[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: "I made a fire, and by melting snow boiled my kettle." (_Page 33._)] SADDLE, SLED AND SNOWSHOE: PIONEERING ON THE SASKATCHEWAN IN THE SIXTIES. BY JOHN McDOUGALL, Author of "Forest, Lake and Prairie: Twenty Years of Frontier Life in Western Canada," etc. _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. E. LAUGHLIN._ TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS, WESLEY BUILDINGS. MONTREAL: C. W. COATES. HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS. 1896. Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-six, by WILLIAM BRIGGS, at the Department of Agriculture. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Old Fort Edmonton--Early missionaries--Down the Saskatchewan by dog-train--Camp-fire experiences--Arrival at home--Daily occupations CHAPTER II. A foraging expedition--Our hungry camp--A welcome feast--Dogs, sleds and buffalo bull in a tangle--In a Wood Cree encampment--Chief Child, Maskepetoon and Ka-kake--Indian hospitality--Incidents of the return trip CHAPTER III. Scarcity of food--The winter packet--Start for Edmonton for the eastern mails--A lonely journey--Arrive at Fort Edmonton--Start for home--Camping in a storm--Improvising a "Berlin"--Old Draffan--Sleeping on a dog-sled en route--A hearty welcome home CHAPTER IV. Trip to Whitefish Lake--Mr. Woolsey as a dog-driver--Rolling down a side hill--Another trip to Edmonton--Mr. O. B. as a passenger--Perils of travel by ice--Narrow escape of Mr. O. B.--A fraud exposed--Profanity punished--Arrival at Edmonton--Milton and Cheadle--Return to Victoria CHAPTER V. Mr. Woolsey's ministrations--An exciting foot-race--Building operations--Gardening--Stolen (?) buffalo tongues--Addled duck eggs as a relish--A lesson in cooking--A lucky shot--Precautions against hostile Indians CHAPTER VI. The summer brigade--With the brigade down the Saskatchewan--A glorious panorama--Meet with father and mother on the way to Victoria--Privations of travel--A buffalo crossing--Arrival at Victoria--A church building begun--Peter Erasmus as interpreter CHAPTER VII. In search of the Stoneys--An Indian avenger--A Sunday at Fort Edmonton--Drunken Lake carousals--Indian trails--Canyon of the Red Deer--I shoot my father--Amateur surgeons--Prospecting for gold--Peter gets "rattled"--A mysterious shot--Friends or foes?--Noble specimens of the Indian race--A "kodak" needed--Among the Stoneys--Prospecting for a mission site--A massacre of neophytes--An Indian patriarch--Back at Victoria again CHAPTER VIII.