representing to the people the horrors, the dangers, and privations that awaited our adventurous friends; that if they were fortunate enough to escape being scalped by the Indians, they would assuredly be doomed, like Nebuchadnezzar, to eat grass, and never would return to tell the sad tale of their destruction. While Mr. Hunt’s affairs thus seemed almost at a stand, a new impulse was given to the expedition by the timely acquisition of another partner, a Mr. Miller, who had been a trader up the Missouri, had considerable experience among Indians along the route to be followed, and was a great favourite with the people at St. Louis. As soon, therefore, as Mr. Miller joined the expedition, people from all quarters began again to enlist under the banner of the new company. Canoemen, hunters, trappers, and interpreters were no longer wanting, and the number of each being completed, the expedition left St. Louis, after a vexatious delay of forty-eight days. On the 21st of October the expedition started {177} in three boats, and soon after reached the mouth of the Missouri, up which the party proceeded. Our Canadian voyageurs were now somewhat out of their usual element. Boats and oars, the mode of navigating the great rivers of the south, were new to men who had been brought up to the paddle, the cheering song, and the bark canoe of the north. They detested the heavy and languid drag of a Mississippi boat, and sighed for the paddle and song of former days. They soon, however, became expert at the oar, and Mr. Hunt, who was somewhat partial to the south men, was forced to acknowledge that their merits were not to be compared to the steady, persevering, habits of the men of the north. Yet the progress was but slow, scarcely averaging twenty-one miles a day, so that it was the 16th of November before they reached the Nodowa, a distance of only 450 miles up the Missouri, and there, from the coldness of the weather and lateness of the season, they were obliged to winter. Mr. M‘Kenzie, accustomed, during the days of the North-West, to start from Montreal and reach the mouth of Columbia river, or Great Bear’s Lake, the same season, did not much like this slow travelling, and had his advice been acted on, the expedition, in place of wintering at the Nodowa, would have wintered on the waters of the Columbia. Here it was that Mr. M‘Lellan, another partner, joined the expedition. This gentleman was one of the first shots in America, nothing could escape his {178} keen eye and steady hand; hardy, enterprizing, and brave as a lion: on the whole, he was considered a great acquisition to the party. After settling the winter quarters, Mr. Hunt returned to St. Louis, which place he reached on the 20th of January, 1811, and before he joined his wintering friends at the Nodowa River again, it was the 17th of April.