ON TO OUR HOME.
At the end of six weeks my husband returned from the west, and with many
pleasant recollections of Battleford, we left for our own home, which
I had pictured in my mind with joyous anticipation, as the place of
our continued happiness: a beautiful oasis, in that land of prairie and
sparse settlement, and with a buoyancy of spirit which true happiness
alone can bring, I looked forward with anticipated pleasure, which made
that little log house appear to me, a palace, and we its king and queen.
On this last part of our journey we were favored with the company of
Mr. Ballentyne of Battleford who went with us, and after the first day's
travelling, we stopped all night at a half-breed's house, where they
had a large fire-place made of mud, which was just like a solid piece
of stone; they had a bright fire, and everything appeared nice and tidy
within; a woman was making bannock, and when she had the dough prepared,
she took a frying pan and put the cake in and stood it up before the
fire. This is the way they do all their baking, and then she fried some
nice white fish and hung a little kettle on a long iron hook over the
fire, put in potatoes, and boiled the tea-kettle, making the tea in it
too. She then spread a white cloth over the table and we all enjoyed our
supper together after the long ride. The squaw gave us a nice clean bed
to sleep in, making theirs on the floor and in the morning I saw four
little children crawling out from under the bed where we slept, and my
husband looked up at me and laughed, and said, "that is where children
sleep up in _this country_." Their ways appeared very strange to me, and
in the morning before going away, they gave us a warm breakfast.
We travelled all the next day and camped that night. We had a small
tin stove which is part of a camping outfit, and which smoked very much
while cooking. We had great trouble to know how we would obtain a light,
but we had a candle and we lighted that, and then we had nothing to hold
it in, but as necessity is the mother of invention, we found a way out
of the difficulty; we took a pocket knife that had two blades, and stuck
one blade in the tent pole and opened the other half way, fastening the
candle into the blade, which answered the purpose and enabled us to
see while we ate our supper. We then turned down our beds, and in a
few minutes were fast asleep. When morning came we had breakfast, and
travelled on again. Mr. Ballentyne shot some prairie chickens and we had
them for our dinner, which was a great treat to me. We arrived at Fort
Pitt on the tenth, bidding Mr. Ballentyne good-bye, stopped at Mr.
McLean's all night, where we enjoyed a very pleasant evening.
The next morning we left for Onion Lake, where we were welcomed by Mr.
Mann and family, and after a night's rest proceeded on our journey
to Frog Lake, reaching there on the 12th. We went to Mr. and Mrs.
Delaney's, who kindly allowed me to stop there until my husband fixed
up some articles of furniture at our own house two miles further on and
south-west of the Lake.
After arriving at Mrs. Delaney's, my husband left me and went down to
the house to work, on Saturday evening he came back. On Sunday morning
Mr. Quinn came over and asked us to go for a drive, we accepted the
invitation. It was a bright frosty morning; he took us to our little
home that I had not yet seen. On hearing the men singing who were
employed at the mill, we drove down to their cooking tent, where we
found Mr. Gilchrist cooking breakfast for fourteen men. They had a large
cooking stove inside, with a long board table; the table was covered
with tin plates and cups. They had rabbit soup, and bread and coffee for
breakfast; after getting ourselves warm we drove back to Mr. Delaney's.
On the following Thursday my husband drove up and took me to our home,
where all was in beautiful order, and Mr. Gilchrist waiting for our
arrival.