One day when I had a large crowd of these people before me I said to them, "I have lived amongst different peoples, and in every case these at times have sickened and died, and from all I can learn this has been going on for thousands of years. These peoples expect this to take place at some time in their experience. Everywhere I have travelled I have seen graveyards, and plenty of evidence that all men in the countries that I have been in are visited by death. But now I have come among a people who, if they did not hate one another, and work bad medicines and poison on one another, would live always--at least, that is what you think and how you talk. You are different from all other men. How is this? Has the Great Spirit treated you with partiality? His word says, 'God is no respecter of persons.' Are you not foolish to think and act as you do? Come, now, think about this, and ask the Great Spirit to give you light." So at service and in the lodge and around the camp-fire we kept at them; but the implantings of centuries cannot be shaken off in one or two generations. CHAPTER XI. We return to Victoria--War parties abroad--Father's influence over the Indians--We organize a big fresh meat hunt--David's first buffalo hunt--Mark's adventure with a war party--Surrounded by wolves--Incidents of our journey--Preparing for the winter. Soon the autumn was past, the most of our wandering people had gone, and we made ready to travel back to Victoria. Mark, whose wife had died during the epidemic of the previous spring, left his motherless children with their grandparents and his brothers, and went with us. He said his heart was sore and he would go with us in order to be comforted. Carefully we scouted past Edmonton, for this was the season of activity for the scalp-taker and horse-thief, but we reached the older Mission without any mishap. Here we found everybody busy at the necessary work of preparing for the winter, which always involved a considerable amount of labor. The usual excitement over the coming and going of war parties had taken place. Mother and sisters had spent days and nights in a sort of semi-terror because of the wild conduct of these people, which even Maskepetoon's strong influence could not wholly control, though doubtless this grand old man's firm friendship for the white man, and especially for those of our Mission, was the main reason that no violence was attempted.