of the fall; and upon deep snow the danger is not greatthough I was often half buried, when I required the assistance of my companions, which was always tendered with great kindness and good humor.
We made thirty miles the first day, and then made preparations to encamp. Some pine trees were cut down and stripped of their branches, and these being laid on the snow furnished us with a bed, whilst a fire was lighted on a floor of green logs. To sleep thus - under the beautiful canopy of the starry heavens -in the midst of lofty and steep mountains - among sweet murmuring rills and roaring torrents -may appear strange to you, and to all lovers of rooms, rendered comfortable by stoves and feathers; but you may think differently after having come and breathed the pure air of the mountains, where in return coughs and colds are unknown. Come and make the trial, and you will say that it is easy to forget the fatigues of a long march, and find contentment and joy even upon the spread branches of pines, on which, after the Indian fashion, we extended ourselves and slept, wrapped up in buffalo robes.
The next morning we commenced the descent of what is called the Great Western Slope." This took us five hours. The whole slope is covered with gigantic cedars and with pine trees of different species. Woe to the man who happens to have a heavy body or to make a false step. I say this from experience; for many times I found myself twenty or thirty feet from the point of my departure -happy indeed if, in the fall, I did not violently strike my head against the trunk of some great tree.
At the foot of the mountain an obstacle of a new kind presented itself. All the barriers of snow, the innumerable banks, which had stopped the water of the streams, lakes and torrents, were broken up during the night, and swelled considerably the Great Portage river, which is scarce more than a mile wide, and it meanders so remarkably in this to Fr. La Grande Cote de 1'Ouest.