initial commit of ebook 15401HEADmain

16 files changed, 35200 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/15401-8.txt b/15401-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e205cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11730 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Lone Land
+       A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
+
+Author: W. F. Butler
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15401]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Col Choat
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT LONE LAND: A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE IN THE
+NORT-WEST OF AMERICA.
+
+BY COLONEL W. F. BUTLER, C.B., F.R.G.S.
+AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE SIXTY-NINTH REGIMENT," ETC.
+
+
+"A full fed river winding slow,
+By herds-upon an endless plain."
+
+. . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+"And some one pacing there alone
+Who paced for ever in a glimmering land,
+Lit with a low, large moon."
+
+TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ROUTE MAP. [Not included in this ebook.]
+
+LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY Limited
+St. Dunstan's House FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET,
+
+First Published 1872 (All rights reserved)
+
+PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIFINGTON, LD.,
+ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKEMWELL ROAD, E.C.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+At York Factory on Hudson Bay there lived, not very long ago, a man who
+had stored away in his mind one fixed resolution it was to write a book.
+
+"When I put down," he used to say, "all that I have seen, and all that I
+havn't seen, I will be able to write a good book."
+
+It is probable that had this man carried his intention into effect the
+negative portion of his vision would have been more successfal than the
+positive. People are generally more ready to believe what a man hasn't
+seen'than what he has seen. So, at least, thought Karkakonias the
+Chippeway Chief at Pembina.
+
+Karkakonias was taken to Washington during the great Southern War, in
+order that his native mind might be astonished by the grandeur of the
+United States, and by the strength and power of the army of the Potomac.
+
+Upon his return to his tribe he remained silent and impassive; his days
+were spent in smoking, his evenings in quiet contemplation; he spoke not
+of his adventures in the land of the great white medicine-man. But at
+length the tribe grew discontented; they had expected to hear the recital
+of the wonders seen by their chief, and lo! he had come-back to them as
+silent as though his wanderings had ended on the Coteau of the Missouri,
+or by the borders of the Kitchi-Gami. Their discontent found vent in
+words.
+
+"Our father, Karkakonias, has come back to us," they said; "why does he
+not tell his children of the medicine of the white man? Is our father
+dumb that he does not speak to us of these things?"
+
+Then the old chief took his calumet from his lips, and replied, "'If
+Karkakonias told his children of the medicines of the white man--of his
+war-canoes moving by fire, and making thunder as they move, of his
+warriors more numerous than the buffalo in the days of our fathers, of
+all the wonderful things he has looked upon-his children would point and
+say, Behold! Karkakonias has become in his old age a maker of lies! No,
+my children, Karkakonias has seen many wonderful things, and his tongue
+is still able to speak; but, until your eyes have travelled as far as has
+his tongue, he will sit silent and smoke the calumet, thinking only of
+what he has looked upon."
+
+Perhaps I too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway
+chief, not because of any wonders I have looked upon; but rather because
+of that well-known prejudice against travellers tales, and of that
+terribly terse adjuration-".O that mine enemy might write a book!" Be
+that as it may, the book has been written; and it only remains to say a
+few words about its title and its theories.
+
+The "Great Lone Land" is no sensational name. The North-west fulfils, at
+the present time, every essential of that title. There is no other
+portion of the globe in which travel is possible where loneliness can be
+said to live so thoroughly. One may wander 500 miles in a direct line
+without seeing a human being, or an animal larger than a wolf. And if
+vastness of plain, and magnitude of lake, mountain, and river can mark a
+land as great, then no region possesses higher claims to that
+distinction.
+
+A word upon more personal matters. Some two months since I sent to the
+firm from whose hands this work has emanated a portion of the unfinished
+manuscript. I received in reply a communication to the effect that their
+Reader thought highly of my descriptions of real occurrences, but less
+of my theories. As it is possible that the general reader may fully
+endorse at least the latter portion of this opinion, I have only one
+observation to make.
+
+Almost every page of this book has been written amid the ever-present
+pressure of those feelings which spring from a sense of unrequited
+labour, of toil and service theoretically and officially recognized, but
+practically and professionally denied. However, a personal preface is not
+my object, nor should these things find allusion here, save to account in
+some manner, if account be necessary, for peculiarities of language or
+opinion which may hereafter make themselves apparent to the reader. Let
+it be.
+
+In the solitudes of the Great Lone Land, whither I am once more about to
+turn my steps, the trifles that spring from such disappointments will
+cease to trouble.
+
+April 14th 1872.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER ONE. Peace--Rumours of War--Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far
+West--A Distant Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A
+Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+CHAPTER TWO. The "Samaria"--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of
+the Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+CHAPTER THREE. Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in
+Quebec--A Summons--A Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An
+Expedition--Poor Canada--An Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival
+Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early
+Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"--M. Louis Riel--The Murder of
+Scott
+
+CHAPTER FOUR. Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great
+Fusion-Wisconsin--The Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I
+start for Lake Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The
+End of the Track
+
+CHAPTER FIVE. Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North
+Pacific Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A
+Plan to dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and
+its Neighbourhood.
+
+CHAPTER SIX. Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud-Sauk
+Rapids--"Steam Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the
+Red River.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN. North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival
+Savages-Abercrombie--News from the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red
+River-Prairies-Sunset-Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A
+Thunder-storm--A Prussian-Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer
+"International "--Pembina.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT. Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of
+Hudson--Rival Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west
+Company--How the Half-breeds came--The Highlanders
+defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+CHAPTER NINE. Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief
+ahead-Preparations--A Night March--The Steamer captured--The
+Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower Fort--The Red Indian at last--The Chief's
+Speech--A Big Feed--Making ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort
+Garry--Mr. President Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night
+out--My Crew.
+
+CHAPTER TEN. The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a
+Rapid--A Camp--No Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat
+Portage--A far-fetched Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A
+close Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The
+Officer commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE. To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal
+Mail--Grilling a Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary
+Bivouac--The President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular
+Troops.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my
+Steps--An Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland
+Ocean--Preparations-Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely
+Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine River--Rossette.
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort
+Ellice--Quick Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A
+Snow-storm--The South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of
+poor Blackie--Carlton.
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our
+Way--A long Ride--Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN. The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A
+long Ride--Fort Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant
+Companion--An easy Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French
+Missionaries--Westward still--A beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A
+"Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the
+Rocky Mountains--The Mountain House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian
+Trade--M. la Combe--Fire-water-A Night Assault.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN. I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The
+Cabri Sack--A cold Day-Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Battle Fort Pitt--The
+blind Cree--A Feast or a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY. The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of
+Hunting--A Fight--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great
+Cold-Carlton--Family Responsibilities.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the
+Saskatchewan--An Iroquois--Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside
+World--All haste for Home--The solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of
+Dogs--The great Marsh-Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a
+Medicine-man--Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his
+Boots--We reach the Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+APPENDIX
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Map of the Great Lone Land.
+Working up the Winnipeg.
+I waved to the leading Canoe.
+Across the Plains in November.
+The Rocky Mountains at the Sources of the Saskatchewan.
+Leaving a cosy Camp at dawn.
+The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT LONE LAND.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+Peace--Rumours of War-Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant
+Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+IT was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a
+shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was
+not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, a
+Burmese, or any other of the many "eses" or "eas" forming the great
+colonial empire of Britain who seemed capable of kicking up the semblance
+of a row. Newspapers had never been so dull; illustrated journals had to
+content themselves with pictorial representations of prize pigs,
+foundation stones, and provincial civic magnates. Some of the great
+powers were bent upon disarming; several influential persons of both
+sexes had decided, at a meeting held for the suppression of vice, to
+abolish standing armies. But, to be more precise as to the date of this
+epoch, it will be necessary to state that the time was the close of the
+year 1869, just twenty-two months ago. Looking back at this most-piping
+period of peace from the stand-point of today, it is not at all
+improbable that even at that tranquil moment a great power, now, very
+much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the
+dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at
+each other's throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more
+unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the
+part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known
+Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power
+that possessed a deeper insight into the future than did its neighbours.
+It is hardly to be gainsaid that there was, about that period, another
+great power popularly supposed to dwell amidst darkness-a power which is
+said also to possess the faculty of making Scriptural quotations to his
+own advantage. It is not at all unlikely that amidst this scene of
+universal quietude he too was watching certain little snow-wrapt hamlets,
+scenes of straw-yard and deep thatched byre in which cattle munched their
+winter provender-watching them with the perspective scent of death and
+destruction in his nostrils; gloating over them with the knowledge of
+what was to be their fate before another snow time had come round. It
+could not be supposed that amidst such an era of tranquillity the army of
+England should have been allowed to remain in a very formidable position.
+When other powers were talking of disarming, was it not necessary that
+Great Britain should actually disarm? of course there was a slight
+difference existing between the respective cases, inasmuch as Great
+Britain had never armed; but that distinction was not taken into account,
+or was not deemed of sufficient importance to be noticed, except by a few
+of the opposition journals; and is not every one aware that when a
+country is governed on the principle of parties, the party which iscalled
+the opposition must be in the wrong? So it was decreed about this time
+that the fighting force of the British nation should be reduced. It was
+useless to speak of the chances of war, said the British tax-payer,
+speak-ing through the mouths of innumerable members of the British
+Legislature. Had not the late Prince Consort and the late Mr. Cobden
+come to the same conclusion from the widely different points of great
+exhibitions and free trade, that war could never be? And if; in the face
+of great exhibitions and universal free trade-even if war did become
+possible, had we not ambassadors, and legations, and consulates all over
+the world; had we not military attaches at every great court of Europe;
+and would we not know all about it long before it commenced? No, no, said
+the tax-payer, speaking through the same medium as before, reduce the
+army, put the ships of war out of commission, take your largest and most
+powerful transport steamships, fill them full with your best and most
+experienced skilled military and naval artisans and labourers, send them
+across the Atlantic to forge guns, anchors, and material of war in the
+navy-yards of Norfolk and the arsenals of Springfield and Rock Island;
+and let us hear no more of war or its alarms. It is true, there were some
+persons who thought otherwise upon this subject, but many of them were
+men whose views had become warped and deranged in such out-of-the-way
+places as Southern Russia, Eastern China, Central Hindoostan, Southern
+Africa, and Northern America military men, who, in fact, could not be
+expected to understand questions of grave political economy, astute
+matters of place.-and party, upon which the very existence of the
+parliamentary system depended; and who, from the ignorance of these nice
+distinctions of liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal, had
+imagined that the strength and power of the empire was not of secondary
+importance to the strength and power of a party. But the year 1869 did
+not pass altogether into the bygone without giving a faint echo of
+disturbance in one far-away region of the earth. It is true, that not the
+smallest breathing of that strife which was to make: the succeeding year
+crimson through the centuries had yet sounded on the continent of Europe.
+No; all was as quiet there as befits the mighty hush which precedes
+colossal conflicts. But far away in the very farthest West, so far that
+not one man in fifty could tell its whereabouts, up somewhere between the
+Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Superior, along a river called the
+Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who or what
+they were, had risen in insurrection. Well-informed persons said these
+insurgents were only Indians; others, who had relations in America,
+averreed that they were Scotchmen, and one journal, well-known for its
+clearness upon all subjects connected with the American Continent,
+asserted that they were Frenchmen. Amongst so much conflicting testimony,
+it was only natural that the average Englishman should possess no very
+decided opinions upon the matter; in fact, it came to pass that the
+average Englishman, having heard that somebody was rebelling against him
+somewhere or other, looked to his atlas and his journal for information
+on the subject, and having failed in obtaining any from either source,
+naturally concluded that the whole thing was something which no fellow
+could be expected to understand. As, however, they who follow the writer
+of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
+to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it
+will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the
+last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon. Bookmark About the
+time when Napoleon was carrying half a million of men through the snows
+of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the
+idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the
+vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that
+entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in
+earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the
+imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century,
+had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico
+the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord
+Selkirk's experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded
+it. The earlier adventurers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic
+upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the
+very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day
+is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast
+wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles
+between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the
+cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Indeed,
+so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the
+Atlantic that all means of communication in that direction was utterly
+unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the
+ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world
+should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of
+lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its
+descent of 700 feet, lay between them and the ocean, and then only to
+reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice-bound
+outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
+latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
+for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
+summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
+raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
+before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in
+spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were
+married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the
+outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years
+after its formation, it rose in insurrection.
+
+And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the
+positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must
+undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain
+so until the end; if you be cruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me,
+it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the individual
+"I," and to retain it until we part.
+
+It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having
+experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a
+distinguished military functionary an intimation to the effect that a
+company in Her Majesty's service would be at my disposal, provided I
+could produce the sum of 1100 pounds. Some dozen years previous to the
+date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process
+of existence had reached-a position among the subalterns of the regiment
+technically known as first for purchase; but now, when the moment arrived
+to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 1100 pounds of
+regulation amount nor the 400 pounds of over-regulation items (terms
+very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obsolete) were
+forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in
+the race of life. What was to be done? What course lay open? Serve on;
+let the dull routine of barrack-life grow duller; go from Canada to the
+Cape, from the Cape to the Mauritius, from Mauritius to Madras, from
+Madras goodness knows where, and trust to delirium tremens, yellow fever,
+or: cholera morbus for promotion and advancement; or, on the other hand,
+cut the service, become in the lapse of time governor of a penitentiary,
+secretary to a London club, or adjutant of militia. And yet-here came the
+rub-when every fibre of one's existence beat in unison with the true
+spirit of military adventure, when the old feeling which in boyhood had
+made the study of history a delightful pastime, in late years had grown
+into a fixed unalterable longing for active service, when the whole
+current of thought ran in the direction of adventure-no matter in what
+climate, or under what circumstances-it was hard beyond the measure of
+words to sever in an instant the link that bound one to a life where such
+aspirations were still possible of fulfilment; to separate one's destiny
+for ever from that noble profession of arms; to become an outsider, to
+admit that the twelve best years of life had been a useless dream, and
+to bury oneself far away in some Western wilderness out of the reach or
+sight of red coat or sound of bugle-sights and sounds which old
+associations would have made unbearable. Surely it could not be done; and
+so, looking abroad into the future, it was difficult to trace a path
+Which could turn the flank of this formidable barrier flung thus suddenly
+into the highway of life.
+
+Thus it was that one, at least, in Great Britain watched with anxious
+gaze this small speck of revolt rising so far away in the vast wilderness
+of the North-West; and when, about the beginning of the month of April,
+1870, news came of the projected despatch of an armed force from Canada
+against the malcontents of Red River, there was one who beheld in the
+approaching expedition the chance of a solution to the difficulties which
+had beset him in his career. That one was myself.
+
+There was little time to be lost, for already; the cable said, the
+arrangements were in a forward state; the staff of the little force had
+been organized, the rough outline of the expedition had been sketched,
+and with the opening of navigation on the northern lakes the first move
+would be commenced. Going one morning to the nearest telegraph station, I
+sent the following message under the Atlantic to America:--"To: Winnipeg
+Expedition. Please remember me." When words cost at the rate of four
+shillings each, conversation and correspondence become of necessity
+limited. In the present instance I was only allowed the use of ten words
+to convey address, signature, and substance, and the five words of my
+message were framed both with a view to economy and politeness, as well
+as in a manner which by calling for no direct answer still left undecided
+the great question of success. Having despatched my message under the
+ocean, I determined to seek the Horse Guards in a final effort to procure
+unattached promotion in the army. It is almost unnecessary to remark that
+this attempt failed; and as I issued from the audience in which I had
+been informed of the utter hopelessness of my request, I had at least the
+satisfaction of having reduced my chances of fortune to the narrow limits
+of a single throw. Pausing at the gate of the Horse Guards I reviewed in
+a moment the whole situation; whatever was to be the result there was no
+time for delay and so, hailing a hansom, I told the cabby to drive to the
+office of the Cunard Steamship Company, Old Broad Street, City.
+
+"What steamer sails on Wednesday for America?"
+
+"The 'Samaria for Boston, the 'Marathon for New York."
+
+"The 'Samaria broke her shaft, didn't she, last voyage, and was a
+missing ship for a month?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the clerk.
+
+"Then book me a passage in her," I replied; "she's not likely to play
+that prank twice in two voyages."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+The "Samaria "--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of the
+Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+POLITICAL economists and newspaper editors for years have dwelt upon the
+unfortunate fact that Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, and does not
+export largely the products of her soil. But persons who have lived in
+the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern
+shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail
+daily from the United Kingdom, must have arrived at a conclusion totally
+at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under
+the sun which manufactures the material called man so readily as does
+that grass-covered island. Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, says
+the political economist. Indeed, my good sir, you are wholly mistaken.
+She is not only a manufacturing nation, but she manufactures nations. You
+do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines,
+but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her
+daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as
+for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me
+on board this ocean steamship "Samaria", and look at them. The good ship
+has run down the channel during the night and now lies at anchor in
+Queenstown harbour, waiting for mails and passengers. The latter came,
+quickly and thickly enough. No poor, ill-fed, miserably dressed crowd,
+but fresh, and fair, and strong, and well clad, the bone and muscle and
+rustic beauty of the land; the little steam-tender that plies from the
+shore to the ship is crowded at every trip, and you can scan them as they
+come on board in batches of seventy or eighty. Some eyes among the girls
+are red with crying, but tears dry quickly on young cheeks, and they will
+be laughing before an hour is over. "Let them go," says the economist;
+"we have too many mouths to feed in these little islands of ours; their
+going will give us more room, more cattle, more chance to keep our acres
+for the few'; let them go." My friend, that is just half the picture, and
+no more; we may get a peep at the other half before you and I part.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the
+"Samaria" steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and
+rounding out into Atlantic turned her head towards the western horizon.
+The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland's southmost
+shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked
+the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A
+hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off
+summit of some inland mountain; and as evening came down over the still
+tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through
+phosphorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in
+distance till there lay around only the unbroken circle of the sea.
+
+ON BOARD.-A trip across the Atlantic is now-a-days a very ordinary
+business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost
+count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue
+skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but
+don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of
+discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that
+north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such
+thing as pleasant sailing.
+
+But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not
+more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one
+meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life,
+and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who,
+nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in
+ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been
+eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good
+Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a
+subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth
+voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the
+voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to
+cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this
+intimacy has been on the decline for some days, and, as he has committed
+the unpardonable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a
+subject connected with the general direction and termination of the Gulf
+Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate.
+Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going
+to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port
+negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband
+received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two
+years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a
+grateful nation, for three youthful Fusbies, who now serve their country
+in various parts of the world. She does not suffer from sea-sickness, but
+occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the
+administration of the stimulant already referred to. It is a singular
+fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable
+events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a
+porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence of the early
+career of the major; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an
+iceberg, has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense
+suffering undergone by the major during the period of his wound, owing to
+the scarcity of the article ice in tropical countries. Then on deck
+we have the inevitable old sailor who is perpetually engaged in scraping
+the vestiges of paint from your favourite seat, and who, having arrived
+at the completion of his monotonous task after four days incessant
+labour, is found on the morning of the fifth engaged in smearing the
+paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to
+ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and
+jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the
+roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all
+about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a
+chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there
+is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever wielded
+such power, what czar or kaiser had ever such obedience yielded to their
+decrees? This man, who on shore is nothing, is here on his deck a very
+pope; he is infallible. Canute could not stay the tide, but our sea-king
+regulates the sun. Charles the Fifth could not make half a dozen clocks
+go in unison, but Captain Smith can make it twelve o'clock any time he
+pleases; nay, more, when the sun has made it twelve o'clock no tongue of
+bell or sound of clock can proclaim time's decree until it has been
+ratified by the fiat of the captain; and even in his misfortunes what
+gran deur, what absence of excuse or crimination of others in the hour of
+his disaster! Who has not heard of that captain who sailed away from
+Liverpool one day bound for America? He had been hard worked on shore,
+and it was said that when he sought the seclusion of his own cabin he was
+not unmindful of that comfort which we are told the first navigator of
+the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The
+Isle of Man was passed; but unfortunately, on the second day out, the
+good ship struck the shore of the north-east coast of Ireland and became
+a total wreck. As the weather was extremely fine, and there appeared to
+be no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for
+investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade.
+During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man had been passed at
+such an hour on such a day, and the circumstance duly reported to the
+captain, who, it was said, was below. It was also stated that having
+received the report of the passage of the Calf of Man the captain had
+ordered the ship to be kept in a north-west course until further orders.
+About six hours later the vessel went ashore on the coast of Ireland.
+Such was the evidence of the first officer. The captain was shortly after
+called and examined.
+
+"It appears, sir," said the president of the court, "that the passing of
+the Calf of Man was duly reported to you by the first officer. May I ask,
+sir, what course you ordered to be steered upon receipt of that
+information?"
+
+"North-west, sir," answered the captain; "I said, 'Keep her north-west."'
+
+"North-west," repeated the president; "a very excellent general course
+for making the coast of America, but not until you had cleared the
+channel and were well into the Atlantic. Why, sir, the whole of Ireland
+lay between you and America on that course."
+
+"Can't help that, sir; can't help that, sir," replied the sea-king in a
+tone of half-contemptuous pity, that the whole of Ireland should have
+been so very unreasonable as to intrude itself in such a position.
+
+And yet, with all the despotism of the deck, what kindly spirits are
+these old sea-captains with the freckled hard knuckled hands and the grim
+storm-seamed faces! What honest genuine hearts are lying buttoned beneath
+those rough pea-jackets! If all despots had been of that kind perhaps we
+shouldn't have known quite as much about Parliamentary Institutions as we
+do.
+
+And now, while we have been talking thus, the "Samaria" has been getting
+far out into mid Atlantic, and yet we know not one among our
+fellow-passengers, although they do not number much above a dozen: a
+merchant from Maryland, a sea-captain-from Maine, a young doctor from
+Pennsylvania, a Massachusetts man, a Rhode Islander, a German geologist
+going to inspect seams in Colorado, a priest's sister from Ireland going
+to look after some little property left her by her brother, a poor fellow
+who was always ill, who never appeared at table, and who alluded to the
+demon sea-sickness that preyed upon him as "it". "It comes on very bad at
+night. It prevents me touching food. It never leaves me," he would say;
+and in truth this terrible "it" never did leave him until the harbour of
+Boston was reached, and even then, I fancy, dwelt in his thoughts during
+many a day on shore.
+
+The sea-captain from Maine was a violent democrat, the Massachusetts man
+a rabid republican; and many a fierce battle waged between them on the
+vexed questions of state rights, negro suffrage, and free trade in
+liquor. To many Englishmen the terms republican and democrat may seem
+synonymous; but not between radical and conservative, between outmost
+Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these
+great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of
+sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so
+these units of American political controversy were microscopic
+representatives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what
+a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words.
+The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation; the democrat held
+opinions not very easy of description, something of a universalist and
+semi-unitarian tendency; these opinions became frequently intermixed with
+their political jargon, forming that curious combination of ideas which
+to unaccustomed ears sounds slightly blasphemous. I recollect a very
+earnest American once saying that he considered all religious, political,
+social, and historical teaching should be reduced to three subjects: the
+Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the
+Chicago Republican Platform of 1860.
+
+On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves
+were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat
+being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency
+towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain
+an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it
+was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted
+for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been
+ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little
+village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of
+Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us,
+with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that
+we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our
+destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship
+had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
+prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
+knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
+this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
+our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
+expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
+repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
+take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
+induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
+and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
+the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
+trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
+priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
+announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
+the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
+called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
+generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
+member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
+countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
+silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more
+forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which
+those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish
+"darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or
+amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm
+and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life
+itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of
+New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over
+the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island,
+who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away
+and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as
+these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the
+man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly
+uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of
+ocean: small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain
+crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness Of which
+prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound
+vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain
+summit-one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the
+Cape be St. Ann's or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip
+of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland
+lie scattered many landscapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and
+forest, all unseen, all unknown to the wanderer who for the first time
+seeks the American shore; yet instinctively their presence is felt in
+that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the
+ocean; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as
+it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these
+immense inland seas; these mighty rivers whose waters seek their mother
+ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast
+though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as
+strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western
+horizon of the Atlantic.
+
+The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the
+shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of
+steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port
+was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston
+harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island
+can make it. If ever that much talked-of conflict between the two great
+branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to quit the realms of fancy
+for those of fact, Boston, at least, will rest as safe from the
+destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the
+Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should
+have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within
+sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle
+of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution
+of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped
+gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in
+the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the
+landscape. "There, serais Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners
+during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of
+Bunker's Hill;" and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to
+some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
+
+Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her
+lamps, before the "Samaria," swinging round in the fast-running tide,
+lay, with quiet screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New
+England's oldest city.
+
+"Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker's Hill," said
+the sea-captain from Maine; "just like the ill-mannered republican cuss!"
+It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the
+information given me by his political opponent. "Never mind," he said,
+"to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned
+liquor law in every hotel in their city."
+
+Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all
+the cities in the United States. Its streets, running in curious curves,
+as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of
+prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair
+idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have
+combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the
+western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New
+England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a
+glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their
+colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man
+in "Hudibras,"
+
+"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"
+
+and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard
+of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that
+this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston
+should not have been found capable of association with the duties of
+domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better
+understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most
+eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are
+nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the
+inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home
+truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious
+Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female
+excellence, should not be forgotten.
+
+There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more
+likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or
+system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I
+cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in
+this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to
+insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes
+that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual
+characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not
+strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are
+simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die
+sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at
+once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning;
+but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of
+resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the
+part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American
+social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the
+earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in
+the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the
+day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup,
+and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door
+is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to
+do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition
+of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the
+event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this
+document-such as not getting up very early-you will not be sent to the
+penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would
+imply a necessity for trouble and exertion on the part of the
+richly-apparelled gentleman who does you the honour of receiving your
+petitions and grossly overcharging you at the office-no, you have simply
+to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a
+jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your
+bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were
+occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the
+rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expectorate
+profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is
+paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the
+bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is apparently the one saving
+clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to
+the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine-you, who have never
+yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction-that this tyranny is
+confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay money in the ordinary
+travelling transactions of life-your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor,
+your steamboat-clerk-takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a
+manner which tells you plainly enough that he is conferring a very great
+favour by so doing. He is in all probability realizing a profit of from
+three to four hundred-per cent. on whatever the transaction may be; but,
+all the same, although you are fully aware of this fact, you are
+nevertheless almost overwhelmed with the sense of the very deep
+obligation which you owe to the man who thus deigns to receive your
+money.
+
+It was about ten o'clock at night when the steamer anchored at the wharf
+at Boston. Not until midday. On the following day were we (the
+passengers) allowed to leave the vessel. The cause of this delay arose
+from the fact that the collector of customs of the port of Boston was an
+individual of great social importance; and as it would have been
+inconvenient for him to attend at an earlier hour for the purpose of
+being present at the examination of our baggage, we were detained
+prisoners until the day was far enough advanced to suit his convenience.
+From a conversation which subsequently I had with this gentleman at our
+hotel, I discovered that he was more obliging in his general capacity of
+politician and prominent citizen than he was in his particular duties of
+customs collector. Like many other instances of the kind in the United
+States, his was a case of evident unfitness for the post he held. A.
+socially smaller man would have made a much better customs official.
+Unfortunately for the comfort of the public, the remuneration attached to
+appointments in the postal and customs departments is frequently very
+large, and these situations are eagerly sought as prizes in the lottery
+of political life-prizes, too, which can only be held for the short term
+of four years. As. A consequence, the official who holds his situation by
+right of political service rendered to the chief of the predominant
+clique or party in his state does not consider that he owes to the public
+the service of his office. In theory he is a public servant; in reality
+he becomes the master of the public. This is, however, the fault of the
+system and not of the individual.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in Quebec--A Summons--A
+Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An Expedition--Poor Canada--An
+Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River
+Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"-M.
+Louis Riel--The Murder of Scott
+
+When a city or a nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with
+all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or
+parrot. Boston-supreme over any city in the Republic-can boast of
+possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has
+long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to
+remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character
+and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker-perhaps he couldn't
+write!-are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in
+Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in
+the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in
+full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped
+soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork
+on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before
+them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure
+that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as
+valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic "bauble" of
+our own constitution.
+
+Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told
+frequently enough-and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them.
+The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and
+houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the
+stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property
+in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into
+the great heart of the past.
+
+Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward stream of empire
+in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it
+into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther
+still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still
+reigns in savage supremacy.
+
+NIAGARA--They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to
+Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet,
+put all together, they have not said much about it; description depends
+so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If
+there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this
+one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are
+generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however,
+comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that
+analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the
+Battle of the Nile-a statement not likely to be challenged, as the
+survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one
+we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another
+writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this
+similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the
+one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly
+bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit
+the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a
+thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to
+Egypt--what Vesuvius is to Naples--what the field of Waterloo has been
+for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of
+North America.
+
+It was early in the month of September, three years prior to the time I
+now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season
+was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and
+dance; tourists were doing the falls, and touts were doing the tourists.
+Newly-married couples were conducting themselves in that demonstrative
+manner characteristic of such as responded freely to the invitation
+contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work;
+itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws; free and
+enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract, who should have
+been sent over it; spiritualists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had
+made the place their own. Shoddy and petroleum were having "a high old
+time of it," spending the dollar as though that "almighty article had
+become the thin end of nothing whittled fine:" altogether, Niagara was a
+place to be instinctively shunned.
+
+Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to a
+close. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange
+wonders with the scene. Folly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy
+and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly
+demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had vanished, the monster hotels were
+silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to
+Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of
+yore, "under de light of de moon." Well, Niagara was worth seeing
+then-and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. "Pat," said an
+American to a staring Irishman lately landed, "did you ever see such a
+fall as that in the old country?" "Begarra! I niver did; but look here
+now, why wouldn't it fall? what's to hinder it from falling?"
+
+When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, I
+found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered,
+previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters
+of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again
+with a "You should have been here last week; every soul wants to get on
+the Expedition, and you hav'n't a chance. The whole thing is complete; we
+start to-morrow." Thus I encountered those few friends who on such
+occasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your
+neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that
+the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.
+
+"My good fellow, there's not a vacant berth for you," he said; "I got
+your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the
+Expedition."
+
+"I think, sir, there is one berth still vacant," I answered.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the
+flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you," I said.
+
+"You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal
+by first train to-morrow; by to night's mail I will write to the general,
+recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may
+yet be all right."
+
+I thanked him, said "Good-bye," and in little more than twenty-four hours
+later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.
+
+"Let me see," said the general next morning, when I presented myself
+before him, "you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last
+month, didn't you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will
+require a man there, but the thing doesn't rest with me; it will have to
+be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your
+regiment, pending the receipt of an answer."
+
+So I went back to my regiment to wait.
+
+Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec-that portion of America
+known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the
+Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees
+begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it
+quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green;
+the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol
+of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its
+earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds,
+sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are
+drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and
+flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring.
+When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at
+Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow.
+Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists
+a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes
+the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form,
+as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a
+landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the
+whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp
+of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome
+his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to
+look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of
+gladness--"the birch-tree," as the old Saxon said, "becomes beautiful in
+its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro
+by the breath of heaven "--the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their
+mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the
+transparent waters--far into the depths of the great forest speeds the
+glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss,
+and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and
+wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many
+landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but
+which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again And again in
+after-time-these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not
+easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye
+sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found
+in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far stretching river,
+foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of
+many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its
+fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour
+from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field in what other spot on
+the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many
+of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves to feast on and to place
+in memory as joys-for ever?
+
+I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one
+morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal
+to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my
+further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and
+fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It
+was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch
+of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to
+the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the
+broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the
+citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed
+with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant
+thought at the prospect before me. I little knew then the limits of my
+wanderings-I little thought that for many and many a day my track would
+lie with almost undeviating precision towards the setting sun, that
+summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and
+that still the nightly bivouac would be made a little nearer to that west
+whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.
+
+But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in
+the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem
+laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening
+Cataraqui. "We must leave matters to yourself, I think," said the
+General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, "you will be best
+judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground. I will not ask
+you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if
+you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the
+place. You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave altogether to
+yourself. For the rest, you can draw on us for any money you require.
+Take care of those northern fellows. Good-bye, and success."
+
+This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by
+the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West. On that morning the Grand
+Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement. It was about
+to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for
+Toronto; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of
+the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capital was
+drawing to a close. The Lightning Express was not attended with the
+glowing success predicted for it by its originators. At some thirty or
+forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some
+misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the
+rough uneven track. A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning
+Express got into motion again, and jolted along with tolerable celerity
+to Kingston. When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of
+fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity
+which promised disaster. The car in which I travelled was one belonging
+to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumberland, and
+we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of education, a governor of a
+province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a
+distinguished rifle regiment. Being the last car of the train, the
+vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails
+was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little
+unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the
+track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said
+to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into
+the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an
+embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is
+usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as
+those I have already mentioned. Whether a speaker of a house of commons
+and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of
+fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being
+"telescoped through colliding," I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto
+without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished
+fellow-travellers.
+
+I remained long enough in the city of Toronto to provide myself with a
+wardrobe suitable to the countries I was about to seek. In one of the
+principal commercial streets of the flourishing capital of Ontario I
+found a small tailoring establishment, at the door of which stood an
+excellent representation of a colonial. The garments be longing to this
+figure appeared to have been originally designed from the world-famous
+pattern of the American flag, presenting above a combination of stars,
+and below having a tendency to stripes. The general groundwork of the
+whole rig appeared to be shoddy of an inferior-description, and a small
+card attached to the figure intimated that the entire fit-out was
+procurable at the very reasonable sum of ten dollars. It was impossible
+to resist the fascination of this attire. While the bargain was being
+transacted the tailor looked askance at the garments worn by his
+customer, which, having only a few months before emanated from the
+establishment of a well-known London cutter, presented a considerable
+contrast to the new investment; he even ventured upon some remarks which
+evidently had for their object the elucidation of the enigma, but a word
+that such clothes as those worn by me were utterly un suited to the bush
+repelled all further questioning-indeed, so pleased did the noor fellow
+appear in a pecuniary point of view, that he insisted upon presenting me
+gratis with a neck-tie of green and yellow, fully in keeping with the
+other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging
+these little preliminary matters so essential to the work I was about to
+engage in, let us examine for a moment the objects and scope of that
+work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my
+journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected
+that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started
+some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort William, on
+the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between
+Toronto and Thunder Bay is about 600 miles, 100 being by railroad
+conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded expanse of Lake Huron,
+known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of
+the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards
+of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of
+fresh water has rendered necessary the construction of a canal of
+considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory-a
+fact which gives our friendly cousins the exclusive possession of the
+great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the
+Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition.
+Poor Canada! when one looks at you along the immense length of your noble
+river boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your
+youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding
+colonial minister through the particular whig, or tory spectacles of his
+party, subject to violent and radical alterations of policy because of
+some party vote in a Legislative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest
+coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the
+limits of your possible future, parties every where in your provinces,
+and of every kind, except a national party; no breadth, no depth, no
+earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for
+himself and no-one for the country; men fighting for a sect, for a
+province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this
+while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth,
+looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with
+perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time,'
+digging his canals and grading, his railroads, with one eye on the
+Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing,
+annexing, outmanoeuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in
+solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy proclamations and
+despatches anent boundary-lines, of which they knew next to nothing.
+Macaulay laughs at poor Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out
+that Cape Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were other
+and later Newcastles whose geographical knowledge of matters American
+were not a whit superior. Poor Canada! they muddled you out of Maine,
+and the open harbour of Portland, out of Rouse's Point, and the command
+of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the Rocky
+Mountains. It little matters whether it was the treaty of 1783, or 1818,
+or '21, or '48, or '71, the worst of every bargain, at all times, fell to
+you.
+
+I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault St. Marie
+enabled the Americans to delay the progress of the Red River Expedition.
