On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake, and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of "What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question, might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury, it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia. But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria. "You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see," said the Hudson Bay officer in charge. "Yes," I replied. "Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?" "Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it." "Did he say he had had it himself?" "No." "Well, he had," continued ny host, "only a month ago, and the coat and trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he lay all the time he had it," was the pleasant reply.