In the company was one woman, with two children. She was an Irishwoman; but she bore the name of Shubert, from which we may infer that her husband was not an Irishman. Sunday having intervened, the travellers did not reach Portage la Prairie until the fourth day out. Another week passed before they arrived at Fort Ellice. Heavy rains came on now, and James M'Kay, chief trader at Fort Ellice, opened his doors to the gold-seekers. Harness and carts repaired and more pemmican bought, the travellers crossed the Qu'Appelle river in a Hudson's Bay scow, paying toll of fifty cents a cart. From the Qu'Appelle westward the journey grew more arduous. The weather became oppressively hot and mosquitoes swarmed from the sloughs. At Carlton and at Fort Pitt the fur-traders' 'string band'--husky-dogs in wolfish packs--surrounded the camp of the Overlanders and stole pemmican from under the tent-flaps. From Fort Pitt westward the trail crossed a rough, wooded country, and there were no more scows to take the ox-carts across the rivers. Eleven days of continuous rain had flooded the sloughs into swamps; and in three days as many as eight corduroy bridges had to be built. Two {61} long trees were felled parallel and light poles were laid across the floating trees. Where the trees swerved to the current, some one would swim out and anchor them with ropes till the hundred carts had passed safely to the other side. It was the 21st of July when the travellers came out on the high banks of the North Saskatchewan, flowing broad and swift, opposite Fort Edmonton. There had been floods and all the company's rafts had been carried away. But the ox-carts were poled across by means of a big York boat; and the travellers were welcomed inside the fort. The arrival of the Overlanders is remembered at Edmonton by some old-timers even to this day. Salvoes of welcome were fired from the fort cannon by a half-breed shooting his musket into the touch-hole of the big gun. Concerts were given, with bagpipes, concertinas, flutes, drums, and fiddles, in honour of the far-travellers. Pemmican-bags were replenished from the company's stores. Miners often uttered loud complaints against the charges made by the fur-traders for provisions, forgetting what it cost to pack these provisions in by dog-train and canoe. If the Hudson's Bay officials at Fort Garry and {62} Edmonton had withheld their help, the Overlanders would have perished before they reached the Rockies. Though the miner did everything to destroy the fur trade--started fires which ravaged the hunter's forest haunts, put up saloons which demoralized the Indians, built wagon-roads where aforetime wandered only the shy creatures of the wilds--though the miner heralded the doom of the fur trade--yet with an unvarying courtesy, from Fort Garry to the Rockies, the Hudson's Bay men helped the Overlanders.