Next day this eventful voyage ended. We arrived at Fort McMurray before noon. There was one particularly handsome fellow among my passengers, who attracted me by his refined appearance, but he spoke no English. The lad with many of his companions went in to bathe in the Clearwater River, which joins the Athabasca at this point. In front of the village it is very shallow. This man went out too far. There was a hole into which he fell and could not swim out. He was drowned before it was possible for a boat to reach him. A drag was improvised out of a two-by-four to which were attached cords fitted with fish hooks. After six hours' labor our mournful task was successfully accomplished and he was laid to rest in a new outfit of store clothes in accordance with the Mohomedan faith. Thus for a week was my journeying at an end. (_To be continued_) ========== FORTY YEARS IN SERVICE OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY INLAND (_Continued from December issue_) By N. M. W. J. McKENZIE BUFFALO were plentiful in my first years and I have seen thousands of them. Many of the old freighters have told me that very often when the buffalo were travelling south that they were compelled to stop their brigades of carts and camp for one or two days until the great herds passed. Of course the freighters picked out the choice ones, or as many as they required, for meat supply on the trip. I saw where buffalo in the fall had tried to cross the Saskatchewan River, and had broken through the ice. The animals behind had forced the others on, trampling them to death. Carcasses of dead buffalo completely bridged the river, the remainder of the herd passing over them. Buffalo always followed the leader like sheep. There were millions of them in that part of the country and all disappeared in a few years. Today there is a herd of about two hundred and fifty animals in the MacKenzie River valley. They have not increased in numbers. The Siberian wolves get among them continually and destroy many of the calves. There is another herd in the government park at Wainwright, Saskatchewan, which is thriving and increasing. After the buffalo had disappeared, the plains Indians, who numbered many thousands at that time, were reduced to starvation. Many of them died, and the Canadian government of that day was compelled to gather them all into reservations throughout the country, and ration them. Living in small log houses, with only one room, was a great change from their roaming, open-air life on the plains, and they became afflicted with all kinds of diseases, consumption being their greatest destroyer.