mistake for our first meals was that we put everything on the fire
at the same time, and, funnily enough, our fish boiled quicker
than the sausages, and they again much quicker than the pudding.
Once there was a bread-and-butter one, about which there has been
a good deal of chaff, as it was supposed to be first cousin to
bread-and-milk!

The weather was very bad, constant rain, and we had a fair specimen of
Winnipeg mud. To these buckboards (which is a buggy with a board
behind for luggage), or to any of the carriages, there are no wings to
protect one from the mud, so that we always came in bespattered all
over, a great trial to our clothes. But in spite of the rain and bad
weather we were determined to come out here on Friday. We hired a
democrat, a light waggon with two seats, and started during the
afternoon in the rain, hoping it might clear which it eventually did
when we were about a third of our way. It was awfully cold, and the
jolting of the carriage over the prairie so fearful that our wraps
were always falling off. I had always understood the prairie was so
beautifully smooth to drive over; but found it much resembling an
English arable field thrown out of cultivation, with innumerable
mole-hills and badger-holes, and natural cracks about an inch wide,
which drain the water off into the marshes. If your carriage is
heavily weighted it runs pretty easy; but woe betide you if driving by
yourself--you bump up and down like a pea on a shovel.

We nearly upset, shortly after leaving Winnipeg, as a house was on
the move, or, more properly speaking, had been, as it was stuck in
a mud-hole; a load of hay, trying to get round it, had stuck as well;
and the only place given us to pass was fearfully on the slant down to
a deepish dyke, into which a buggy had already capsized. We caught the