On the 8th of September we left Kamloops with Mr. McKay, and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Assiniboine, the boy, and another Indian. We had determined to take our friends down to Victoria, for, although The Assiniboine had once visited the Red River Settlement, the woman and boy had never seen anything more like a town than a Hudson’s Bay Post. We crossed the Thompson at the foot of Kamloops Lake, which is about twelve miles long and not more than half a mile in breadth, and surrounded by fine rocky hills; then, leaving the river, we kept on to the valley of the Bonaparte, where we struck the road from Cariboo to Yale, as yet only partially completed. The Assiniboine and his wife were both greatly astonished at the Queen’s highway, but the boy became quite excited, exclaiming, whenever any person appeared in sight, “Aiwarkaken! mina quatuck!” (By Jove! there’s another fellow!) But when we encountered a real swell of the neighbourhood, driving a “buggy” and pair, he was delighted beyond expression. We now followed the valley of the Bonaparte until it joins that of the Thompson, viewing with wonder the curious terraces which strike the eye of a stranger so oddly, and give such a peculiar character to the scenery of the Thompson and the Fraser. We first observed them on the North Thompson, some thirty or forty miles above Kamloops, and they are invariably present all along the main river until its junction with the Fraser at Lytton. On the Fraser they stretch from a little north of Alexandria to the Cañons above Yale, a distance of above 300 miles. These terraces--or benches, as they are called in this district--are perfectly level, and of exactly the same height on each side of the river. They differ from the so-called “parallel roads” of Glenroy in their enormous extent, being vast plains as compared with the mere ledges of the Scottish terraces, and are also free from the erratic boulders which mark the latter. In most places there are three tiers, each tier corresponding with a similar one on the opposite side of the valley. The lowest of the three, where the valley expands, presents a perfectly flat surface of often many miles in extent, raised some forty or fifty feet above the level of the river bank, with a sloping front, resembling the face of a railway embankment. Higher still, the second tier is generally cut out of the mountain side, seldom more than a few acres in extent, and raised sixty or seventy feet above the lower one; while, marked at an inaccessible height along the face of the bluffs which run down to the river, and probably 400 or 500 feet above it, is the third tier. These “benches” are quite uniform, and of even surface, entirely free from the great boulders so numerous in the present bed of the river, being composed of shale, sand, and gravel, the detritus of the neighbouring mountains. They are clothed with bunch-grass and wild sage, while here and there a few scattered pines relieve the yellow bareness so