voyage.

How will I attempt to describe it! There is so much to tell and yet I
know not what is best to record and what is best to leave out.

Half a day's journey from Troy we crossed the Qu'Appelle river. The
scenery upon the banks of that most picturesque of streams would
demand the pencil of a Claude Lorraine, or the pen of a Washington
Irving to do it justice. Such hills I never before beheld. Not
altogether for size but for beauty. Clad in a garb of the deepest
green they towered aloft, like the battlement of two rival
fortresses--and while the sun lit up the hills to our right, the
shades of mid-day deepened upon the frowning buttresses to our left.
Every tree seemed to have a peculiar hue, a certain depth of color
completely its own. Indeed, one would imagine that Dame Nature had
been trying a gigantic crazy quilt and had flung it over the bed of
the Qu'Appelle valley, that all who went by might admire her
handiwork.

I might here remark that the days of the summer are longer, in the
north-west, than in the Ottawa district. In fact, we used to rise at
three o'clock in the morning and drive for three hours before our
breakfast. It would then be grey dawn and the flush of approaching
day-light could be seen over the eastern hills. At nine o'clock in the
evening it would be twilight The days of midwinter are proportionately
shorter.

The road we had to travel was a lovely one: at times it might be a
little rough, but indeed it could well compare with most of the roads
in our more civilized places. Nearly every night we managed to reach a