Crossing the north end of Lake Winnipeg, canoes bound inland passed Horse Island and ascended the Saskatchewan. Only one interruption broke navigation for one thousand miles--Grand Rapids at the entrance of the river, three miles of which could be tracked, three must be portaged--in all a trail of about nine miles on the north shore where the English had laid a corduroy road of log rollers. The ruins of old Fort Bourbon and Basquia or Pas, where Hendry had seen the French in ’54, were first passed. Then boats came to the metropolis of the Saskatchewan--the gateway port of the great Up Country--Cumberland House on Sturgeon Lake. Here, Hearne had built the post for Hudson’s Bay, and Frobisher the fort for the Nor’Westers. Here, boats could go on up the Saskatchewan, or strike northwest through a chain of lakes past Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse to Athabasca and MacKenzie River. Fishing never failed, and when the fur traders went down to headquarters, their families remained at Cumberland House laying up a store of dried fish for the winter. Beyond Cumberland House came those forts famous in Northwest annals, Lower Fort des Prairies, and the old French Nipawi, and Fort a la Corne, and Pitt, and Fort George, and Vermilion, and Fort Saskatchewan and Upper Fort des Prairies or Augustus--many of which have crumbled to ruin, others merged into modern cities like Augustus into Edmonton. On the south branch of the Saskatchewan and between the two rivers were more forts--oases in a wilderness of savagery--Old Chesterfield House where Red Deer River comes in and Upper Bow Fort within a stone’s throw of the modern summer resort at Banff, where grassed mounds and old arrowheads to-day mark the place of the palisades. More dangers surrounded the traders of the South Saskatchewan than in any part of the Up Country. The Blackfeet were hostile to the white men. With food in abundance from the buffalo hunts, they had no need of white traders and resented the coming of men who traded firearms to their enemies. There was, beside, constant danger of raiders from the Missouri--Snakes and Crows and Minnetaries. Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers built their forts close together for defence in South Saskatchewan, but that did not save them. At Upper Bow Fort in Banff Valley, in 1796, Missouri raiders surrounded the English post, scaled the palisades, stabbed all the whites to death except one clerk, who hid under a dust pile in the cellar, pillaged the stores, set fire, then rallied across to the Nor’Westers, but the Nor’Westers had had warning. Jaccot Finlay and the Cree Beau Parlez, met the assailants with a crash of musketry. Then dashing out, they rescued the Hudson’s Bay man, launched their canoes by night and were glad to escape with their lives down the Bow to Old Chesterfield House at Red Deer River.