On the 8th July, Mr.Laird secured the adhesion of the Crees and Beavers at Fort Vermilion, and Messrs.

Ross and McKenna of those at Little Red River, the headman there refusing to sign at first because, he said, "he had a divine inspiration to the contrary"! This was followed by adhesions taken by the latter Commissioners, on the 13th, from the Crees and Chipewyans at Fort Chipewyan.
"Here it was," Mr.McKenna writes me, "that the chief asked for a railway--the first time in the history of Canada that the red man demanded as a condition of cession that steel should be laid into his country.

He evidently understood the transportation question, for a railway, he said, by bringing them into closer connection with the market, would enhance the value of what they had to sell, and decrease the cost of what they had to buy.

He had a striking object-lesson in the fact that flour was $12 a sack at the Fort.

These Chipewyans lost no time in flowery oratory, but came at once to business, and kept us, myself in particular, on tenterhooks for two hours.