+The embargo put upon the Canadian vessels originated, however, in the
+State, and not the Federal, authorities; that is to say, the State of
+Michigan issued the prohibition against the passage of the steam boat,
+and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally, Washington overruled the
+decision of Michigan-a feat far more feasible now than it would have been
+prior to the Southern war-and the steamers were permitted to pass through
+into the waters of Lake Superior. From thence to Thunder Bay was only the
+steaming of four-and-twenty hours through a lake whose vast bosom is the
+favourite playmate of the wild storm-king of the North. But although
+full half the total distance from Toronto to the Red River had been
+traversed when the Expedition reached Thunder Bay, not a twentieth of the
+time nor one hundredth part of the labour and fatigue had been
+accomplished. For a distance of 600 miles there stretched away to the
+northwest a vast tract of rock-fringed lake, swamp, and forest; lying
+spread in primeval savagery, an untravelled wilderness; the home of the
+Ojibbeway, who here, entrenched amongst Nature's fastnesses, has long
+called this land his own. Long before Wolfe had scaled the heights of
+Abraham, before even Marlborough, and Eugene, and Villers, and V'endome,
+and Villeroy had commenced to fight their giants fights in divers
+portions of the low countries, some adventurous subjects of the Grand
+Monarque were forcing their way, for the first time, along the northern
+shores of Lake Superior, nor stopping there: away to the north-west there
+dwelt wild tribes to be sought out by two classes of men-by the black
+robe, who laboured for souls; by the trader, who sought for skins-and a
+hard race had these two widely different pioneers who sought at that
+early day these remote and friendless regions, so hard that it would
+almost seem as though the great powers of good and of evil had both
+despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain
+dominion over these distant savages. It was a curious contest: on the one
+hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the other,
+the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary--a
+contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with
+the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain
+ramble away into its depths; but it must not be, or else the journey I
+have to travel myself would never even begin.
+
+Vast as is the accumulation of fresh water in Lake Superior, the area of
+the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its
+northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or "divide" of
+the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence
+the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the
+voyageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the
+many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the
+north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic Ocean and
+Hudson Bay. Here, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the sea level, and
+of 900 above Lake Superior, he launches his canoe upon water flowing
+north and west; then he has before him hundreds of miles of quiet-lying
+lake, of wildly rushing river, of rock-broken rapid, of foaming cataract,
+but through it all runs ever towards the north the ocean-seeking current.
+As later on we shall see many and many a mile of this wilderness--living
+in it, eating in it, sleeping in it-although reaching it from a different
+direction altogether from the one spoken of now, I anticipate, by
+alluding to it here, only as illustrating the track of the Expedition
+between Lake Superior and Red River. For myself, my route was to be
+altogether a different one. I was to follow the lines of railroad which
+ran-out into the frontier territories of the United States, then, leaving
+the iron horse, I was to make my way to the settlements on the west shore
+of Lake Superior, and from thence to work Round to the American
+boundary-line at Pembina on the Red River; so far through American
+territory, and with distinct and definite instructions; after that,
+altogether to my own resources, but with this summary of the general's
+wishes: "I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but however you manage
+it, try and reach Wolseley-before he gets through from Lake Superior, and
+let him know what these Red River men are going to do." Thus the military
+Expedition under Colonel Wolseley was to work its way Across from Lake
+Superior to Red River, through British territory; I was to pass round by
+the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of Fenian
+intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, endeavour to reach
+Colonel Wolseley beyond Red River, with all tidings as to state of
+parties and chances of fight. But as the reader has heard only a very
+brief mention of the state of affairs in Red River, and as he may very
+naturally be inclined to ask, What is this Expedition going to do--why
+are these men sent through swamp and wilderness at all? A few explanatory
+words may not be out of place, serving to make matters now and at a later
+period much more intelligible. I have said in the opening chapter of this
+book, that the little community, or rather a portion of the little
+community, of Red River Settlement had risen in insurrection, protesting
+vehemently against certain arrangements made between the Governor of
+Canada and the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company relative to the cession of
+territorial rights and governing powers. After forcibly expelling the
+Governor of the country appointed by Canada, from the frontier station at
+Pembina, the French malcontents had proceeded to other and still more
+questionable proceedings. Assembling in large numbers, they had fortified
+portions of the road between Pembina and Fort Garry, and had taken armed
+possession of the latter place, in which large stores of provisions,
+clothing, and merchandise of all descriptions had been stored by the
+Hudson Bay Company. The occupation of this fort, which stands close to
+the confluence of the Red and Assineboine Rivers, nearly midway between
+the American boundary-line and the southern shore of Lake Winnipeg, gave
+the French party the virtual command of the entire settlement. The
+abundant stores of clothing and provisions were not so important as the
+arms and ammunition which also fell into their hands--a battery of
+nine-pound bronze guns, complete in every respect, besides several
+smaller pieces of ordnance, together with large store of Enfield rifles
+and old brown-bess smooth bores. The place was, in fact, abundantly
+supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing
+to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this
+point had characterized all the movements of the originator and
+mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to see a
+thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion,
+becomes respectable when it is carried out with courage, energy, and
+decision.
+
+And, in truth, up to this point in the little insurrection it is not easy
+to condemn the wild Metis of the North-west--wild as the bison which he
+hunted, unreclaimed as the prairies he loved so well, what knew he of
+State duty or of loyalty? He knew that this land was his, and that strong
+men were coming to square it into rectangular farms and to push him
+farther west by the mere pressure of civilization. He had heard of
+England and the English, but it was in a shadowy, vague, unsubstantial
+sort of way, unaccompanied by any fixed idea of government or law. The
+Company--not the Hudson Bay Company, but the Company-represented for him
+all law, all power, all government. Protection he did not need-his quick
+ear, his unerring eye, his untiring horse, his trading gun, gave him
+that; but a market for his taurreau, for his buffalo robe, for his lynx,
+fox, and wolf skins, for the produce of his summer hunt and winter trade,
+he did need, and in the forts of the Company he found it. His wants were
+few-a capôte of blue cloth, with shining brass buttons; a cap, with beads
+and tassel; a blanket; a gun, and ball and powder; a box: of matches, and
+a knife, these were all he wanted, and at every fort, from the mountain
+to the banks of his well-loved River Rouge, he found them, too. What were
+these new people coming to do with him? Who could tell? If they meant him
+fair, why did they not say so? why did they not come up and tell him what
+they wanted, and what they were going to do for him, and ask him what he
+wished for? But, no; they either meant to outwit him, or they held him of
+so small account that it mattered little what he thought about it; and,
+with all the pride of his mother's race, that idea of his being slighted
+hurt him even more than the idea of his being wronged. Did not every
+thing point to his disappearance under the new order of things? He had
+only to look round him to verify the fact; for years before this
+annexation to Canada had been carried into effect stragglers from the
+east had occasionally reached Red River. It is true that these new-comers
+found much to foster the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon settler. They
+found a few thousand occupants, half-farmers, half-hunters, living under
+a vast commercial monopoly, which, though it practically rested upon a
+basis of the most paternal kindness towards its subjects, was
+theoretically hostile to all opposition. Had these men settled quietly to
+the usual avocations of farming, clearing the wooded ridges, fencing the
+rich expanses of prairie, covering the great swamps and plains with
+herds and flocks, it is probable that all would have gone well between
+the new-comers and the old proprietors. Over that great western thousand
+miles of prairie there was room for all. But, no; they came to trade and
+not to till, and trade on the Red River of the North was conducted upon
+the most peculiar principles. There was, in fact, but one trade, and that
+was the fur trade. Now, the fur trade is, for some reason or other, a
+very curious description of barter. Like some mysterious chemical agency,
+it pervades and permeates every thing it touches. If a man cuts off legs,
+cures diseases, draws teeth, sells whiskey, cotton, wool, or any other
+commodity of civilized or uncivilized life, he will be as sure to do it
+with a view to furs as any doctor, dentist, or general merchant will be
+sure to practise his particular calling with a view to the acquisition of
+gold and silver. Thus, then, in the first instance were the new-comers
+set in antagonism to the Company, and finally to the inhabitants
+themselves. Let us try and be just to all parties in this little oasis of
+the Western wilderness.
+
+The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much
+given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice; and
+it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to
+do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out
+so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their not being able
+to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the
+advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming
+race. Obstacles of any kind are their peculiar detestation-if it is a
+tree, cut it down; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a
+half-breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said
+they act up to their convictions.
+
+'Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled
+wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the
+North-west from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown
+to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but,
+unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in
+peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000
+persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed
+away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than
+that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain
+half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events
+had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would
+dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western
+region, the Company would dis appear, and all the institutions of New
+World progress would shed-prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to
+the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the
+new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community,
+resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got
+their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns,
+and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several
+anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling
+the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily
+informing Mr. Governor M'Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his
+presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its
+inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had
+worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and
+directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis
+Riel--a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of
+parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of
+political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has
+followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the
+assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds-it has
+occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the
+mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who
+surrendered for 300,000 pounds their territorial rights? was it the
+Imperial Government who accepted that surrender? or was it the Dominion
+Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial
+authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business
+belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. Any ordinary
+matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few
+hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen
+despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the
+whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and
+carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing
+would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to
+Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would
+have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country
+relative to` the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of
+their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might
+be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead
+ignorance upon any matter pertaining to the people it governs, or expects
+to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such
+matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea
+put forward by the Dominion Government of Canada, and yet the Dominion
+Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving
+at a-correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they had
+only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that
+warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling
+amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, "they are only eaters of
+pemmican," so cutting to the Metis, was then first originated by a
+distinguished Canadian politician.
+
+And now let us see what the "eaters of pemmican" proceeded to do after
+their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitted they
+behaved in a very indifferent manner, going steadily from bad to worse,
+and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft
+repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of
+December, 1869, Mr. M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at
+Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor
+of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the
+other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the
+high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest,
+-disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to
+assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were
+to be found." Now, of the first proclamation it will be only necessary to
+remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind,
+imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the
+reader that the title of "Conservator of the Peace" was singularly
+inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers
+as was the holder of this commission, who was to "assault, fire upon,
+and break into houses, and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse
+people," and generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila,
+Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of
+ancient or modern times. The officer holding this destructive commission
+thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French
+adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other
+rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty
+miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but
+unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, not finding within its walls the
+same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry
+senior.
+
+The Indians, ever ready to have a hand in any fighting which may be
+"knocking around," came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and
+pow-wow; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place.
+Some hundreds of English and Scotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off
+to companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing
+pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course.
+But, in truth, the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in
+this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney
+and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen,
+these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had
+been only fighting the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had
+hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of
+Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers
+began to melt away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had
+disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became
+apparent in the increasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his
+followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the
+Scotch and English half-breeds against him served only to add strength to
+his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much
+increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their manifest
+functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of
+religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened
+by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel
+determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This
+was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement
+already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the
+people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the
+certain advance of the English force upon Fort Garry, had taken up a
+position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from
+the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents previous to
+making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more
+than a match for his antagonists; marching quickly out of his stronghold,
+he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a
+gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to
+surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such
+occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were
+ordered, and marching out-with or without side-arms and military honours
+history does not relate-were forthwith conducted into close confinement
+within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession
+not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many
+valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr.
+Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine
+himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are
+sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man's
+property is only to confiscate it, and to take his life is merely to
+execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and
+requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable
+share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having
+particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent
+Jamaica rum. The proverb which has reference to a mendicant suddenly
+Placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the case
+of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily
+from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a
+very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial
+debauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1870, disregarding
+some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless
+cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott.
+This act, committed in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name:
+the red name of murder-a name which instantly and for ever drew between
+Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable
+gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and
+which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is
+needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising
+which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless
+and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoners death a foregone
+conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which
+characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting
+subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to
+illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves. On the
+night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had
+been dug within the walls of the fort. Two clergymen had asked permission
+to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had
+been denied. On the anniversary of the murder, namely, the 4th March,
+1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd
+gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the
+purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to
+an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was
+empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the
+final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one
+thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his
+immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed
+they had committed, for had they believed that the taking of this man's
+life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or
+political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes
+committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held
+its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless
+lie. The murderer and the law both take life--it is only the murderer who
+hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great Fusion-Wisconsin--The
+Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I start for Lake
+Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The End of the Track.
+
+ALAS! I have to go a long way back to the city of Toronto, where I had
+just completed the purchase of a full costume of a Western borderer. On
+the 10th of June I crossed the Detroit River from Western Canada to the
+State of Michigan, and travelling by the central railway of that state
+reached the great city of Chicago on the following day. All Americans,
+but particularly all Western Americans, are very proud of this big city,
+which is not yet as old as many of its inhabitants, and they are justly
+proud of it. It is by very much the largest and the richest of the new
+cities of the New World. Maps made fifty years ago will be searched in
+vain for Chicago. Chicago was then a swamp where the skunks, after whom
+it is called, held undisputed revels. To-day Chicago numbers about
+300,000 souls, and it is about "the livest city in our great Republic;
+sir."
+
+Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York. A traveller leaving
+the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday
+at eight o'clock in the evening in Chicago-one thousand miles in
+thirty-four hours. In the meantime he will have eaten three meals and
+slept soundly "on board" his palace-car, if he is so minded. For many
+hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have
+noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and
+settlements interspersed between; and then, when these tracts of swamp
+and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he
+comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full-grown, bustling city, with tall
+chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great: drays
+of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall-masted
+ships and whole fleets of steamers lying packed against the crowded
+quays. He has begun to dream himself in the West, and lo! there rises up
+a great city. "But is not this the West?" will ask the new-comer from the
+Atlantic states. "Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New
+York, by water 1500 miles to Quebec; surely this must be the West?" No;
+for in this New World the West is ever on the move. Twenty years ago
+Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City,
+and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.
+
+This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new
+scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An
+American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on many
+social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very
+shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of
+ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact
+that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub
+every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will
+find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your
+peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you the details of
+every item connected with his business--altogether a very jolly every-day
+companion when met on even basis. If you happen to be a military man, he
+will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition: of rank
+by virtue of his volunteer services in the 44th: Illinois, or 55th
+Missourian. At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a
+safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with "I
+say, General," and on no account ever to get below the rank of field
+officer when addressing anybody holding a socially smaller position than
+that of bar-keeper. Indeed major-generals were as plentiful in the United
+States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in
+the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign. It was at
+Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was established by a youngster on
+the score that he really could not spit out of his own window without
+hitting a brevet major outside; and it was in a Western city that the man
+threw his stick at a dog across the road, "missed that dawg, sir, but hit
+five major-generals on t'other side, and 'twasn't a good day for
+major-generals either, sir." Not less necessary than knowledge of social
+position is knowledge of the political institutions and characters of the
+West. Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is
+simply to argue yourself utterly unknown. My first experience of Chicago
+fully impressed me with this fact. I had made the acquaintance of an
+American gentleman "on board" the train, and as we approached the city
+along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the
+buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.
+
+"There, sir," he finally said, "there is our new monument to Stephen B.
+Douglas."
+
+I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in
+course of erection into a pedestal. I confess to having been entirely
+ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to
+this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my informant's
+voice was sufficient to warn me that everybody knew Stephen B. Douglas,
+and that ignorance of his career might prove hurtful to the feelings of
+my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or
+look the drawback under which I laboured. There was with me, however, a
+travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to
+mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours
+should be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint across the
+Atlantic. Looking partly at the monument, partly at our American
+informant, and partly at me, he hastily ejaculated, "Who the devil was
+Stephen B. Douglas?"
+
+Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggravating form. I hastily
+attempted a rescue. "Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?" I exclaimed,
+in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise. "Is it possible you don't know
+who Stephen B. Douglas was?"
+
+Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my
+fellow-traveller was not to be done. "All deuced fine," he went on, "I'll
+bet you a fiver you don't know who he was either!"
+
+I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he
+persisted in his reckless offers of "laying fivers," and our united
+ignorance stood fatally revealed.
+
+Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level
+prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as
+fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under
+a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles
+from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The
+Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its
+western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich
+burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on
+its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the
+Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, unwaters the
+south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse
+the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant
+fact--5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state!
+More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage
+of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion
+Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have
+striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day,
+thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of
+the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own
+produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely
+inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago
+since William Cobbett laboured long and earnestly to prove that English
+emigrants who pushed on into the "wilderness of the Illinois went
+straight to misery and ruin."
+
+Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north
+along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in
+the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of
+Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100
+miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being, also some 100
+miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by
+water to New York and the Atlantic, Milwaukie caries off no small share
+of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling
+prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing
+states of the American Union. Scandinavia, Germany, and Ireland have made
+this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one
+hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish
+Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is
+one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern
+Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie
+between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Mississippi. No one
+stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill
+the sheds at the depot, the sight is too common to cause interest now,
+and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the
+promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd
+of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food
+while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the
+most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can
+devise--such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like
+boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or
+Christian--clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray
+of mid-Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since
+New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and
+seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion; altogether a homely people,
+but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits
+under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast
+human machine Which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth
+into the same image and likeness of the inevitable Yankee--grinds him too
+into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it
+without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language
+or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the
+various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American
+people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so
+gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going
+on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of
+dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race
+the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the
+noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling
+of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human
+family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the
+human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve
+it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success.
+Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die
+out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his
+love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt,
+Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those
+traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be
+that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old
+distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from
+it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--
+
+"Sin itself be found,
+A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun."
+
+But at present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American
+society, there seems little reason to hope for required alteration. The
+dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that
+"honesty is the best policy" must once more come into fashion.
+
+Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of
+Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of
+Minnesota. About half that distance lies through the State of Wisconsin,
+and the remaining half is somewhat unequally divided between Iowa and
+Minnesota. Leaving Milwaukie at eleven o'clock a.m., one reaches the
+Mississippi at Prairie-du-Chien at ten o'clock same night; here a steamer
+ferries the broad swift-running stream, and at North Macgregor, on the
+Iowa shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy
+passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American
+institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable
+and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the
+other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under
+the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses
+would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc violently along over
+rough and uneven iron when he could select a stationary resting-place. On
+the other hand, it is a very great saving of time and expense to travel
+for some eighty or one hundred consecutive hours, and this can only be
+effected by means of the sleeping-car. Take this distance, from New York
+to St. Paul, as an instance. It is about 1450 miles, and it can be
+accomplished in sixty-four hours. Of course one cannot expect to find
+oneself as comfortably located as in an hotel; but, all things
+considered, the balance of advantage is very much on the side of the
+sleeping-car. After a night or two one becomes accustomed to the noise
+and oscillation; the little peculiarities incidental to turning-in in
+rather a promiscuous manner with ladies old and young, children in arms
+and out of arms, vanish before the force of habit; the necessity of
+making an early rush to the lavatory appliances in the morning, and there
+securing a plentiful supply of water and clean towels, becomes quickly
+apparent, and altogether the sleeping-car ceases to be a thing of
+nuisance and is accepted as an accomplished fact. The interior
+arrangements of the car are conducted as follows. A passage runs down the
+centre from one door to the other; on either side are placed the berths
+or "sections" for sleeping; during the day-time these form seats, and are
+occupied by such as care to take them in the ordinary manner of railroad
+cars. At night, however, the whole car undergoes a complete
+transformation. A negro attendant commences to make down the beds. This
+operation is performed by drawing out, after the manner of telescopes,
+portions of the car heretofore looked upon as immoveable; from various
+receptacles thus rendered visible he extracts large store of blankets,
+mattresses, bolsters, pillows, sheets, all which he arranges after the
+usual method of such articles. His work is done speedily and without
+noise or bustle, and in a very short time the interior of the car
+presents the spectacle of a long, dimly lighted passage, having on either
+side the striped damask curtains which partly shroud the berths behind
+them. Into these berths the passengers soon withdraw themselves, and all
+goes quietly till morning-unless, indeed, some stray turning bridge has
+been left turned over one of the numerous creeks that underlie the track,
+or the loud whistle of "brakes down" is the short prelude to one of the
+many disasters of American railroad travel. There are many varieties of
+the sleeping-car, but the principle and mode of procedure are identical
+in each. Some of those constructed by Messrs. Pullman and Wagner are as
+gorgeously decorated as gilding, plating, velvet, and damask can make
+them. The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the
+title of his cars. One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a
+Pullman) as one takes a Hansom. Pullman and sleeping-car have become
+synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time. Travelling from sunrise
+to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and
+at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an
+hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupation; still it has much to
+relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel
+would be almost insupportable. The fact of easy communication being
+maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to
+another during motion a most feasible undertaking. One can visit the
+various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to
+obtain information this is no small boon. Americans are always ready to
+enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met
+with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons
+from all parts of the Union--easters, Southerners, Western men, and
+Californians--the experiment of "knocking around the cars" is well worth
+the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take
+the weather, just as it comes.
+
+The individual known by the title of "train-boy" is also worth some
+study. He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most
+precocious boy; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago,
+New York, or Philadelphia, or some other large town, and his aim is to
+dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily
+nourishment. He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which
+he serves round in several courses. The first course consists of works of
+a high moral character standard English novels in American reprints, and
+works of travel or biography. These he lays beside each passenger,
+stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular
+excellence of morality or binding. Having distributed a portion through
+the car, he passes into the next car, and so through the train. After a
+few minutes delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle
+with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one. After the
+lapse of a very short time he reappears with the second course of
+literature. This usually consists of a much lower standard of excellence
+--Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap
+reprints of popular works. The third course, which soon follows, is,
+however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the
+part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a
+little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high
+moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of
+the "Last Sensation," "The Dime Illustrated," "New York under Gas
+light," "The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains," and other similar
+productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the
+train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from
+him no further effort; he relinquishes that portion of his labour and
+devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment,
+consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly
+and uninviting description; these he follows with sugar in various
+preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and
+crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance;
+one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his
+vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He
+gets, he will tell you, a percentage on his sales of ten cents in the
+dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a
+dollar's worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents.
+Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral literature than
+present him at once with this ten cents, stipulating that on no account
+is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy,
+condiment, or book during the remainder of the journey. If you do this
+you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.
+
+Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which lead
+to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi
+one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in
+the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is
+very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer,
+deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into
+stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into
+uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the
+sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the-most
+northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great
+wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far
+within the territories where yet the red man holds his own. Here, in the
+south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region.
+Far beyond the northern limit of the state it stretches away into
+latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes
+which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey
+into together.
+
+The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota,
+gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade
+centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the
+Mississippi River, about 2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great
+river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to
+the north, 700 miles along the stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a
+few miles above St. Paul, interrupt all navigation, and the course of the
+river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and
+obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River
+receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north west;
+the St. Peter's or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the
+Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which
+lies West of Lake Superior; but it is not alone to water communication
+that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless
+energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the
+future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching
+out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited
+prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the
+world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the
+life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken
+"straight," the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting
+accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a
+hurry, all tend to cut short the term of man's life in the New World.'
+Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. "Yes, sir, we live fast here,"
+said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast
+too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of
+course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid
+seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere
+from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity
+of the surrounding prairies, its hotels--and they are many--are crowded
+with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they
+seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die.
+
+Business connected with the supply of the troops during the coming winter
+in Red River, detained me for some weeks in Minnesota, and as the
+letters which I had despatched upon my arrival giving the necessary
+particulars regarding the proposed arrangements, required at least a week
+to obtain replies to, I determined to visit in the interim the shores of
+Lake Superior. Here I would glean what tidings I could of the progress of
+the Expedition, from whose base at Fort William, I would be only 100
+miles distant, as well as examine the% chances of Fenian intervention, so
+much talked of in the American newspapers, as likely to place in peril
+the flank of the expeditionary force as it followed the devious track of
+swamp and forest which has on one side Minnesota, and on the other the
+Canadian Dominion.
+
+Since my departure from Canada the weather had been intensely warm:
+pleasant in Detroit, warm in Chicago, hot in Milwaukie, and sweltering,
+blazing in St. Paul, would have aptly described the temperature, although
+the last named city is some hundred miles more to the north than the
+first. But latitude is no criterion of summer heat in America, and the
+short Arctic summer of the Mackenzie River knows often a fiercer heat
+than the swamp lands of the Carolinas. So, putting together a very light
+field-kit, I started early one morning from St. Paul for the new town of
+Duluth, on the extreme westerly end of Lake Superior.
+
+Duluth, I was told, was the very newest of new towns, in fact it only had
+an existence of eighteen months; as may be inferred, it had no past, but
+any want in that respect was compensated for in its marvellous future. It
+was to be the great grain emporium of the North-west; it was to kill St.
+Paul, Milwaukie, Chicago, and half-a-dozen other thriving towns; its
+murderous propensities seemed to have no bounds; lots were already
+selling at fabulous prices, and everybody seemed to have Duluth in some
+shape or other on the brain. To reach this paradise of the future I had
+to travel 100 miles by the Superior and Mississippi railroad, to a
+halting-place known as the End of the Track-a name which gave a very
+accurate idea of its whereabouts and general capabilities. The line was,
+in fact, in course of formation, and was being rapidly pushed forward
+from both ends with a view to its being opened through by the 1st day of
+August. About forty miles north-east of St. Paul we entered the region of
+pine forest. At intervals of ten or twelve miles the train stopped at
+places bearing high-sounding titles, such as Rush City, Pine City; but
+upon examination one looked in vain for any realization of these names,
+pines and rushes certainly were plentiful enough, but the city part of
+the arrangement was nowhere visible. Upon asking a fellow-passenger for
+some explanation of the phenomena, he answered, "Guess there was a city
+hereaway last year, but it busted up or gone on." Travellers unacquainted
+with the vernacular of America might have conjured up visions of a
+catastrophe not less terrible than that of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but
+an earlier acquaintance of Western cities had years before taught me to
+comprehend such phrases. In the autumn of 1867 I had visited the prairies
+of Nebraska, along the banks of the Platte River. Buffalo were numerous
+on the sandy plains which form the hunting-grounds of the Shienne and
+Arapahoe Indians, and amongst the vast herds the bright October days
+passed quickly enough. One day, in company with an American officer, we
+were following, as usual, a herd of buffalo, when we came upon a town
+standing silent and deserted in the middle the Trairie. "That," said the
+American, "is Kearney City; it did a good trade in the old wagon times,
+but it busted up when the railroad went on farther west; the people moved
+on to North Platte and Julesburg--guess there's only one man left in it
+now, and he's got snakes in his boots the hull season." Marvelling what
+manner of man this might be who dwelt alone in the silent city, we rode
+on. One house showed some traces of occupation, and in this house dwelt
+the man. We had passed through the deserted grass-grown street, and were
+again on the prairie, when a shot rang out behind us, the bullet cutting
+up the dust away to the left. "By G---- he's on the shoot," cried our
+friend; "ride, boys!" and so we rode. Much has been written and said of
+cities old and new, of Aztec and Peruvian monuments, but I venture to
+offer to the attention of the future historian of America this sample of
+the busted up city of Kearney and its solitary indweller, who had snakes
+in his boots and was on the shoot.
+
+After that explanation of a "busted-up" and "gone-on" city, I was of
+course sufficiently well "posted" not to require further explanation as
+to the fate of Pine and Rush Cities; but had I entertained any doubts
+upon the subject, the final stoppage of the train at Moose Lake, or City,
+would have effectually dispelled them. For there stood the portions of
+Rush and Pine Cities which had not "bust up," but had simply "gone
+on." Two shanties, with a few outlying sheds, stood on either side of the
+track, which here crossed a clear running forest stream. Passenger
+communication ended at this point; the rails were laid down for a
+distance of eight miles farther, but only the "construction train," with
+supplies, men, etc. proceeded to that point. Track-laying was going on at
+the rate of three miles a day, I was informed, and the line would soon be
+opened to the Dalles of the St. Louis River, near the hecad of Lake
+Superior. The heat all day had been very great, and it was refreshing to
+get out of the dusty car, even though the shanties, in which eating,
+drinking, and sleeping were supposed to be carried on, were of the very
+lowest description. I had made the acquaintance of the express agent, a
+gentleman connected with the baggage department of the train, and during
+the journey he had taken me somewhat into his confidence on the matter of
+the lodging and entertainment which were to be found in the shanties.
+"The food ain't bad," he said, "but that there shanty of Tom's licks
+creation for bugs." This terse and forcibly expressed opinion made me
+select the interior of a wagon, and some fresh hay, as a place of rest,
+where, in spite of vast numbers of mosquitoes, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.
+
+The construction train started from Moose City at six o'clock a.m., and
+as the stage, which was supposed to connect with the passenger train and
+carry forward its human freight to Superior City was filled to
+overflowing, I determined to take advantage of the construction train,
+and travel on it as far as it would take me. A very motley group of
+lumberers, navvies, and speculators assembled for breakfast at five
+o'clock a.m. at Tom's table, and although I cannot quite confirm the
+favourable opinion of my friend the express agent as to the quality of
+the viands which graced it, I can at least testify to the vigour with
+which the "guests" disposed of the pork and beans, the molasses and
+dried apples which Tom, with foul fingers, had set before them. Seated on
+the floor of a waggon in the construction train, in the midst of navvies
+of all countries and ages, I reached the end of the track while the
+morning sun was yet low in the east. I had struck up a kind of
+partnership for the journey with a pedlar Jew and an Ohio man, both going
+to Duluth, and as we had a march of eighteen miles to get through
+between the end of the track and the town of Fond-du-Lac, it became
+necessary to push on before the sun had reached his midday level; so,
+shouldering our baggage, we left the busy scene of track-laying and
+struck out along the graded line for the Dalles of the St. Louis. Up to
+this point the line had been fully levelled, and the walking was easy
+enough, but when the much-talked of Dalles were reached a complete
+change took place, and the toil became excessive. The St. Louis River,
+which in reality forms the headwater of the great St. Lawrence, has its
+source in the dividing ridge between Minnesota and the British territory.
+From these rugged Laurentian ridges it foams down in an impetuous torrent
+through wild pine-clad steeps of rock and towering precipice, apparently
+to force an outlet into the valley of the Mississippi, but at the Dalles
+it seems to have suddenly preferred to seek the cold waters of the
+Atlantic, and, bending its course abruptly to the east, it pours its
+foaming torrent into the great Lake Superior below the old French
+trading-post of Fond-du-Lac. The load which I carried was not of itself a
+heavy one, but its weight became intolerable under the rapidly increasing
+heat of the sun and from the toilsome nature of the road. The deep narrow
+gorges over which the railway was to be carried were yet unbridged, and
+we had to let ourselves down the steep yielding embankment to a depth of
+over 100 feet, and then clamber up the other side almost upon hands and
+knees-this under a sun that beat down between the hills with terrible
+intensity on the yellow sand of the railway cuttings! The Ohio man
+carried no baggage, but the Jew was heavily laden, and soon fell behind.
+For a time I kept pace with my light companion; but soon I too was
+obliged to lag, and about midday found myself alone in the solitudes of
+the Dalles. At last there came a gorge deeper and steeper than any thing
+that had preceded it, and I was forced to rest long before attempting its
+almost perpendicular ascent. When I did reach the top, it was to find
+myself thoroughly done up--the sun came down on the side of the
+embankment as though it would burn the sandy soil into ashes, not a
+breath of air moved through the silent hills, not a leaf stirred in the
+forest. My load was more than I could bear, and again I had to lie down
+to avoid falling down. Only once before had I experienced a similar
+sensation of choking, and that was in toiling through a Burmese swamp,
+snipe-shooting under a midday sun. How near that was to sun-stroke, I
+can't say; but I don't think it could be very far. After a little time, I
+saw, some distance down below, smoke rising from a shanty. I made my way
+with no small difficulty to the door, and found the place full of some
+twenty or more rough-bearded looking men sitting down to dinner.
+
+"About played out, I guess?" said one. "Wall, that sun is h--; any how,
+come in and have a bit. Have a drink of tea or some vinegar and water."
+
+They filled me out a literal dish of tea, black and boiling; and I
+drained the tin with a feeling of relief such as one seldom knows. The
+place was lined round with bunks like the forecastle of a ship. After a
+time I rose to depart and asked the man who acted as cook how much there
+was to pay.
+
+"Not a cent, stranger;" and so I left my rough hospitable friends, and,
+gaining the railroad, lay down to rest until the fiery sun had got lower
+in the west. The remainder of the road was thronged with gangs of men at
+work along it, bridging, blasting, building, and levelling--strong
+able-bodied fellows fit for any thing. Each gang was under the
+superintendence of a railroad "boss," and all seemed to be working well.
+But then two dollars a head per diem will make men work well even under
+such a sun.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North Pacific
+Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A Plan to
+dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and its
+Neighbourhood.
+
+ALMOST in the centre of the Dalles I passed the spot where the Northern
+Pacific Railroad had on that day turned its first sod, commencing its
+long course across the continent. This North Pacific Railroad is destined
+to play a great part in the future history of the United States; it is
+the second great link which is to bind together the Atlantic and Pacific
+States (before twenty years there will be many others). From Puget Sound
+on the Pacific to Duluth on Lake Superior is about 2200 miles, and across
+this distance the North Pacific Railroad is to run. The immense plains of
+Dakota, the grassy uplands of Montana and Washington, and the centre of
+the State of Minnesota will behold ere long this iron road of the North
+Pacific Company piercing their lonely wilds. "Red Cloud" and "Black
+Eagle" and "Standing Buffalo" may gather their braves beyond the Coteau
+to battle against this steam-horse which scares their bison from his
+favourite breeding grounds on the scant pastures of the great Missouri
+plateau; but all their efforts will be in vain, the dollar will beat them
+out. Poor Red Cloud! in spite of thy towering form and mighty strength,
+the dollar is mightier still, and the fiat has gone forth before which
+thou and thy braves must pass away from the land! Very tired and covered
+deep with the dust of railroad cuttings, I reached the collection of
+scattered houses which bears the name of Fond-du Lac. Upon inquiring at
+the first house which I came to as to the whereabouts of the hotel, I was
+informed by a sour-visaged old female, that if I wanted to drink and get
+drunk, I must go farther on; but that if I wished to behave in a quiet
+and respectable manner, and could live %without liquor, I could stay in
+her house, which was at once post office, Temperance Hotel, and very
+respectable. Being weary and footsore, I. did not feel disposed to seek
+farther, for the place looked clean, the river was close at hand, and the
+whole aspect of the scene was suggestive of rest. In the evening hours
+myriads of mosquitoes and flying things of minutest size came forth from
+the wooded hills and did their best towards making life a misery; so bad
+were they that I welcomed a passing navvy who dropped in as a real
+godsend.
+
+"You're come up to look after work on this North Pacific Railroad, I
+guess?" he commenced-he was a Southern Irish man, but "guessed" all the
+same--"well, now, look here, the North Pacific Railroad will never be
+like the U.P. (Union Pacific) I worked there, and I know what it was; it
+was bully, I can tell you. A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two
+dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and bit the boss on the head with
+his shovel if the boss gave him any d---- chat. No, sirree, the North
+Pacific will never be like that."
+
+I could not help thinking that it was perhaps quite as well for the North
+Pacific Railroad Company and the boss if they never were destined to
+rival the Union Pacific Company as pictured by my companion; but I did
+not attempt to say so, as it might have come under the heading of
+"d---- chat," worthy only of being replied to by that convincing argument,
+the shovel.
+
+A good night's sleep and a swim in the St. Louis river banished all trace
+of toil. I left Fond-du-Lac early in the afternoon, and, descending by a
+small steamer the many-winding St. Louis River, soon came in sight of the
+town of Duluth. The heat had become excessive; the Bay of St. Louis, shut
+in on all sides by lofty hills, lay under a mingled mass of thunder-cloud
+and sunshine; far out in Lake Superior vivid lightnings flashed over the
+gloomy water and long rolls of thunder shook the hills around. On board
+our little steamboat the atmosphere was stifling, and could not have been
+short of 100 degrees in the coolest place (it was 93 at six o'clock same
+evening in the hotel at Duluth); there was nothing for it but to lie
+quietly on a wooden bench and listen to the loud talking of some
+fellow-passengers. Three of the hardest of hard cases were engaged in the
+mental recreation of "'swapping lies;" their respective exchanges
+consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing; the experiences of one
+I recollect in particular. He had stolen an axe from a man on the North
+Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article. This
+Piece of knavery was received as the acme of cuteness; and I well
+recollect the language in which the brute wound up his self-laudations:
+"If any chap can steal faster than me, let him."
+
+As we emerged from the last bend of the river and stood across the Bay of
+St. Louis, Duluth, in all its barrenness, stood before us. The future
+capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town
+whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of
+Japan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorriest
+spectacle of city that eye of man could look upon-wooden houses scattered
+at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only
+partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out of
+a reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and lumber
+standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs
+and passable only by crazy looking planks of tilting proclivities--over
+all, a sun fit for a Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in
+whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever.
+Still, in spite of rock and swamp and icy winter, Yankee energy will
+triumph here as it has triumphed else where over kindred difficulties.
+
+"There's got to be a Boss City hereaway on this end of the lake," said
+the captain of the little boat; and though he spoke with much labour of
+imprecation, both needless then and now, taking what might be termed a
+cursory view of the situation, he summed up the prospects of Duluth
+conclusively and clearly enough.
