From the head of Lake Superior he had to travel practically all the way by canoe, though occasionally on horseback. His route lay through the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg to Norway House, up the North Saskatchewan to Edmonton House, up the Athabasca to Jasper’s, across the Yellowhead Pass—through which the Canadian National Railway now runs—then down the whole length of the Columbia, by the Arrow Lakes and Fort Okanagan. At Edmonton he found quite “a large establishment,” forty or fifty men, with their wives and children, amounting altogether to about 139, all living within the pickets of the fort. The men were occupied chiefly in building the company’s boats, sawing timber and cutting up firewood. The women, all, without exception, either Indian or Métis, were employed making moccasins and clothing for the men, and converting buffalo meat into “pimmi-kon.” The one real settlement in the whole of the West was that of Fort Garry, extending about 50 miles along the banks of the Red River, and “back from the water, according to the original grant from the Indians, as far as a person can distinguish a man from a horse on a clear day.” Here lived about 6,000 Métis, all speaking Cree and French, though “governed by a chief named Grant.” The white folk, about 3,000 in number, were Scottish families, living “in great plenty so far as mere food and clothing are concerned.” Luxuries were “almost unattainable.” There was “no market nearer than St. Paul’s, on the Mississippi River, a distance of nearly 700 miles over a trackless prairie.” The Scotsmen were genuine farmers—the fathers of western agriculture. The Métis of that time—well, they had discarded “the practice of scalping,” but otherwise Kane says they differed “in very few respects from the pure Indians.” In fact, when our artist went riding with them after buffalo, the first game they stalked was a party of Sioux Indians, of whom they brought down eight at one volley. “They abandoned the dead bodies to the malice of a small party of Saulteaux, who accompanied them.” These Indian allies immediately “commenced a scalp dance, during which they mutilated the bodies in a most horrible manner. One old woman, who had lost several relatives by the Sioux, rendered herself particularly conspicuous” in this ghastly work. When they came up with the buffalo, a herd of four or five thousand bulls, the chase continued only about one hour, but at the end of that time five hundred lay dead and dying over an area of five or six square miles. It was calculated, according to Kane, that the Métis alone destroyed 30,000 annually. Farther west, near Fort Carlton, our traveller found the Indians hunting buffalo in their own way—driving them into an enclosure and then despatching them with spears and arrows. Some of the bowmen were so strong that arrows passed right through the buffalo’s body.