After all, I was not much too soon. When one has journeyed very far along such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though one had quietly taken one's ease at an inn. Still there were others to be consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine. After an hour's delay I went to the house where the men were lying down, and said to them, "The Colonel is close at hand. It will be well for us to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive at the Fort;" so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into Rainy River two miles above the fort. It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river makes as it flows out of the Lake. Forcing up this rapid, we saw spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake. The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it. can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the lake first caught my sight. There they are! Yes, there they were. Coming along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant as they shot down towards the river's source. Beyond, in the expanse of the lake, a boat or two showed far and faint. We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the centre sat a figure in uniform with forage-cap on head, and I could see that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and commenced to dip down its rushing waters. Quitting the rock, I got again into my canoe, and we shoved off into the current. Thus running down the rapid the two canoes drew together, until at its foot they were only a few paces apart. Then the officer in the large canoe, recognizing a face he had last seen three months before in the hotel at Toronto, called out, "Where on earth have you dropped from?" and with a "Fort Garry, twelve days out, sir," I was in his boat.