in our frantic exertions, it occurred to us that our friend Mr. O’B. had hitherto given us no assistance, and, looking round, descried him still seated where we had left him, feebly tugging at a boot which he appeared to have great difficulty in pulling on. We shouted to him, for God’s sake, to come and help us, or we should all be burnt to death. He replied, in a doubtful, uncertain manner, that he was coming directly, when he had got his boots on. Roused at length by our fierce objurgations, and struck by the suggestion that he would burn as easily with his boots off as when properly shod, he ran up, trembling and bewildered, bringing a tardy and ineffectual assistance in the shape of half-pints of water in his little tin mug! Gradually, however, we succeeded in cutting off the fire, which still raged fiercely away from us, recovered our horses, and found that even the one which had caused us such anxiety was not seriously injured, although singed all over, and much burnt about the legs. The Assiniboine came back soon after, having found the road, and we therefore re-packed the horses, rapidly retraced our steps to the point where the trails diverged, and camped there for the night. Clouds of smoke, visible during this and the following day behind us, showed that the fire was still burning furiously. The next day we turned off at right angles from the McLeod, passing through the usual routine of muskeg and pine forest, and before night came were drenched through and through by the rain of the most tremendous thunder-storm we ever encountered, with the exception of the memorable one on Red River. At our evening’s camping place we found an inscription on a tree, to the effect that the three miners who had left the party in the Saskatchewan to find out the sources of that river, discovering that they were close to the Athabasca, had turned back to prospect the sources of the McLeod. Heavy rain continued to fall without intermission the following day, and we were obliged to remain under shelter of our lodge. But the following morning broke clear and bright, and a good trail of about half a mile brought us to the banks of the Athabasca, flowing like the Saskatchewan, in a channel cut in the flat bottom of the wide river-valley, the steep sides of which, 200 feet in height, were thickly clothed with pine, spruce, and poplar, resembling those of the McLeod. The river-valley of the Athabasca is, however, deeper and wider, and its waters turbid, deep, and rapid. At this time it was tremendously swollen--at the height of the summer flood--and formed a striking contrast to the clear, shallow stream we had crossed before. Full to the overflowing of the present banks, the stream, some 200 yards in breadth, rushed along, swelling in great waves over the huge boulders in its bed, and bearing along large pine-trees of five or six feet in diameter, which played about like straws in the powerful current.