Keith and Black, the partners of the North-West Company in charge, in the most kind and hospitable manner.

Thus terminated a winter's journey of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles, in the progress of which there was a great intermixture of agreeable and disagreeable circumstances.

Could the amount of each be balanced I suspect the latter would much preponderate; and amongst these the initiation into walking in snowshoes must be considered as prominent.

The suffering it occasions can be but faintly imagined by a person who thinks upon the inconvenience of marching with a weight of between two and three pounds constantly attached to galled feet and swelled ankles.

Perseverance and practice only will enable the novice to surmount this pain.
The next evil is the being constantly exposed to witness the wanton and unnecessary cruelty of the men to their dogs, especially those of the Canadians who beat them unmercifully and habitually vent on them the most dreadful and disgusting imprecations.