East of Devil's Point, the Saskatchewan breaks from its river bed and is lost for a hundred and fifty miles through a country of pure muskeg, quaking silt soft as sponge, overgrown with reed and goose grass. Here are not even low banks; there are no banks at all. Canoes are on a level with the land, and reeds sixteen feet high line the aisled water channels. One can stand on prow or stern and far as eye can see is naught but reeds and waterways, waterways and reeds. Below the muskeg country lies Cumberland Lake. At its widest the lake is some forty miles across, but by skirting from island to island boatmen could make a crossing of only twenty-three miles. Far to the south is the blue rim of the Pas mountain, named from the Indian word Pasquia, meaning open country. Hendry's canoes were literally loaded with peltry when he drew in at the Pas. There he learned a bitter lesson on the meaning of a rival's suavity. The French plied his Indians with brandy, then picked out a thousand of his best skins, a trick that cost the Hudson's Bay Company some of its profit. On June 1 the canoes once more set out for York. With the rain-swollen current the paddlers easily made fast time and reached York on June 20. James Isham, the governor of the fort, realized that his men had brought down a good cargo of furs, but when Hendry began to talk of Indians on horseback, he was laughed out of the service. Who had ever heard of Indians on horseback? The Company voted Hendry £20 reward, and Isham by discrediting Hendry's report probably thought to save himself the trouble of going inland. But the unseen destiny of world movement rudely disturbed the lazy trader's indolent dream. In four years French power fell at Quebec, and the wildwood rovers of the St Lawrence, unrestricted by the new government and soon organized under the leadership of Scottish merchants at Montreal, invaded the sacred precincts of the Company's inmost preserve. In other volumes of this Series we shall learn more of the fur lords and explorers in the great West and North of Canada; of the fierce warfare between the rival traders; of the opening up of great rivers to commerce, and of the founding of colonies that were to grow into commonwealths. We shall witness the gradual, stubborn, and unwilling retreat of the fur trade before the onmarching settler, until at last the Dominion government took over the vast domain known as Rupert's Land, and the Company, founded by the courtiers of King Charles and given absolute sway over an empire, fell to the status of an ordinary commercial organization. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE