The wildest of the buffalo hunts used to take place along this section of the river, or between what are now known as Pitt and Battleford. It was a common trick of the eternally warring Blackfeet and Cree to lie in hiding among the woods here and stampede all horses, or for the Blackfeet to set canoes adrift down the river or scuttle the teepees of the frightened Cree squaws who waited at this point for their lords' return from the Bay. Round that three-hundred mile bend in the river known as 'the Elbow' the water is wide and shallow, with such numbers of sand-bars and shallows and islands that one is lost trying to keep the main current. Shallow water sounds safe and easy for canoeing, but duststorms and wind make the Elbow the most trying stretch of water in the whole length of the river. Beyond this great bend, still called the Elbow, the Saskatchewan takes a swing north-east through the true wilderness primeval. The rough waters below the Elbow are the first of twenty-two rapids round the same number of sharp turns in the river. Some are a mere rippling of the current, more noisy than dangerous; others run swift and strong for sixteen miles. First are the Squaw Rapids, where the Indian women used to wait while the men went on down-stream with the furs. Next are the Cold Rapids, and boats are barely into calm water out of these when a roar gives warning of more to come, and a tall tree stripped of all branches but a tufted crest on top--known among Indians as a 'lob-stick,--marks two more rippling rapids. The Crooked Rapids send canoes twisting round point after point almost to the forks of the South Saskatchewan. Here, five miles below the modern fur post, at a bend in the river commanding a great sweep of approach, a gay courtier of France built Fort La Corne. Who called the bold sand-walls to the right Heart Hills? And how comes it that here are Cadotte Rapids, named after the famous voyageur family of Cadottes, whose ancestor gave his life and his name to one section of the Ottawa? [Illustration: A CAMP IN THE SWAMP COUNTRY From a photograph] Forty miles below La Corne is Nepawin, the 'looking-out-place' of the Indians for the coming trader, where the French had another post. And still the river widens and widens. Though the country is flat, the level of the river is ten feet below a crumbling shore worn sheer as a wall, with not the width of a hand for camping-place below. On a spit of the north shore was the camping-place known as Devil's Point, where no voyageur would ever stay because the long point was inhabited by demons. The bank is steep here, flanked by a swamp of huge spruce trees criss-crossed by the log-jam of centuries. The reason for the ill omen of the place is plain enough--a long point running out with three sides exposed to a bellowing wind.