ing with ardor and constancy in the amelioration of the condition of the Indians, and who joins, as much as is in his power, the use of means to the laudable wishes of his heart.
I have traversed at several different times the vast plains which are watered by the Missouri and its principal tributaries, such as the Platte or Nebraska, Yellowstone, the Mankizita-Watpa, the Niobrara, Tchan Sausan, called James river by the whites, the Wasecha or Vermillion and the three great superior forks that constitute the source of the Missouri, viz., the Jefferson, the Gallatin and the Madison. Coasting along the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan, I penetrated 300 miles into the interior of the forests and plains watered by the Athabasca. In every place the whites, half-breeds and natives who inhabit these regions, agree in saying that the buffalo, moose, or American elk, and deer of all kinds, diminish in an alarming manner, and that in a few years these races of animals will have wholly disappeared. The'territory traversed by the Athabasca furnished, some years ago, abundant game to the greater part of the nations of the Crees, and to a tribe of Assiniboins, which, sixty years previous, had detached themselves from the main body of their nation.
Well, over this vast extent of territory I met but three families, viz.-an old Iroquois with his children and grandchildren, numbering about thirty-seven; a family of halfbreeds, composed of seven persons; and a Sioux with his wife and children. The Crees and the Assiniboins, hitherto the occupants of this land, have been forced to follow the track of the buffalo, and are beginning to intrude upon the territory of the Blackfeet. I resided a long time among the Flatheads and the Kalispels. I have visited at different epochs the Kootenais at the North, and the Shoshones or Snakes at the South. Their vast territories, watered by the principal branches of the upper Columbia and the Rio Colorado of the West, were formerly abundantly provided with