to cross in due time the now swelling rapids and rivers. The news between travelers who meet in the mountains is quickly conveyed to one another. The leaders of the company were my old friends, Mr. Ermatinger, of the Honorable Hudson Bay Company, and two distinguished officers of the English army, Captains Ward and Vavasseur,a whom I had the honor of entertaining last year at the Great Kalispel lake. Captain Ward is the gentleman who had the kindness to take charge of my letters for the States and for Europe.
Fifteen Indians of the Kettle Falls tribe accompanied him. Many of them had scaled the mountains with 150 pounds weight upon their backs. The worthy Captain Ward spoke many things in praise of them. He admired their honesty and civility, and above all, their sincere piety and great regularity in their religious duties; every morning and evening they were seen retiring a short distance from the camp, to sing one or two hymns and join in common prayer. " I hope," added the Captain, " I shall never forget the example which these poor but good savages have given me. During the time that they were with me I was much struck by their becoming deportment, and I have never seen more sincere piety than they exhibited."
The gentlemen of the English brigade were now at the end of their chief difficulties and troubles. They gladly threw away their snow-shoes to take horses for four days; at Fort jasper they were to enter skiffs, to go to Fort Assiniboin, on the river Athabasca. There they would take horse again for Fort Edmonton or Augustus, on the Saskatche wan. They descend this river, which runs into Lake Winnipeg, traverse the lake, and finally follow the Nelson river
01 "Two commissioners, Warre and Vavasour, were sent out in 1845 by the Hudson Bay Company to examine into McLoughlin's policy and proceedings, and the state of the country generally. They dispatched their report without showing it to McLoughlin, which hurt his feelings greatly, implying as it did that his conduct had been unfavorably criticised by the commissioners."- Bancroft.