Hendry's itinerary is not difficult to follow. The Indian place-names used by him are the Indian place-names used to-day by the Assiniboines. Four hundred paddlers manned the big brigade of canoes which he accompanied inland to the modern Oxford Lake and from Oxford to Cross Lake. The latter name explains itself. Voyageurs could reach the Saskatchewan by coming on down westward through Playgreen Lake to Lake Winnipeg, or they could save the long detour round the north end of Lake Winnipeg--a hundred miles at least, and a dangerous stretch because of the rocky nature of the coast and the big waves of the shallow lake--by portaging across to that chain of swamps and nameless lakes, leading down to the expansion of the Saskatchewan, known under the modern name of the Pas. It is quite plain from Hendry's narrative that the second course was followed, for he came to 'the river on which the French have two forts' without touching Lake Winnipeg; and he gave his distance as five hundred miles from York,[4] which would bring him by way of Oxford and Cross Lakes precisely at the Pas. [4] Nelson. Throughout this narrative Nelson, the name of the port and river, is generally used instead of York, the name of the fort or factory. The Saskatchewan is here best described as an elongated swamp three hundred miles by seventy, for the current of the river proper loses itself in countless channels through reed-grown swamps and turquoise lakes, where the white pelicans stand motionless as rocks and the wild birds gather together in flocks that darken the sky and have no fear of man. Between Lake Winnipeg and Cumberland Lake one can literally paddle for a week and barely find a dry spot big enough for a tent among the myriad lakes and swamps and river channels overwashing the dank goose grass. Through these swamps runs the limestone cliff known as the Pasquia Hills--a blue lift of the swampy sky-line in a wooded ridge. On this ridge is the Pas fort. All the romance of the most romantic era in the West clings to the banks of the Saskatchewan--'Kis-sis-kat-chewan Sepie'--swift angrily-flowing waters, as the Indians call it, with its countless unmapped lakes and its countless unmapped islands. Up and down its broad current from time immemorial flitted the war canoes of the Cree, like birds of prey, to plunder the Blackfeet, or 'Horse Indians.' Between these high, steep banks came the voyageurs of the old fur companies--'ti-aing-ti-aing' in monotonous sing-song day and night, tracking the clumsy York boats up-stream all the way from tide water to within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Up these waters, with rapids so numerous that one loses count of them, came doughty traders of the Company with the swiftest paddlers the West has ever known. The gentleman in cocked hat and silk-lined overcape, with knee-buckled breeches and ruffles at wrist and throat, had a habit of tucking his sleeves up and dipping his hand in the water over the gunnels. If the