+
+I cannot say I enjoyed a stay of two days in Duluth. Several new saloons
+(name for dram-shops, gaming-houses, and generally questionable places)
+were being opened for the first time to the public, and free drinks were
+consequently the rule. Now "free drinks" have generally a demoralizing
+tendency upon a community, but taken in connexion with a temperature of
+98 degrees in the shade, they quickly develop into free revolvers and
+freer bowie-knives. Besides, the spirit of speculation was rampant in the
+hotel, and so many men had corner lots, dock locations, pine forests, and
+pre-empted lands to sell me, that nothing but flight prevented my
+becoming a large holder of all manner of Duluth securities upon terms
+that, upon the clearest showing, would have been ridiculously favourable
+to me. The principal object of my visit to Duluth was to discover if any
+settlement existed at the Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles to the north and
+not far from the track of the Expedition, a place which had been named to
+the military authorities in Canada as likely to form a base of attack for
+any filibusters who would be adventurous enough to make a dash at the
+communication of the expeditionary force. A report of the discovery of
+gold and silver mines around the Vermilion Lakes had induced a rush of
+miners there during the previous year; but the mines had all "bust up,"
+and the miners had been blown away to other regions, leaving the plant
+and fixtures of quartz-crushing machinery standing drearily in the
+wilderness. These facts I ascertained from the engineer, who had
+constructed a forest track from Duluth to the mines, and into whose
+office I penetrated in quest of information. He, too, looked upon me as a
+speculator.
+
+"Don't mind them mines," he said, after I had questioned him on all
+points of distance and road; "don't touch them mines; they're clean gone
+up. The gold in them mines don't amount to a row of pines, and there's
+not a man there now."
+
+That evening there came a violent thunder-storm, which cleared and cooled
+the atmosphere; between ten o'clock in the morning and three in the
+afternoon the thermometer fell 30 degrees. Lake Superior had asserted its
+icy influence over the sun. Glad to get away from Duluth, I crossed the
+bay to Superior City, situated on the opposite, or Wisconsin shore of the
+lake. A curious formation of sand and shingle runs out from the shore of
+Duluth, forming a long narrow spit of land projecting far into Lake
+Superior. It bears the name of Minnesota Point, and has evidently been
+formed by the opposing influence of the east wind over the great expanse
+of the lake, and the current of the St. Louis River from the West. It has
+a length of seven miles, and is only a few yards in width. Close to the
+Wisconsin shore a break occurs in this long narrow spit, and inside this
+opening lies the harbour and city of Superior incomparably a better
+situation for a city and lake-port, level, sheltered, capacious; but,
+nevertheless, Superior City is doomed to delay, while eight miles off its
+young rival is rapidly rushing to wealth. This anomaly is easily
+explained. Duluth is pushed forward by the capital of the State of
+Minnesota, while the legislature of Wisconsin looks with jealous eye upon
+the formation of a second lake-port city which might draw off to itself
+the trade of Milwaukie.
+
+In course of time, however, Superior City must rise, in spite of all
+hostility, to the very prominent position to which its natural advantages
+entitle it. I had not been many minutes in the hotel at Superior City
+before the trying and unsought character of land speculator was again
+thrust upon me.
+
+"Now, stranger," said a long-legged Yankee, who, with his boots on the
+stove---the day had got raw and cold--and his knees considerably higher
+than his head, was gazing intently at me, "'I guess I've fixed you." I
+was taken aback by the sudden identification of my business, when he
+continued, "Yes, I've just fixed you. You air a Kanady speculator, ain't
+ye?" Not deeming it altogether wise to deny the correct ness of his
+fixing, I replied I had lived in Kanady for some time, but that I was not
+going to begin speculation until I had knocked round a little. An
+invitation to liquor soon followed. The disagreeable consequence
+resulting from this admission soon became apparent. I was much pestered
+towards evening by offers of investment in things varying from a
+sand-hill to a city-square, or what would infallibly in course of time
+develop into a city-square. A gentleman rejoicing in the name of Vose
+Palmer insisted upon inter viewing me until a protracted hour of the night,
+with a view towards my investing in straight drinks for him at the bar and
+in an extensive pine forest for myself some where on the north shore of
+Lake Superior. I have no doubt the pine forest is still in the market; and
+should any enterprising capitalist in this country feel disposed to enter
+into partnership on a basis of bearing all expenses himself, giving only
+the profits to his partner, he will find "Vose Palmer, Superior City,
+Wisconsin, United States," ever ready to attend to him.
+
+Before turning our steps westward from this inland ocean of Superior, it
+will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its bosom.
+It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal. Four
+Hundred English miles in length, 50 miles across it, 600 feet above
+Atlantic level, 900 feet in depth-one vast spring of purest crystal
+water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself,
+and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out
+as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the
+outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron,
+Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes
+Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, in the quiet
+loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar
+Rapids; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the
+foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, down where the lone
+Laurentian Hills come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest
+beginnings they cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close
+to the sounding billows of the Atlantic, 2000 miles from Superior, these
+hills--the only ones that ever last-guard the great gate by which the St.
+Lawrence seeks the sea.
+
+There are rivers whose current, running red with the silt and mud of
+their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the ocean the record of their
+muddy progress; but this glorious river system, through its many lakes
+and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from
+the fountain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but
+they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steamships
+cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not the
+beauty of the water-no more than the fleets of the world mark the waves
+of the ocean. Any person looking at the map's of the region bounding the
+great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers
+flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron from the south; in fact,
+the drainage of the states bordering these lakes on the south is
+altogether carried off by the valley of the Mississippi-it follows that
+this valley of Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface of
+the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some 73,000 square miles,
+are therefore an immense reservoir held high over the level of the great
+Mississippi valley, from which they are separated by a barrier of slight
+elevation and extent.
+
+It is not many years ago since an enterprising Yankee proposed to
+annihilate Canada, dry up Niagara, and "fix British creation" generally,
+by diverting the current of Lake Erie, through a deep canal, into the
+Ohio River; but should nature, in one of her freaks of earthquake, ever
+cause a disruption to this intervening barrier on the southern shores of
+the great northern lakes, the drying up of Niagara, the annihilation of
+Canada, and the divers disasters to British power, will in all
+probability be followed by the submersion of half of the Mississippi
+states under the waters of these inland seas.
+
+On the 26th June I quitted the shores of Lake Superior and made my way
+back to Moose Lake. Without any exception, the road thither was the very
+worst I had ever travelled over--four horses essayed to drag a stage-waggon
+over, or rather, I should say, through, a track of mud and ruts
+impossible to picture. The stage fare amounted to $6, or 4s. for 34
+miles. An extra dollar reserved the box-seat and gave me the double
+advantage of knowing what was coming in the rut line and taking another
+lesson in the idiom of the American stage-driver. This idiom consists of
+the smallest possible amount of dictionary words, a few Scriptural names
+rather irreverently used, a very large intermixture of "git-ups" and
+ejaculatory "his," and a general tendency to blasphemy all round. We
+reached Tom's shanty at dusk. As before, it was crowded to excess, and
+the memory of the express man's warning was still sufficiently strong to
+make me prefer the forest to "bunking in" with the motley assemblage; a
+couple of Eastern Americans shared with me the little camp. We made a
+fire, laid some boards on the ground, spread a blanket upon them, pulled
+the "mosquito bars" over our heads, and lay down to attempt to sleep. It
+was a vain effort; mosquitoes came out in myriads, little atoms of gnats
+penetrated through the netting of the "bars," and rendered rest or sleep
+impossible. At last, when the gnats seemed disposed to retire, two
+Germans came along, and, seeing our fire, commenced stumbling about our
+boards. To be roused at two o'clock a.m., when one is just sinking into
+obliviousness after four hours of useless struggle with unseen enemies,
+is provoking enough, but to be roused under such circumstances by Germans
+is simply unbearable.
+
+At last daylight came. A bathe in the creek, despite the clouds of
+mosquitoes, freshened one up a little and made Tom's terrible table see
+less repulsive. Then came a long hot day in the dusty cars, until at
+length St. Paul was reached.
+
+I remained at St. Paul some twelve days, detained there from day to day
+awaiting the arrival of letters from Canada relative to the future supply
+of the Expedition. This delay was at the time most irksome, as I too
+frequently pictured the troops pushing on towards Fort Garry while I was
+detained inactive in Minnesota; but one morning the American papers came
+out with news that the expeditionary forces had met with much delay in
+their first move from Thunder Bay; the road over which it was necessary
+for them to transport their boats, munitions, and supplies for a distance
+of forty-four miles from Superior to Lake Shebandowan was utterly
+impracticable, portions of it, indeed, had still to be made, bridges to
+be built, swamps to be corduroyed, and thus at the very outset of the
+Expedition a long delay became necessary. Of course, the American press
+held high jubilee over this check, which was represented as only the
+beginning of the end of a series of disasters. The British Expedition was
+never destined to reach Red River--swamps would entrap it, rapids would
+engulf it; and if, in spite of these obstacles, some few men did succeed
+in piercing the rugged wilderness, the trusty rifle of the Metis would
+soon annihilate the presumptive intruders. Such was the news and such
+were the comments I had to read day after day, as I anxiously scanned the
+columns of the newspapers for intelligence. Nor were these comments on
+the Expedition confined to prophecy of its failure from the swamps and
+rapids of the route: Fenian aid was largely spoken of by one portion of
+the press. Arms and ammunition, and hands to use them, were being pushed
+towards St. Cloud and the Red River to aid the free sons of the
+North-west to follow out their manifest destiny, which, of course, was
+annexation to the United States. But although these items made reading a
+matter of no pleasant description, there were other things to be done in
+the good city of St. Paul not without their special interest. The Falls
+of the Mississippi at St. Anthony, and the lovely little Fall of
+Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect
+little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy
+threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so
+light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming
+through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The
+Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly
+disfigured by the various sawmills that surround them.
+
+The hotel in which I lodged at St. Paul was a very favourable specimen
+of the American hostelry; its proprietor was, of course, a colonel, so it
+may be presumed that he kept his company in excellent order. I had but
+few acquaintances in St. Paul, and had little to do besides study
+American character as displayed in dining-room, lounging-hall, and
+verandah, during the hot fine days; but when the hour of sunset came it
+was my wont to ascend to the roof of the building to look at the glorious
+panorama spread out before me-for sunset in America is of itself a sight
+of rare beauty, and the valley of the Mississippi never appeared to
+better advantage than when the rich hues of the western sun were gilding
+the steep ridges that over hang it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud--Sauk Rapids--"Steam
+Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the Red River.
+
+ENGLISHMEN who visit America take away with them two widely different
+sets of opinions. In most instances they have rushed through the land,
+note-book in hand, recording impressions and eliciting information. The
+visit is too frequently a first and a last one; the thirty-seven states
+are run over in thirty-seven days; then out comes the book, and the great
+question of America, socially and politically considered, is sealed for
+evermore. Now, if these gentlemen would only recollect that impressions,
+which are thus hastily collected must of necessity share the
+imperfection of all things done in a hurry, they would not record these
+hurriedly gleaned facts with such an appearance of infallibility, or,
+rather, they might be induced to try a second rush across the Atlantic
+before attempting that first rush into print. Let them remember that even
+the genius of Dickens was not proof against such error, and that a
+subsequent visit to the States caused no small amount of alteration in
+his impressions of America. This second visit should be a rule with every
+man who wishes to read aright, for his own benefit, or for that of
+others, the great book which America holds open to the traveller. Above
+all, the English traveller who enters the United States with a portfolio
+filled with letters of introduction will generally prove the most
+untrustworthy guide to those who follow him for information. He will
+travel from city to city, finding everywhere lavish hospitality and
+boundless kindness; at every hotel he will be introduced to several of
+"our leading citizens;" newspapers will report his progress,
+general-superintendents of railroads will pester him with free passes
+over half the lines in the Union; and he will take his departure from New
+York after a dinner at Delmonico's, the cartes of which will cost a
+dollar each. The chances are extremely probable that his book will be
+about as fair a representation of American social and political
+institutions as his dinner at Delmonico's would justly represent the
+ordinary cuisine throughout the Western States.
+
+Having been fêted and free-passed through the Union, he of course comes
+away delighted with everything. If he is what is called a Liberal in
+politics, his political bias still further strengthens his favourable
+impressions of democracy and Delmonico; if he is a rigid Conservative,
+democracy loses half its terrors when it is seen across the
+Atlantic--just as widow-burning or Juggernaut are institutions much better
+suited to Bengal than they would be to Berkshire. Of course Canada and
+things Canadian are utterly beneath the notice of our traveller. He may,
+however, introduce them casually with reference to Niagara, which has a
+Canadian shore, or Quebec, which possesses a fine view; for the rest,
+America, past, present, and to come, is to be studied in New York,
+Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and half a dozen other big places, and,
+with Niagara, Salt Lake City and San Francisco thrown in for scenic
+effect, the whole thing is complete. Salt Lake City is peculiarly
+valuable to the traveller, as it affords him much subject-matter for
+questionable writing. It might be well to recollect, however, that there
+really exists no necessity for crossing the Atlantic and travelling as
+far west as Utah in order to compose questionable books upon
+unquestionable subjects; similar materials in vast quantities exist much
+nearer home, and Pimlico and St. John's Wood will be found quite as
+prolific in "Spiritual Wives" and "Gothic" affinities as any creek or
+lake in the Western wilderness. Neither is it to be wondered at that so
+many travellers carry away with them a fixed idea that our cousins are
+cousins in heart as well as in relationship-the friendship is of the
+Delmonico type too. Those speeches made to the departing guest, those
+Pledges of brotherhood over the champagne glass, this "old lang syne"
+with hands held in Scotch fashion, all these are not worth much in the
+markets of brotherhood. You will be told that the hostility of the
+inhabitants of the United States towards England is confined to one
+class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically
+insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant: the hostility to
+England is universal; it is more deep rooted than any other feeling; it
+is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged
+strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you
+pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with
+your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the
+most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whose grip was
+around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that English-speaking
+cousin of yours over the Atlantic whose language is your language, whose
+literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your
+digests of law would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat
+over your agony, would keep the ring while you were, being knocked out of
+all semblance of nation and power, and would not be very far distant when
+the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast disjointed
+limbs. Make no mistake in this matter, and be not blinded by ties of
+kindred or belief. You imagine that because he is your cousin-sometimes
+even your very son-that he cannot hate you, and you nurse yourself in the
+belief that in a moment of peril the stars and stripes would fly
+alongside the old red cross. Listen one moment; we cannot go five miles
+through any State in the American Union without coming upon a square
+substantial building in which children are being taught one universal
+lesson-the history of how, through long years of blood and strife, their
+country came forth a nation from the bungling tyranny of Britain. Until
+five short years ago that was the one bit of history that went home to
+the heart of Young America, that Was the lesson your cousin learned, and
+still learns, in spite of later conflicts. Let us see what was the lesson
+your son had laid to heart. Well, your son learned his lesson, not from
+books, for too often he could not read, but he learned it in a manner
+which perhaps stamps it deeper into the mind than even letter-press or
+schoolmaster. He left you because you would not keep him, because you
+preferred grouse-moors and deer-forests in Scotland, or meadows and
+sheep-walks in Ireland to him or his. He did not leave you as one or two
+from a household--as one who would go away and establish a branch
+connexion across the ocean; he went away by families, by clans, by kith
+and kin, for ever and for aye and he went away with hate in his heart and
+dark thoughts towards you who should have been his mother. It matters
+little that he has bettered himself and grown rich in the new land; that
+is his affair; so far as you were concerned, it was about even betting
+whether he went to the bottom of the Atlantic or to the top of the
+social tree-so, I say, to close this subject, that son and cousin owe you
+and give you, scant and feeblest love. You will find themn the firm
+friend of the Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your
+enemy in Herat, in Cabool, in Kashgar, or in Constantinople; you will
+find him the ally of the Prussian whenever Kaiser William, after the
+fashion of his tribe, orders his legions to obliterate the line between
+Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you
+spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first
+Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore
+strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's
+friend, for the simple reason that he is your enemy.
+
+But a study of American habits and opinions, however interesting in
+itself, was not calculated to facilitate in any way the solving of the
+problem which now beset me, namely, the further progress of my journey to
+the Northwest. The accounts which I daily received were not encouraging.
+Sometimes there came news that M. Riel had grown tired of his
+pre-eminence and was anxious to lay down his authority; at other times I
+heard of preparation made and making to oppose the Expedition by force,
+and of strict watch being maintained along the Pembina frontier to arrest
+and turn back all persons except such as were friendly to the Provisional
+Government.
+
+Nor was my own position in St. Paul at all a pleasant one. The inquiries
+I had to make on subjects connected with the supply of the troops in Red
+River had made so many persons acquainted with my identity, that it soon
+became known that there was a British officer in the place--a knowledge
+which did not tend in any manner to make the days pleasant in themselves
+nor hopeful in the anticipation of a successful prosecution of my journey
+in the time to come. About the first week in July I left St. Paul for
+St. Cloud, seventy miles higher up on the Mississippi, having decided to
+wait no longer'` for instructions, but to trust to chance for further
+progress towards the North-west. "You will meet with no obstacle at this
+side of the line," said an American gentleman who was acquainted with the
+object of my journey, "but I won't answer for the other side;" and so,
+not knowing exactly how I was to get through to join the Expedition, but'
+determined to try it some way or other, I set out for Sauk Rapids and St.
+Cloud. Sauk Rapids, on the Mississippi River, is a city which has neither
+burst up nor gone on. It has thought fit to remain, without monument of
+any kind, where it originally located itself-on the left bank of the
+Mississippi, opposite the confluence of the Sauk River with the "Father
+of Waters." It takes its name partly from the Sauk River and partly from
+the rapids of the Mississippi which lie abreast of the town. Like many
+other cities, it had nourished feelings of the most deadly enmity.
+against its neighbours, and was to "kill creation" on every side; but
+these ideas of animosity have decreased considerably in lapse of time: Of
+course it possessed a newspaper--I believe it also possessed a church,
+but I did not see that edifice; the paper, however, I did see, and was
+much struck by the fact that the greater portion of the first page--the
+paper had only two-was taken up with a pictorial delineation of what
+Sauk Rapids would attain to in the future, when it had sufficiently
+developed its immense water-power; In the mean time previous to the
+development of said water-power-Sauk Rapids was not a bad sort of place:
+a bath at an hotel in St. Paul was a more expensive luxury than a dinner;
+but the Mississippi flowing by the door of the hotel at Sauk Rapids
+permitted free bathing in its waters. Any traveller in the United States
+will fully appreciate this condescension on the part of the great river.
+If a man wishes to be clean, he has to pay highly for the luxury. The
+baths which exist in the hotels are evidently meant for very rare and
+important occasions.
+
+"I would like," said an American gentleman to a friend of mine travelling
+by railway, "I would like to show % you round our city, and I will call
+for you at the hotel."
+
+"Thank you," replied my friend; "I have only to take a bath, and will be
+ready in half an hour."
+
+"Take a bath!" answered the American; "why, you ain't sick, air you?"
+
+There are not many commandments strictly adhered to in the United
+States; but had there ever existed a "Thou shalt not tub," the implicit
+obedience rendered to it would have been delightful, but perhaps, in that
+case, every American would have been a Diogenes.
+
+The Russell House at Sauk Rapids was presided over by Dr. Chase.
+According to his card, Dr. Chase conferred more benefactions upon the
+human race for the very smallest remuneration than any man living. His
+hotel was situated in the loveliest portion of Minnesota, commanding the
+magnificent rapids of the Mississippi; his board and lodging were of the
+choicest description; horses and buggies were free, gratis, and medical
+attendance was also uncharged for. Finally, the card intimated that, upon
+turning over, still more astonishing revelations would meet the eye of
+the reader. Prepared for some terrible instance of humane abnegation on
+the part of Dr. Chase, I proceeded to do, as directed, and, turning over
+the card, read, "Present of a $500 greenback"!!! The gift of the green
+back was attended with some little drawback, inasmuch as it was
+conditional upon paying to Dr. Chase the sum of $20,000 for the goodwill,
+etc., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for
+them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low
+one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of
+his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the
+frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually
+pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more
+observable than in this Doctor's establishment; whether it was from the
+fact that each guest suffered under a painful knowledge of the superhuman
+efforts which the Doctor was making for his or her benefit, I cannot say;
+but I never witnessed the proverbially frightened appearance of the
+American people at meals to such a degree as at the dinner-table of the
+Sauk Hotel. When the damsels before alluded to commenced their
+peregrinations round the table, giving in terribly terse language the
+choice of meats, the solemnity of the proceeding could not have been
+exceeded. "Pork or beef?" "Pork," would answer the trembling feeder;
+"Beef or pork?" "Beef," would again reply the guest, grasping eagerly at
+the first name which struck upon his ear. But when the second course came
+round the damsels presented us with a choice of a very mysterious nature
+indeed. I dimly heard two names being uttered into the ears of my
+fellow-eaters, and I just had time to notice the paralyzing effect which
+the communication appeared to have upon them, when presently over my own
+shoulder I heard the mystic sound-I regret to say that at first these
+sounds entirely failed to present to my mind any idea of food or
+sustenance of known description, I therefore begged for a repetition of
+the words; this time there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or
+pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in
+her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness,
+but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The
+female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after
+communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not
+thought of much account for the remainder of the meal.
+
+Upon the day of my arrival at Sauk Rapids I had let it be known pretty
+widely that I was ready to become the purchaser of a saddle-horse, if any
+person had such an animal to dispose of. In the three following days the
+amount of saddle-horses produced in the neighbourhood was perfectly
+astonishing; indeed the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any
+thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required animal; even
+a German--a "Dutchman'" came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh,
+sand-cracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of
+$100. Two livery stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated
+stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior
+description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of
+the animals brought up for inspection, I found there was little chance of
+being able to get over the 400 miles which lay between St. Cloud and Fort
+Garry. It was now the 12th of July; I had reached the farthest limit of
+railroad communication, and before me lay 200 miles of partly settled
+country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River. It is true that
+a four-horse stage ran from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie on Red River,
+but that would only have conveyed me to about 300 miles distant from Fort
+Garry, and over that last 300 miles I could see no prospect of
+travelling. I had therefore determined upon procuring a horse and riding
+the entire way, and it was with this object that I had entered into these
+inspections of horseflesh already mentioned. Matters were in this
+unsatisfactory state on the 12th of July, when I was informed that the
+solitary steamboat which plied upon the waters of the Red River was about
+to make a descent to Fort Garry, and that a week would elapse before she
+would start from her moorings below Georgetown, a. station of the Hudson
+Bay Company situated 250 miles from St. Cloud. This was indeed the best
+of good news to me; I saw in it the long-looked-for chance of bridging
+this great stretch of 400 miles and reaching at last the Red River
+Settlement. I saw in it still more the prospect of joining at no very
+distant time the expeditionary force itself, after I had run the gauntlet
+of M. Riel and his associates, and although many obstacles yet remained
+to be overcome, and distances vast and wild had to be covered before that
+hope could be realized, still the prospect of immediate movement overcame
+every perspective difficulty; and glad indeed I was when from the top of
+a well-horsed stage I saw the wooden houses of St. Cloud disappear
+beneath the prairie behind me, and I bade good-bye for many a day to the
+valley of the Mississippi,
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival Savages-Abercrombie--News from
+the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red River--Prairies--Sunset--
+Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A Thunder-storm--A Prussian--
+Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer "International"--Pembina.
+
+The stage-coach takes three days to run from St. Cloud to Fort
+Abercrombie, about 180 miles. The road was tolerably good, and many
+portions of the country were very beautiful to look at. On the second day
+one reaches the height of land between the Mississippi and Red Rivers, a
+region abounding in clear crystal lakes of every size and shape, the old
+home of the great Sioux nation, the true Minnesota of their dreams.
+Minnesota ("sky-coloured water"), how aptly did it describe that home
+which was no longer theirs! They have left it for ever; the Norwegian and
+the Swede now call it theirs, and nothing remains of the red man save
+these sounding names of lake and river which long years ago he gave them.
+Along the margins of these lakes many comfortable dwellings nestle
+amongst oak openings and glades, and hill and valley are golden in
+summer with fields of wheat and corn, and little towns are springing up
+where twenty years ago the Sioux lodge-poles were the only signs of
+habitation; but one cannot look on this transformation without feeling,
+with Longfellow, the terrible surge of the white man, "whose breath, like
+the blast of the east wind, drifts evermore to the west the scanty smoke
+of the wigwams." What savages, too, are they, the successors of the old
+race--savages! not less barbarous because they do not scalp, or
+war-dance, or go out to meet the Ojibbeway in the woods or the
+Assineboine in the plains.
+
+We had passed a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Osakis, and reached
+another lake not less lovely, the name of which I did not know.
+
+"What is the name of this place?" I asked the driver who had stopped to
+water his horses.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, lifting a bucket of water to his thirsty
+steeds; "some God-dam Italian name, I guess." This high rolling land
+which divides the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from those of
+Hudson Bay lies at an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea level. It is
+rich in every thing that can make a country prosperous; and that portion
+of the "down-trodden millions," who "starve in the garrets of Europe,"
+and have made their homes along that height of land, have no reason to
+regret their choice.
+
+On the evening of the second day we stopped for the night at the old
+stockaded post of Pomme-de-Terre, not far from the Ottertail River. The
+place was foul beyond the power of words to paint it, but a "shake down"
+amidst the hay in a cow-house was far preferable to the society of man
+close by.
+
+At eleven o'clock on the following morning we reached and crossed the
+Ottertail River, the main branch of the Red River, and I beheld with joy
+the stream upon whose banks, still many hundred miles distant, stood Fort
+Garry. Later in the day, having passed the great level expanse known as
+The Breckenridge Flats, the stage drew up at Fort Abercrombie, and I saw
+for the first time the yellow, muddy waters of the Red River of the
+North. Mr. Nolan, express agent, stage agent, and hotel keeper in the
+town of McAulyville, put me up for that night, and although the room
+which I occupied was shared by no less than five other individuals, he
+nevertheless most kindly provided me with a bed to myself. I can't say
+that I enjoyed the diggings very much. A person lately returned from Fort
+Garry detailed his experiences of that place and his interview with the
+President at some length. A large band of the Sioux Indians was ready to
+support the Dictator against all comers, and a vigilant watch was
+maintained upon the Pembina frontier for the purpose of excluding
+strangers who might attempt to enter from the United States; and
+altogether M. Riel was as securely established in Fort Garry as if there
+had not existed a red-coat in the universe. As for the Expedition, its
+failure was looked upon as a foregone conclusion; nothing had been heard
+of it excepting a single rumour, and that was one of disaster. An Indian
+coming from beyond Fort Francis, somewhere in the wilderness north of
+Lake Superior, had brought tidings to the Lake of the Woods, that forty
+Canadian soldiers had already been lost in one of the boiling rapids of
+the route. "Not a man will get through!" was the general verdict of
+society, as that body was represented at Mr. Nolan's hotel, and, truth'
+to say, society seemed elated at its verdict. All this, told to a roomful
+of Americans, had no very exhilarating effect upon me as I sat, unknown
+and unnoticed, on my portmanteau, a stranger to every one. When our luck
+seems at its lowest there is only one thing to be done, and that is to go
+on and try again. Things certainly looked badly, obstacles grew bigger as
+I got nearer to them--but that is a way they have, and they never grow
+smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my plans for rapid
+movement. There was no horse or conveyance of any kind to be had from
+Abercrombie; but I discovered in the course of questions that the captain
+of the "International" steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a
+week before, and was expected to return to Abercrombie by the next stage,
+two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at
+Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart
+for his steamboat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul.
+Now the boat "International" was lying at a part of the Red River known
+as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I
+had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of
+this horse and cart of the captain's, it became a question of the very
+greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that
+a Red River cart is a very limited conveyance, and a Red River horse, as
+we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of
+impossibilities. To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for
+conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it-by the stage
+back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two
+days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set
+out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the
+Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud.
+This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Abercrombie, which for
+many reasons was a matter for congratulation, and put me in a position to
+intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie. So-on the 13th of July I
+left Nolan's hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary house
+which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and
+Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler's
+log-hut which stood out upon the level sea of grass and was visible miles
+and miles before one reached it. Here had rested one of those unquiet
+birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude nest of such
+material as the oak-wooded "bays" of the Red River afforded, and
+multiplying--in spite of much opposition to the contrary. His eldest had
+been struck dead in his house only a few months before by the
+thunderbolt, which so frequently hurls destruction upon the valley of the
+Red River. The settler had seen many lands since his old home in Cavan
+had been left behind, and but for his name it would have been difficult
+to tell his Irish nationality. He had wandered up to Red River Settlement
+and wandered back again, had squatted in Iowa, and finally, like some
+bird which long wheels in circles ere it settles upon the earth, had
+pitched his tent on the Red River.
+
+The Red River--let us trace it while we wait the coming captain who is to
+navigate us down its tortuous channel. Close to the Lake Ithaska, in
+which the great river Mississippi takes its rise, there is a small sheet
+of water known as Elbow Lake. Here, at an elevation of 1689 feet above
+the sea level, nine feet higher than the source of the Mississippi, the
+Red River has its birth. It is curious that the primary direction of both
+rivers should be in courses diametrically opposite to their afterlines;
+the Mississippi first running to the north, and the Red River first
+bending towards the south; in fact, it is only when it gets down here,
+near the Breckenridge Prairies, that it finally determines to seek a
+northern outlet to the ocean. Meeting the current of the Bois-des-Sioux,
+which has its source in Lac Travers, in which the Minnesota River, a
+tributary of the Mississippi, also takes its rise, the Red River hurries
+on into the level prairie and soon commences its immense windings. This
+Lac Travers discharges in wet seasons north and south, and is the only
+sheet of water on the Continent which sheds its waters into the tropics
+of the Gulf of Mexico and into the polar ocean of the Hudson Bay. In
+former times the whole system of rivers bore the name of the great Dakota
+nation the Sioux River and the title of Red River was only borne by that
+portion of the stream which flows from Red Lake to the forks of the
+Assineboine. Now, however, the whole stream, from its source in Elbow
+Lake to its estuary in Lake Winnipeg fully 900 miles by water, is called
+the Red River: people say that the name is derived from a bloody Indian
+battle which once took place upon its banks, tinging the waters with
+crimson dye. It certainly cannot be called red from the hue of the water,
+which is of a dirty-white colour. Flowing towards the north with
+innumerable twists and sudden turnings, the Red River divides the State
+of Minnesota, which it has upon its right, from the great territory of
+Dakota, receiving from each side many tributary streams which take their
+source in the Leaf Hills of Minnesota and in the Coteau of the Missouri.
+Its tributaries from the east flow through dense forests, those from the
+west wind through the vast sandy wastes of the Dakota Prairie, where
+trees are almost unknown. The plain through which Red River flows is
+fertile beyond description. At a little distance it looks one vast level
+plain through which the windings of the river are marked by a dark line
+of woods fringing the whole length of the stream--each tributary has also
+its line of forest--a line visible many miles away over the great sea of
+grass. As one travels on, there first rise above the prairie the summits
+of the trees; these gradually'! grow larger, until finally, after many
+hours, the river is reached. Nothing else breaks the uniform level.
+Standing upon the ground the eye ranges over many miles of grass,
+standing on a waggon, one doubles the area of vision, and to look over
+the plains from an elevation of twelve feet above the earth is to survey
+at a glance a space so vast that distance alone seems to bound its
+limits. The effect of sunset over these oceans of verdure is very
+beautiful; a thousand hues spread themselves upon the grassy plains; a
+thousand tints of gold are cast along the heavens, and the two oceans of
+the sky and of the earth intermingle in one great blaze of glory at the
+very gates of the setting sun. But to speak of sunsets now is only to
+anticipate. Here at the Red River we are only at the threshold of the
+sunset, its true home yet lies many days journey to the west: there,
+where the long shadows of the vast herds of bison trail slowly over the
+immense plains, huge and dark against the golden west; there, where the
+red man still sees in the glory of the setting sun the realization of his
+dream of heaven.
+
+Shooting the prairie plover, which were numerous around the solitary
+shanty, gossipping with Mr. Connelly on Western life and Red River
+experiences--I passed the long July day until evening came to a close.
+Then came the time of the mosquito; he swarmed around the shanty, he came
+out from blade of grass and up from river sedge, from the wooded bay and
+the dusky prairie, in clouds and clouds, until the air hummed with his
+presence. My host "made a smoke," and the cattle came close around and
+stood into the very fire itself, scorching their hides in attempting to
+escape the stings of their ruthless tormentors. My friend's house was not
+a large one, but he managed to make me a shake-down on the loft overhead,
+and to it he led the way. To live in a country infested by mosquitoes
+ought to insure to a person the possession of health, wisdom, and riches,
+for assuredly I know of nothing so conducive to early turning in and
+early turning out as that most pitiless pest. On the present occasion I
+had not long turned in before I became aware of the presence of at least
+two other persons within the limits of the little loft, for only a few
+feet distant soft whispers became fintly audible. Listening attentively,
+I gathered the following dialogue:
+
+"Do you think he has got it about him?"
+
+"Maybe he has," replied the first speaker with the voice of a woman.
+
+"Are you shure he has it at all at all?"
+
+"Didn't I see it in his own hand?"
+
+Here was a fearful position! The dark loft, the lonely shanty miles away
+from any other habitation, the mysterious allusions to the possession of
+property, all naturally combined to raise the most dreadful suspicions in
+the mind of the solitary traveller. Strange to say, this conversation had
+not the terrible effect upon me which might be supposed. It was evident
+that my old friends, father and mother of Mrs. C----, occupied the loft in
+company with me, and the mention of that most suggestive word,
+"crathure," was sufficient to neutralize all suspicions connected with
+the lonely surroundings of the place. It was, in fact, a drop of that
+much-desired "crathure" that the old couple were so anxious to obtain.
+
+About three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday the 17th July I left the
+house of Mr. Connelly, and journeyed back to Abercrombie in the stage
+waggon from St. Cloud. I had as a fellow-passenger the captain of the
+"International" steamboat, whose acquaintance was quickly made. He had
+received my letter at Pomme-de-Terre, and most kindly offered his pony
+and cart for our joint conveyance to George town that evening; so, having
+waited only long enough at Abercrombie to satisfy hunger and get ready
+the Red River cart, we left Mr. Nolan's door some little time before
+sunset, and turning north along the river held our way towards
+Georgetown. The evening was beautifully fine and clear; the plug trotted
+steadily on, and darkness soon wrapped its mantle around the prairie. My
+new acquaintance had many questions to ask and much information to
+impart, and although a Red River cart is not the easiest mode of
+conveyance to one who sits amidships between the wheels, still when I
+looked to the northern skies and saw the old pointers marking our course
+almost due north, and thought that at last I was launched fair on a road
+whose termination was the goal for which I had longed so earnestly, I
+little recked the rough jolting of the wheels whose revolutions brought
+me closer to my journey's end. Shortly after leaving Abercrombie we
+passed a small creek in whose leaves and stagnant waters mosquitoes were
+numerous.
+
+"If the mosquitoes let us travel," said my companion, as we emerged upon
+the prairie again, "we should reach Georgetown to breakfast."
+
+"If the mosquitoes let us travel?" thought I. "Surely he must be
+joking!"
+
+I little knew then the significance of the captain's words. I thought
+that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps,
+to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught
+me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that
+night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the
+possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may
+appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about ten o'clock at night when
+there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud scarcely visible
+above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the
+north-east; so when my attention had been called to the speck of cloud by
+my companion I naturally concluded that it could in no way concern us,
+but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time the
+little cloud grew bigger, the wind died away altogether, and the stars
+began to look mistily from a sky no longer blue. Every now and again my
+companion looked towards this increasing cloud, and each time his opinion
+seemed to be less favourable. But another change also occurred of a
+character altogether different. There came upon us, brought apparently by
+the cloud, dense swarms of mosquitoes, humming and buzzing along with us
+as we journeyed on, and covering our faces and heads with their sharp
+stinging bites. They seemed to come with us, after us, and against us,
+from above and from below, in volumes that ever increased. It soon began
+to dawn upon me that this might mean something akin to the "mosquitoes
+allowing us to travel," of which my friend had spoken some three hours
+earlier. Meantime the cloud had increased to large proportions; it was no
+longer in the south-west; it occupied the whole west, and was moving on
+towards the north. Presently, from out of the dark heavens, streamed
+liquid fire, and long peals of thunder rolled far away over the gloomy
+prairies. So sudden appeared the change that one could scarce realize
+that only a little while before the stars had been shining so brightly
+upon the ocean of grass. At length the bright flashes came nearer and
+nearer, the thunder rolled louder and louder, and the mosquitoes seemed
+to have made up their minds that to achieve the maximum of torture in the
+minimum of time was the sole end and aim of their existence. The
+captain's pony showed many signs of agony; my dog howled with pain, and
+rolled himself amongst the baggage in useless writhings.
