This was not our last stick: there were other awkward rapids
near by; but by dint of wading, shouldering, pulling and tracking,
we got over the last of them and into a deep channel for good,
having advanced only five miles after a day of incessant toil,
most of it in the water.

Our camp that night was a memorable one. The day was the fiftieth
anniversary of Father Lacombe's ministration as a missionary in
the North-West, and all joined in presenting him with a suitable
address, handsomely engrossed by Mr. Prudhomme on birch bark,
and signed by the whole party. A poem, too, composed by Mr.
Coté, a gentleman of literary gifts and taste, also written on
bark, was read and presented at the same time. [The poem, the text
of which was secured from the author too late for insertion here,
will be found in the Appendix, p. 490.] Père Lacombe made a touching
impromptu reply, which was greatly appreciated. Many of us were not
of the worthy Father's communion, yet there was but one feeling,
that of deep respect for the labours of this celebrated missionary,
whose life had been a continuous effort to help the unbefriended
Indian into the new but inevitable paths of self-support, and to
shield him from the rapacity of the cold incoming world now surging
around him. After the presentation, over a good cigar, the Father
told some inimitable stories of Indian life on the plains in the
old days, which to my great regret are too lengthy for inclusion
here. One incident, however, being _apropos_ of himself, must find
place. Turning the conversation from materialism, idealism, and the
other "isms" into which it had drifted, he spoke of the fears so
many have of ghosts, and even of a corpse, and confessed that, from
early training, he had shared this fear until he got rid of it in an
incident one winter at Lac Ste. Anne. He had been sent for during