When I left Calgary, I took a flying trip home, and on my return decided to go up to Strathclair and look over our land there. I was met by W. Geekie, a neighbour, who took me over to his house to stay; but as my movements were uncertain, it was decided to leave my trunks at the station for a few days. Geekie, I found, was all prepared to start off on a trip, hauling provisions up to a lumber camp near Lake Winnipegosis, so I offered to accompany him and drive one of the teams. This was in mid-November, and the cold was bitter, but with a good fur coat over a pilot jacket I expected to be all right. We started out the next morning, five big freight-sledges and a jumper (small home-made sledge) for the provisions and bedding, six men all told, and five gallons of whisky for the eight-day trip. Strathclair with the surrounding country is a settlement of Highlanders, and they were as hardy a lot of men as I have ever come across, but very clannish. I had two or three “Black Angus” steer hides tanned with the hair on for lap-robes, but found that, in order to be comfortable, I had every few miles to drop off and flounder through the snow to start a good circulation. The others mostly used whisky for the same purpose. We encountered one blizzard on the trip, and I found out that they are not so black as they are painted, for directly the snow commenced to fall, the temperature rose, though the wind was very disagreeable. The flying snow, however, made it impossible to proceed for fear of losing the way, so we pitched camp in a clump of tamaracs. We slept out some of the nights, and the experience is not so bad as might be expected, provided you can get plenty of spruce-boughs and a place sheltered from the wind. Steer-hides and spruce-boughs make a very comfortable and warm bed if you pull in your head like a turtle. If I had a very great enemy, I would wish him a job in a lumber camp, if they are all like the one we went to. A long house of one room, about 20 feet by 30 feet, with bunks built up on the walls; one door as the only opening for ventilation; a large cook-stove in the centre, which was always full of wood, and served the double purpose of heating and cooking. In this room lived about twenty men—French Canadians, half-breed Indians, and other conglomerations. Here they cooked, ate, slept, washed, and dried their clothes steaming against the stove, and cursed if the door was opened for a minute. After seeing a decrepit Irish cook dropping ashes and nicotine from his pipe into the food he was preparing for supper, I fed outside, and stayed out during the night and part of a day we remained there. I doubt if these men washed their bodies during an entire winter. Such a state of affairs would not be tolerated even on a “Stag” cattle-ranch, and I have seen a dirty cowboy taken out by his fellows, stripped and scrubbed, and the operation never had to be repeated; nor could he resent it, as he could not fight the entire ranch.