+
+"I thought it would come to this," said the captain. "We must unhitch
+and lie down."
+
+It was now midnight. To loose the horse from the shafts, to put the
+oil-cloth over the cart, and to creep underneath the wheels did-not take
+my friend long. I followed his movements, crept in and drew a blanket over
+my head. Then came the crash; the fire seemed to pour out of the clouds.
+It was impossible to keep the blanket on, so raising it every now and
+again I. looked out from between the spokes of the wheel. During three
+hours the lightning seemed to run like a river of flame out of the
+clouds. Sometimes a stream would descend, then, dividing into two
+branches, would pour down on the prairie two distinct channels of fire.
+The thunder rang sharply, as though the metallic clash of steel was about
+it, and the rain descended in torrents upon the level prairies. At about
+three o'clock in the morning the storm seemed to lull a little. My
+companion crept out from underneath the cart; I followed. The plug, who
+had managed to improve the occasion by stuffing himself with grass, was
+soon in the shafts again, and just as dawn began to streak the dense
+low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion. Still for
+a couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the
+lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten
+flat by the rain-torrent. What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us
+when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low
+upon the dank prairie.
+
+Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was
+I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty
+for Food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name
+of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the
+bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.'
+Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general
+should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted
+the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrangements of
+limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfelds in particular.
+While the Herr was thus engaged in illuminating our minds, the Frau was
+much more agreeably employed in preparing something for our bodily
+comfort. I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the
+future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the
+Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. Many youthful
+Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a
+continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion
+of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future.
+It is more than probable that Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just
+at that moment, when the sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds
+over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen
+were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special
+furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind-it is most probable, I
+say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no
+ways lessened.
+
+Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night storm on the
+prairie, and it was midday on the 18th when we reached the Hudson Bay
+Company Post which stood at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red
+Rivers. Food and fresh horses were all we required, and after these
+requisites had been obtained the journey was prosecuted with renewed
+vigour. Forty miles had yet to be traversed before the point at which
+the Steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran
+on the left or Dakota side of the Red River. As we journeyed along the
+Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it
+a Scene of magical beauty. The sun resting on the rim of the prairie
+cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light. On the east lay
+the darker green of the trees of the Red River. The whole western sky
+was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of
+sunlight shot upward in great trembling shafts of glory. Being on
+horseback and alone, for my companion had trotted on in his waggon, I
+had time to watch and note this brilliant spectacle; but as soon as the
+sun had dipped beneath the sea of verdure an ominous sound caused me
+to gallop on with increasing haste. The pony seemed to know the
+significance of that sound much better than its rider. He no longer
+lagged, nor needed the spur or whip to urge him to faster exertion, for
+darker and denser than on the previous night there rose around us vast
+numbers of mosquitoes--choking masses of biting insects, no mere cloud
+thicker and denser in one place than in another, but one huge wall of
+never-ending insects filling nostrils, ears, and eyes. Where they came
+from I cannot tell; the prairie seemed too small to hold them; the air
+too limited to yield them space. I had seen many vast accumulations of
+insect life in lands old and new, but never any thing that approached to
+this mountain of mosquitoes on the prairies of Dakota. To say that they
+covered the coat of the horse I rode would be to give but a faint idea
+of their numbers; they were literally six or eight deep upon his skin,
+and with a single sweep of the hand one could crush myriads from his
+neck. Their hum seemed to be in all things around. To ride for it was
+the sole resource. Darkness came quickly down, but the track knew no
+turn, and for seven miles I kept the pony at a gallop; my face, neck,
+and hands cut and bleeding.
+
+At last in the gloom I saw, down in what appeared to be the bottom of a
+valley, a long white wooden building, with lights showing out through
+the windows. Riding quickly down this valley we reached, followed by
+hosts of winged pursuers, the edge of some water lying amidst
+tree-covered banks-the water was the Red River, and the white wooden
+building the steamboat "International."
+
+Now one word about mosquitoes in the valley of the Red River. People will
+be inclined to say, "We know well what a mosquito is--very troublesome
+and annoying, no doubt, but you needn't make so much of what every one
+understands." People reading what I have written about this insect will
+probably say this. I would have said so myself before the occurrences of
+the last two nights, but I will never say so again, nor perhaps will my
+readers when they have read the following: It is no unusual event during
+a wet summer in that portion of Minnesota and Dakota to which I refer for
+oxen and horses to perish from the bites of mosquitoes. An exposure of a
+very few hours duration is sufficient to cause death to these animals.
+It is said, too, that not many years ago the Sioux were in the habit of
+sometimes killing their captives by exposing them at night to the attacks
+of the mosquitoes; and any person who has experienced the full intensity
+of a mosquito night along the American portion of the Red River will not
+have any difficulty in realizing how short a period would be necessary to
+cause death.
+
+Our arrival at the "International" was the cause of no small amount of
+discomfort to the persons already on board that vessel. It took us but
+little time to rush over the gangway and seek safety from our pursuers
+within the precincts of the steamboat: but they were not to be baffled
+easily; they came in after us in millions; like Bishop Haddo's rats, they
+came "in at the windows and in at the doors," until in a very short space
+of time the interior of the boat became perfectly black with insects.
+Attracted by the light they flocked into the saloon, covering walls and
+ceiling in one dark mass. We attempted supper, but had to give it up.
+They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter,
+until at length, feverish, bitten, bleeding, and hungry, I sought refuge
+beneath the gauze curtains in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer
+exhaustion.
+
+And in truth there was reason enough for sleep independently of
+mosquitoes bites. By dint of hard travel we had accomplished 104 miles
+in twenty-seven hours. The midnight storm had lost us three hours and
+added in no small degree to discomfort. Mosquitoes had certainly caused
+but little thought to be bestowed upon fatigue during the last two hours;
+but I much doubt if the spur-goaded horse, when he stretches himself at
+night to rest his weary limbs, feels the less tired because the miles
+flew behind him all unheeded under the influence of the spur-rowel. When
+morning broke we were in motion. The air was fresh and cool; not a
+mosquito was visible. The green banks of Red River looked pleasant to the
+eye as the "International" puffed along between them, rolling the
+tranquil water before her in a great muddy wave, which broke amidst the
+red and grey willows on the shore. Now and then the eye caught glimpses
+of the prairies through the skirting of oak woods on the left, but to the
+right there lay an unbroken line of forest fringing deeply the Minnesota
+shore. The "International" was a curious craft; she measured about 130
+feet in length, drew only two feet of water, and was propelled by an
+enormous wheel placed over her stern. Eight summers of varied success and
+as many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river
+worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the
+Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a
+perfect marvel of patchwork--pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank
+and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and
+spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not
+supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on
+fire seemed to be very great; each gust of wind sent showers of sparks
+from the furnaces flying along the lower deck, the charred beams of which
+attested the frequency of the occurrence. Alarmed at the prospect of
+seeing my conveyance wrapped in flames, I shouted vigorously for
+assistance, and will long remember the look of surprise and pity with
+which the native regarded me as he leisurely approached with the
+water-bucket and cast its contents along the smoking deck.
+
+I have already mentioned the tortuous course which the Red River has
+wound for itself through these level northern prairies. The windings of
+the river more than double the length of its general direction, and the
+turns are so sharp that after steaming a mile the traveller will often
+arrive at a spot not one hundred yards distant from where he started.
+
+Steaming thus for one day and one night down the Red River of the North,
+enjoying no variation of scene or change of prospect, but nevertheless
+enjoying beyond expression a profound sense of mingled rest and
+progression, I reached at eight o'clock on the morning of the-20th of
+July the frontier post of Pembina.
+
+And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red
+River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my
+readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into earlier
+times. For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the
+latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of
+Assineboine without any preliminary-acquaintance with its history or its
+inhabitants.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of Hudson--Rival
+Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west Company--How the
+Half-breeds came--The Highlanders defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+WE who have seen in our times the solution of the long-hidden secret
+worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the
+excitement which for nigh 400 years vexed the minds of European kings and
+peoples--how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild
+realms of Cathay and Hindostan--how from every port, from the Adriatic to
+the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest of this ocean strait, to find
+in succession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the
+human race.
+
+Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly
+entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger
+than canal-boats. And how long and how tenaciously did they hold that
+some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached! Not a
+creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to
+the Pacific.
+
+Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought
+they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the
+path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which
+bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac. Two hundred years
+had passed away from the time of Columbus ere his dream of an open sea to
+the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers. This immense
+inlet of Hudson Bay must lead to the Western Ocean. So, at least, thought
+a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into
+the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island,
+which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never
+think or care about again. Nor were these anticipations of reaching the
+East held only by the sailors.
+
+La Salle, when he fitted out his expeditions from the Island of Montreal
+for the West, named his point of departure La Chine, so certain was he
+that his canoes would eventually reach Cathay. And La Chine still exists
+to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent,
+reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt
+another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast
+volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their
+unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water
+must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might
+the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of
+arduous toil through swamp and forest, he stood at last on the low shores
+of the Mississippi and beheld in thought the enormous space which lay
+between him and the spot where such a river had its birth.
+
+The East--it was always the East. Columbus had said the world was not so
+large as the common herd believed it, and yet when he had increased it by
+a continent he tried to make it smaller than it really was. So fixed were
+men's minds upon the East, that it was long before they would think of
+turning to account the discoveries of those early navigators. But in time
+there came to the markets of Europe the products of the New World. The
+gold and the silver of Mexico and the rich sables of the frozen North
+found their way into the marts of Western Europe. And while Drake
+plundered galleons from the Spanish Main, England and France commenced
+their career of rivalry for the possession of that trade in furs and
+peltries which had its sources round the icy shores of the Bay of Hudson.
+It was reserved however for the fiery Prince Rupert to carry into effect
+the idea of opening up the North-west. Through the ocean of Hudson Bay.
+
+Somewhere about 200 years ago a ship sailed away from England bearing in
+it a company of adventurers sent out to form a colony upon the southern
+shores of James's Bay. These men named the new land after the Prince who
+sent them forth, and were the pioneers of that "Hon. Company of
+Adventurers from England trading into Hudson Bay."
+
+More than forty years previous to the date of the charter by which
+Charles II. conferred the territory of Rupert's Land upon the London
+company, a similar grant had been made by the French monarch, Louis
+XIII, to "La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France." Thus there had arisen
+rival claims to the possession of this sterile region, and although
+treaties had at various times attempted to rectify boundaries or to
+rearrange watersheds, the question of the right of Canada or of the
+Company to hold a portion of the vast territory draining into Hudson Bay
+had never been legally solved.
+
+For some eighty years after this settlement on James's Bay, the
+Company held a precarious tenure of their forts and factories. Wild-looking
+men, more Indian than French, marched from Canada over the height of
+land and raided upon the posts of Moose and Albany, burning the stockades
+and carrying off the little brass howitzers mounted thereon. The same
+wild-looking men, pushing on into the interior from Lake Superior, made
+their way into Lake Winnipeg, up the great Saskatchewan River, and
+across to the valley of the Red River; building their forts for war
+and trade by distant lake-shore and confluence of river current, and
+drawing off the valued trade in furs to France; until all of a sudden
+there came the great blow struck by Wolfe under the walls of Quebec, and
+every little far-away post and distant fort throughout the vast interior
+continent felt the echoes of the guns of Abraham. It might have been
+imagined that now, when the power of France was crushed in the Canadas,
+the trade which she had carried on with the Indian tribes of the Far West
+would lapse to the English company trading Into Hudson Bay; but such was
+not the case.
+
+Immediately upon the capitulation of Montreal, fur traders from the
+English cities of Boston and Albany appeared in Montreal and Quebec, and
+pushed their way along the old French route to Lake Winnipeg and into the
+valley of the Saskatchewan. There they, in turn, erected their little
+posts and trading-stations, laid out their beads and blankets, their
+strouds and cottons, and exchanged their long-carried goods for the
+beaver and marten and fisher skins of the Nadow, Sioux, Kinistineau, and
+Osinipoilles. Old maps of the North-west still mark spots along the
+shores of Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan with names of Henry's House,
+Finlay's House, and Mackay's House. These "houses" were the
+Trading-posts of the first English free-traders, whose combination in
+1783 gave rise to the great North-west Fur Company, so long the fierce
+rival of the Hudson Bay. To picture here the jealous rivalry which during
+forty years raged throughout these immense territories would be to fill a
+volume with tales of adventure and discovery.
+
+The zeal with which the North-west Company pursued the trade in furs
+quickly led to the exploration of the entire country. A Mackenzie
+penetrated to the Arctic Ocean down the immense river which bears his
+name--a Frazer and a Thompson pierced the tremendous masses of the Rocky
+Mountains and beheld the Pacific rolling its waters against the rocks of
+New Caledonia. Based upon a system which rewarded the efforts of its
+employees by giving them a share in the profits of the trade, making them
+partners as well as servants, the North-west Company soon put to sore
+straits the older organization of the Hudson Bay. While the heads of both
+companies were of the same nation, the working men and voyageurs were of
+totally different races, the Hudson Bay employing Highlanders and Orkney
+men from Scotland, and the North-west Company drawing its recruits from
+the hardy French inhabitants of Lower Canada. This difference of
+nationality deepened the strife between them, and many a deed of cruelty
+and bloodshed lies buried amidst the oblivion of that time in those
+distant regions. The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and
+servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from
+Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life
+in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of
+inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of
+excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow
+limits of civilization. Besides, he had taken to himself an Indian wife,
+and although the ceremony by which that was effected was frequently
+wanting in those accessories of bell, book, and candle so essential to
+its proper well-being, nevertheless the voyageur and his squaw got on
+pretty well together, and little ones, who jabbered the smallest amount
+of English or French, and a great deal of Ojibbeway, or Cree, or
+Assineboine, began to multiply around them.
+
+Matters were in this state when, in 1812, as we have already seen in an
+earlier chapter, the Earl of Selkirk, a large proprietor of the Hudson
+Bay Company, conceived the idea of planting a colony of Highlanders on
+the banks of the Red River near the lake called Winnipeg.
+
+Some great magnate was intent on making a deer forest in Scotland about
+the period that this country was holding its own with difficulty against
+Napoleon. So, leaving their native parish of Kildonan in Sutherlandshire,
+these people established another Kildonan in the very heart of North
+America, in the midst of an immense and apparently boundless prairie.
+Poor people! they had a hard time of it-inundation and North-west Company
+hostility nearly sweeping them off their prairie lands. Before long
+matters reached a climax. The North-west Canadians and half-breeds
+sallied forth one day and attacked the settlers; the settlers had a small
+guard in whose prowess they placed much credence; the guard turned out
+after the usual manner of soldiers, the half-breeds and Indians lay in
+the long grass after the method of savages. For once the Indian tactics
+prevailed. The Governor of the Hudson Bay Company and the guard were shot
+down, the fort at Point Douglas on the Red River was taken, and the
+Scotch settlers driven out to the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+To keep the peace between the rival companies and the two nationalities
+was no easy matter, but at last Lord Selkirk came to the rescue; they
+were disbanding regiments after the great peace of 1815, and portions of
+two foreign corps, called De Muiron's and De Watteville's Regiments,
+were induced to attempt an expedition to the Red River.
+
+Starting in winter from the shores of Lake Superior, these hardy fellows
+traversed the forests and frozen lakes upon snow-shoes, and, entering
+from the Lake of the Woods, suddenly appeared in the Selkirk Settlement,
+and took possession of Fort Douglas.
+
+A few years later the great Fur Companies became amalgamated, or rather
+the North-west ceased to exist, and henceforth the Hudson Bay Company
+ruled supreme from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Russian
+America.
+
+From that date, 1822, the progress of the little colony had been gradual
+but sure. Its numbers were constantly increased by the retired servants
+of the Hudson Bay Company, who selected it as a place of settlement when
+their period of active service had expired. Thither came the voyageur and
+the trader to spend the winter of their lives in the little world of
+Assineboine. Thus the Selkirk Settlement grew and flourished, caring
+little for the outside earth-"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
+
+But the old feelings which had their rise in earlier years never wholly
+died out. National rivalry still existed, and it required no violent
+effort to fan the embers into flame again. The descendants of the two
+nationalities dwelt apart; there were the French parishes and the Scotch
+and English parishes, and, although each nationality spoke the same
+mother tongue, still the spread of schools and churches fostered the
+different languages of the fatherland, and perpetuated the distinction of
+race which otherwise would have disappeared by lapsing into savagery. In
+an earlier chapter I have traced the events immediately pre ceding the
+breaking out of the insurrectionary movement among the French
+half-breeds, and in the foregoing pages I have tried to sketch the early
+life and history of the country into which I am about to ask the reader
+to follow me. Into the immediate sectional disputes and religious
+animosities of the present movement it is not my intention to enter; as I
+journey on an occasional arrow may be shot to the right or to the left at
+men and things; but I will leave to others the details of a petty
+provincial quarrel, while-I have before me, stretching far and wide, the
+vast solitudes which await in silence the footfall of the future.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief ahead-Preparations--A
+Night March--The Steamer captured--The Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower
+Fort--The Red-Indian at last--The Chief's Speech--A Big Feed--Making
+ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort Garry--Mr. President
+Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night out--My Crew.
+
+THE steamer "International" made only a short delay at the frontier post
+of Pembina, but it was long enough to impress the on-looker with a sense
+of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the
+leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches'
+pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and
+defensive alliance with the arms, never again to permit the hands to
+emerge into daylight unless it should be in the vicinity of the ankles.
+
+Upon inquiring for the post-office, I was referred to the Postmaster
+himself, who, in his-capacity of leading citizen, was standing by. Asking
+if there were any letters lying at his office for me, I was answered in a
+very curt negative, the postmaster retiring immediately up the steep bank
+towards the collection of huts which calls itself Pembina. The boat soon
+cast off her moorings and steamed on into British territory. We were at
+length within the limits of the Red River Settlement, in the land of M.
+Louis Riel, President, Dictator, Ogre, Saviour of Society, and New
+Napoleon; as he was variously named by friends and foes in the little
+tea-cup of Red River whose tempest had cast him suddenly from dregs to
+surface. "I wasn't so sure that they wouldn't have searched the boat for
+you," said the captain from his wheel-house on the roof-deck, soon after
+we had passed the Hudson Bay Company's post, whereat M. Riel's frontier
+guard was supposed to hold its head-quarters. "Now, darn me, if them
+whelps had stopped the boat, but I'd have just rounded her back to
+Pembina and tied up under the American post yonder, and claimed
+protection as an American citizen." As the act of tying up under the
+American post would in no way have forwarded my movements, however
+consolatory it might have proved to the wounded feelings of the captain,
+I was glad that we had been permitted to proceed without molestation. But
+I had in my possession a document which I looked upon as an "open sesame"
+in case of obstruction from any of the underlings of the Provisional
+Government.
+
+This document had been handed to me by an eminent ecclesiastic whom I met
+on the evening preceding my departure at St. Paul, and who, upon hearing
+that it was my intention to proceed to the Red River, had handed me,
+unsolicited, a very useful notification. So far, then, I had got within
+the outer circle of this so jealously protected settlement. The guard,
+whose presence had so often been the theme of Manitoban journals, the
+picquet line which extended from Pembina Mountain to Lake of the Woods
+(150 miles), was nowhere visible, and I. began to think that the whole
+thing was only a myth, and that the Red River revolt was as unsubstantial
+as the Spectre of the Brocken. But just then, as I stood on the high roof
+of the "International," from whence a wide view was obtained, I saw
+across the level prairie outside the huts of Pembina the figures of two
+horsemen riding at a rapid pace towards the north. They were on the road
+to Fort Garry. The long July day passed slowly away, and evening began to
+darken over the level land, to find us still steaming down the widening
+reaches of the Red River.
+
+But the day had shown symptoms sufficient to convince me that there was
+some reality after all in the stories of detention and resistance, so
+frequently mentioned; more than once had the figures of the two horsemen
+been visible from the roof-deck of the steamer, still keeping the Fort
+Garry trail, and still forcing their horses at a gallop.
+
+The windings of the river enabled these men to keep ahead of the boat, a
+feat which, from their pace and manner, seemed the object they had in
+view. But there were other indications of difficulty lying ahead: an
+individual connected with the working of our boat had been informed by
+persons at Pembina that my expected arrival had been notified to Mr.
+President Riel and the members of his triumvirate, as I would learn to my
+cost upon arrival at Fort Garry.
+
+That there was mischief ahead appeared probable enough, and it was with
+no pleasant feelings that when darkness came I mentally surveyed the
+situation, and bethought me of some plan by which to baffle those who
+sought my detention.
+
+In an hour's time the boat would reach Fort Garry. I was a stranger in a
+strange land, knowing not a feature in the locality, and with only an
+imperfect map for my guidance. Going down to my cabin, I spread out the
+map before me. I saw the names: of places familiar in imagination--the
+winding river, the junction of the Assineboine and the Red River, and
+close to it Fort Garry and the village of Winnipeg; then, twenty miles
+farther to the north, the Lower Fort Garry and the Scotch and English
+Settlement. My object was to reach this lower fort; but in that lay all
+the difficulty. The map showed plainly enough the place in which safety
+lay; but it showed no means by which it could be reached, and left me, as
+before, to my own resources. These were not large.
+
+My baggage was small and compact, but weighty; for it had in it much shot
+and sporting gear for perspective swamp and prairie work at wild duck and
+sharp-tailed grouse. I carried arms available against man and beast a
+Colt's six-shooter and a fourteen-shot repeating carbine, both light,
+good, and trusty; excellent weapons when things came to a certain point,
+but useless before that point is reached.
+
+Now, amidst perplexing prospects and doubtful expedients, one course
+appeared plainly prominent; and that was that there should be no capture
+by Riel. The baggage and the sporting gear might go, but, for the rest,
+I was bound to carry myself and my arms, together with my papers and a
+dog, to the Lower Fort and English Settlement. Having decided on this
+course, I had not much time to lose in putting it into execution. I
+packed my things, loaded my arms, put some extra ammunition into pocket,
+handed over my personal effects into the safe custody of the captain, and
+awaited whatever might turn up.
+
+When these preparations were completed, I had still an hour to spare.
+There happened to be on board the same boat as passenger a gentleman
+whose English proclivities had marked him during the late disturbances at
+Red River as a dangerous opponent to M. Riel, and who consequently had
+forfeited no small portion of his liberty and his chattels. The last two
+days had made me acquainted-with his history and opinions, and, knowing
+that he could supply the want I was most in need of--a horse--I told him
+the plan I had formed for evading M. Ril, in case his minions should
+attempt my capture. This was to pass quickly from the steamboat on its
+reaching the landing-place and to hold my way across the country in the
+direction of the Lower Fort, which I hoped to reach before daylight. If
+stopped, there was but one course to pursue--to announce name and
+profession, and trust to the Colt and sixteen-shooter for the rest. My
+new acquaintance, however, advised a change of programme, suggested by
+his knowledge of the locality.
+
+At the point of junction of the Assineboine and Red Rivers the steamer,
+he said, would touch the north shore. The spot was only a couple of
+hundred yards distant from Fort Garry, but it was sufficient in the
+darkness to conceal any movement at that point; we would both leave the
+boat and, passing by the flank of the fort, gain the village of Winnipeg
+before the steamer would reach her landing place; he would seek his home
+and, if possible, send a horse to meet me at the first wooden bridge upon
+the road to the Lower Fort. All this was simple enough, and supplied me
+with that knowledge of the ground which I required.
+
+It was now eleven o'clock p.m., dark but fine. With my carbine concealed
+under a large coat, I took my station near the bows of the boat, watching
+my companion's movements. Suddenly the steam was shut off, and the boat
+began to round from the Red River into the narrow Assineboine. A short
+distance in front appeared lights and figures moving to and fro along the
+shore--the lights were those of Fort Garry, the figures those of Riel,
+O'Donoghue, and Lepine, with a strong body of guards.
+
+A second more, and the boat gently touched the soft mud of the north
+shore. My friend jumped off to the beach; dragging the pointer by chain
+and collar after me, I too, sprang to the shore just as the boat began to
+recede from it. As I did so, I saw my companion rushing up a very steep
+and lofty bank. Much impeded by the arms and dog, I followed him up the
+ascent and reached the top. Around stretched a dead black level plain, on
+the left the fort, and figures were dimly visible about 200 yards away.
+There was not much time to take in all this, for my companion, whispering
+me to follow him closely, commenced to move quickly along an irregular
+path which led from the river bank. In a short time we: had reached the
+vicinity of a few straggling houses whose white walls showed distinctly
+through the darkness; this, he told me, was Winnipeg. Here was his
+residence, and here we were to separate. Giving me a few hurried
+directions for further guidance, he pointed to the road before me as a
+starting-point, and then vanished into the gloom. For a moment I stood at
+the entrance of the little village half irresolute what to do. One or two
+houses showed lights in single windows, behind gleamed the lights of the
+steamer which had now reached the place of landing. I commenced to walk
+quickly through the silent houses.
+
+As I emerged from the farther side of the village I saw, standing on the
+centre of the road, a solitary figure. Approaching nearer to him, I found
+that he occupied a narrow wooden bridge which opened out upon the
+prairie. To pause or hesitate would only be to excite suspicion in the
+mind of this man, sentinel or guard, as he might be. So, at a sharp pace,
+I advanced towards him. He never moved; and without word or sign I passed
+him at arm's length. But here the dog, which I had unfastened when
+parting from my companion, strayed away, and, being loth to lose him, I
+stopped at the farther end of the bridge to call him back. This was
+evidently the bridge of which my companion had spoken, as the place where
+I was to await the horse he would send me.
+
+The trysting-place seemed to be but ill-chosen-close to the village, and
+already in possession of a sentinel, it would not do. "If the horse
+comes," thought I, "he will be too late; if he does not come, there can
+be no use in waiting," so, giving a last whistle for the dog (which I
+never saw again), I turned and held my way into the dark level plain
+lying mistily spread around me. For more than an hour I walked hard along
+a black-clay track bordered on both sides by prairie. I saw no one, and
+heard nothing save the barking of some stray dogs away to my right.
+
+During this time the moon, now at its last quarter, rose above trees to
+the east, and enabled me better to discern the general features of the
+country through which I was passing. Another hour passed, and still I
+held on my way. I had said to myself that for three hours I must keep up
+the same rapid stride without pause or halt. In the meantime I was
+calculating for emergencies. If followed on horseback, I must become
+aware of the fact while yet my enemies were some distance away. The black
+capote flung on the road would have arrested their attention, the
+enclosed fields on the right of the track would afford me concealment, a
+few shots from the fourteen shooter fired in the direction of the party,
+already partly dismounted deliberating over the mysterious capote, would
+have occasioned a violent demoralization, probably causing a rapid
+retreat upon Fort Garry, darkness would have multiplied numbers, and a
+fourteen-shooter by day or night is a weapon of very equalizing
+tendencies.
+
+When the three hours had elapsed I looked anxiously around for water, as
+I was thirsty in the extreme. A creek soon gave me the drink I thirsted
+for, and, once more refreshed, I kept on my lonely way beneath the waning
+moon. At the time when I was searching for water along the bottom of the
+Middle Creek my pursuers were close at hand--probably not five minutes
+distant--but in those things it is the minutes which make all the
+difference one way or the other.
+
+We must now go back and join the pursuit, just to see what the followers
+of M. Riel were about.
+
+Sometime during the afternoon preceding the arrival of the steamer at
+Fort Garry, news had come down by mounted express from Pembina, that a
+stranger was about to make his entrance into Red River.
+
+Who he might be was not clearly discernible; some said he was an officer
+in Her Majesty's Service, and others, that he was somebody connected
+with the disturbances of the preceding winter who was attempting to
+revisit the settlement.
+
+Whoever he was, it was unanimously decreed that he should be captured;
+and a call was made by M. Riel for "men not afraid to fight" who would
+proceed up the river to meet the steamer. Upon after-reflection, however,
+it was resolved to await the arrival of the boat, and, by capturing
+captain, crew, and passengers, secure the person of the mysterious
+stranger.
+
+Accordingly, when the "International" reached the landing-place beneath
+the walls of Fort Garry a strange scene was enacted.
+
+Messrs. Riel, Lepine, and O'Donoghue, surrounded by a body-guard of
+half-breeds and a few American adventurers, appeared upon the
+landing-place. A select detachment, I presume, of the "men not afraid to
+fight'" boarded the boat and commenced to ransack her from stem to stern.
+While the confusion was at its height, and doors, etc., were being broken
+open, it became known to some of the searchers that two persons had left
+the boat only a few minutes previously. The rage of the petty Napoleon
+became excessive, he sarcéed and stamped and swore, he ordered pursuit on
+foot and on horseback; and altogether conducted himself after the manner
+of rum-drunkenness and despotism based upon ignorance and "straight
+drinks."
+
+All sorts of persons were made prisoners upon the spot. My poor companion
+was seized in his house twenty minutes after he had reached it, and,
+being hurried to the boat, was threatened with instant hanging. Where had
+the stranger gone to? and who was he? He had asserted himself to belong
+to Her Majesty's Service, and he had gone to the Lower Fort.
+
+"After him!" screamed the President; "bring him in dead or alive."
+
+So some half-dozen men, half-breeds and American filibusters, started out
+in pursuit. It was averred that the man who left the boat was of
+colossal proportions, that he carried arms of novel and terrible
+construction, and, more mysterious still, that he was closely followed by
+a gigantic dog.
+
+People shuddered as they listened to this part of the story-a dog of
+gigantic size! What a picture, this immense man and that immense
+dog--stalking through the gloom-wrapped prairie, goodness knows where!
+Was it to be wondered at, that the pursuit, vigorously though it
+commenced, should have waned faint as it reached the dusky prairie and
+left behind the neighbourhood and the habitations of men? The party,
+under the leadership of Lepine the "Adjutant-general," was seen at one
+period of its progress besides the moments of starting and return. Just
+previous to daybreak it halted at a house known by the suggestive title
+of "Whisky Tom's," eight miles from the village of Winnipeg; whether it
+ever got farther on its way remains a mystery, but I am inclined to
+think that the many attractions of Mr. Tom's residence, as evinced by
+the prefix to his name, must have proved a powerful obstacle to such
+thirsty souls.
+
+Daylight breaks early in the month of July, and I had been but little
+more than three hours on the march when the first sign of dawn began to
+glimmer above the tree tops of the Red River. When the light became
+strong enough to afford a clear view of the country, I found that I was
+walking along a road or track of very black soil with poplar groves at
+intervals on each side.
+
+Through openings in these poplar groves I beheld a row of houses built
+apparently along the bank of the river, and soon the steeple of a church
+and a comfortable-looking glebe became visible about a quarter of a mile
+to the right. Calculating by my watch, I concluded that I must be some
+sixteen miles distant from Fort Garry, and therefore not more than four
+miles from the Lower Fort. However, as it was now quite light, I thought'
+I could not do better than approach the comfortable-looking glebe with a
+double view towards refreshment and information. I reached the gate and,
+having run the gauntlet of an evilly-intentioned dog, pulled a bell at
+the door.
+
+Now it had never occurred to me that my outward appearance savoured not a
+little of the bandit--a poet has written about "the dark Suliote, in his
+shaggy capote" etc., conveying the idea of a very ferocious-looking fellow
+but I believe that my appearance fully realized the description, as far
+as outward semblance was concerned; so, evidently, thought the worthy
+clergyman when, cautiously approaching his hall-door, he beheld through
+the glass window the person whose reiterated ringing had summoned him
+hastily from his early slumbers. Half opening his door, he inquired my
+business.
+
+"How far," asked I, "to the Lower Fort?"
+
+"About four miles."
+
+"Any conveyance thither?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+He was about to close the door in my face, when I inquired his country,
+and he replied, "I am English."
+
+"And I am an English officer, arrived last night in the Red River, and
+now making my way to the Lower Fort."
+
+Had my appearance been ten times more disreputable than it was, had I
+carried a mitrailleuse instead of a fourteen-shooter, I would have been
+still received with open arms after that piece of information was given
+and received. The door opened very wide and the worthy clergyman's hand
+shut very close. Then suddenly there became apparent many facilities for
+reaching the Lower Fort not before visible, nor was the hour deemed too
+early to preclude all thoughts of refreshment.
+
+It was some time before my host could exactly realize the state of
+affairs, but when he did, his horse and buggy were soon in readiness, and
+driving along the narrow road which here led almost uninterruptedly
+through little clumps and thickets of poplars, we reached the Lower Fort
+Garry not very long after the sun had begun his morning work of making
+gold the forest summits. I had run the gauntlet of the lower settlement;
+I was between the Expedition and its destination, and it was time to lie
+down and rest.
+
+Up to this time no intimation had reached the Lower Fort of pursuit by
+the myrmidons of M. Riel. But soon there came intelligence. A farmer
+carrying corn to the mill in the fort had been stopped by a party of men
+some seven miles away, and questioned as to his having seen a stranger;
+others had also seen the mounted scouts. And so while I slept the sleep
+of the tired my worthy host was receiving all manner of information
+regarding the movements of the marauders who were in quest of his
+sleeping guest.
+
+I may have been asleep some two hours, when I became aware of a hand laid
+on my shoulder and a voice whispering something into my ear. Rousing
+myself from a very deep sleep, I beheld the Hudson Bay officer in charge
+of the fort standing by the bed repeating words which failed at first to
+carry any meaning along with them.
+
+"The French are after you," he reiterated.
+
+"The French"-where was I, in France?
+
+I had been so sound asleep, that it took some seconds to gather up-the
+different threads of thought where I had left them off a few hours
+before, and "the French" was at that time altogether a new name in my
+ears for the Red River natives. "The French are after you!" altogether it
+was not an agreeable prospect to open my eyes upon, tired, exhausted, and
+sleepy as I was. But, under the circumstances, breakfast seemed the best
+preparation for the siege, assault, and general battery which, according
+to all the rules of war, ought to have followed the announcement of the
+Gallic Nationality being in full pursuit of me.
+
+Seated at breakfast, and doing full justice to a very excellent mutton
+chop and cup of Hudson Bay Company Souchong (and where does there exist
+such tea; out of China?), I heard a digest of the pursuit from the lips
+of my host. The French had visited him in his fort once before with evil
+intentions, and they might come again, so he proposed that we should
+drive down to the Indian Settlement, where the ever-faithful Ojibbeways
+would, if necessary, roll back the tide of Gallic pursuit, giving the
+pursuers a reception in which Pahaouza-tau-ka, or "The Great
+Scalp-taker," would play a prominent part.
+
+Breakfast over, a drive of eight miles brought us to the mission of the
+Indian Settlement presided over by Archdeacon Cowley.
+
+Here, along the last few miles of the Red River ere it seeks, through
+many channels, the waters of Lake Winnipeg, dwell the remnants of the
+tribes whose fathers in times gone by claimed the broad lands of the Red
+River; now clothing themselves, after the fashion of the white man, in
+garments and in religion, and learning a few of his ways and dealings,
+but still with many wistful hankerings towards the older era of the paint
+and feathers, of the medicine bag and the dream omen.
+
+Poor red man of the great North-west, I am at last in your land! Long as
+I have been hearing of you and your wild doings, it is only here that I
+have reached you on the confines of the far-stretching Winnipeg. It is no
+easy task to find you now, for one has to travel far into the lone
+spaces of the Continent before the smoke of your wigwam or of your tepie
+blurs the evening air.
+
+But henceforth we will be companions for many months, and through many
+varied scenes, for my path lies amidst the lone spaces which are still
+your own; by the rushing rapids where you spear the great "namha" (
+sturgeon) will we light the evening fire and lie down to rest, lulled by
+the ceaseless thunder of the torrent; the lone lake shore will give us
+rest for the midday meal, and from your frail canoe, lying like a
+sea-gull on the wave, we will get the "mecuhaga" (the blueberry) and the
+"wa-wa," (the goose) giving you the great medicine of the white man, the
+thé and suga in exchange. But I anticipate.
+
+On the morning following my arrival at the mission house a strange sound
+greeted my ears as I arose. Looking through the window, I beheld for the
+first time the red man in his glory.
+
+Filing along the outside road came some two hundred of the warriors and
+braves of the Ojibbeways, intent upon all manner of rejoicing. At their
+head marched Chief Henry Prince, Chief "Kechiwis" (or the Big Apron) "Sou
+Souse" (or Little Long Ears); there was also "We-we-tak-gum Na-gash" (or
+the Man who flies round the Feathers), and Pahaouza-tau-ka, if not
+present, was represented by at least a dozen individuals just as fully
+qualified to separate the membrane from the top of the head as was that
+most renowned scalp-taker.
