After this interruption conviviality reigned again. We played “Pitch seven up” till we were too sleepy to see the cards; the Hudson’s Bay man tuned up indiscriminately, Janet sang “Auld Robin Gray” five or six times, “Billy the Bladge” carried on a fierce argument with the manager of the bank on colonial politics, everybody talked at the same time, smoked and drank whisky until far on towards daylight, when we turned out into the cold night with the thermometer standing at five degrees, and made our way back to Cusheon’s. On the 30th of October, having spent ten days in William’s Creek, we resumed our packs, and bade adieu to Cusheon’s, Cameron Town, and Judge Cox, and started for the Mouth of Quesnelle. The snow had fallen to the depth of six or seven inches, but this had been well beaten by previous passengers. We reached the banks of the Fraser in three days, with far greater ease than we had walked the same distance on our way in. To our dismay, we found that the steamer to Soda Creek had stopped running for the winter; but were relieved to learn that an open boat would start for that place on the following day, in which we took our passages. The owner of the boat, Mr. McBride, was one of a party which had ascended the Fraser, and crossed to Peace River by Stuart’s and McLeod’s Lakes, during the summer. They had followed the Peace River right through the Rocky Mountains, and as far as Fort Dunegan, on the eastern side. He described the country on the west of the mountains as resembling the ordinary Fraser River country; but that to the _east_ of them a mixture of fine woods and fertile prairies, abounding in game. On the banks of Smoky River, one of the tributaries of Peace River, numerous craters were observed, emitting dense volumes of smoke and sulphurous gases from upwards of thirty funnel-shaped apertures, the size of ordinary stove-pipes. The banks were in many parts covered with a deposit of pure sulphur. On Tribe or Nation River, another tributary, they found slate-rock and quartz veins, and very good diggings on some of the bars.