The following facts may be depended upon.

The disorder attacks those only who drink the water of the river.

It is indeed in its worst state confined almost entirely to the half-breed women and children, who reside constantly at the fort, and make use of river water, drawn in the winter through a hole cut in the ice.

The men, being often from home on journeys through the plain, when their drink is melted snow, are less affected; and, if any of them exhibit during the winter, some incipient symptoms of the complaint, the annual summer voyage to the sea-coast generally effects a cure.

The natives who confine themselves to snow water in the winter, and drink of the small rivulets which flow through the plains in the summer, are exempt from the attacks of this disease.
"These facts are curious, inasmuch as they militate against the generally-received opinion that the disease is caused by drinking snow-water; an opinion which seems to have originated from bronchocele being endemial to sub-alpine districts.
"The Saskatchawan, at Edmonton, is clear in the winter, and also in the summer, except during the May and July floods.