+
+Wheeling into the grass-plot in front of the mission house, the whole
+body advanced towards the door shouting, "Ho, ho!" and firing off their
+flint trading-guns in token of welcome. The chiefs and old men advancing
+to the front, seated themselves on the ground in a semi-circle, while the
+young men and braves remained standing or lying on the ground farther
+back in two deep lines. In front of all stood Henry Prince the son of
+Pequis, Chief of the Swampy tribe, attended by his interpreter and
+pipe-bearer.
+
+My appearance upon the door-step was the signal for a burst of deep and
+long-rolling, "Ho, ho's," and then the ceremony commenced. There Was no
+dance or "pow wow;" it meant business at once. Striking his hand upon
+his breast the chief began; as he finished each sentence the interpreter
+took up the thread, explaining with difficulty the long rolling, words of
+the Indian.
+
+"You see here," he said, "the most faithful children of the Great Mother;
+they have heard that you have come from the great chief who is bringing
+thither his warriors from the Kitchi-gami" (Lake Superior), "and they
+have come to bid you welcome, and to place between you and the enemies
+of the Great Mother their guns and their lives. But these children are
+sorely puzzled; they know not what to do. They have gathered in from the
+East, and the North, and the West, because bad men have risen their hands
+against the Great Mother and robbed her goods and killed her sons and put
+a strange flag over her fort. And these bad men are now living in plenty
+on what they have robbed, and the faithful children of the Great Mother
+are starving and very poor, and they wish to know what they are to do. It
+is said that a great chief is coming across from the big sea-water with
+many mighty braves and warriors, and much goods and presents for the
+Indians. But though we have watched long for him, the lake is still
+clear of his canoes, and we begin to think he is not coming at all;
+therefore we were glad when we were told that you had come, for now you
+will tell us what we are to do and what message the great Ogima has sent
+to the red children of the Great Mother."
+
+The speech ended, a deep and prolonged "Ho!"--a sort of universal "thems
+our sentiments "--ran round the painted throng of warriors, and then they
+awaited my answer, each looking with stolid indifference straight before
+him.
+
+My reply was couched in as few words as possible. "It was true what they
+had heard. The big chief was coming across from the Kitchi-gami at the
+head of many warriors. The arm of the Great Mother was a long one, and
+stretched far over'seas and forests; let them keep quiet, and when the
+chief would arrive, he would give them store of presents and supplies; he
+would reward them for their good behaviour. Bad men had set themselves
+against the Great Mother; but the Great Mother would feel angry if any of
+her red children moved against these men. The big chief would soon be
+with them, and all would be made right. As for myself, I was now on my
+way to meet the big chief and his warriors, and I would say to him how
+true had been the red children, and he would be made glad thereat.
+Meantime, they should have a present of tea, tobacco, flour, and
+pemmican; and with full stomachs their harts would feel fuller still."
+
+A universal "Ho!" testified that the speech was good; and then the
+ceremony of hand-shaking began. I intimated, however, that time would
+only permit of my having that honour with a few of the large assembly--in
+fact, with the leaders and old men of the tribe.
+
+Thus, in turns, I grasped the bony hands of the "Red Deer'" and the "Big
+Apron," of the "Old Englishman" and the "Long Claws," and the "Big Bird;"
+and, with the same "Ho, ho!" and shot-firing, they filed away as they had
+come, carrying with them my order upon the Lower Fort for one big feed
+and one long pipe, and, I dare say, many blissful visions of that life
+the red man ever loves to live-the life that never does come to him the
+future of plenty and of ease.
+
+Meantime, my preparations for departure, aided by my friends at the
+mission, had gone on apace. I had got a canoe and five stout English
+half-breeds, blankets, pemmican, tea, flour, and biscuit. All were being
+made ready, and the Indian Settlement was alive with excitement on the
+subject of the coming man--now no longer a myth--in relation to a general
+millennium of unlimited pemmican and tobacco.
+
+But just when all preparations had been made complete an unexpected event
+occurred which postponed for a time the date of my departure; this was
+the arrival of a very urgent message from the Upper Fort, with an
+invitation to visit that place before quitting the settlement. There had
+been an error in the proceedings on the night of my arrival, I was told,
+and, acting under a mistake, pursuit had been organized. Great excitement
+existed amongst the French half breeds, who were in reality most loyally
+disposed; it was quite a mistake to imagine that there was any thing
+approaching to treason in the designs of the Provisional Government and
+much more to the same effect. It is needless now to enter into the
+question of how much all this was worth: at that time so much conflicting
+testimony was not easily reduced into proper limits. But on three points,
+at all events, I could form a correct opinion for myself. Had not my
+companion been arrested and threatened with instant death? Was he not
+still kept in confinement? and had not my baggage undergone confiscation
+(it is a new name for an old thing)? And was there not a flag other than
+the Union Jack flying over Fort Garry? Yes, it was true; all these things
+were realities.
+
+Then I replied, "While these things remain, I will not visit Fort Garry."
+
+Then I was told that Colonel Wolseley had written, urging the
+construction of a road between Fort Garry and Lake of the Woods, and that
+it could not be done unless I visited the upper settlement.
+
+I felt a wish, and a very strong one, to visit this upper Fort Garry and
+see for myself its chief and its garrison, if the thing could be managed
+in any possible way.
+
+From many sources I was advised that it would be dangerous to do so; but
+those who tendered this counsel had in a manner grown old under the
+despotism of M. Riel, and had, moreover, begun to doubt that the
+expeditionary force would ever succeed in overcoming the terrible
+obstacles of the long route from Lake Superior. I knew better. Of Riel I
+knew nothing, or next to nothing; of the progress of the expeditionary
+force, I knew only that it was led by a man who regarded impossibilities
+merely in the light of obstacles to be cleared from his path; and that it
+was composed of soldiers who, thus led, would go any where, and do any
+thing, that men in any shape of savagery or of civilization can do or
+dare. And although no tidings had reached me of its having passed the
+rugged portage from the shore of Lake Superior to the height of land and
+launched itself fairly on the waters which flow from thence into Lake
+Winnipeg, still its ultimate approach never gave me one doubtful thought.
+I reckoned much on the Bishop's letter, which I had still in my
+possession, and on the influence which his last communication to the
+"President" would of necessity exercise; so I decided to visit Fort
+Garry, upon the conditions that my baggage was restored intact, Mr.
+Dreever set at liberty, and the nondescript flag taken down. My
+interviewer said he could promise the first two propositions, but of the
+third he was not so certain. He would, however, despatch a message to me
+with full information as to how they had been received. I gave him until
+five o'clock the following evening, at which hour, if his messenger had
+not appeared, I was to start for the Winnipeg River, en route for the
+Expedition.
+
+Five o'clock came on the following day, and no messenger. Every thing
+was in readiness for my departure: the canoe, freshly pitched, was
+declared fit for the Winnipeg itself; the provisions were all ready to be
+put on board at a moment's notice. I gave half an hour's law, and that
+delay brought the messenger; so, putting off my intention of starting, I
+turned my face back towards Fort Garry. My former interviewer had sent me
+a letter; all was as I wished-Mr. Dreever had been set at liberty, my
+baggage given up, and he would expect me on the following morning.
+
+The Indians were in a terrible state of commotion over my going. One of
+their chief medicine-men, an old Swampy named Bear, laboured long and
+earnestly to convince me that Riel had got on what he called "the track
+of blood," the devil's track, and that he could not get off of it. This
+curious proposition he endeavoured to illustrate by means of three small
+pegs of wood, which he set up on the ground. One represented Riel,
+another his Satanic Majesty, while the third was supposed to indicate
+myself.
+
+He moved these three pegs about-very much after the fashion of a
+thimble-rigger; and I seemed to have, through my peg, about as bad a time
+of it as the pea under the thimble usually experiences. Upon the most
+conclusive testimony, Bear proceeded to show that I hadn't a chance
+between Riel and the devil, who, according to an equally clear
+demonstration, were about as bad as bad could be.
+
+I had to admit a total inability to follow Bear in the reasoning which
+led to his deductions; but that only proved that I was not a
+"medicine-man," and knew nothing whatever of the peg theory.
+
+So, despite of the evil deductions drawn by Bear from the three pegs, I
+set out for Fort Garry, and, journeying along the same road which I had
+travelled two nights previously, I arrived in sight of the village of
+Winnipeg before midday on the 23rd of July. At a little distance from the
+village rose the roof and flag-staffs of Fort Garry, and around in
+unbroken verdure stretched-the prairie lands of Red River.
+
+Passing from the village along the walls of the fort, I crossed the
+Assineboine River and saw the "International" lying at her moorings
+below the floating bridge. The captain had been liberated, and waved his
+hand with a cheer as I crossed the bridge. The gate of the fort stood
+open, a sentry was leaning lazily against the wall, a portion of which
+leant in turn against nothing. The whole exterior of the place looked old
+and dirty. The muzzles of one or two guns protruding through the
+embrasures in the flanking bastions failed even to convey the idea
+of-fort or fortress to the mind of the beholder.
+
+Returning from the east or St. Boniface side of the Red River, I was
+conducted by my companion into the fort. His private residence was
+situated within the walls, and to it we proceeded. Upon entering the gate
+I took in at a glance the surroundings-ranged in a semi-circle with their
+muzzles all pointing towards the entrance, stood some six or eight
+field-pieces; on each side and in front were bare looking, white-washed
+buildings. The ground and the houses looked equally dirty, and the whole
+aspect of the place was desolate and ruinous.
+
+A few ragged-looking dusky men with rusty firelocks, and still more
+rusty bayonets, stood lounging about. We drove through without stopping,
+and drew up at the door of my companion's house, which was situated at
+the rear of the buildings I have spoken of. From the two flag-staffs flew
+two flags, one-the Union Jack in shreds and tatters, the other a
+well-kept bit of bunting having the fleur-de-lis and a shamrock on a
+white field. Once in the house, my companion asked me if I would see Mr.
+Riel.
+
+"To call on him, certainly not," was my reply.
+
+"But if he calls on you?"
+
+"Then I will see him," replied I.
+
+The gentleman who had spoken thus soon left the room. There stood in the
+centre of the apartment a small billiard table, I took up a cue and
+commenced a game with the only other occupant of the room-the same
+individual who had on the previous evening acted as messenger to the
+Indian Settlement. We had played some half a dozen strokes when the door
+opened, and my friend returned. Following him closely came a short stout
+man with a large head, a sallow, puffy face, a sharp, restless,
+intelligent eye, a square-cut massive forehead overhung by a mass of long
+and thickly clustering hair, and marked with well-cut eyebrows--altogether,
+a remarkable-looking face, all the more so, perhaps, because it was to be
+seen in a land where such things are rare sights.
+
+This was M. Louis Riel, the head and front of the Red River Rebellion-the
+President, the little Napoleon, the Ogre, or whatever else he may be
+called. He was dressed in a curious mixture of clothing--a black
+frock-coat, vest, and trousers; but the effect of this somewhat clerical
+costume was not a little marred by a pair of Indian mocassins, which
+nowhere look more out of place than on a carpeted floor.
+
+M. Riel advanced to me, and we shook hands with all that empressement so
+characteristic of hand-shaking on the American Continent. Then there came
+a pause. My companion had laid his cue down. I still retained mine in my
+hands, and, more as a means of bridging the awkward gulf of silence which
+followed the introduction, I asked him to continue the game--another
+stroke or two, and the mocassined President began to move nervously about
+the window recess. To relieve his burthened feelings, I inquired if he
+ever indulged in billiards; a rather laconic "Never," was his reply.
+
+"Quite a loss," I answered, making an absurd stroke across the table; "a
+capital game."
+
+I had scarcely uttered this profound sentiment when I beheld the
+President moving hastily towards the door, muttering as he went, "I see I
+am intruding here." There was hardly time to say, "Not at all," when he
+vanished.
+
+But my companion was too quick for him; going out into the hall, he
+brought him back once more into the room, called away my billiard
+opponent, and left me alone with the chosen of the people of the new
+nation.
+
+Motioning M. Riel to be seated, I took a chair myself, and the
+conversation began.
+
+Speaking with difficulty, and dwelling long upon his words, Riel
+regretted that I should have shown such distrust of him and his party as
+to prefer the Lower Fort and the English Settlement to the Upper Fort and
+the society of the French. I answered, that if such distrust existed it
+was justified by the rumours spread by his sympathizers on the American
+frontier, who represented him as making active preparations to resist the
+approaching Expedition.
+
+"Nothing," he said, "was more false than these statements. I only wish to
+retain power until I can resign it to a proper Government. I have done
+every thing for the sake of peace, and to prevent bloodshed amongst the
+people of this land. But they will find," he added passionately, "they
+will find, if they try, these people here, to put me out-they will find
+they cannot do it. I will keep what is mine until the proper Government
+arrives;" as he spoke he got up from his chair and began to pace
+nervously about the room.
+
+I mentioned having met Bishop Taché in St. Paul and the letter which I
+had received from him. He read it attentively and commenced to speak
+about the Expedition.
+
+"Had I come from it?"
+
+"No; I was going to it."
+
+He seemed surprised.
+
+"By the road to the Lake of the Woods?"
+
+"No; by the Winnipeg River," I replied.
+
+"Where was the Expedition?"
+
+I could not answer this question; but I concluded it could not be very
+far from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+"Was it a large force?"
+
+I told him exactly, setting the limits as low as possible, not to deter
+him from fighting if such was his intention. The question uppermost in
+his mind was one of which he did not speak, and he deserves the credit of
+his silence. Amnesty or no amnesty was at that moment a matter of very
+grave import to the French half-breeds, and to none so much as to their
+leader. Yet he never asked if that pardon was an event on which he could
+calculate. He did not even allude to it at all.
+
+At one time, when speaking of the efforts he had made for the advantage
+of his country, he grew very excited, walking hastily up and down the
+room with theatrical attitudes and declamation, which he evidently
+fancied had the effect of imposing on his listener; but, alas! for the
+vanity of man, it only made him appear ridiculous; the mocassins sadly
+marred the exhibition of presidential power.
+
+An Indian speaking with the solemn gravity of his race looks right manful
+enough, as with moose-clad leg his mocassined feet rest on prairie grass
+or frozen snow-drift; but this picture of the black-coated Metis playing
+the part of Europe's great soldier in the garb of a priest and the shoes
+of a savage looked simply absurd. At length M. Riel appeared to think he
+had enough of the interview, for stopping in front of me he said,
+
+"Had I been your enemy you would have known it be fore. I heard you would
+not visit me, and, although I felt humiliated, I came to see you to show
+you my pacific inclinations."
+
+Then darting quickly from the room he left me. An hour later I left the
+dirty ill-kept fort. The place was then full of half-breeds armed and
+unarmed. They said nothing and did nothing, but simply stared as I drove
+by. I had seen the inside of Fort Garry and its president, not at my
+solicitation but at his own; and now before me lay the solitudes of the
+foaming Winnipeg and the pathless waters of great inland seas.
+
+It was growing dusk when I reached the Lower Fort. My canoe men stood
+ready, for the hour at which I was to have joined them had passed, and
+they had begun to think some mishap had befallen me. After a hasty supper
+and a farewell to my kind host of the Lower Fort, I stepped into the
+frail canoe of painted bark which lay restive on the swift current. "All
+right; away!" The crew, with paddles held high for the first dip, gave a
+parting shout, and like an arrow from its bow we shot out into the
+current. Overhead the stars were beginning to brighten in the intense
+blue of the twilight heavens; far away to the north, where the river ran
+between wooded shores, the luminous arch of the twilight bow spanned the
+horizon, merging the northern constellation into its soft hazy glow.
+Towards that north we held our rapid way, while the shadows deepened on
+the shores and the reflected stars grew brighter on the river.
+
+We halted that night at the mission, resuming our course at sunrise on
+the following morning. A few miles below the mission stood the huts and
+birch-bark lodges Of the Indians. My men declared that it would be
+impossible to pass without the ceremony of a visit. The chief had given
+them orders on the subject, and all the Indians were expecting it; so,
+paddling in to the shore, I landed and walked up the pathway leading to
+the chief's hut.
+
+It was yet very early in the morning, and most of the braves were lying
+asleep inside their wigwams, dogs and papooses seeming to have matters
+pretty much their own way outside.
+
+The hut in which dwelt the son of Pequis was small, low, and
+ill-ventilated. Opening the latched door I entered stooping; nor was
+there much room to extend oneself when the interior was attained.
+
+The son of Pequis had not yet been aroused from his morning's slumber;
+the noise of my entrance, however, disturbed him, and he quickly came
+forth from a small interior den, rubbing his eyelids and gaping
+profusely. He looked sleepy all over, and was as much disconcerted as a
+man usually is who has a visit of ceremony paid to him as he is getting
+out of bed.
+
+Prince, the son of Pequis, essayed a speech, but I am constrained to
+admit that taken altogether it was a miserable failure. Action loses
+dignity when it is accompanied by furtive attempts at buttoning nether
+garments, and not even the eloquence of the Indian is proof against the
+generally demoralized aspect of a man just out of bed. I felt that some
+apology was due to the chief for this early visit; but I told him that
+being on my way to meet the great Ogima whose braves were coming from the
+big sea water, I could not pass the Indian camp without stopping to say
+good-bye.
+
+Before any thing else could be said I shook Prince by the hand and walked
+back towards the river.
+
+By this time, however, the whole camp was thoroughly aroused. From each
+lodge came forth warriors decked in whatever garments could be most
+easily donned.
+
+The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading-guns were held aloft and a
+hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the salutes
+were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge to see me
+off. Putting out into the middle of the river, I discharged my four teen
+shooter in the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war whoop answered my
+salute, and paddling their very best, for the eyes of the finest canoers
+in the world were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over
+the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were
+hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and amidst
+a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks the
+waters of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of the
+varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River is,
+like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.
+
+The wind sighs over it, bending the tall reeds with mournful rustle, and
+the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes
+which form his summer home.
+
+Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters of
+an immense lake, a lake which stretched away into unseen spaces, and over
+whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of mirage and
+inverted shore land.
+
+This was Lake Winnipeg, a great lake even on a continent where lakes are
+inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a tithe of what it must
+have been in the earlier ages of the earth.
+
+The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far
+away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present
+limits these great landmarks still look down on an ocean, but it is an
+ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and
+they are now mountain ridges rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom
+of this bygone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present
+Lakes Winnipegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie lands of the Lower
+Assineboine, 100,000 square miles of water. The water has long since been
+drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels leading to Hudson Bay,
+and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the richest prairie land in the
+world.
+
+But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its
+rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once
+flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has
+twice the volume of the Rhine. 400,000 square miles of continent shed
+their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as the ocean, but,
+fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day. Not a wave, not a
+ripple on its surface; not a breath of breeze to aid the untiring
+paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had
+scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the
+steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving behind
+the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.
+
+A long low point stretching from the south shore of the lake was faintly
+visible on the horizon. It was past mid day when we reached it; so,
+putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the shore, we lighted our
+fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grande Traverse
+was entered upon. Far away over the lake rose the point of the Big Stone,
+a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high over the water.
+The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a breath rippled
+the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide expanse, all was
+as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole speck of life on the
+waters of the world. The red sun sank into the lake, warning us that it
+was time to seek the shore and make our beds for the night. A deep sandy
+bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks, seemed to invite us to its
+solitudes. Steering in with great caution amid the rocks, we landed in
+this sheltered spot, and our boat upon the sandy beach. The shore yielded
+large store of drift-wood, the relics of many a northern gale. Behind us
+lay a trackless forest; in front the golden glory of the Western sky. As
+the night shades deepened around us and the red glare of our drift-wood
+fire cast its light upon the woods and the rocks, the scene became one of
+rare beauty.
+
+As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all the
+charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little
+marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loth to
+quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as I
+thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature
+which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms.'
+They were Ojibbeways, who came to share our fire and our evening meal.
+The land was still their own. When I lay down to rest that night on the
+dry sandy shore, I long watched the stars above me. As children sleep
+after a day of toil and play, so slept the dusky men who lay around me.
+It was my first night with these poor wild sons of the lone spaces; it
+was strange and weird, and the lapping of the mimic wave against the
+rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes. Many a night
+afterwards I lay down to sleep beside these men and their brethren--many
+a night by lake-shore, by torrent's edge, and far out amidst the
+measureless meadows of the West--but "custom stales" even nature's
+infinite variety, and through many wild bivouacs my memory still wanders
+back to that first night out by the shore of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+At break of day we launched the canoe again and pursued our course for
+the mouth of the Winnipeg River. The lake which yesterday was all
+sunshine, to-day looked black and overcast--thunder-clouds hung angrily
+around the horizon, and it seemed as though Winnipeg was anxious to give
+a sample of her rough ways before she had done with us. While the morning
+was yet young we made a portage--that is, we carried the canoe and its
+stores across a neck of land, saving thereby a long paddle round a
+projecting cape. The portage was through a marshy tract covered with long
+grass and rushes. While the men are busily engaged in carrying across the
+boat and stores, I will introduce them to the reader. They were four in
+number, and were named as follows:-Joseph Monkman, cook and interpreter;
+William Prince, full Indian; Thomas Smith, ditto; Thomas Hope, ci-devant
+schoolmaster, and now self-constituted steersman. The three first were
+good men. Prince, in particular, was a splendid canoe-man in dangerous
+water. But Hope possessed the greatest capacity for eating and talking of
+any man I ever met. He could devour quantities of pemmican any number of
+times during the day, and be hungry still. What he taught during the
+period when he was schoolmaster I have never been able to find out, but
+he was popularly supposed at the mission to be a very good Christian. He
+had a marked disinclination to hard or continued toil, although he would
+impress an on looker with a sense of unremitting exertion. This he
+achieved by divesting himself of his shirt and using his paddle, as Alp
+used his sword, "with right arm bare." A fifth Indian was added to the
+canoe soon after crossing the portage.
+
+A couple of Indian lodges stood on the shore along which we were
+coasting. We put in towards these lodges to ask information, and found
+them to belong to Samuel Henderson, full Swampy Indian. Samuel, who spoke
+excellent English, at once volunteered to come with me as a guide to the
+Winnipeg River; but I declined to engage him until I had a report of his
+capability for the duty from the Hudson Bay officer in charge of Fort
+Alexander, a fort now only a few miles distant. Samuel at once launched
+his canoe, said "Good-bye" to his wife and nine children, and started
+after us for the fort, where, on the advice of the officer, I finally
+engaged him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a Rapid--A Camp--No
+Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat Portage--A far-fetched
+Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+WE entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at midday and paddled up to
+Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance. Here
+I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg, getting a
+fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five o'clock in
+the evening started on my journey Up the river. Eight miles above the
+fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the twilight. In
+surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume of the Winnipeg
+was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its waters with the
+lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which stood well out into
+the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.
+
+The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us, dark and
+solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept
+the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky
+blackness the rushing water, white with foam-above, the rifted
+thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the
+thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a
+rough shelter with cross-poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling themselves
+together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the storm.
+
+I was ninety miles from Fort Garry, and as yet no tidings of the
+Expedition.
+
+A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without
+meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place
+her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations.
+To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it
+descends 360 feet in a distance of 160 miles, that it is full of eddies
+and whirlpools, of every variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts,
+that it expands into lonely pine edged lakes and far-reaching
+island-studded bays, that its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished
+rocks, that its vast solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly
+active--to say all this is but to tell in bare items of fact the
+narrative of its beauty. For the Winnipeg by the multiplicity of its
+perils and the ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the
+description of civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized
+travel. It seems part of the savage-fitted alone for him and for his
+ways, useless to carry the burden of man's labour, but useful to shelter
+the wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its
+shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through
+the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways!
+To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one
+would of a high-mettled charger which will do any thing if he be rightly
+handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To
+shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of the Barriere, to carry his canoe
+down the whirling eddies of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush
+of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the
+whirlpool below the Chute-à-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a
+skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in
+the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness
+of skill, not to be found except after generations of practice. For
+hundreds of years the Indian has lived amidst these rapids; they have
+been the playthings of his boyhood, the realities of his life, the
+instinctive habit of his old age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the
+dog is to the Esquimaux, what the camel is to those who journey across
+Arabian deserts, so is the canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore
+yields him from first to last the materials-he requires for its
+construction: cedar for the slender ribs, birch-bark to cover them,
+juniper to stitch together the separate pieces, red pine to give resin
+for the seams and crevices. By the lake or river shore, close to his
+wigwam, the boat is built;
+
+"And the forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the
+tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the
+larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in
+autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."
+
+It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances over
+land from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load it
+down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters him
+by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land is
+unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in
+it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots
+his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing
+torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water.
+
+For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees
+are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends
+its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the
+rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the
+winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the
+north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and
+with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and
+the wavy, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its
+long icy sleep.
+
+Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes
+like an arrow.
+
+The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+moments of keenest enjoyment, every thing was new and strange, and each
+hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian
+scenery.
+
+The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays when
+the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on the
+water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns would
+be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while one
+remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its
+sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the
+centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away
+from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no
+difficult matter: start at five o'clock a.m., halt for breakfast at seven
+o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away at two
+o'clock, paddle until sunset at 7:30; that was the work of each day. But
+how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and circumstance
+between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost at every hour
+of the long summer day the great Winnipeg revealed some new phase of
+beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I have
+already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the Woods to
+Lake Winnipeg, 160 miles, makes a descent of 360 feet. This descent is
+effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of terraces at
+various distances from each other; in other words, the river forms
+innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by rapids and
+perpendicular falls of varying altitude, thus when the voyageur has
+lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and launched it again
+above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted two-and-twenty feet
+of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages will give him a total
+rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles. (How cold does the bare
+narration of these facts appear beside their actual realization in a
+small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we can picture one of these
+many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of falling water, and we see, upon
+rounding some pine-clad island or ledge of rock, a tumbling mass of foam
+and spray studded with projecting rocks and flanked by dark wooded
+shores; above we can see nothing, but below the waters, maddened by their
+wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap in angry whirlpools. It is as
+wild a scene of crag and wood and water as the eye can gaze upon, but we
+look upon it not for its beauty, because there is no time for that, but
+because it is an enemy that must be conquered. Now mark how these Indians
+steal upon this enemy before he is aware of it. The immense volume of
+water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools at the foot of the fall,
+rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer water; this rush produces
+along the shores of the river a counter or back-current which flows up
+sometimes close to the foot of the fall, along this back-water the canoe
+is carefully steered, being often not six feet from the opposing rush in
+the central river, but the back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and
+the canoe, if it followed this back-current, would inevitably end in the
+same place; for a minute there is no paddling, the bow paddle and the
+steersman alone keeping the boat in her proper direction as she drifts
+rapidly up the current. Amongst the crew not a word is spoken, but every
+man knows what he has to do and will be ready when the moment comes; and
+now the moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of
+water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth
+green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a
+strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down
+into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has
+been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often
+only the choice of the whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very
+edge of the eddy there is one loud shout given by the bow paddle, and the
+canoe shoots full into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the
+united strength of the entire crew--the men work for their very lives,
+and the boat breasts across the river with her head turned full toward
+the falls; the waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over
+the gunwale, the Indians shout as they dip their paddles like lightning
+into the foam, and the stranger to such a scene holds his breath amidst
+this war of man against nature. Ha! the struggle is useless, they cannot
+force her against such a torrent, we are close to the rocks and the foam;
+but see, she is driven down by the current in spite of those wild fast
+strokes. The dead strength of such a rushing flood must prevail. Yes, it
+is true, the canoe has been driven back; but behold, almost in a second
+the whole thing is done-we float suddenly beneath a little rocky isle on
+the foot of the cataract. We have crossed the river in the face of the
+fall, and the portage landing is over this rock, while three yards out on
+either side the torrent foams its headlong course. Of the skill necessary
+to perform such things it is useless to speak. A single false stroke, and
+the whole thing would have failed; driven headlong down the torrent,
+another attempt would have to be made to gain this rock-protected spot,
+but now we lie secure here; spray all around us, for the rush of the
+river is on either side and you can touch it with an outstretched paddle.
+The Indians rest on their paddles and laugh; their long hair has escaped
+from its-fastening through their exertion, and they retie it while they
+rest. One is already standing upon the wet slippery rock holding the
+canoe in its place, then the others get out. The freight is carried up
+piece by piece and deposited on the flat surface some ten feet above;
+that done, the canoe is lifted out very gently, for a single blow against
+this hard granite boulder would shiver and splinter the frail birch-bark
+covering; they raise her very carefully up the steep face of the cliff
+and rest again on the top. What a view there is from this coigne of
+vantage! We are on the lip of the fall, on each side it makes its plunge,
+and below we mark at leisure the torrent we have just braved; above, it
+is smooth water, and away ahead we see the foam of another rapid. The
+rock on which we stand has been worn smooth by the washing of the water
+during countless ages, and from a cleft or fissure there springs a
+pine-tree or a rustling aspen. We have crossed the Petit Roches, and our
+course is onward still.
+
+Through many scenes like this we held our way during the last days of
+July. The weather was beautiful; now and then a thunder-storm would roll
+along during the night, but the morning sun rising clear and bright would
+almost tempt one to believe that it had been a dream, if the pools of
+water in the hollows of the rocks and the dampness of blanket or
+oil-cloth had not proved the sun a humbug. Our general distance each day
+would be about thirty-two miles, with an average of six portages. At
+sunset we made our camp on some rocky isle or shelving shore, one or two
+cut wood, another got the cooking things ready, a fourth gummed the seams
+of the canoe, a fifth cut shavings from a dry stick for the fire--for
+myself, I generally took a plunge in the cool delicious water--and soon
+the supper hissed in the pans, the kettle steamed from its suspending
+stick, and the evening meal was eaten with appetites such as only the
+voyageur can understand.
+
+Then when the shadows of the night had fallen around and all was silent,
+save the river's tide against the rocks, we would stretch our blankets on
+the springy moss of the crag and lie down to sleep with only the stars
+for a roof.
+
+Happy, happy days were these--days the memory of which goes very far into
+the future, growing brighter as we journey farther away from them, for
+the scenes through which our course was laid were such as speak in
+whispers, only when we have left them--the whispers of the pine-tree, the
+music of running water, the stillness of great lonely lakes.
+
+On the evening of the fifth day from leaving Fort Alexander we reached
+the foot of the Rat Portage, the twenty-seventh, and last, upon the
+Winnipeg River; above this portage stretched the Lake of the Woods, which
+here poured its waters through a deep rock-bound gorge with tremendous
+force. During the five days we had only encountered two solitary Indians;
+they knew nothing whatever about the Expedition, and, after a short
+parley and a present of tea and flour, we pushed on. About midday on the
+fourth day we halted at the Mission of the White Dog, a spot which some
+more than heathen missionary had named Islington in a moment of virtuous
+cockneyism. What could have tempted him to commit this act of desecration
+it is needless to ask.
+
+Islington on the Winnipeg! O religious Gilpin, hadst thou fallen a prey
+to savage Cannibalism, not even Sidney Smith's farewell aspiration would
+have saved the savage who devoured you, you must have killed him.
+
+The Mission of the White Dog had been the scene of Thomas Hope's most
+brilliant triumphs in the role of schoolmaster, and the youthful
+Ojibbeways of the place had formerly belonged to the band of hope. For
+some days past Thomas had been labouring under depression, his power of
+devouring pemmican had, it is true, remained unimpaired, but in one or
+two trying moments of toil, in rapids and portages, he had been found
+miserably wanting; he had, in fact, shown many indications of utter
+uselessness; he had also begun to entertain gloomy apprehensions of what
+the French would do to him when they caught him on the Lake of the Woods,
+and although he endeavoured frequently to prove that under certain
+circumstances the French would have no chance whatever against him, yet,
+as these circumstances were from the nature of things never likely to
+occur, necessitating, in the first instance, a presumption that Thomas
+would show fight, he failed to convince not only his hearers, but
+himself, that he was not in a very bad way. At the White Dog Mission he
+was, so to speak, on his own hearth, and was doubtless desirous of
+showing me that his claims to the rank of interpreter were well founded.
+No tidings whatever had reached the few huts of the Indians at the White
+Dog; the women and children, who now formed the sole inhabitants, went
+but little out of the neighbourhood, and the men had been away for many
+days in the forest, hunting and fishing. Thus, through the whole course
+of the Winnipeg, from lake to lake, I could glean no tale or tidings of
+the great Ogima or of his myriad warriors. It was quite dark when we
+reached, on the evening of the 30th July, the northern edge of the Lake
+of the Woods and paddled across its placid waters to the Hudson Bay
+Company's post at the Rat Portage. An arrival of a canoe with six
+strangers is no ordinary event at one of these remote posts which the
+great fur company have built at long intervals over their immense
+territory. Out came the denizens of a few Indian lodges, out came the
+people of the fort and the clerk in charge of it. My first question was
+about the Expedition, but here, as elsewhere, no tidings had been heard
+of it. Other tidings were however forthcoming which struck terror into
+the heart of Hope. Suspicious canoes had been seen for-some days past
+amongst the many islands of the lake; strange men had come to the fort at
+night, and strange fires had been seen on the islands-the French were out
+on the lake. The officer in charge of the post was absent at the time of
+my visit, but I had met him at Fort Alexander, and he had anticipated my
+wants in a letter which I myself carried to his son. I now determined to
+strain every effort to cross with rapidity the Lake of the Woods and
+ascend the Rainy River to the next post of the Company, Fort Francis,
+distant from Rat Portage about 1400 miles, for there I felt sure that I
+must learn tidings of the Expedition and bring my long solitary journey
+to a close. But the Lake of the Woods is an immense sheet of water lying
+1000 feet above the sea level, and subject to violent gales which lash
+its bosom into angry billows. To be detained upon some island,
+storm-bound amidst the lake, %would never have answered, so I ordered a
+large keeled boat to be got ready by midday it only required a few
+trifling repairs of sail and oars, but a great feast had to be gone
+through in which my pemmican and flour were destined to play a very
+prominent part. As the word pemmican is one which may figure frequently
+in these pages, a few words explanatory of it may be useful. Pemmican,
+the favourite food of the Indian and the half-breed voyageur, can be made
+from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of
+buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by
+fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky
+substance; in this state it is put into a large bag made from the hide of
+the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by
+melted fat being poured over it-the quantity of fat is nearly half the
+total weight, forty pounds of fat going to fifty pounds of "beat meat;"
+the best pemmican generally has added to it ten pounds of berries and
+sugar, the whole composition forming the most solid description of food
+that man can make. If any person should feel inclined to ask, "What does
+pemmicau taste like?" I can only reply, "Like pemmican," there is
+nothing else in the world that bears to it the slightest resemblance.
+-Can I say any thing that Will give the reader an idea of its sufficing
+quality? Yes, I think I can. A dog that will eat from four to six pounds
+of raw fish a day when sleighing, will only devour two pounds: of
+pemmican, if he be fed upon that food; yet I have seen Indians and
+half-breeds eat four pounds of it in a single day-but this is
+anticipating. Pemmican can be prepared in many ways, and it is not easy
+to decide which method is the least objectionable. There is rubeiboo and
+richot, and pemmican plain and pemmican raw, this last method being the
+one most in vogue amongst voyageurs; but the richot, to me, seemed the
+best; mixed with a little flour and fried in a pan, pemmican in this form
+can be eaten, provided the appetite be sharp and there is nothing else to
+be had--this last consideration is, however, of importance.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A close
+Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The Officer
+commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+The feast having been concluded (I believe it had gone on all night, and
+was protracted far into the morning), the sails and oars were suddenly
+reported ready, and about midday on the 31st July we stood away from the
+Portages du Rat into the Lake of the Woods. I had added another man to
+my crew, which now numbered seven hands, the last accession was a French
+half-breed, named Morrisseau. Thomas Hope had possessed himself of a
+flint gun, with which he was to do desperate things should we fall in
+with the French scouts upon the lake. The boat in which I now found
+myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of
+freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and
+also possessed of powerful sweeps, which were worked by the men in
+standing positions, the rise of the oar after each stroke making the
+oarsman sink back upon the thwarts only to resume again his upright
+attitude for the next dip of the heavy sweep.
+
+This is the regular Hudson Bay Mackinaw boat, used for the carrying
+trade of the great Fur Company on every river from the Bay of Hudson to
+the Polar Ocean. It looks a big, heavy, lumbering affair, but it can sail
+well before a wind, and will do good work with the oars too.
