Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/258

228 that terrible disease, which was introduced by an American steamboat, and, in the mad hope of assuaging the fever, casting themselves into the deadly stream. Under such circumstances they had no difficulty in making themselves masters of one hundred and sixty horses, and with this rich booty set out for their own camp. But the distemper had communicated itself to them, and ere long broke out on the way. Two-thirds of the robbers perished, and the survivors were obliged to abandon their ill-gotten spoil. The Company's people at Carlton had been all vaccinated; yet the contagion was communicated from the Assisiboine camp, and two of the servants fell victims to its malignity. It is with sincere pleasure I add, that the humane precautions taken by Chief Factor Rowand, and the other gentlemen in the Saskatchewan, to vaccinate the Crees, saved the whole of that valuable tribe from the disastrous consequences of the malady, which happily did not penetrate farther north. We afterwards learned that it spread throughout the Plain tribes along the American lines to the Rocky Mountains; that it broke out on the north-west coast, and committed dreadful havoc among the sanguinary tribes from Vancouver Island northward, and at the Russian settlements. Of the Mandans of the Missouri it was said that