+Plate+ 278, is a party of Sioux, in bark canoes (purchased of the Chippeways), gathering the wild rice, which grows in immense fields around the shores of the rivers and lakes of these northern regions, and used by the Indians as an useful article of food. The mode of gathering it is curious, and as seen in the drawing—one woman paddles the canoe, whilst another, with a stick in each hand, bends the rice over the canoe with one, and strikes it with the other, which shells it into the canoe, which is constantly moving along until it is filled. +Plate+ 279, is a representation of one of the many lovely prairie scenes we passed on the banks of the St. Peters river, near the Traverse de Sioux. Whilst traversing this beautiful region of country, we passed the bands of Sioux, who had made us so much trouble on our way to the Red Pipe, but met with no further molestation. At the Traverse de Sioux, our horses were left, and we committed our bodies and little travelling conveniences to the narrow compass of a modest canoe, that must most evidently have been dug out from the _wrong side of the log_—that required _us_ and everything in it, to be exactly in the bottom—and then, to look straight forward, and speak from the _middle_ of our _mouths_, or it was “_t’other side up_” in an instant. In this way embarked, with our paddles used as balance poles and propellers (after drilling awhile in shoal water till we could “get the hang of it”), we started off, upon the bosom of the St. Peters, for the Fall of St. Anthony. * * * * * * Sans accident we arrived, at ten o’clock at night of the second day—and sans steamer (which we were in hopes to meet), we were obliged to trust to our little tremulous craft to carry us through the windings of the mighty Mississippi and Lake Pepin, to Prairie du Chien, a distance of 400 miles, which I had travelled last summer in the same manner. “Oh the drudgery and toil of paddling our little canoe from this to Prairie du Chien, we never can do it, Catlin.”