+
+That portion of the Lake of the Woods through which we now steered our
+way was a perfect maze and network of island and narrow channel; a light
+breeze from the north favoured us, and we passed gently along the rocky
+islet shores through unruffled water. In all directions there opened out
+innumerable channels, some narrow and winding, others straight and open,
+but all lying'-between shores clothed with a rich and luxuriant
+vegetation; shores that curved and twisted into mimic bays and tiny
+promontories, that rose in rocky masses abruptly from the water, that
+sloped down to meet the lake in gently swelling undulations, that seemed,
+in fine, to present in the compass of a single glance every varying
+feature of island scenery. Looking through these rich labyrinths of tree
+and moss-covered rock, it was difficult to imagine that winter could ever
+-stamp its frozen image upon such a soft summer scene. The air was balmy
+with the scented things which grow profusely upon the islands; the water
+was warm, almost tepid, and yet despite of this the winter frost would
+cover the lake with five feet of ice, and the thick brushwood of the
+islands would lie hidden during many months beneath great depths of snow.
+
+As we glided along through this beautiful scene the men kept a sharp
+look-out for the suspicious craft whose presence had caused such alarm at
+the Portage-du-Rat. We saw no trace of man or canoe, and nothing broke
+the stillness of the evening except the splash of a sturgeon in the
+lonely bays. About sunset we put ashore upon a large rock for supper.
+While it was being prepared I tried to count the islands around. From a
+projecting point I could see island upon island to the number of over a
+hundred--the wild cherry, the plum, the wild rose, the raspberry,
+intermixed with ferns and mosses in vast variety, covered every spot
+around me, and from rock and crevice the pine and the poplar hung their
+branches over the water. As the breeze still blew fitfully from the north
+we again embarked and held our way through the winding channels--at times
+these channels would grow wider only again to close together; but there
+was no current, and the large high sail moved us slowly through the
+water. When it became dark a fire suddenly appeared on an island some
+distance ahead. Thomas Hope grasped his flint gun and seemed to think the
+supreme moment had at length arrived. During the evening I could tell by
+the gestures and looks of the men that the mysterious rovers formed the
+chief subject of conversation, and our latest accession painted so
+vividly their various suspicious movements, that Thomas was more than
+ever convinced his hour was at hand. Great then was the excitement when
+the fire was observed upon the island, and greater still when I told
+Samuel to steer full towards it. As we approached we could distinguish
+figures moving to and fro between us and the bright flame, but when we
+had got within a few hundred yards of the spot the light was suddenly
+extinguished, and the ledge of rock upon which it had been burning became
+wrapped in darkness. We hailed, but there was no reply. Whoever had been
+around the fire had vanished through the trees; launching their canoe
+upon the other side of the island, they had paddled away through the
+intricate labyrinth scared by our sudden appearance in front of their
+lonely bivouac. This apparent confirmation of his worst fears in no way
+served to reanimate the spirits of Hope, and though shortly after he lay
+down with the other men in the bottom of the boat, it was not without
+misgivings as to the events which lay before him in the darkness. One man
+only remained up to steer, for it was my intention to run as long as the
+breeze, faint though it was, lasted. I had been asleep about half an hour
+when I felt my arm quickly pulled, and, looking up, beheld Samuel bending
+over me, while with one hand he steered the boat. "Here they are," he
+whispered, "here they are." I looked over the gunwale and under the sail
+and beheld right on the course we were steering two bright fires burning
+close to the water's edge. We were running down a channel which seemed to
+narrow to a strait between two islands, and presently a third fire came
+into view on the other side of the strait, showing distinctly the narrow
+pass towards which we were steering, it did not appear to be more than
+twenty feet across it, and, from its exceeding narrowness and the
+position of the fires, it seemed as though the place had really been
+selected to dispute our outward passage. We were not more than two
+hundred yards from the strait and the breeze was holding well into it.
+What was to be done? Samuel was for putting the helm up; but that would
+Have been useless, because we were already in the channel, and to run on
+shore would only place us still more in the power of our enemies, if
+enemies they were, so I told him to hold his course and run right through
+the narrow pass. The other men had sprung quickly from their blankets,
+and Thomas was the picture of terror. When he saw that I was about to run
+the boat through the strait, he instantly made up his mind to shape for
+himself a different course. Abandoning his flint musket to any body who
+would take it, he clambered like a monkey on to the gunwale, with the
+evident intention of dropping noiselessly into the water, and seeking, by
+swimming on shore, a safety which he deemed denied to him on board. Never
+shall I forget his face as he was pulled back into the boat; nor is it
+easy to describe the sudden revulsion of feeling which possessed him
+when: a dozen different fires breaking into view showed at once that the
+forest was on fire, and that the imaginary bivouac of the French was only
+the flames of burning brushwood. Samuel laughed over his mistake, but
+Thomas looked on it in no laughing light, and, seizing his gun, stoutly
+maintained that had it really been the French they would have learnt a
+terrible lesson from the united volleys of the fourteen-shooter and his
+flint musket.
+
+The Lake of the Woods covers a very large extent of country. In length it
+measures about seventy miles, and its greatest breadth is about the same
+distance; its shores are but little known, and it is only the Indian who
+can steer with accuracy through its labyrinthine channels. In its
+southern portion it spreads out into a vast expanse of open water, the
+surface of which is lashed by tempests into high-running seas.
+
+In the early days of the French fur trade it yielded large stores of
+beaver and of martens, but it has long ceased to be rich in furs. Its
+shores and islands will be found to abound in minerals whenever
+civilization reaches them.
+
+Among the Indians the lake holds high place as the favourite haunt of the
+Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone
+from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of
+ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly
+by lightning, the islands which abound in lizards although these reptiles
+are scarce elsewhere--all these make the Lake of the Woods a region
+abounding in Indian legend and superstition. There are isles upon which
+he will not dare to venture, because the evil spirit has chosen them;
+there are promontories upon which offerings must be made to the Manitou
+when the canoe drifts by their lonely shores; and there are spots watched
+over by the great Kennebic, or Serpent, who is jealous of the treasures
+which they contain. But all these things are too long to dwell upon now;
+I must haste along my way.
+
+On the second morning after leaving Rat Portage we began to leave behind
+the thickly-studded islands and to get out into the open waters. A
+thunder-storm had swept the lake during the night, but the morning was
+calm, and the heavy sweeps were not able to make much way. Suddenly,
+while we were halted for breakfast, the wind veered round to the
+north-west and promised us a rapid passage across the Grande Traverse to
+the mouth of Rainy River. Embarking hastily, we set sail for a strait
+known as the Grassy Portage, which the high stage of water in the lake
+enabled us to run through without touching ground. Beyond this strait
+there stretched away a vast expanse of water over which the white-capped
+waves were running in high billows from the west. It soon became so rough
+that we had to take on board the small canoe which I had brought with me
+from Rat Portage in case of accident, and which was towing astern. On we
+swept over the high-rolling billows with a double reef in the lug-sail.
+Before us, far away, rose a rocky promontory, the extreme point of which
+we had to weather in order to make the mouth of Rainy River. Keeping the
+boat as close to the wind as she would go, we reeled on over the tumbling
+seas. Our lee-way was very great, and for some time it seemed doubtful if
+we would clear the point; as we neared it we saw that there was a
+tremendous sea running against the rock, the white sprays shooting far up
+into the air When the rollers struck against it. The wind had now
+freshened to a gale and the boat laboured much, constantly shipping
+sprays. At last we were abreast of the rocks, close hauled, and yet only
+a hundred yards from the breakers. Suddenly the wind veered a little, or
+the heavy swell which was running caught us, for we began to drift
+quickly down into the mass of breakers. The men were all huddled together
+in the bottom of the boat, and for a moment or two nothing could be done.
+"Out with the sweeps!" I roared. All was confusion; the long sweeps got
+foul of each other, and for a second every thing went wrong. At last
+three sweeps were got to work, but they could do nothing against such a
+sea. We were close to the rocks, so close that one began to make
+preparations for doing something--one didn't well know what--when we
+should strike. Two more oars were out, and for an instant we hung in
+suspense as to the result. How they did pull! it was the old paddle-work
+forcing the rapid again; and it told; in spite of wave and wind, we were
+round the point, but it was only by a shade. An hour later we were
+running through a vast expanse of marsh and reeds into the mouth of Rainy
+River; the Lake of the Woods was passed, and now before me Lay eighty
+miles of the Rivière-de-la-Pluie.
+
+A friend of mine once, describing the scenery of the Falls of the Cauvery
+in India, wrote that "below the falls there was an island round which
+there was water on every side:" this mode of description, so very true
+and yet so very simple in its character, may fairly-be applied to Rainy
+River; one may safely say that it is a river, and that it has banks on
+Either side of it; if one adds that the banks are rich, fertile, and well
+wooded, the description will be complete--such was the river up which I
+now steered to meet the Expedition. The Expedition, where was it? An
+Indian whom we met on the lake knew nothing about it; perhaps on the
+river we should hear some tidings. About five miles from the mouth of
+Rainy River there was a small out-station of the Hudson Bay Company kept
+by a man named Morrisseau, a brother of my boatman. As we approached this
+little post it was announced to us by an Indian that Morrisseau had that
+morning lost a child. It was a place so wretched looking that its name
+of Hungery Hall seemed well adapted to it.
+
+When the boat touched the shore the father of the dead child came out of
+the hut, and shook hands with every one in solemn silence; when he came
+to his brother he kissed him, and the brother in his turn went up the
+bank and kissed a number of Indian women who were standing round; there
+was not a word spoken by any one; after awhile they all went into the
+hut in which the little body lay, and remained some time inside. In its
+way, I don't ever recollect seeing a more solemn exhibition of grief
+than this complete silence in the presence of death; there was no
+question asked, no sign given, and the silence of the dead seemed to
+have descended upon the living. In a little time several Indians
+appeared, and I questioned them as to the Expedition; had they seen or
+heard of it?
+
+"Yes, there was one young man who had seen with his own eyes the great
+army of the white braves."
+
+"Where?" I asked.
+
+"Where the road slants down into the lake, was the interpreted reply.
+
+"What were they like?" I asked again, half incredulous after so many
+disappointments.
+
+He thought for awhile: "They were like the locusts," he answered, "they
+came on one after the other." There could be no mistake about it, he had
+seen British soldiers.
+
+The chief of the party now came forward, and asked what I had got to say
+to the Indians; that he would like to hear me make a speech; that they
+wanted to know why all these men were coming through their country. To
+make a speech! it was a curious request. I was leaning with my back
+against the mast, and the Indians were seated in a line on the bank;
+every thing looked so miserable around, that I thought I might for once
+play the part of Chadband, and improve the occasion, and, as a speech was
+expected of me, make it. So I said, "Tell this old chief that I am sorry
+he is poor and hungry; but let him look around, the land on which he sits
+is rich and fertile, why does he not cut down the trees that cover it,
+and plant in their places potatoes and corn? then he will have food in
+the winter when the moose is scarce and the sturgeon cannot be caught."
+He did not seem to relish my speech, but said nothing. I gave a few plugs
+of tobacco all round, and we shoved out again into the river. "Where the
+road comes down to the lake" the Indian had seen the troops; where was
+that spot? No easy matter to decide, for lakes are so numerous in this
+land of the North-west that the springs of the earth seem to have found
+vent there. Before sunset we fell in with another Indian; he was alone in
+a canoe, which he paddled close along shore out of the reach of the
+strong breeze which was sweeping us fast up the river. While he was yet a
+long way off, Samuel declared that he had recently left Fort Francis, and
+therefore would bring us news from that place. "How can you tell at this
+distance that he has come from the fort?" I asked. "Because his shirt
+looks bright," he answered. And so it was; he had left the fort on the
+previous day and run seventy miles; he was old Monkman's Indian returning
+after having left that hardy voyageur at Fort Francis.
+
+Not a soldier of the Expedition had yet reached the fort, nor did any man
+know where they were.
+
+On again; another sun set and another sun rose, and we were still running
+up the Rainy River before a strong north wind which fell away towards
+evening. At sundown of the 3rd August I calculated that some four and
+twenty miles must yet lie between me and that fort at which, I felt
+convinced, some distinct tidings must reach me of the progress of the
+invading column. I was already 180 miles beyond the spot where I had
+counted upon falling in with them. I was nearly 400 miles from Fort
+Garry.
+
+Towards evening on the 3rd it fell a dead calm, and the heavy boat could
+make but little progress against the strong running current of the river,
+so I bethought me of the little birch-bark canoe which I had brought from
+Rat Portage; it was a very tiny one, but that was no hindrance to the
+work I now\ required of it. We had been sailing all day, so my men were
+fresh. At supper I proposed that Samuel, Monkman, and William Prince
+should come on with me during the night, that we would leave Thomas Hope
+in command of the big boat and push on for the fort in the light canoe,
+taking with us only sufficient food for one meal. The three men at once
+assented, and Thomas was delighted at the prospect of one last grand feed
+all to himself, besides the great honour of being promoted to the rank
+and dignity of Captain of the boat. So we got the little craft out, and
+having gummed her all over, started once more on our upward way just as
+the shadows of the night began to close around the river. We were four in
+number, quite as many as the canoe could carry; she was very low in the
+water and, owing to some damage received in the rough waves of the Lake
+of the Woods, soon began to leak badly. Once we put ashore to gum and
+pitch her seams again, but still the water oozed in and we were wet. What
+was to be done? with these delays we never could hope to reach the fort
+by daybreak, and something told me instinctively, that unless I did get
+there that night I would find the Expedition already arrived. Just at
+that moment we descried smoke rising amidst the trees on the right shore,
+and soon saw the poles of Indian lodges. The men said they were very bad
+Indians. firom the American side--the left shore of Rainy River is
+American territory--but the chance of a bad Indian was better than the
+certainty of a bad canoe, and we stopped at the camp. A lot of half-naked
+redskins came out of the trees, and the pow-wow commenced. I gave them
+all tobacco, and then asked if they would give me a good canoe in
+exchange for my bad one, telling them that I would give them a present
+next day at the fort if one or two amongst them would come up there.
+After a short parley they assented, and a beautiful canoe was brought out
+and placed on the water. They also gave us a supply of dried sturgeon,
+and, again shaking hands all round, we departed on our way.
+
+This time there was no mistake, the canoe proved as dry as a bottle, and
+we paddled bravely on through the mists of night. About midnight we
+halted for supper, making a fire amidst the long wet grass, over which we
+fried the sturgeon and boiled our kettle; then we went on again through
+the small hours of the morning. At times I could see on the right the
+mouths of large rivers which flowed from the west: it is down these
+rivers that the American Indians come to fish for sturgeon in the Rainy
+River. For nearly 200 miles the country is still theirs, and the
+Pillager and Red Lake branches of the Ojibbeway nation yet hold their
+hunting-grounds in the vast swamps of North Minnesota.
+
+These Indians have a bad reputation, as the name of Pillager implies, and
+my Red River men were anxious to avoid falling in with them. Once during
+the night, opposite the mouth of one of the rivers opening to the west,
+we saw the lodges of a large party on our left; with paddles that were
+never lifted out of the water, we glided noiselessly by, as silently as a
+wild duck would cleave the current. Once again during the long night a
+large sturgeon, struck suddenly by a paddle, alarmed us by bounding out
+of the water and landing full upon the gunwale of the Canoe, splashing
+back again into the water and wetting us all by his curious manoeuvre. At
+length in the darkness we heard the hollow roar of the great Falls of the
+Chaudiere sounding loud through the stillness. It grew louder and louder
+as with now tiring strokes my worn-out men worked mechanically at their
+paddles. The day was beginning to break. We were close beneath the
+Chaudiere and alongside of Fort Francis. The scene was wondrously
+beautiful. In the indistinct light of the early dawn the cataract seemed
+twice its natural height, the tops of pine trees rose against the pale
+green of the coming day, close above the falls the bright morning star
+hung, diamond-like, over the rim of the descending torrent; around the
+air was tremulous with the rush of water, and to the north the
+rose-coloured streaks of the aurora were woven into the dawn. My long
+solitary journey had nearly reached its close.
+
+Very cold and cramped by the constrained position in which I had remained
+all night, I reached the fort, and, unbarring the gate, with my rifle
+knocked at the door of one of the wooden houses. After a little, a man
+opened the door in the costume, scant and unpicturesque, in which he had
+risen from his bed.
+
+"Is that Colonel Wolseley?" he asked.
+
+"No," I answered; "but that sounds well; he can't be far off."
+
+"He will be in to breakfast," was the reply.
+
+After all, I was not much too soon. When one has journeyed very far along
+such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily
+expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant
+point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being
+found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though
+one had quietly taken one's ease at an inn. Still there were others to be
+consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours
+of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine.
+
+After an hour's delay I went to the house where the men were lying down,
+and said to them, "The Colonel is close at hand. It will be well for us
+to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive
+at the Fort;" so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above
+the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into
+Rainy River two miles above the fort.
+
+It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river
+makes as it flows out of the Lake. Forcing up this rapid, we saw
+spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake.
+
+The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it.
+can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object
+will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the
+eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the
+lake first caught my sight. There they are! Yes, there they were. Coming
+along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west
+canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant
+as they shot down towards the river's source.
+
+Beyond, in the expanse of the lake, a boat or two showed far and faint.
+We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the
+head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the
+centre sat a figure in uniform with forage-cap on head, and I could see
+that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved
+a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and commenced to
+dip down its rushing waters. Quitting the rock, I got again into my
+canoe, and we shoved off into the current. Thus running down the rapid
+the two canoes drew together, until at its foot they were only a few
+paces apart.
+
+Then the officer in the large canoe, recognizing a face he had last seen
+three months before in the hotel at Toronto, called out, "Where on earth
+have you dropped from?" and with a "Fort Garry, twelve days out, sir," I
+was in his boat.
+
+The officer whose canoe thus led the advance into Rainy River was no
+other than the commander of the Expeditionary Force. During the period
+which had elapsed since that force had landed at Thunder Bay on the
+shore of Lake Superior, he had toiled with untiring energy to overcome
+the many obstacles which opposed the progress of the troops through the
+rock-bound fastnesses of the North. But there are men whose perseverance
+hardens, whose energy quickens beneath difficulties and delay, whose
+genius, like some spring bent back upon its base, only gathers strength
+from resistance. These men are the natural soldiers of the world; and
+fortunate is it for those who carry swords and rifles and are dressed in
+uniform when such men are allowed to lead them, for with such men as
+leaders the following, if it be British, will be all right--nay, if it be
+of any nationality on the earth, it will be all right too. Marches will
+be made beneath suns which by every rule of known experience ought to
+prove fatal to nine-tenths of those who are exposed to them, rivers will
+be crossed, deserts will be traversed, and mountain passes will be
+pierced, and the men who cross and traverse and pierce them will only
+marvel that doubt or distrust should ever have entered into their minds
+as to the feasibility of the undertaking. The man who led the little army
+across the Northern wilderness towards Red River was well fitted in
+every respect for the work which was to be done. He was young in years
+but he was old in service; the highest professional training had
+developed to the utmost his ability, while it had left unimpaired the
+natural instinctive faculty of doing a thing from oneself, which the
+knowledge of a given rule for a given action so frequently destroys. Nor
+was it only by his energy, perseverance, and professional training that
+Wolseley was fitted to lead men upon the very exceptional service now
+required from them. Officers and soldiers will always follow when those
+three qualities are combined in the man who leads them; but they will
+follow with delight the man who, to these qualities, unites a happy
+aptitude for command, which is neither taught nor learned, but which is
+instinctively possessed.
+
+Let us look back a little upon the track of this Expedition. Through a
+vast wilderness of wood and rock and water, extending for more than 600
+miles, 1200 men, carrying with them all the appliances of modern war, had
+to force their way.
+
+The region through which they travelled was utterly destitute of food,
+except such as the wild game afforded to the few scattered Indians; and
+even that source was so limited that whole families of the Ojibbeways had
+perished of starvation, and cases of cannibalism had been frequent
+amongst them. Once cut adrift from Lake Superior, no chance remained for
+food until the distant settlement of Red River had been reached. Nor was
+it at all certain that even there supplies could be obtained, periods of
+great distress had occurred in the settlement itself; and the disturbed
+state into which its affairs had lately fallen in no way promised to give
+greater habits of agricultural industry to a people who were proverbially
+roving in their tastes. It became necessary, therefore, in piercing this
+wilderness to take with the Expedition three month's supply of food, and
+the magnitude of the undertaking will be somewhat under stood by the
+outside world when this fact is borne in mind.
+
+Of course it would have been a simple matter if the-boats which carried
+the men and their supplies had been able to sail through an unbroken
+channel into the bosom of Lake Winnipeg; but through that long 600 miles
+of lake and river and winding creek, the rocky declivities of cataracts
+and the wild wooded shores of rapids had to be traversed, and full
+forty-seven times between lake and lake had boats, stores, and
+ammunition, had cannon, rifles, sails, and oars to be lifted from the
+water, borne across long ridges of rock and swamp and forest, and placed
+again upon the northward rolling river. But other difficulties had to be
+overcome which delayed at the outset the movements of the Expedition. A
+road, leading from Lake Superior to the height by land (42 miles), had
+been rendered utterly impassable by fires which swept the forest and
+rains which descended for days in continuous torrents. A considerable
+portion of this road had also to be opened out in order to carry the
+communication through to Lake Shebandowan close to the height of land.
+
+For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been
+employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the
+Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven
+weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary
+difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of
+boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
+Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the 4th of August, just three
+weeks after that departure, the silent shores of the Rainy River beheld
+the advance of these pioneer boats who thus far had "marched on without
+impediment."
+
+The evening of the day that witnessed my arrival at Fort Francis saw also
+my departure from it; and before the sun had set I was already far down
+the Rainy River. But I was no longer the solitary white man; and no
+longer the camp-fire had around it the swarthy faces of the Swampies. The
+woods were noisy with many tongues; the night was bright with the glare
+of many fires. The Indians, frightened by such a concourse of braves, had
+fled into the woods, and the roofless poles of their wigwams alone marked
+the camping-places where but the evening before I had seen the red man
+monarch of all he surveyed. The word had gone forth from the commander to
+push on with all speed for Red River, and I was now with the advanced
+portion of the 60th Rifles en route for the Lake of the Woods. Of my old
+friends the Swampies only one remained with me, the others had been kept
+at Fort Francis to be distributed amongst the various brigades of boats
+as guides to the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River; even Thomas Hope
+had got a promise of a brigade-in the mean time pork was abundant; and
+between pride and pork what more could even Hope desire?
+
+In two days we entered the Lake of the Woods, and hoisting sail stood out
+across the waters. Never before had these lonely islands witnessed such a
+sight as they now beheld. Seventeen large boats close hauled to a
+splendid breeze swept in a great scattered mass through the high running
+seas, dashing the foam from their bows as they dipped and rose under
+their large lug-sails. Samuel Henderson led the way, proud of his new
+position, and looked upon by the soldiers of his boat as the very acme
+of an Indian. How the poor fellows enjoyed that day! no oar, no portage
+no galling weight over rocky ledges, nothing but a grand day's racing
+over the immense lake. They smoked-all day, balancing themselves on the
+weather-side to steadv the boats as they keeled over into the heavy seas.
+I think they would have-given even Mr. Riel that day a pipeful of
+tobacco; but Heaven help him if they: had caught him two days later on
+the portages of the Winnipeg! he would have had a hard time of it.
+
+There has been some Hungarian poet, I think, who has found a theme for
+his genius in the glories of the _private soldier. He had been a soldier
+himself, and he knew the wealth of the mine hidden in the unknown and
+unthought of Rank and File. It is a pity that the knowledge of that
+wealth should not be more widely circulated.
+
+Who are the Rank and File? They are the poor wild birds whose country
+has cast them off, and who repay her by offering their lives for her
+glory; the men who take the shilling, who drink, who drill, who march to
+music, who fill the graveyards of Asia; the men who stand sentry at the
+gates of world-famous fortresses, who are old when their elder brothers
+are still young, who are bronzed and burned by fierce suns, who sail
+over seas packed in great masses, who watch at night over lonely
+magazines, who shout, "Who comes there?" through the darkness, who dig
+in trenches, who are blown to pieces in mines, who are torn by shot and
+shell, who have carried the flag of England into every land, who have
+made her name famous through the nations, who are the nation's pride in
+her hour of peril and her plaything-in her hour of prosperity--these
+are the rank and file. We are a curious nation; until lately we bought
+our rank, as we buy our mutton, in a market; and we found officers and
+gentlemen where other nations would have found thieves and swindlers.
+Until lately we flogged our files with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and found
+heroes by treating men like dogs. But to return to the rank and file.
+
+The regiment-which had been selected for the work of piercing these
+solitudes of the American continent had peculiar claims for that service.
+In bygone times it had been composed exclusively of Americans, and there
+was not an Expedition through all the wars which England waged against
+France in the New World in which the 60th, or "Royal Americans," had not
+taken a prominent part. When Munro yielded to Montcalm the fort of
+William Henry, when Wolfe reeled back from Montmorenci and stormed
+Abraham, when Pontiac swept the forts from Lake Superior to the Ohio, the
+60th, or Royal Americans, had ever been foremost in the struggle. Weeded
+now of their weak and sickly men, they formed a picked 'body, numbering
+350 soldiers, of whom any nation on earth might well be proud. They were
+fit to do anything and to go any where; and if a fear lurked in the minds
+of any of them, it was that Mr. Riel would not show fight. Well led, and
+officered by men who shared with them every thing, from the portage-strap
+to a roll of tobacco, there was complete confidence from the highest to
+the lowest. To be wet seemed to be the normal condition of man, and to
+carry a pork-barrel weighing 200 pounds over a rocky portage was but
+constitutional and exhilarating exercise--such were the men with whom, on
+the evening of the 8th of August, I once more reached the neighbourhood'
+of the Rat Portage. In a little bay between many islands the flotilla
+halted just before entering the reach which led to the portage. Paddling
+on in front with Samuel in my little canoe, we came suddenly upon four
+large Hudson Bay boats with full crews of Red River half-breeds and
+Indians-they were on their way to meet the Expedition, with the object of
+rendering what assistance they could to the troops in the descent of the
+Winnipeg river. They had begun, to despair of ever falling in with it,
+and great was the excitement at the sudden meeting; the flint-gun was at
+once discharged into the air, and the shrill shouts began to echo through
+the islands. But the excitement on the side of the Expedition was quite
+as keen. The sudden shots and the wild shouts made the men in the boats
+in rear imagine that the fun was really about to begin, and that a
+skirmish through the wooded isles would be the evening's work. The
+mistake was quickly discovered. They were glad of course to meet their
+Red River friends; but somehow, I fancy, the feeling, of joy would
+certainly not have been lessened had the boats held the dusky adherents
+of the Provisional Government.
+
+On the following morning the seventeen boats commenced the descent of the
+Winnipeg river, while I remained at the Portage-du-Rat to await the
+arrival of the chief of the Expedition from Fort Francis. Each succeeding
+day brought a fresh brigade of boats under the guidance of one of my late
+canoe-men; and finally Thomas Hope came along,-seemingly enjoying life to
+the utmost--pork was plentiful, and as for the French there was no need
+to dream of them, and he could sleep in peace in the midst of fifty white
+soldiers. During six days I remained at the little Hudson Bay Company's
+post at the Rat Portage, making short excursions into the surrounding
+lakes and rivers, fishing below the rapids of the Great Chute; and in the
+evenings listening to the Indian stories of the lake as told by my worthy
+host, Mr. Macpherson, a great portion of whose life had been spent in the
+vicinity.
+
+One day I went some distance away from the fort to fish at the foot of
+one of the great rapids formed by the Winnipeg River as it runs from the
+Lake of the Woods. We carried our canoe over two or three portages, and
+at length reached the chosen spot. In the centre of the river an Indian
+was floating quietly in his canoe, casting every now and then a large
+hook baited with a bit of fish into the water. My bait consisted of a
+bright spinning piece of metal, which I had got in one of the American
+cities on my way through Minnesota. Its effect upon the fish of this
+lonely region was marvellous; they had never before been exposed to such
+a fascinating affair, and they rushed at it with avidity. Civilization on
+the rocks had certainly a better time of it, as far as catching fish
+went, than barbarism in the canoe. With the shining thing we killed three
+for the Indian's one. My companion, who was working the spinning bait
+while I sat on the rock, casually observed, pointing to the Indian, "He's
+a Windigo."
+
+"A what?" I asked.
+
+"A Windigo."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"A man that has eaten other men."
+
+"Has this man eaten other men?"
+
+"Yes; a long time ago he and his band were starving, and they killed and
+ate forty other Indians who were starving with them. They lived through
+the winter on them, and in the spring he had to fly from Lake Superior
+because the others wanted to kill him in revenge; and so he came here,
+and he now lives alone near this place."
+
+The Windigo soon paddled over to us, and I had a good opportunity of
+studying his appearance. He was a stout, low-sized savage, with coarse
+and repulsive features, and eyes fixed sideways in his head like a
+Tartar's. We had left our canoe some distance away, and my companion
+asked him to put us across to an island. The Windigo at once consented:
+we got into his canoe, and he ferried us over. I don't know the name of
+the island upon which he landed us, and very likely it has got no name,
+but in my mind, at least, the rock and the Windigo will always be
+associated with that celebrated individual of our early days, the King
+of the Cannibal Islands. The Windigo looked with wonder at the spinning
+bait, seeming to regard it as a "great medicine;" perhaps if he had
+possessed such a thing he would never have been forced by hunger to
+become a Windigo.
+
+Of the bravery of the Lake of the Woods Ojibbeway I did not form a very
+high estimate. Two instances related to me by Mr. Macpherson will suffice
+to show that opinion to have been well founded. Since the days when the
+Bird of Ages dwelt on the Coteau-des-Prairies the Ojibbeway and the Sioux
+have warred against each other; but as the Ojibbeway dwelt chiefly in the
+woods and the Sioux are denizens of the great plains, the actual war
+carried on between them has not beena unusually destructive. The
+Ojibbeways dislike to go far into the open plains; the Sioux hesitate to
+pierce the dark depths of the forest, and the war is generally confined
+to the border land, where the forest begins to merge into the plains.
+Every now and again, however, it becomes necessary to go through the
+form of a war-party, and the young men depart upon the war-path against
+their hereditary enemies. To kill a Sioux and take his scalp then becomes
+the great object of existence. Fortunate is the brave who can return to
+the camp bearing with him the coveted trophy. Far and near spreads the
+glorious news that a Sioux scalp has been taken, and for many a night the
+camps are noisy with the shouts and revels of the scalp dance from
+Winnipeg to Rainy Lake. It matters little whether it be the scalp of a
+man, a woman, or a child; provided it be a scalp it is all right. There
+is the record of the two last war-paths from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+Thirty Ojibbeways set out one fine day for the plains to war against the
+Sioux, they followed the line of the Rosseaui river, and soon emerged
+from the forest. Before them lay a camp of Sioux. The thirty braves,
+hidden in the thickets, looked at the camp of their enemies; but the more
+they looked the less they liked it. They called a council of
+deliberation; it was unanimously resolved to retire to the Lake of the
+Woods: but surely they must bring back a scalp, the women would laugh at
+them! What was to be done? At length the difficulty was solved. Close by
+there was a newly-made grave, a squaw had died and been buried. Excellent
+idea; one scalp was as good as another. So the braves dug up the buried
+squaw-, took the scalp, and departed for Rat Portage. There was a great
+dance, and it was decided that each and every one of the thirty
+Ojibbeways deserved well of his nation.
+
+But the second instance is still more revolting. A very brave Indian
+departed alone from the Lake of the Woods to war against the Sioux; he
+wandered about, hiding in the thickets by day and coming forth at night.
+One evening, being nearly starved, he saw the smoke of a wigwam; he went
+towards it, and found that it was inhabited only by women and
+children, of whom there were four altogether. He went up and asked for
+food; they invited him to enter the lodge; they set before him the best
+food they had got, and they laid a buffalo robe for his bed in the
+warmest corner of the wigwam. When night came, all slept; when midnight
+came the Ojibbeway quietly arose from his couch, killed the two women,
+killed the two children, and departed for the Lake of the Woods with
+four scalps. Oh, he was a very brave Indian, and his name went far
+through the forest! I know somebody who would have gone very far to see
+him hanged.
+
+Late on the evening of the 14th August the commander of the Expedition
+arrived from Fort Francis at the Portage-du-Rat. He had attempted to
+cross the Lake of the Woods in a gig manned by soldiers, the weather
+being too tempestuous to allow the canoe to put out, and had lost his way
+in the vast maze of islands already spoken of. As we had received
+intelligence at the Portage-du-Rat of his having set out from the other
+side of the lake, and as hour after hour passed without bringing his boat
+in sight, I got the canoe ready and, with two Indians, started to light a
+beacon-fire on the top of the Devil's Rock, one of the haunted islands of
+the lake, which towered high over the surrounding isles. We had not
+proceeded far, however, before we fell in with the missing gig bearing
+down for the portage under the guidance of an Indian who had been picked
+up en route.
+
+On the following day I received orders to start at once for Fort
+Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg River to engage guides for the
+brigades of boats which had still to come--two regiments of Canadian
+Militia. And here let us not-forget the men who, following in the
+footsteps of the regular troops, were now only a few marches behind their
+more fortunate comrades. To the lot of these two regiments of Canadian
+Volunteers fell the same hard toil of oar and portage which we have
+already described. The men composing these regiments were stout athletic
+fellows, eager for service, tired of citizen life, and only needing the
+toil of a campaign to weld them into as tough and resolute a body of men
+as ever leader could desire.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal Mail--Grilling a
+Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary Bivouac--The
+President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular Troops.
+
+I TOOK a very small canoe, manned by three Indians--father and two
+sons--and, with provisions for three days, commenced the descent of the
+river of rapids. How we shot down the hissing waters in that tiny craft!
+How fast we left the wooded shores behind us, and saw the-lonely isles
+flit by as the powerful current swept us like a leaf upon its bosom!
+
+It was late of the afternoon of the 15th August when I left for the last
+time the Lake of the Woods. Next night our camp was made below the
+Eagle's Nest, seventy miles from the Portage-du-Rat. A wild storm burst
+upon us at night-fall, and our bivouac was a damp and dreary one. The
+Indians lay under the canoe; I sheltered as best I could beneath a huge
+pine-tree. My oil-cloth was only four feet in length-a shortcoming on the
+part of its feet which caused mine to suffer much discomfort. Besides, I
+had Her Majesty's royal mail to keep dry, and, with the limited liability
+of my oil-cloth in the matter of length, that became no easy task--two
+bags of letters and papers, home letters and papers, too, for the
+Expedition. They had been flung into my: canoe when leaving Rat Portage,
+and I had spent the first day in-sorting them as we swept along, and now
+they were getting wet in spite of every effort to the contrary. I made
+one bag into a pillow, but the rain came through the big pine-tree,
+splashing down through the branches, putting out my fire and drenching
+mail-bags and blankets.
+
+Daylight came at last, but still the rain hissed down, making it no easy
+matter to boil our kettle and fry our bit of pork. Then we put out for
+the day's work on the river. How bleak and wretched it all was! After a
+while we found it was impossible to make head against the storm of wind
+and rain which swept the water, and we had to put back to the shelter of
+our miserable camp. About seven o'clock the wind fell, and we set out
+again. Soon the sun came forth drying and warming us all over. All day we
+paddled on, passing in succession the grand Chute-à-Jacquot, the Three
+Portages-des-Bois, the Slave Falls, and the dangerous rapids of the
+Barrière. The Slave Falls! who that has ever beheld that superb rush of
+water will forget it? Glorious, glorious Winnipeg! it may be that with
+these eyes of mine I shall never see thee again, for thou liest far out
+of the track of life, and man mars not thy beauty with ways of civilized
+travel; but I shall often see thee in imagination, and thy rocks and thy
+waters shall murmur in memory for life.
+
+That night, the 17th of August, we made our camp on a little island close
+to the Otter Falls. It came a night of ceaseless rain, and again the
+mail-bags underwent a drenching. The old Indian cleared a space in the
+dripping vegetation, and made me a rude shelter with branches woven
+together; but the rain beat through, and drenched body, bag, and baggage.
+And yet how easy it all was, and how sound one slept! simply because one
+had to do it; that one consideration is the greatest expounder of the
+possible. I could not speak a word to my Indians, but we got on by signs,
+and seldom found the want of speech--"ugh, ugh" and "caween," yes and no,
+answered for any difficulty. To make a fire and a camp, to boil a kettle
+and fry a bit of meat are the home works of the Indian. His life is one
+long picnic, and it matters as little to him whether sun or rain, snow or
+biting frost, warm, drench, cover, or freeze him, as it does to the
+moose or the reindeer that share his forest life and yield him often his
+forest fare. Upon examining the letters in-the morning the interior of
+the bags presented such a pulpy and generally deplorable appearance that
+I was obliged to stop at one of the Seven Portages for the purpose of
+drying Her Majesty's mail. With this object we made a large fire, and
+placing cross-sticks above proceeded to toast and grill the dripping
+papers. The Indians sat around, turning the letters with little sticks as
+if they were baking cakes or frying sturgeon. Under their skilful
+treatment the pulpy mats soon attained the consistency, and in many
+instances the legibility, of a smoked herring, but as they had before
+presented a very fishy appearance that was not of much consequence.
