This was great sport--this was great luck for our table at home. In a little while Conference sat, and my father was appointed to Norway House, Hudson's Bay. This news came like a clap of thunder into our quiet home at Rama. Hudson's Bay--we had a very vague idea where that was; but Norway House, who could tell us about this? Now, it so happened that we were very fortunate, for right beside us lived Peter Jacobs. Peter had once been a missionary, and had been stationed at Norway House and Lac-la-Pliue; therefore to Peter I went for information. He told me Norway House was north of Lake Winnipeg, on one of the rivers which flow into the Nelson; that it was a large Hudson's Bay Company's fort, the head post of a large district; that our mission was within two miles of the fort; that the Indians were quiet, industrious, peaceable people; "in fact," said he, "the Indians at Norway House are the best I ever saw." All this was comforting, especially to mother. But as to the route to be travelled, Peter could give but little information. He had come and gone by the old canoe route, up the Kaministiqua and so on, across the height of land down to Lake Winnipeg. We were to go out by another way altogether. I began to study the maps. This was a route I had not been told anything about at school. In the meantime father came home. And though I did hope to work my way through college, when my father said, "My son, I want you to go with me," that settled it, and we began to make ready for our big translation. CHAPTER V. From Rama to St. Paul--Mississippi steamers--Slaves--Pilot--Race. Early in July, 1860, we started on our journey. I was then in my seventeenth year. We sailed from Collingwood on an American propeller, which brought us to Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. Here we took a train through a part of Wisconsin to Lacrosse, on the Mississippi River, which place we reached about midnight, and immediately were transferred to a big Mississippi steamer. Here everything was new--the style and build of the boat, long and broad and flat, made to run in very shallow water. The manner of propelling this huge craft was a very large wheel, as wide as the boat, and fixed to the stern, and which in its revolutions fairly churned the waters in her wake. The system of navigation was so different; the pilot steered the boat, not by his knowledge of the fixed channel, but by his experience of the lights and shadows on the water which by day or night indicated to him the deep and shallow parts. Passengers and mails had no sooner been transferred, than tinkle! tinkle! went the bells, and our big steamer quivered from stem to stern, and then began to vibrate and shake as if in a fit of ague, and we were out in the stream and breasting the current of this mighty river. Dancing was going on in the cabin of the boat when we went on board; but soon all was quiet except the noise of the engines and the splash of the paddles.