It was August 17th when Long's expedition left Fort Douglas and went down the Red River. It took but two days to reach the mouth of the river and cross Lake Winnipeg to Fort Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Six days more brought the swift canoe-men up the river to Lake of the Woods. At the falls of Rainy River was the Hudson's Bay Company establishment, then under the charge of fur trader McGillivray. On the opposite side of the river was the fort of the American Fur Company. Following the old route, they reached Grand Portage, September 12th, and thence the expedition returned to the East. Major Long's expedition was a well-conducted and successful enterprise. Its members were of the highest respectability, and the two volumes written by Secretary Keating have the charm of real adventure about them. BELTRAMI'S DASH. When Major Long was leaving Fort Snelling, on the Mississippi, to go upon the expedition we have just described, an erratic but energetic and clever Italian, named J. C. Beltrami, asked to be allowed to accompany him. This aspiring but wayward man has left us a book, consisting of letters addressed to Madame la Comtesse Compagoni, a lady of rank in Florence, which is very interesting. On starting he wrote, "My first intention, that of going in search of the real source of the Mississippi, was always before my eyes." Beltrami, while clever, seems to have been a man of insufferable conceit. On the journey to Big Stone Lake and thence along the river, in the buffalo hunts, in conferences with the Sioux, the Italian adventurer awakened the resentment of the commander of the expedition, who refused to allow him to accompany his party further. This proved rather favourable to the purpose of Beltrami, who, with a half-breed guide and Chippewa Indians, started to go eastward, having a mule and a dog train as means of transport. After a few days' journey the guide left him, returning with the mule and dog train to Pembina. Next his Indian guide deserted him, fearing the Sioux, and Beltrami was left to make his way in a canoe up the river to Red Lake. Inexperienced in the management of a birch bark canoe, Beltrami was upset, but he at length proceeded along the bank and shallows of the river, dragging the canoe with a tow line after him, and arrived in miserable plight at Red Lake. Here he engaged a guide and interpreter, and writes that he went "where no white man had previously travelled." He was now on the highway to renown. He was taken from point to point on the many lakes of Northern Minnesota, and affixed names to them. On August 20th, 1823, he went over several portages, led by his guide to Turtle Lake, which was to him a source of wonder, as he saw it from the flow of waters south to the Gulf of Mexico, north to the Frozen Sea, east to the Atlantic, and west toward the Pacific Ocean.