+
+This day was bright and fine. Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying
+the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we
+overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less
+than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is
+very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would
+stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and
+the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning
+but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected
+with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian war. Thus the great
+Slave Fall tells by its name the fate of two Sioux captives taken in some
+foray by the Ojibbeway; lashed together in a canoe, they were the only
+men who ever ran the Great Chute. The rocks around were black with the
+figures of the Ojibbeways, whose wild triumphant yells were hushed by the
+roar of the cataract; but the torture was a short one; the mighty rush,
+the wild leap, and the happy hunting-ground, where even Ojibbeways cease
+from troubling and Sioux warriors are at rest, had been reached. In
+Mackenzie's journal the fall called Galet-du-Bonnet is said to have been
+named by the Canadian voyageurs, from the fact that the Indians were in
+the habit of crowning the highest rock above the portage with wreaths of
+flowers and branches of trees. The Grand Portage, which is three quarters
+of a mile in length, is the great test of the strength of the Indian and
+half-breed; but, if Mackenzie speaks correctly, the voyageur has much
+degenerated since the early days of the fur trade, for he writes that
+seven pieces, weighing each ninety pounds, were carried over the Grand
+Portage by an Indian in one trip, 630 pounds borne three quarters of a mile
+by one man--the loads look big enough still, but 250 pounds is considered
+excessive now. These loads are carried in a manner which allows the whole
+strength of the body to be put into the work. A broad leather strap is
+placed round the forehead, the ends of the strap passing back over the
+shoulders support the pieces which, thus carried, lie along-the spine
+from the small of the back to the crown of the head. When fully loaded,
+the voyageur stands with his body bent forward, and with one hand
+steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
+rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
+nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
+send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.
+
+In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
+breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
+operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
+which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
+shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
+an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
+but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
+of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
+knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
+rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
+the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
+embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
+drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
+sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
+see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
+spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
+about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
+knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
+canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
+its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
+disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
+head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
+without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
+him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
+here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
+and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
+smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
+chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
+rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
+like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
+slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a
+backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and
+again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off
+some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her
+steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a
+thousand horses: for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no
+mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and
+"wave-worn precipice" there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine
+itself pours forth. The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the
+most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they
+appear to the stranger. Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the
+midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape
+seems impossible. The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can
+save it--there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself
+provides it. Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that
+rock. There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides
+than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away
+with redoubled speed. No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool
+and twisting billow.
+
+On the night of the 20th of August the whole of the regular troops of the
+Expedition and the general commanding it and his staff had reached Fort
+Alexander, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Some accidents had
+occurred, and many had been the "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no
+life had been lost; and from the 600 miles of wilderness there emerged
+400 soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous
+toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and
+whose appearance and physique--browned, tanned, and powerful told: of the
+glorious climate of these Northern solitudes, It was near sunset when the
+large canoe touched the wooden pier opposite the Fort Alexander and the
+commander of the Expedition stepped on shore to meet his men, assembled
+for the first time together since Lake Superior's distant sea had been
+left behind. It-was a meeting not devoid of those associations which make
+such things memorable, and the cheer which went up from the soldiers who
+lined the steep bank to bid him welcome had in it a note of that sympathy
+which binds men together by the inward consciousness of difficulties
+shared in common and dangers--successfully overcome together. Next day
+the united fleet put out into Lake Winnipeg; and steered for the lonely
+shores of the Island of Elks, the solitary island of the southern portion
+of the lake. In a broad, curving, sandy bay the boats found that night a
+shelter; a hundred fires threw their lights far into the lake, and
+bugle-calls startled echoes that assuredly had never been rouse before by
+notes so strange. Sailing in a wide scattered mass before a favouring
+breeze, the fleet reached about noon the following day the mouth of the
+Red River, the river whose name was the name of the Expedition, and whose
+shores had so long been looked forward to as a haven of rest from portage
+and oar labour. There it was at last, seeking through its many mouths the
+waters of the lake. And now our course lay up along the reed fringed
+river and sluggish current to where the tree-tops began to rise over the
+low marsh-land-up to where my old friends the Indians had pitched their
+camp and given me the parting salute on the morning of my departure just
+one month before. It was dusk when we reached the Indian Settlement and
+made a camp upon the opposite shore, and darkness had quite set in when I
+reached the mission-house, some three miles higher up. My old friend the
+Archdeacon was glad indeed to welcome me back. News from the settlement
+there was none--news from the outside world there was plenty. "A great
+battle had been fought near the Rhine," the old man said, "and the French
+had been disastrously defeated."
+
+Another day of rowing, poling, tracking, and sailing, and evening closed
+over the Expedition, camped within six miles of Fort Garry; but all
+through the day the river banks were enlivened with people shouting
+welcome to the soldiers, and church bells rang out peals of gladness as
+the boats passed by. This was through the English and Scotch Settlement,
+the people of which had long grown weary of the tyranny of the Dictator
+Riel. Riel--why, we have almost forgotten him altogether during these
+weeks on the Winnipeg! Nevertheless, he-had still held his own within the
+walls of Fort Garry, and still played to a constantly decreasing audience
+the part of the Little Napoleon.
+
+During this day, the 23rd August, vague rumours reached us of terrible
+things to be done by the warlike President. He would suddenly appear with
+his guns from the woods? he would blow up the fort when the troops had
+taken possession--he would die in the ruins. These and many other
+schemes of a similar description were to be enacted by the Dictator in
+the last extremity of his despair. I had spent the day in the saddle,
+scouring the woods on the right bank of the river in advance of the
+fleet, while on the left shore a company of the 60th, partly mounted,
+moved on also in advance of the leading boats. But neither Riel nor his
+followers appeared to dispute-the upward passage of the flotilla, and the
+woods through which I rode were silent and deserted. Early in the morning
+a horse had been lent to me by an individual rejoicing in the classical
+name of Tacitus Struthers. Tacitus had also assisted me to swim the steed
+across the Red River in order to gain the right shore, and, having done
+so, took leave of me with oft-repeated injunctions to preserve from harm
+the horse and his accoutrements, "For," said Tacitus, "that horse is a
+racer." Well, I suppose it must have been that fact that made the horse
+race all day through the thickets and oak woods of the right shore, but I
+rather fancy my spurs had something to say to it too.
+
+When night again fell, the whole force had reached a spot six-miles from
+the rebel fort, and camp was formed for the last time on the west bank
+of the river. And what a night and storm then broke upon the Red River
+Expedition! till the tents flapped and fell and the drenched soldiers
+shiv'ered shelterless, waiting for the dawn. The occupants of tents which
+stood the pelting of the pitiless storm were no better off than those
+outside; the surface of the ground became ankle-deep in mud and water,
+and the men lay in pools during the last hours of the night. At length a
+dismal daylight dawned over the dreary scene, and the upward course was
+resumed. Still the rain came down in torrents, and, with water above,
+below, and around, the Expedition neared its destination. If the steed of
+Tacitus had had a hard day, the night had been less severe upon him than
+upon his rider. I had procured him an excellent stable at the other side
+of the river, and upon recrossing again in the morning I found him as
+ready to race as his owner could desire. Poor beast, he was a most
+miserable-looking animal, though belying his attenuated appearance by his
+performance. The only race which his generally forlorn aspect justified
+one in believing him capable of running was a race, and a hard one, for
+existence; but for all that he went well, and Tacitus himself might have
+envied the classical outline of his Roman nose.
+
+About two miles north of Fort Garry the Red River makes a sharp bend to
+the east and, again turning round to the west, forms a projecting point
+or neck of land known as Point Douglas. This spot is famous in Red River
+history as the scene of the battle, before referred to in these pages,
+where the voyageurs and French half-breeds of the North west Fur Company
+attacked the retainers of the Hudson Bay, some time in 1813, and
+succeeded in putting to death by various methods of half-Indian warfare
+the governor of the rival company and about a score of his followers. At
+this point, where the usually abrupt bank of the Red River was less
+steep, the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance
+upon Fort Garry. The preliminary arrangements were soon completed, and
+the little army, with its two brass guns trundling along behind Red River
+carts, commenced its march across the mud-soaked prairie. How unspeakably
+dreary it all looked! the bridge, the wretched village, the crumbling
+fort, the vast level prairie, water soaked, draped in mist, and pressed
+down by low-lying clouds. To me the ground was not new--the bridge was
+the spot where only a month before I had passed the half reed sentry in
+my midnight march to the Lower Fort. Other things had changed since then
+besides the weather.
+
+Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force
+drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the
+flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed
+through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible
+about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary
+one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the
+skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west
+face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps
+of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his
+horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals
+and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who
+seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson
+Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave
+men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long
+polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in
+advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with
+unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the
+members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the
+American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision
+the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and
+their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered
+hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of
+retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the
+bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On
+the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and
+from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns
+told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the
+grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the
+highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously
+expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be
+too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed
+to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted
+that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red
+River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our
+European ideas of that virtue.
+
+That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by
+his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine
+on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth
+much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps
+an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to
+depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear
+to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W.
+B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the
+Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred.
+Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the
+more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance,
+he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and
+indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property
+and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at
+once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save
+America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for
+which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel
+council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much.
+He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his
+virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the
+rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members
+of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the
+approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound
+of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the
+troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by
+the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory
+language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel
+government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government
+House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt
+of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea.
+A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed
+the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village
+produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in
+the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors
+were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as
+though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had
+been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any
+kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but
+the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost
+to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water
+sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it
+was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system,
+that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched
+upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I
+regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the
+general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from
+the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to
+their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden
+revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power,
+would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or
+two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of
+the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to
+rights.
+
+Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long
+return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had
+arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what
+work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly
+intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was
+a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at
+the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept
+quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of
+that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his
+chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken
+Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling
+in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely
+back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run
+a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques
+Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person
+of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude,
+peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At
+length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of
+September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the
+torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander
+also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River
+Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the
+United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was
+mistaken, for it was only about to begin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An
+Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations--
+Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine
+River--Rossette.
+
+One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long
+prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of
+which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my
+last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its
+close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before
+a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores
+of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives:
+the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves
+prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.
+
+So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the
+quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of
+my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old
+associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every
+feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and
+trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be
+gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the
+moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one
+sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would
+be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my
+hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of
+ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind,
+running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea:
+I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times
+the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely
+excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and
+walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some
+guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the
+north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in
+the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky
+prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the
+star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a
+long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west
+it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the
+west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call
+chance, and dreamers destiny?
+
+A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina,
+whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had
+induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of
+September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the
+Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the
+boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known
+member of the Canadian bench.
+
+"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.
+
+"To Canada."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because there is nothing more to be done."
+
+"Oh, you must come back."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because we have a lot of despatches to send to Ottawa, and the mail is
+not safe. Come back now and you will be here again in ten days time."
+
+Go back again on the steam-boat and come up next trip--would I?
+
+There are many men who pride themselves upon their fixity of purpose, and
+a lot of similar fixidities and steadiness; but I don't. I know of
+nothing so fixed as the mole, so obstinate as the mule, or so steady as
+a stone wall, but I don't particularly care about making their general
+characteristics the rule of my life; and so I decided to go back to Fort
+Garry, just as I would have decided to start for the North Pole had the
+occasion offered.
+
+Early in the second week of October I once more drew nigh the hallowed
+precincts of Fort Garry.
+
+"I am so glad you have returned," said the governor, Mr. Archibald, when
+I met him on the evening of my arrival, "because I want to ask you if you
+will undertake a much longer journey than any thing you have yet done. I
+am going to ask you if you will accept a mission to the Saskatchewan
+Valley and through the Indian countries of the West. Take a couple of
+days to think over it, and let me know your decision."
+
+"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have
+already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."
+
+This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his
+breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.
+
+And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my
+wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly,
+and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of
+mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast
+stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the
+central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title
+for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and
+ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend
+into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction,
+through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming
+greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and
+start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
+resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of
+miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
+now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends
+towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours
+its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river
+rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns
+once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh,
+sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a
+rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake
+Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its
+birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale,
+meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called
+by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the
+Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not
+the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red
+River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the
+rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller
+stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the
+waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line
+and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.
+
+So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How
+shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great,
+boundless, solitary waste of verdure?
+
+The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed
+from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson,
+played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The
+coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate;
+but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose
+shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the
+much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of
+Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the
+description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an
+ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of
+Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the
+shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of
+sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite
+variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
+dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
+and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
+ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
+solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
+the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
+makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
+silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
+has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
+no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
+these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
+this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
+oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
+my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
+oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
+shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
+beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
+brought forth the flowers.
+
+October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
+their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
+through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
+settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
+the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
+summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.
+
+On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
+and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
+the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
+and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
+friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
+firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
+saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
+space!
+
+I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
+Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
+Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
+French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by
+name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
+Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
+or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
+drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
+found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
+half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
+myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
+capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
+at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
+kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
+By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
+the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
+second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
+of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
+Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
+parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
+the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
+Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
+general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
+and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
+jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
+name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
+uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
+Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
+terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
+journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
+aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
+depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
+not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
+lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
+diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
+has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
+upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
+Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
+brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the
+most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too
+legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where
+the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination.
+Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and
+the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should
+flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square
+plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more
+despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them.
+They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white
+man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold,
+and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men
+who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years
+these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this
+disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the
+same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had
+remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by
+hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before
+it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The
+camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a
+perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and
+far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and
+bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.
+
+The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest
+attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the
+Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan,
+attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees.
+The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of
+death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles
+north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September
+the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west
+tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees,
+half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines
+had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of
+the disease.
+
+"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what
+tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now
+prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you
+can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease.
+You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be
+deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment
+of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper
+treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief
+officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other
+intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran
+this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many
+curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of
+physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became
+the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of
+the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had
+consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At
+length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect
+them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight
+cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a
+remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to
+visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to
+him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited
+printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have
+already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of
+Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but
+much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the
+snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of
+the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is
+a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the
+mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November
+delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which
+made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature
+of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie,
+the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed
+the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and
+struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering
+one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine
+of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave
+of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away
+by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered
+for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly
+put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any
+person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox
+brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A
+French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the
+black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its
+lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the
+solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally
+through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the
+wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to
+resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me,
+nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach
+the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of
+civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a
+cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts
+of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the
+spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many
+nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little
+camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there
+stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a
+terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So,
+lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt
+as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved
+that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark
+immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of
+the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose
+lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term
+of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to
+fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories,
+for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better
+never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who
+have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a
+sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more
+substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the
+prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into
+strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the
+other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all
+the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra
+incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into
+the solitudes.
+
+The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+unceasing travel; clear, bright days of mellow sunshine followed by
+nights of sharp frost which almost imperceptibly made stronger the icy
+covering of the pools and carried farther and farther out into the
+running streams the edging of ice which so soon was destined to cover
+completely the river and the rill. Our route lay along the left bank of
+the Assineboine, but at a considerable distance from the river, whose
+winding course could be marked at times by the dark oak woods that
+fringed it. Far away to the south rose the outline of the Blue Hills of
+the Souris, and to the north the Riding Mountains lay faintly upon the
+horizon. The country was no longer level, fine rolling hills stretched
+away before us over which the wind came with a keenness that made our
+prairie-fare seem delicious at the close of a hard day's toil. 36, 22,
+24, 20; such were the readings of my thermometer as each morning I looked
+at it by the fire-light as we arose from our blankets-before the dawn and
+shivered in the keen hoarfrost while the kettle was being boiled.
+Perceptibly getting colder, but still clear and fine, and with every
+Breeze laden with healthy and invigorating freshness, for four days we
+journeyed without seeing man or beast; but on the morning of the fifth
+day, while camped in a thicket on the right of the trail, we heard the
+noise of horses passing near us. A few hours afterwards we passed a small
+band of Salteaux encamped farther on; and later in the day overtook a
+half-breed trader on his way to the Missouri to trade with the Sioux.
+This was a celebrated &French half breed named Chaumon Rossette. Chaumon
+had been undergoing a severe course of drink since he had left the
+settlement some ten days earlier, and his haggard eyes and swollen
+features revealed the incessant orgies of his travels. He had as
+companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
+token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
+Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
+drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
+seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
+with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
+two clear and beautiful lakes.
+
+"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"
+
+"Oui, Captain."
+
+"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
+No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."
+
+"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
+drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
+Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."
+
+Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
+semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
+the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
+cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
+proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
+line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
+study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
+"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
+his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
+that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
+had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
+Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
+could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
+over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
+Missouri.
+
+On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
+a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
+shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
+a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
+magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
+Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
+Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
+the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
+the fort. I had ridden that distance in five days and two hours.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort Ellice--Quick
+Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A Snow-storm--The
+South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of poor
+Blackie--Carlton.
+
+IT may have occurred to some reader to ask, What is this company whose
+name so often appears upon these pages? Who are the men composing it, and
+what are the objects it has in view? You have glanced at its early
+history, its rivalries, and its discoveries, but now, now at this present
+time, while our giant rush of life roars and surges along, what is the
+work done by this Company of Adventurers trading into the Bay of Hudson?
+Let us see if we can answer. Of the two great monopolies which the
+impecuniosity of Charles II. gave birth to, the Hudson Bay Company alone
+survives, but to-day the monopoly is one of fact, and not of law. All men
+are now free to come and go, to trade and sell and gather furs in the
+great Northern territory, but distance and climate raise more formidable
+barriers against strangers than law or protection could devise. Bold
+would be the trader who would carry his goods to the far away Mackenzie
+River; intrepid would be the voyageur who sought a profit from the lonely
+shores of the great Bear Lake. Locked in their fastnesses of ice and
+distance, these remote and friendless solitudes of the North must long
+remain, as they are at present, the great fur preserve of the Hudson Bay
+Company. Dwellers within the limits of European states can ill comprehend
+the vastness of territory over which this Fur Company holds sway. I say
+holds sway, for the north of North America is still as much in the
+possession of the Company, despite all cession of title to Canada, as
+Crusoe was the monarch of his island, or the man must be the owner of the
+moon. From Pembina on Red River to Fort Anderson on the Mackenzie is as
+great a distance as from London to Mecca. From the King's Posts to the
+Pelly Banks is farther than from Paris to Samarcand, and yet today
+throughout that immense region the Company is king. And what a king! no
+monarch rules his subjects with half the power of this Fur Company. It
+clothes, feeds, and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From
+the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and
+through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot
+than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate
+shores of the great_ Slave Lake. _Twice in the year news comes from the
+outside world-news many, many months old--news borne by men and dogs
+through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down
+the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket
+that covers the wild Indian in his cold camp has been woven in a Whitney
+loom; that knife is from Sheffield; that string of beads from Birmingham.
+Let us follow the ships that sail annually from the Thames bound for the
+supply of this vast region. It is early in June when she gets clear of
+the Nore; it is mid-June when the Orkneys and Stornaway are left behind;
+it is August when the frozen Straits of Hudson are pierced; and the end
+of the month has been reached when the ship comes to anchor off the
+sand-barred mouth of the Nelson River. For one year-the stores that she has
+brought lie in the warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they
+reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the
+Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days
+of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs
+and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at
+four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames
+and the gun in the pine woods of the Mackenzie are two widely different
+articles. The old rough flint, whose bent barrel the Indians will often
+straighten between the cleft of a tree or the crevice of a rock, has been
+made precious by the labour of many men; by the trackless wastes through
+which it has been carried; by winter-famine of those who have to vend it;
+by the years which elapse between its departure from the work shop and
+the return of that skin of sable or silver-fox for which it has been
+bartered. They are short-sighted men who hold that because the flint-gun
+and the sable possess such different values in London, these articles
+should also possess their relative values in North America, and argue
+from this that the Hudson Bay Company treat the Indians unfairly; they
+are short-sighted men, I say, and know not of what they speak. That old
+rough flint has often cost more to put in the hands of that Dogrib hunter
+than the best finished central fire of Boss or Purdey. But that is not
+all that has to be said about the trade of this Company. Free trade may
+be an admirable institution for some nations-making them, amongst other
+things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means
+follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian.
+Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade
+has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the
+earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks,
+and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine,
+and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease,
+small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears
+and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an
+institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these
+things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no
+reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or,
+for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the
+principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of
+men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or
+for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a
+future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters
+and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who
+takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy
+all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself,
+second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get
+them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may
+take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have
+been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of
+the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there
+has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the
+wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.
+
+I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in
+costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and
+hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of
+buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and
+immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for
+before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that
+were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain over
+which, for three hundred miles, there lay no fort or house of any kind.
+
+Bidding adieu to my host, a young Scotch gentleman, at Fort Ellice, my
+little party turned once more towards the North-west and, fording the
+Qu'Appelle five miles above its confluence with the Assineboine, struck
+out into a lovely country. It was the last day of October and almost the
+last of the Indian summer. Clear and distinct lay the blue sky upon the
+quiet sun-lit prairie. The horses trotted briskly on under the charge of
+an English half-breed named Daniel. Pierre Diome had returned to Red
+River, and Daniel was to bear me company as far as Carlton on the North
+Saskatchewan. My five horses were now beginning to show the effect of
+their incessant work, but it was only in appearance, and the distance
+travelled each day was increased instead of diminished as we journeyed
+on. I would not have believed it possible that horses could travel the
+daily distance which mine did without breaking down altogether under it,
+still less would it have appeared possible upon the food which they had
+to eat. We had neither hay nor oats to give them; there was nothing-but
+the dry grass of the prairie, and no time to eat that but the cold frosty
+hours of the night. Still we seldom travelled less than fifty miles
+a-day, stopping only for one hour at midday, and going on again until
+night began to wrap her mantle around the shivering prairie. My horse was
+a wonderful animal; day after day would I fear that his game little limbs
+were growing weary, and that soon he must give out; but no, not a bit of
+it; his black coat roughened and his flanks grew a little leaner, but
+still he went on as gamely and as pluckily as ever. Often during the long
+day I would dismount and walk along leading him by the bridle, while the
+other two men and the six horses jogged on far in advance; when they had
+disappeared altogether behind some distant ridge of the prairie my little
+horse would commence to look anxiously around, whinnying and trying to
+get along after his comrades; and then how gamely he trotted on when I
+remounted, watching out for the first sign of his friends again, far-away
+little specks on the great wilds before us. When the camping place would
+be reached at nightfall the first care went to the horse. To remove
+saddle, bridle, and saddle-cloth, to untie the strip of soft buffalo
+leather from his neck and twist it well around his fore-legs, for the
+purpose of hobbling, was the work of only a few minutes, and then poor
+Blackie hobbled away to find over the darkening expanse his night's
+provender. Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea
+had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some
+frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in
+the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the
+heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter
+spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South
+Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about
+in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always
+ran loose while the other three worked in harness. These loose horses,
+one might imagine, would be prone to gallop away when they found
+themselves at liberty to do so: but nothing seems farther from their
+thoughts; they trot along by the side of their harnessed comrades
+apparently as though they knew all about it now and again they stop
+behind, to crop a bit of grass or tempting stalk of wild pea or vetches,
+but on they come again until the party has been reached, then, with ears
+thrown back, the jog-trot is resumed, and the whole band sweeps on over
+hill and plain. To halt and change horses is only the work of two minutes
+--out comes one horse, the other is standing close by and never stirs
+while the hot harness is being put upon him; in he goes into the rough
+shafts, and, with a crack of the half-breed's whip across his flanks,
+away we start again.
+
+But my little Blackie seldom got a respite from the saddle; he seemed so
+well up to his work, so much stronger and better than any of the others,
+that day after day I rode him, thinking each day, "Well, to-morrow I will
+let him run loose;" but when to-morrow came he used to look so fresh and
+well, carrying his little head as high as ever, that again I put the
+saddle on his back, and another day's talk and companionship would still
+further cement our friendship, for I grew to like that horse as one only
+can like the poor dumb beast that serves us. I know not how it is, but
+horse and dog have worn themselves into my heart as few men have ever
+done in life and now, as day by day went by in one long scene of true
+companionship, I came to feel for little Blackie a friendship not the
+less sincere because all the service was upon his side, and I was
+powerless to make his supper a better one, or give him more cosy lodging
+for the night. He fed and lodged himself and he carried me--all he asks
+in return was a water-hole in the frozen lake, and that I cut for him.
+Sometimes the night came down upon us still in the midst of a great open
+treeless plain, without shelter, water, or grass, and then we would
+continue on in the inky darkness as though our march was to last
+eternally, and poor Blackie would step out as if his natural state was
+one of perpetual motion. On the 4th November we rode over sixty miles;
+and when at length the camp was made in the lea of a little clump of bare
+willows, the snow was lying cold upon the prairies, and Blackie and his
+comrades went out to shiver through their supper in the bleakest scene my
+eyes had ever looked upon.
+
+About midway between Fort Ellice and Carlton a sudden and well-defined
+change occurs in the character of the country; the light soil disappears,
+and its place is succeeded by a rich dark loam covered deep in grass and
+vetches. Beautiful hills swell in slopes more or less abrupt on all
+sides, while lakes fringed with thickets and clumps of good-sized poplar
+balsam lie lapped in their fertile hollows.
+
+This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. Around it, far into
+endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty vegetation,
+plains seared with the tracks of countless buffalo which, until a few
+years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assineboine and
+the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing these
+great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie
+thickly strewn over the surface. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons dot
+the short scant grass; and when fire has laid barer still the level
+surface, the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and
+near the dark burnt prairie. There is something unspeakably melancholy in
+the aspect of this portion of the North-west. From one of the westward
+jutting spurs of the Touchwood Hills the eye sees far away over an
+immense plain; the sun goes down, and as he sinks upon the earth the
+straight line of the horizon becomes visible for a moment across this
+blood red disc, but so distant, so far away, that it seems dream like in
+its immensity. There is not a sound in the air or on the earth; on every
+side lie spread the relics of the great fight waged by man against the
+brute creation: all is silent and deserted--the Indian and the buffalo
+gone, the settler not yet come. You turn quickly to the right or left;
+over a hill-top, close by, a solitary wolf steals away. Quickly the vast
+prairie begins to grow dim, and darkness forsakes the skies because they
+light their stars, coming down to seek in the utter solitude of the
+blackened plains a kindred spirit for the night.
+
+On the night of the 4th November we made our camp long after dark in a
+little clump of willows far out in the plain which lies west of the
+Touchwood Hills. We had missed the only lake that was known to lie in
+this part of the plain, and after journeying far in the darkness halted
+at length, determined to go supperless, or next to supperless, to bed,
+for pemmican without that cup which nowhere tastes more delicious than in
+the wilds of the North-west would prove but sorry comfort, and the supper
+without tea would be only a delusion. The fire was made, the frying-pan
+taken out, the bag of dried buffalo meat and the block of pemmican got
+ready, but we said little in the presence of such a loss as the steaming
+kettle and the hot, delicious, fragrant tea. Why not have provided
+against this evil hour by bringing on from the last frozen lake some
+blocks of ice? Alas! why not? Moodily we sat down round the blazing
+willows. Meantime Daniel commenced to unroll the oil cloth cart cover-and
+lo, in the ruddy glare of the fire, out rolled three or four large pieces
+of thick, heavy ice, sufficient to fill our kettle three times over with
+delicious tea. Oh, what a joy it was! and how we relished that cup! for
+remember, cynical friend who may be inclined to hold such happiness
+cheap and light, that this wild life of ours is a curious leveller of
+civilized habits--a cup of water to a thirsty man can be more valuable
+than a cup of diamonds, and the value of one article over the other is
+only the question of a few hours privation. When the morning of the. 5th
+dawned we were covered deep in snow, a storm had burst in the night, and
+all around was hidden in a dense sheet of driving snow-flakes; not a
+vestige of our horses was to be seen, their tracks were obliterated by
+the fast-falling snow, and the surrounding objects close at hand showed
+dim and indistinct through the white cloud. After fruitless search,
+Daniel returned to camp with the tidings that the horses were nowhere to
+be found; so, when breakfast had been finished, all three set out in
+separate directions to look again for the missing steeds. Keeping the
+snow-storm on my left shoulder, I went along through little clumps of
+stunted bushes which frequently deceived me by their resemblance through
+the driving snow to horses grouped together. After awhile I bent round
+towards the wind and, making a long sweep in that direction, bent again
+so as to bring the drift upon my right shoulder. No horses, no tracks,
+any where--nothing but a waste of white drifting flake and feathery
+snow-spray. At last I turned away from the wind, and soon struck full on
+our little camp; neither of the others had returned. I cut down some
+willows and made a blaze. After a while I got on to the top of the cart,
+and looked out again into the waste. Presently I heard a distant shout;
+replying vigorously to it, several indistinct forms came into view; and
+Daniel soon emerged from the mist, driving before him the hobbled
+wanderers; they had been hidden under the lea of a thicket some distance
+off, all clustered together for shelter and warmth. Our only difficulty
+was now the absence of my friend the Hudson Bay officer. We waited some
+time, and at length, putting the saddle on Blackie, I started out in the
+direction he had taken. Soon I heard a faint far-away shout; riding
+quickly in the direction from whence it proceeded, I heard the calls
+getting louder and louder, and soon came up with a figure heading right
+away into the immense plain, going altogether in a direction opposite to
+where our camp lay. I shouted, and back came my friend no little pleased
+to find his road again, for a snowstorm is no easy thing to steer
+through, and at times it will even fall out that not the Indian with all
+his craft and instinct for direction will be able to find his way through
+its blinding maze. Woe betide the wretched man who at such a time finds
+himself alone upon the prairie, without fire or the means of making it;
+not even the ship-wrecked-sailor clinging to the floating mast is in a
+more pitiable strait. During the greater portion of this day it snowed
+hard, but our track was distinctly-marked across the plains, and we held
+on all day. I still rode Blackie; the little fellow had to keep his wits
+at work to avoid tumbling into the badger holes which the snow soon
+rendered invisible. These badger holes in this portion of the plains were
+very numerous; it is not always easy to avoid them when the ground is
+clear of snow, but riding becomes extremely difficult when once the
+winter has set in. The badger burrows straight down for two or three
+feet, and if a horse be travelling at any pace his fall is so sudden and
+violent that a broken leg is too often the result. Once or twice Blackie
+went in nearly to the shoulder, but he invariably scrambled up again all
+right-poor fellow, he was reserved for a worse fate, and his long journey
+was near its end! A clear cold day followed the day of snow, and for the
+first time the thermometer fell below zero.
+
+Day dawned upon us on the 6th November camped in a little thicket of
+poplars some seventy miles from the South Saskatchewan; the thermometer
+stood 30 below zero, and as I drew the girths tight on poor Blackie's
+ribs that morning, I felt happy in the thought that I had slept for the
+first time under the stars with 35 degrees of frost lying on the blanket
+outside. Another long day's ride, and the last great treeless plain was
+crossed and evening found us camped near the Minitchinass, or Solitary
+Hill, some sixteen miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan. The grass
+again grew long and thick, the clumps of willow, poplar, and birch had
+reappeared, and the soil, when we scraped the snow away to make our
+sleeping place, turned up black and rich-looking under the blows of the
+axe. About midday on the 7th November, in a driving storm of snow, we
+suddenly emerged upon a high plateau. Before us, at a little distance, a
+great gap or valley seemed to open suddenly out, and farther off the
+white sides of hills and dark tree-tops rose into view. Riding to the
+edge of this steep valley I beheld a magnificent river flowing between
+great banks of ice and snow 300 feet below the level on which we stood.
+Upon each side masses of ice stretched out far into the river, but in
+the centre, between these banks of ice, ran a swift, black-looking
+current the sight of which for a moment filled us with dismay. We had
+counted upon the Saskatchewan being firmly locked in ice, and here was
+the river rolling along between its icy banks forbidding all passage.
+Descending to the low valley of the river, we halted for dinner,
+determined to try some method by which to cross this formidable barrier.
+An examination of the river and its banks soon revealed the difficulties
+before us. The ice, as it approached the open portion, was unsafe,
+rendering it impossible to get within reach of the running water.` An
+interval of some ten yards separated the sound ice from the current,
+while nearly 100 yards of solid ice lay between the true bank of the
+river and the dangerous portion; thus our first labour was to make a
+solid footing for ourselves from which to launch any raft or make-shift
+boat which we might construct. After a great deal of trouble and labour,
+we got the waggon-box roughly fashioned into a raft, covered over with
+one of our large oil-cloths, and Lashed together with buffalo leather.
+This most primitive looking craft we carried down over the ice to where
+the dangerous portion commenced; then Daniel,-wielding the axe with
+powerful dexterity, began to hew away at the ice until space enough was
+opened out to float our raft upon. Into this-we slipped the-waggon-box,
+and into the waggon-box we put the half-breed Daniel. It floated
+admirably, and on went the axe-man, hewing, as before, with might and
+main. It was cold, wet work, and, in spite of every thing, the water
+began to ooze through the oil-cloth into the waggon-box. We had to haul
+it up, empty it, and launch again; thus for some hours we kept on, cold,
+wet, and miserable, until night forced us to desist and make our camp on
+the tree-lined shore. So we hauled in the wagon and retired, baffled, but
+not beaten, to begin again next morning. There were many reasons to make
+this delay feel vexatious and disappointing; we had travelled a distance
+of 560 miles in twelve days; travelled only to find ourselves stopped by
+this partially frozen river at a point twenty miles distant from Carlton,
+the first great station on my journey. Our stock of provisions, too, was
+not such as would admit of much delay; pemmican and dried meat we had
+none, and flour, tea, and grease were all that remained to us. However,
+Daniel declared that he knew a most excellent method of making a
+combination of flour and fat which Would allay all disappointment-and I
+must conscientiously admit that a more hunger-satiating mixture than he
+produced out of the frying-pan it had never before been my lot to taste.
+A little of it went such a long way, that it would be impossible to find
+a parallel for it in portability; in fact, it went such a long way, that
+the person who dined off it found himself, by common reciprocity of
+feeling, bound to go a long way in return before he again partook of it;
+but Daniel was not of that opinion, for he ate the greater portion of our
+united shares, and slept peacefully when it was all gone. I would
+particularly recommend this mixture to the consideration of the guardians
+of the poor throughout the United Kingdom, as I know of nothing which
+would so readily conduce to the satisfaction of the hungry element in'
+our society. Had such a combination been known to Bumble. and his Board,
+the hunger of Twist would even have been satisfied by a single helping;
+but, perhaps, it might be injudicious to introduce into the sister island
+any condiment so antidotal in its nature to the removal of the Celt
+across the Atlantic--that "consummation so devoutly wished for" by the
+"leading journal."
+
+Fortified by Daniel's delicacy, we set to work early next morning at
+raft-making and ice-cutting; but we made the attempt to cross at a
+portion of the river where the open water was narrower and the bordering
+ice sounded more firm to the testing blows of the axe. One part of the
+river had now closed in, but the ice over it was unsafe. We succeeded in'
+getting the craft into the running water and, having strung together all
+the available line and rope we possessed, prepared for the venture. It
+was found that the waggon-boat would only carry one passenger, and
+accordingly I took my place in it, and with a make-shift paddle put out
+into the quick-running stream. The current had great power over the
+ill-shaped craft, and it was no easy-matter to keep her head at all
+against stream.
+
+I had not got five yards out when the whole thing commenced to fill
+rapidly with water, and I had just time to get back again to ice before
+she was quite full. We hauled her out once more, and found the oil-cloth
+had been cut by the jagged ice, so there was nothing for it but to remove
+it altogether and put on another. This was done, and soon our waggon-box
+was once again afloat. This time I reached in safety the farther side;
+but there a difficulty arose which we had not foreseen. Along this
+farther edge of ice the current ran with great force, and as the leather
+line which was attached to the back of the boat sank deeper and deeper
+into the water, the drag upon it caused the boat to drift quicker and
+quicker downstream; thus, when I touched the opposite ice, I found the
+drift was so rapid that my axe failed to catch a hold in the yielding
+edge, which broke away at every stroke. After several ineffectual
+attempts to stay the rush of the boat, and as I was being borne rapidly
+into a mass of rushing water and huge blocks of ice, I saw it was all up,
+and shouted to the others to rope in the line; but this was no easy
+matter, because the rope had got foul of the running ice, and was caught
+underneath. At last, by careful handling, it was freed, and I stood once
+more on the spot from whence I had started, having crossed the River
+Saskatchevan to no purpose. Daniel now essayed the task, and reached the
+opposite shore, taking the precaution to work up the nearer side before
+crossing; once over, his vigorous use of the axe told on the ice, and he
+succeeded in fixing the boat against the edge. Then lhe quickly clove his
+way into the frozen mass, and, by repeated blows, finally reached a spot
+from which he got on shore.
