Rousseau and the sentimentalists, who talk of the savage, greatly err in their estimate of that noble individual. He is lazy and filthy, gluttonous, and would be a wine-bibber had he the chance. I looked into his tent, and there he was sitting naked, whilst his squaw was cooking a bit of a horse with the hair on for his dinner. He is unpleasant as a neighbour for many reasons, and is indifferent how he gets a dollar, or how his squaw earns it either. All along the prairie he seems to have nothing to do but to rush to the nearest railway station, and sit there all day in the hope that some passing traveller may give him tobacco or cash, the only two things on earth he seems to care for. Apparently, the mothers are fond of their young. The men are clever at stealing horses, and the traveller must look after his horses by night, or he may find them, as friends of my own did, gone in the morning. But to return to the prairie, it is an awful place to travel in alone; it is so easy to lose one’s way. I heard wonderful stories in this respect. Fancy being lost on the prairie; nothing but the grass to eat; nothing but the sky to look at; nothing in the shape of human speech to listen to. Out here by myself, I felt more than once how appropriate the language of the poet beloved by our grandmothers: ‘O Solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.’ There is a good deal of hardship to be encountered by any who would penetrate to the dim and mysterious region we denominate the North-West. For instance, I left Moose Jaw at half-past two yesterday morning by a train timed to arrive there at a quarter-past one; at which unreasonable hour I had to leave my bed, just as I was getting into a sound sleep, and to catch the train, which was so crowded that I could scarcely get a seat, and the atmosphere of which was not redolent of the odours of Araby the Blest. There I had to sit till the time I mention, as the engine managed to get off the line. Deeply do I pity the poor emigrants tempted into this part of the world by the delusive utterances of sham emigration agents at home and local journals—which, when they are not abusing one another, seem to delight in giving representations of the country by no means literally to be depended on; the only thing to do is to go to the fountain head—the Government office. People who make up their minds to come into these parts must learn to put up with a good deal. Here is a sad case, a very exceptional one, I admit, but I am bound to tell the whole truth. I quote from a Winnipeg paper: ‘David Kirkpatrick, his wife, and nine children, the eldest a girl of twelve, arrived from Scotland on Wednesday. A part of the voyage was made on board the _Algoma_. The cold was intense, and many of the passengers suffered severely. Among these was Mrs. Kirkpatrick. The exposure, in her case,