Nothing finer, indeed, could be imagined in all this remarkable
river's remarkable scenery than this impressive view, not from
jutting peaks, for the sky-line of the banks runs parallel with
the water, but from the antique grandeur of their sweep and
apparent junction.
That afternoon we rounded Point Brul?©, a high, bold cliff of
sandstone with three "lop-sticks" upon its top. The Indian's
lop-stick, called by the Cree piskoot??enusk, is a sort of living
talisman which he connects in some mysterious way with his own fate,
and which he will often go many miles out of his direct course to
visit. Even white men fall in with the fetish, and one of the three
we saw was called "Lambert's lop-stick." I myself had one made for
me by Gros Oreilles, the Saulteau Chief, nearly forty years ago, in
the forest east of Pointe du Chene, in what is now Manitoba. They
are made by stripping a tall spruce tree of a deep ring of branches,
leaving the top and bottom ones intact. The tree seems to thrive all
the same, and is a very noticeable, and not infrequent, object
throughout the whole Thickwood Indian country.
Just opposite the cliff referred to, the Little Buffalo, a swift
creek, enters between two bold shoulders of hills, and on its
western side are the wonderful gas springs. The "amphitheatre,"
sweeps around to, and is cloven by, that stream, its elevation
on the west side being lofty, and deeply grooved from its summit
downward, the whole locality at the time of our visit being
covered with raspberry bushes loaded with fruit.
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