Then when the shadows of the night had fallen around and all was silent, save the river's tide against the rocks, we would stretch our blankets on the springy moss of the crag and lie down to sleep with only the stars for a roof. Happy, happy days were these--days the memory of which goes very far into the future, growing brighter as we journey farther away from them, for the scenes through which our course was laid were such as speak in whispers, only when we have left them--the whispers of the pine-tree, the music of running water, the stillness of great lonely lakes. On the evening of the fifth day from leaving Fort Alexander we reached the foot of the Rat Portage, the twenty-seventh, and last, upon the Winnipeg River; above this portage stretched the Lake of the Woods, which here poured its waters through a deep rock-bound gorge with tremendous force. During the five days we had only encountered two solitary Indians; they knew nothing whatever about the Expedition, and, after a short parley and a present of tea and flour, we pushed on. About midday on the fourth day we halted at the Mission of the White Dog, a spot which some more than heathen missionary had named Islington in a moment of virtuous cockneyism. What could have tempted him to commit this act of desecration it is needless to ask. Islington on the Winnipeg! O religious Gilpin, hadst thou fallen a prey to savage Cannibalism, not even Sidney Smith's farewell aspiration would have saved the savage who devoured you, you must have killed him.