During the winter of 1867-68, the buffalo still kept far out, and there was considerable destitution all over the country. Our storehouse and fish-house were ever and anon called upon to come to the rescue. We never failed to emphasize the stern necessity of making provision for the future, but with a people having no abiding place this was a hard lesson to learn. The rabbits, fortunately, were more numerous than usual, and with them came the lynx, both helping out in the preservation of life from actual starvation. I killed quite a number of lynx that winter, and got many of these on the ice of the lake. Whenever I saw an object moving on the snow-covered ice, I concluded it was either a lynx or a wolf, and as I had an opera glass I could very soon determine which, for the wolf had a long, bushy tail, and the lynx a very stumpy one--in fact, hardly any. Therefore, if the object I saw was tailless, I saddled my horse and rode for him. My dogs would also join the hunt, and when we came within a half-mile or so, the lynx generally noticed us and started off with tremendous leaps as if he would leave all creation behind. His strong feature, however, was in the height rather than the length of his jumping, and soon his half circles in the air came to a stop. While I was coming up on the steady jump, slow and sure, he would crook up his back, straighten up the fur on it and turn fiercely on me, but a shot from my gun would quickly keel him over. Later I found that one of my dogs could kill a lynx at one bite across the small of the back, and then I let him do the killing, for ammunition was none too plentiful in those days. I made several trips to Victoria and visited a number of camps, and in March took my family through to Whitefish Lake by dog-train. When we reached home, towards the last of the month, winter was breaking; but what nearly broke our hearts was an epidemic, a sort of distemper, that took hold of my sleigh-dogs, and one after the other I had to shoot the poor brutes. They seemed to have a kind of hydrophobia. They did not attack human beings, but we thought it best to kill them. I felt the parting with the faithful fellows more than the loss of their usefulness. A pagan Cree who had come to us asked permission to skin two of my biggest and swiftest dogs, and I told him he could. The reader will note this, and see later what his purpose was.