route lay thru a chain of small lakes on which I had a couple of bear traps set. To save me a trip to visit these traps I told Robert, the guide, to kill any bear he found caught and reset the traps, cache the meat and skin and bring it with them on their return journey. These instructions were simple enough and I was not anxious about Ralson. Ralson, however, changed all these plans for, when they reached the first trap, in which they found a bear caught and Robert had killed it, Ralson proposed he should stay behind, skin and cut up the meat and visit the second trap which was a short distance off the canoe route, and then he was to come home on foot by skirting the lakes along a sometimes used trail, taking the skin with him.