+
+This success of our long labour and exertion was announced to the
+solitude by three ringing cheers, which we gave from our side; for, be
+it remembered, that it was now our intention to use the waggon-boat to
+convey across all our baggage, towing the boat from one side to the other
+by means of our line; after which, we would force the horses to swim the
+river, and then cross ourselves in the boat. But all our plans were
+defeated by an unlooked-for accident; the line lay deep in the water, as
+before, and to raise it required no small amount of force. We hauled and
+hauled, until snap went the long rope somewhere underneath the water, and
+all was over. With no little difficulty Daniel got the boat across again
+to our side, and we all went back to camp wet, tired, and dispirited by
+so much labour and so many misfortunes. It froze hard that night, and in
+the morning the great river had its waters altogether hidden opposite our
+camp by a covering of ice. Would it bear? that was the question. We went
+on it early, testing with axe and sharp-pointed poles. In places it was
+very thin, but in other parts it rang hard and solid to the blows. The
+dangerous spot was in the very centre of the river, where the water had
+shown through in round holes on the previous day, but we hoped to avoid
+these bad places by taking a slanting course across the channel. After
+walking backwards and forwards several times, we determined to try a
+light horse. He was led out with a long piece of rope attached to his
+neck. In the centre of the stream the ice seemed to bend slightly as he
+passed over, but no break occurred, and in safety we reached the opposite
+side. Now came Blackie's turn. Somehow or other I felt uncomfortable
+about it and remarked that the horse ought to have his shoes removed
+before the attempt was made. My companion, however, demurred, and his
+experience in these matters had extended over so many years, that I was
+foolishly induced to allow him to proceed as he thought fit, even against
+my better judgment. Blackie was taken out, led as before, tied by a long
+line. I followed close behind him, to drive him if necessary. He did not
+need much driving, but took the ice quite readily. We had got to the
+centre of the river, when the surface suddenly bent downwards, and, to my
+horror, the poor horse plunged deep into black, quick-running water! He
+was not three yards in front of me when the ice broke. I recoiled
+involuntarily from the black, seething chasm; the horse, though he
+plunged suddenly down, never let his head under water, but kept swimming
+manfully round and round the narrow hole, trying all he could to get
+upon the ice. All his efforts were useless; a cruel wall of sharp ice
+struck his knees as he tried to lift them on the surface, and the
+current, running with immense velocity, repeatedly carried him back
+underneath. As soon as the horse had broken through, the man who held
+the rope let it go, and the leather line flew back about poor Blackie's
+head. I got up almost to the edge of the hole, and stretching out took
+hold of the line again; but that could do no good nor give him any
+assistance in his struggles. I shall never forget the way the poor brute
+looked at me--even now, as I write these lines, the whole scene comes
+back in memory with all the vividness of a picture, and I feel again the
+horrible sensation of being utterly unable, though almost within touching
+distance, to give him help in his dire extremity and if ever dumb animal
+spoke with unutterable eloquence, that horse called to me in his agony he
+turned to me as to one from whom he had a right to expect assistance. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. "Is there no help for him?" I cried
+to the other men. "None whatever," was the reply; "the ice is dangerous
+-all around."
+
+Then I rushed back to the shore and up to the camp where my rifle lay,
+then back again to the fatal spot where the poor beast still struggled
+against his fate. As I raised the rifle he looked at me so imploringly
+that my hand shook and trembled. Another instant, and the deadly bullet
+crashed through his head, and, with one look never to be forgotten, he
+went down under the cold, unpitying ice!
+
+It may have been very foolish, perhaps, for poor Blackie was only a.
+horse, but for all that I went back to camp, and, sitting down in the
+snow, cried like a child. With my own hand I had taken my poor friend's
+life; but if there should exist somewhere in the regions of space that
+happy Indian paradise where horses are never hungry and never tired,
+Blackie, at least, will forgive the hand that sent him there, if he can
+but see the heart that long regretted him.
+
+Leaving Daniel in charge of the remaining horses, we crossed on foot the
+fatal river, and with a single horse set out for Carlton. From the high
+north bank I took one last look back at the South Saskatchewan-it lay in
+its broad deep valley glittering in one great band of purest 'snow; but I
+loathed the sight of it, while the small round open hole, dwarfed to a
+speck by distance, marked the spot where my poor horse had found his
+grave, after having carried me so faithfully through the long lonely
+wilds. We had travelled about six miles when a figure appeared in sight,
+coming towards us upon the same track. The new-comer proved to be a Cree
+Indian travelling to Fort Pelly. He bore the name of the Starving Bull.
+Starving Bull and his boy at once turned back With us towards Carlton. In
+a little while a party of horsemen hove in sight: they had come out from
+the fort to visit the South Branch, and amongst them was the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge of the station. Our first question had reference to the
+plague. Like a fire, it had burned itself out. There was no case then in
+the fort, but out of the little garrison of some sixty souls no fewer
+than thirty-two had perished! Four only had recovered of the thirty-six
+who had taken the terrible infection.
+
+We halted for dinner by the edge of the Duck Lake; midway between the
+North and South Branches of the Saskatchewan. It was a rich, beautiful
+country, although the snow lay some inches deep. Clumps of trees dotted
+the undulating surface, and lakelets glittering in the bright sunshine
+spread out in sheets of dazzling whiteness. The Starving Bull set himself
+busily to work preparing our dinner. What it would have been under
+ordinary circumstances, I cannot state; but, unfortunately for its
+success on the present occasion, its preparation was attended with
+unusual drawbacks. Starving Bull had succeeded in killing a skunk during
+his journey. This performance, while highly creditable to his energy as a
+hunter, was by no means conducive to his success, as a cook. Bitterly did
+that skunk revente himself upon us who had borne no part in his
+destruction. Pemmican is at no time a delicacy; but pemmican flavoured
+with skunk was more than I could attempt. However, Starving Bull proved
+himself worthy of his name, and the frying-pan was-soon scraped clean
+under his hungry manipulations.
+
+Another hour's ride brought us to a high bank, at the base of which lay
+the North Saskatchewan. In the low ground adjoining the river stood
+Carlton House, a large square enclosure, the wooden walls of which were
+more than twenty feet in height. Within these palisades some dozen or
+more houses stood crowded together. Close by, to the right, many
+snow-covered mounds with a few rough wooden crosses above them marked the
+spot where, only four weeks before, the last Victim of the epidemic had
+been laid. On the very spot where I stood looking at this sceiqe, a
+Blackfoot Indian, three years earlier, had stolen out from a thicket,
+fired at, and grievously wounded the Hudson Bay officer belonging to the
+fort, and now close to the same spot a small cross marked that officer's
+last resting-place. Strange fate! he had escaped the Blackfoot's bullet
+only to be the first to succumb to the deadly epidemic. I cannot say that
+Carlton was at all a lively place of sojourn. Its natural gloom was
+considerably deepened by the events of the last few months, and the whole
+place seemed to have received the stamp of death upon it. To add to the
+general depression, provisions were by no means abundant, the few Indians
+that had come in from the plains brought the same tidings of unsuccessful
+chase--for the buffalo were "far out" on the great prairie, and that
+phrase "far out," applied to buffalo, means starvation in the North-west.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+The Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our Way--A long
+Ride-Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+Two things strike the new-comer at Carlton. First, he sees evidences on
+every side of a rich and fertile country; and, secondly, he sees by many
+signs that war is the normal condition of the wild men who have pitched
+their tents in the land of the Saskatchewan that land from which we have
+taken the Indian prefix Kis, without much improvement of length or
+euphony. It is a name but little known to the ear of the outside world,
+but destined one day or other to fill its place in the long list of lands
+whose surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and
+hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well
+to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge
+mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh.
+From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to
+150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie
+spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the
+Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the winter home of the
+buffalo, the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, the future home of
+millions yet unborn. Few men have looked on this land-but the thoughts of
+many in the New World tend towards it, and crave for description and fact
+which in many instances can only be given to them at second-hand.
+
+Like all things in this world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion;
+there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell.
+It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America--it is
+too cold, it is too dry--it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is
+it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the
+eye. Man lives long in it, and the children of his body are cast in manly
+mould. The cold of winter is intense, the strongest heat of summer is not
+excessive. The autumn days are bright and-beautiful; the snow is seldom
+deep, the frosts are early to come and late to go. All crops flourish,
+though primitive and rude are the means by which they are tilled; timber
+is in places plentiful, in other places scarce; grass grows high, thick,
+and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring.
+The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in
+mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such
+fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the
+Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer
+when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red
+man stalks; war, his unceasing toil--horse-raiding, the pastime of his
+life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the
+white man, and long before.
+
+In 1776 the earliest English voyager in these regions speaks of war
+between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the
+Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the
+earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from
+what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson of
+warfare was in all cases the same to him. To say he fights is, after all,
+but to say he is a man; for whether it be in Polynesia or in Paris, in
+the Saskatchewan or in Sweden, in Bundelond or in Bulgaria, fighting is
+just the one universal "touch of nature which makes the whole world
+kin."
+
+"My good brothers," said a missionary friend of mine, some little while
+ago, to an assemblage of Crees, "My good brothers--why do you carry on
+this unceasing war with the Blackfeet and Peaginoos, with Sircies and
+Bloods? It is not good, it is not right; the great Manitou does not like
+his children to kill each other, but he wishes them to live in peace and
+brotherhood."
+
+To which the Cree chief made answer--"My friend, what you say is good;
+but look, you are white man and Christian, we are red men and worship
+the Manitou; but what is the news we hear from the traders and the
+black-robes? Is it not always the news of war? The Kitchi Mokamans (i.e.
+the Americans) are on the war-path against their brethren of the South,
+the English are fighting some tribes far away over the big lake; the
+French, and all the other tribes are fighting too! My brother, it is
+news of war, always news of war! and we--we go on the war-path in small
+numbers. We stop when we kill a few of our enemies and take a few scalps;
+but your nations go to war in countless thousands, and we hear of more of
+your braves killed in one battle than all our tribe numbers together. So,
+my brother, do not say to us that it is wrong to go on the war-path, for
+what is right for the white man cannot be wrong in his red brother. I
+have done!"
+
+During the seven days which I remained at Carlton the winter was not
+idle. It snowed and froze, and looked dreary enough within the darkening
+walls of the fort. A French missionary had come down from the northern
+lake of Isle-à-la-Crosse, but, unlike his brethren, he appeared shy and
+uncommunicative. Two of the stories which he related, however, deserve
+record. One was a singular magnetic storm which took place at
+Isle-à-la-Crosse during the preceding winter. A party of Indians and
+half-breeds were crossing the lake on the ice when suddenly their hair
+stood up on end; the hair of the dogs also turned the wrong way, and the
+blankets belonging to the part even evinced signs of acting, in an
+upright manner. I will not pretend to account for this phenomenon, but
+merely tell it as the worthy père told it to me, and I shall rest
+perfectly satisfied if my readers hair does not follow the example of
+the Indians dogs and blankets and proceed generally after the manner of
+the "frightful porcupine." The other tale told by the père was of a more
+tragical nature. During a storm in the prairies near the South Branch of
+the Saskatchewan a rain of fire suddenly descended upon a camp of Cree
+Indians and burned everything around. Thirty-two Crees perished in the
+flames; the ground was burned deeply for a considerable distance, and
+only one or two of the party who happened to stand close to a lake were
+saved by throwing themselves into the water. "It was," said my informant,
+"not a flash of lightning, but a rain of fire which descended for some
+moments."
+
+The increasing severity of the frost hardened into a solid mass the
+surface of the Saskatchewan, and on the morning of the 14th November we
+set out again upon our Western journey. The North Saskatchewan which I
+now crossed for the first time, is a river 400 yards in width, lying
+between banks descending steeply to a low alluvial valley. These outer
+banks are some 200 feet in height, and in some by-gone age were doubtless
+the boundaries of the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I
+had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of
+them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and
+laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now
+sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted
+two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the
+wild mares were put. At first they refused to move an inch--no, not an
+inch; then came loud and prolonged thwacking from a motley assemblage of
+Crees and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely
+used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly
+a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the
+ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off
+like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is
+easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for
+all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of
+persuasion: if the horse lies down, lick him until he gets up; if he
+stands up on his hind-legs, lick him until he reverts to his original
+position; if he bucks, jibs, or kicks, lick him, lick him, lick him;
+when you are tired of licking him, get another man to continue the
+process; if you can use violent language in three different tongues so
+much the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French,
+you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and,
+crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle
+Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the
+steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the
+horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the
+solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white
+on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far
+away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and
+-our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie.
+About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken
+snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at
+camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had
+escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose
+hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed'
+forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small
+winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point
+some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the
+Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large
+camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our
+steps.
+
+On the morning of the second day out from Carlton, the guide showed
+symptoms of haziness as to direction: he began to bend greatly to the
+south, and at sunrise he ascended a high hill for the purpose of taking a
+general survey of the surrounding country. From this hill the eye ranged
+over a vast extent of landscape, and although the guide failed
+altogether to correct his course, the hill-top yielded such a glorious
+view of sun rising from a sea of snow into an ocean of pale green barred
+with pink and crimson streaks, that I felt well repaid for the trouble of
+the long ascent. When evening closed around us that day, I found myself
+alone amidst a wild, weird scene. Far as the eye could reach in front and
+to the right a boundless, treeless plain stretched into unseen distance;
+to the left a range of steep hills rose abruptly from the plain; over all
+the night was coming down. Long before sunset I had noticed a clump of
+trees many miles ahead, and thought that in this solitary thicket we
+would make our camp for the night. Hours passed away, and yet the
+solitary clump seemed as distant as ever--nay, more, it even appeared to
+grow smaller as I approached it. At last, just at dusk, I drew near the
+wished for camping-place; but lo! it was nothing but a single bush. My
+clump had vanished, my camping-place had gone, the mirage had been
+playing tricks with the little bush and magnifying it into a grove of
+aspens. When night fell there was no trace of camp or companions, but the
+snow marks showed that I was still upon the right track. On again for two
+hours in darkness often it was so dark that it was only by giving the
+horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in
+the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing
+stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added
+to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly
+towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the
+welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes
+struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly lost his way, and after thirteen
+hours hard riding we were lucky to find this cosy nook in the
+tree-sheltered valley. The Saskatchewan was close beside us, and the dark
+ridges beyond were the Eagle Hills of the Battle River.
+
+Early next forenoon we reached the camp of Crees and the winter post of
+the Hudson Bay Company some distance above the confluence of the Battle
+Riverwith the Saskatchewan. A wild scene of confusion followed our entry
+into the camp; braves and squaws, dogs and papooses crowded round, and it
+was difficult work to get to the door of the little shanty where the
+Hudson Bay officer dwelt. Fortunately, there was no small-pox in this
+crowded camp, although many traces of its effects were to be seen in the
+seared and disfigured faces around, and in none more than my host, who
+had been one of the four that had recovered at Carlton. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed, but his handsome face was awfully marked by the
+terrible scourge. This assemblage of Crees was under the leadership of
+Mistawassis, a man of small and slight stature, but whose bravery had
+often been tested in fight against the Blackfeet. He was a man of quiet
+and dignified manner, a good listener, a fluent speaker, as much at his
+ease and as free from restraint as any lord in Christendom. He hears the
+news I have to tell him through the interpreter, bending his head in
+assent to every sentence; then he pauses a bit and speaks. "He wishes to
+know if aught can be done against the Blackfeet; they are troublesome,
+they are fond of war; he has seen war for many years, and he would wish
+for peace; it is only the young men, who want scalps and the soft words
+of the squaws, who desire war." I tell him that "the Great Mother wishes
+her red children to live at peace; but what is the use? do they not
+themselves break the peace when it is made, and is not the war as often
+commenced by the Crees as by the Blackfeet?" He says that "men have told
+them that the white man was coming to take their lands, that the white
+braves were coming to the country, and he wished to know if it was true."
+"If the white braves did come," I replied, "it would be to protect the
+red man, and to keep peace amongst all. So dear was the red man to the
+heart of the chief whom the Great Mother had sent, that the sale of all
+spirits had been stopped in the Indian country, and henceforth, when he
+saw any trader bringing whisky or fire-water into the camp, he could tell
+his young men to go and take the fire-water by force from the trader."
+
+"That is good," he repeated twice, "that is good!" but whether this
+remark of approval had reference to the stoppage of the fire-water or to
+the prospective seizure of liquor by his braves, I cannot say. Soon after
+the departure of Mistawassis from the hut, a loud drumming outside was
+suddenly struck up, and going to the door I found the young men had
+assembled to dance the dance of welcome in my honour; they drummed and
+danced in different stages of semi-nudity for some time, and at the
+termination of the performance I gave an order for tobacco all round.
+When the dancing-party had departed, a very garrulous Indian presented
+himself, saying that he had been informed that the Ogima was possessed of
+some "great medicines," and that he wished to see them. I have almost
+forgotten to remark that my store of drugs and medicines had under gone
+considerable delapidation from frost and fast travelling. An examination
+held at Carlton into the contents of the two cases had revealed a sad
+state of affairs. Frost had smashed many bottles; powders badly folded up
+had fetched way in a deplorable manner; tinctures had proved their
+capability for the work they had to perform by tincturing every thing
+that came within their reach; hopeless confusion reigned in the
+department of pills. A few glass-stoppered bottles had indeed resisted
+the general demoralization; but, for the rest, it really seemed as though
+blisters, pills, powders, scales, and disinfecting fluids had been wildly
+bent upon blistering, pilling, powdering, weighing, and disinfecting one
+another ever since they had left Fort Garry. I deposited at Carlton a
+considerable quantity of a disinfecting fluid frozen solid, and as highly
+garnished with pills as the exterior of that condiment known as a
+chancellor's pudding is resplendent with raisins. Whether this
+conglomerate really did disinfect the walls of Carlton I cannot state,
+but from its appearance and general medicinal aspect I should say that no
+disease, however virulent, had the slightest chance against it. Having
+repacked the other things as safely as possible into one large box, I
+still found that I was the possessor of medicine amply sufficient to
+poison a very large extent of territory, and in particular I had a small
+leather medicine-chest in which the glass-stoppered bottles had kept
+intact. This chest I now produced for the benefit of my garrulous friend;
+one very strong essence of smelling-salts particularly delighted him; the
+more it burned his nostrils the more he laughed and hugged it, and after
+a time declared that there could be no doubt whatever as to that article,
+-for it was a very "great medicine" indeed.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A long Ride--Fort
+Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant Companion--An easy
+Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+EVER, towards the setting sun drifts the flow of Indian migration; ever
+nearer and nearer to that glorious range of snow-clad peaks which the red
+man has so aptly named "the Mountains of the Setting Sun." It is a
+mournful task to trace back through the long list of extinct tribes the
+history of this migration. Turning over the leaves of books belonging to
+that "old colonial time" of which Longfellow speaks, we find strange
+names of Indian tribes now utterly unknown, meetings of council and
+treaty making with Mohawks and Oneidas and Tuscaroras.
+
+They are gone, and scarcely a trace remains of them. Others have left in
+lake and mountain-top the record of their names. Erie and Ottawa, Seneca
+and Cayuga tell of forgotten or almost forgotten nations which a century
+ago were great and powerful. But never at any time since first the white
+man was welcomed on the newly-discovered shores of the Western Continent
+by his red brother, never has such disaster and destruction overtaken
+these poor wild, wandering sons of nature as at the moment in which we
+write. Of yore it was the pioneers of France, England, and Spain with
+whom they had to contend, but now the whole white world is leagued in
+bitter strife against the Indian. The American and Canadian are only
+names that hide beneath them the greed of united Europe. Terrible deeds
+have been wrought out in that western land; terrible heart-sickening
+deeds of cruelty and rapacious infamy--have been, I say? no, are to this
+day and hour, and never perhaps more sickening than now in the full blaze
+of nineteenth-century civilization. If on the long line of the American
+frontier, from the Gulf of Mexico to the British boundary, a Single life
+is taken by an Indian, if even a horse or ox be stolen from a settler,
+the fact is chronicled in scores of-journals throughout the United
+States, but the reverse of the story we never know. The countless deeds
+of perfidious robbery, of ruthless murder done by white savages out in
+these Western wilds never find the light of day. The poor red man has no
+telegraph, no newspaper, no type, to tell his sufferings and his woes. My
+God, what a terrible tale could I not tell of these dark deeds done by
+the white savage against the far nobler red man! From southernmost Texas
+to most northern Montana there is but one universal remedy for Indian
+difficulty--kill him. Let no man tell me that such is not the case. I
+answer, I have heard it hundreds of times: "Never trust a redskin unless
+he be dead." "Kill every buffalo you see," said a Yankee colonel to me
+one day in Nebraska; "every buffalo dead is an Indiaan gone;" such
+things are only trifles. Listen to this cute feat of a Montana trader. A
+store-keeper in Helena City had some sugar stolen from him. He poisoned
+the sugar next night and left his door open. In the morning six Indians
+were found dead outside the town. That was a cute notion, I guess; and
+yet there are other examples worse than that, but they are too revolting
+to tell. Never mind; I suppose they have found record somewhere else if
+not in this world, and in one shape or another they will speak in due
+time. The Crees are perhaps the only tribe of prairie Indians who have as
+yet suffered no injustice at the hands of the white man. The land is
+still theirs, the hunting-rounds remain almost undisturbed; but their
+days are numbered, and already the echo of the approaching wave of
+Western immigration is sounding through the solitudes of the Cree
+country.
+
+It is the same story from the Atlantic to the Pacific. First the White
+man was the welcome guest, the honoured visitor; then the greedy hunter,
+the death-dealing vender of fire-water and poison; then the settler and
+exterminator--every where it has been the same story.
+
+This wild man who first welcomed the new-comer is the only perfect
+socialist or communist in the world. He holds all things in common with
+his tribe--the land, the bison, the river, and the moose. He is starving,
+and the rest of the tribe want food. Well, he kills a moose, and to the
+last bit the coveted food is shared by all. That war-party has taken one
+hundred horses in the last raid into Blackfoot or Peagin territory; well,
+the whole tribe are free to help themselves to the best and fleetest
+steeds before the captors will touch one out of the band. There is but a
+scrap of beaver, a thin rabbit, or a bit of sturgeon in the lodge; a
+stranger comes, and he is hungry; give him his share and let him be first
+served and best attended to. If one child starves in an Indian camp you
+may know that in every lodge scarcity is universal and that every stomach
+is hungry. Poor, poor fellow! his virtues are all his own; crimes he may
+have, and plenty, but his noble traits spring from no book-learning, from
+no school-craft, from the preaching of no pulpit; they come from the
+instinct of good which the Great Spirit has taught him; they are the
+whisperings from that lost world whose glorious shores beyond the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun are the long dream of his life. The most
+curious anomaly among the race of man, the red man of America, is passing
+away beneath our eyes into the infinite solitude. The possession of the
+same noble qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes
+us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all
+right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't
+be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in
+hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the
+Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why
+do I call this wild child the great anomaly of the human race? I will
+tell you. Alone amongst savage tribes he has learnt the lesson which the
+great mother Nature teaches to her sons through the voices of the night,
+the forest, and the solitude. This river, this mountain, this measureless
+meadow speak to him in a language of their own. Dwelling with them, he
+learns their varied tongues, and his speech becomes the echo of the
+beauty that lies spread around him. Every name for lake or river, for
+mountain or meadow, has its peculiar significance, and to tell the Indian
+title of such things is generally to tell the nature of them also. Ossian
+never spoke with the voice of the mist-shrouded mountain or the wave-beat
+shores of the isles more thoroughly than does this chief of the Blackfeet
+or the Sioux speak the voices of the things of earth and air amidst which
+his wild life is cast.
+
+I know that it is the fashion to hold in derision and mockery the idea
+that nobility, poetry, or eloquence exist in the wild Indian. I know that
+with that low brutality which has ever made the Anglo-Saxon race deny its
+enemy the possession of one atom of generous sensibility, that dull
+enmity which prompted us to paint the Maid of Orleans a harlot, and to
+call Napoleon the Corsican robber--I know that that same instinct glories
+in degrading the savage, whose chief crime is that he prefers death to
+slavery; glories in painting him devoid of every trait of manhood, worthy
+only to share the fate of the wild beast of the wilderness--to be shot
+down mercilessly when seen. But those bright spirits who have redeemed
+the America of to-day from the dreary waste of vulgar greed and ignorant
+conceit which we in Europe have flung so heavily upon her; those men
+whose writings have come back across the Atlantic, and have become as
+household words among us--Irving, Cooper, Longfellow--have they not found
+in the rich store of Indian poetry the source of their choicest thought?
+Nay, I will go farther, because it may be said that the a poet would be
+prone to drape with poetry every subject on which his fancy lighted, as
+the sun turns to gold and crimson the dullest and the dreariest clouds:
+but Search the books of travel amongst remote Indian tribes, from
+Columbus to Catlin, from Charlevoix to Carver, from Bonneville to
+Pallisser the story is ever the same. The traveller is welcomed and made
+much of; he is free to come and go; the best food is set before him; the
+lodge is made warm and bright; he is welcome to stay his lifetime if he
+pleases. "I swear to your majesties," writes Columbus--alas! the red
+man's greatest enemy--"I swear to your majesties that there is not in the
+world a better people than these, more affectionate, affable, or mild."
+
+"At this moment," writes an American officer only ten years back, "it is
+certain a man can go about throughout the Blackfoot territory without
+molestation, except in the contingency of being mistaken at night for an
+Indian." No, they are-fast going, and soon they will be all gone, but in
+after-times men will judge more justly the poor wild creatures whom
+to-day we kill and vilify; men will go back again to those old books of
+travel, or to those pages of "Hiawatha" and "Mohican," to find that far
+away from the border-land of civilization the wild red man, if more of
+the savage, was infinitely less of the brute than was the white ruffian
+who destroyed him.
+
+I quitted the camp at Battle River on the 17th November, with a large
+band of horses and a young Cree brave who had volunteered his services
+for some reason of his own which he did not think necessary to impart to
+us. The usual crowd of squaws, braves in buffalo robes, naked children,
+and howling dogs assembled to see us start. The Cree led the way mounted
+on a ragged-looking pony, then came the baggage-sleds, and I brought up
+the rear on a tall horse belonging to the Company. Thus we held our way
+in a north-west direction over high-rolling plains along the north bank
+of the Saskatchewan towards Fort Pitt.
+
+On the morning of the 18th we got away from our camping thicket of
+poplars long before the break of day. There was no track to guide us, but
+the Cree went straight as an arrow over hill and dale and frozen lake.
+The hour that preceded the dawn was brilliant with the flash and glow of
+meteors across the North-western sky. I lagged so far behind to watch
+them that when day broke I found myself alone, miles from the party. The
+Cree kept the pace so well that it took me some hours before I again
+Caught sight of them. After a hard ride of six-and-thirty miles, we
+halted for dinner on the banks of English Creek. Close beside our
+camping-place a large clump of spruce-pine stood in dull contrast to the
+snowy surface. They looked like old friends to me--friends of the
+Winnipeg and the now distant Lake of the Woods; for from Red River to
+English Creek, a distance of 750 miles, I-had seen but a solitary
+pine-tree. After a short dinner We resumed our rapid way, forcing the
+pace with a view of making Fort Pitt by night-fall. A French half-breed
+declared he knew a short cut across the hills of the Red Deer, a wild
+rugged tract of country lying on the north of the Saskatchewan. Crossing
+these hills, he said, we would strike the river at their farther side,
+and then, passing over on the ice, cut the bend which the Saskatchewan
+makes to the north, and, emerging again opposite Fort Pitt, finally
+re-cross the river at that station. So much for the plan, and now for its
+fulfilment.
+
+We entered the region of the Red Deer Hills at about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, and continued at a very rapid pace in a westerly direction for
+three hours. As we proceeded the country became more broken, the hills
+rising steeply from narrow V-shaped valleys, and the ground in many
+places covered with fallen and decaying trees--the wrecks of fire and
+tempest. Every where throughout this wild region lay the antlers and
+heads of moose and elk; but, with the exception of an occasional large
+jackass-rabbit, nothing living moved through the silent hills. The ground
+was free from badger-holes; the day, though dark, was fine; and, with a
+good horse under me, that two hours gallop over, the Red Deer Hills was
+glorious work. It wanted yet an hour of sunset when we came suddenly upon
+the Saskatchewan flowing in a deep narrow valley between steep and lofty
+hills, which were bare of trees and bushes and clear of snow. A very wild
+desolate scene it looked as I surveyed it from a projecting spur upon
+whose summit I rested my blown horse. I was now far in advance of the
+party who occupied a parallel ridge behind me. By signs they intimated
+that our course now lay to the north; in fact, Daniel had steered very
+much too ar south, and we had struck the Saskatchewan river a long,
+distance below the intended place of crossing. Away we went again to the
+north, soon losing sight of the party; but as I kept the river on my left
+far below in the valley I knew they could not cross without my being
+aware of it. Just before sun set they appeared again in sight, making
+signs that they were about to descend into the valley and to cross the
+river. The valley here was five hundred feet in depth, the slope being
+one of the steepest I had ever seen. At the bottom of this steep descent
+the Saskatchewan lay in its icy bed, a large majestic-looking river three
+hundred yards in width. We crossed on the ice without accident, and
+winding up the steep southern shore gained the level plateau above. The
+sun was going down, right on our forward track. In the deep valley below
+the Cree and an English half-breed were getting the horses and
+baggage-sleds over the river. We made signs to them to camp in the
+valley, and we ourselves turned our tired horses towards the west,
+determined at all hazards to reach the fort that night. The Frenchman led
+the way riding, the Hudson Bay officer followed in a horse-sled, I
+brought up the rear on horseback. Soon it got quite dark, and we held on
+over a rough and bushless plateau seamed with deep gullies into which we
+descended at hap hazard forcing our weary horses with difficulty up the
+opposite sides. The night got later and later, and still no sign of Fort
+Pitt; riding in rear I was able to mark the course taken by our guide,
+and it soon struck me that he was steering wrong; our correct course lay
+west, but he seemed to be heading gradually to the North, and finally,
+began to veer even towards the East. I called out to the Hudson Bay man
+that I had serious doubts as to Daniel's knowledge of the track, but I
+was assured that all was correct. Still we went on, and still no sign of
+fort or river. At length the Frenchman suddenly pulled Up and asked us to
+halt while he rode on and surveyed the country, because he had lost the
+track, and didn't know where he had got to. Here was a pleasant prospect!
+without food, fire, or covering, out on the bleak plains, with the
+thermometer at 20 degrees of frost! After some time the Frenchman
+returned and declared that he had altogether lost his way, and that there
+was nothing for it but to camp where we were, and wait for daylight to
+proceed. I looked around in the darkness. The ridge on which we stood was
+bare and bleak, with the snow drifted off into the valleys. A few
+miserable stunted willows were the only signs of vegetation, and the wind
+whistling through their ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as
+man could look at. I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men
+who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in
+the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been
+pursuing. My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent
+resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled
+with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire,
+or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might
+reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying
+himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.
+
+Watching this for some seconds in silence, I determined to shape for
+myself a different course. I dismounted, and taking from the sled a shirt
+made of deer-skin, mounted again my poor weary horse and turned off alone
+into the darkness. "Where are you going to?" I heard my companions
+calling out after me. I was half inclined not to answer, but turned in
+the saddle and holloaed back, "To Fort Pitt, that's all." I heard behind
+me a violent bustle, as though they were busily engaged in yoking up the
+horses again, and then I rode off as hard as my weary horse could go. My
+friends took a very short time to harness up again, and they were soon
+powdering along through the wilderness. I kept on for about half an hour,
+steering by the stars due west; suddenly I came out upon the edge of a
+deep valley, and by the broad white band beneath recognized the frozen
+Saskatchewan again. I have at least found the river, and Fort Pitt, we
+knew, lay somewhere upon the bank. Turning away from the river, I held on
+in a south-westerly direction for a considerable distance, passing up
+along a bare snow-covered valley and crossing a high ridge at its end. I
+could hear my friends behind in the dark. But they had got, I think, a
+notion that I had taken leave of my senses, and they were afraid to call
+out to me. After a bit I bent my course again to the west, and steering
+by my old guides, the stars, those truest and most unchanging friends of
+the wanderer, I once more struck the Saskatchewan, this time descending
+to its level and crossing it on the ice.
+
+As I walked along, leading my horse, I must admit to experiencing a
+sensation not at all pleasant. The memory of the crossing of the South
+Branch was still too strong to admit of over-confidence in the strength
+of the ice, and as every now and again my tired horse broke through the
+upper crust of snow and the ice beneath cracked, as it always will when
+weight is placed on it for the first time, no matter how strong it may
+be, I felt by no means as comfortable as I would have wished. At last the
+long river was passed, and there on the opposite shore lay the cart track
+to Fort Pitt. We were close to Pipe-stone Creek, and only three miles
+from the Fort.
+
+It was ten o'clock when we reached the closely-barred gate of this Hudson
+Bay post, the inhabitants of which had gone to bed. Ten o'clock at night,
+and we had started at six o'clock in the morning. I had been fifteen
+hours in the saddle, and no less than ninety miles had passed under my
+horse's hoofs, but so accustomed had I grown to travel that I felt just
+as ready to set out again as though only twenty miles had been traversed.
+The excitement of the last few hours steering by the stars in an unknown
+country, and its most successful denouement, had put fatigue and
+weariness in the background; and as we sat down to a well-cooked supper
+of buffalo steaks and potatoes, with the brightest eyed little lassie,
+half Cree, half Scotch, in the North-west to wait upon us, while a great
+fire of pine wood blazed and crackled on the open hearth, I couldn't help
+saying to my companions, "Well, this is better than your hill-top and the
+fireless bivouac in the rustling willows."
+
+Fort Pitt was free from small-pox, but it had gone through a fearful
+ordeal: more than one hundred Crees had perished close around its
+stockades. The unburied dead lay for days by the road-side, till the
+wolves, growing bold with the impunity which death among the hunters ever
+gives to the hunted, approached and fought over the decay ing bodies.
+From a spot many marches to the south the Indians had come to the fort in
+midsummer, leaving behind them a long track of dead and dying men over
+the waste of distance. "Give us help," they cried, "give us help, our
+medicine-men can do nothing against this plague; from the white man We
+got it, and it is only the white man who can take it away from us."
+
+But there was no help to be given, and day by day the wretched band grew
+less. Then came another idea into the red man's brain: "If we can only
+give this disease to the white man and the trader in the fort," thought
+they, "we will cease to suffer from it ourselves;" so they came into the
+houses dying and disfigured as they were, horrible beyond description to
+look at, and sat down in the entrances of the wooden houses, and
+stretched themselves on the floors and spat upon the door-handles. It was
+no use, the fell disease held them in a grasp from which there was no
+escape, and just six weeks before my arrival the living remnant fled away
+in despair.
+
+Fort Pitt stands on the left or north shore of the Saskatchewan River,
+which is here more than four hundred yards in width. On the opposite
+shore immense bare, bleak hills raise their wind-swept heads seven
+hundred feet above the river level. A few pine-trees show their tops some
+distance away to the north, but no other trace of wood is to be seen in
+that vast amphitheatre of dry grassy hill in which the fort is built. It
+is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its
+own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so
+pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over those great grassy uplands.
+
+On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses
+for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as
+nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had
+now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once
+more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore
+of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria,
+a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which
+the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake
+Winnipeg. The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a
+loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony,
+jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who
+will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was
+the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr.
+Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River. This youngster
+employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was
+driving--thus "Rouge!" would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and
+Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip;
+"Noir!" he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be
+within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation
+of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon
+their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention
+of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked. One
+horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially
+selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing
+obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French
+semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet,
+and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather
+think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the
+grudges that he owed to the man. Be that as it may, Jean l'Hereux got
+many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges
+which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.
+
+On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake,
+and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the
+following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite
+camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest
+fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper
+Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations
+farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you
+meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle
+Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you
+letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they
+lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have
+found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after
+a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling
+individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of
+"What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a
+personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question,
+might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could
+obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never
+been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might
+perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his
+peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person
+had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and
+his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no
+existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury,
+it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we
+halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who
+approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this
+day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition
+to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of
+Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This
+individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch
+as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of
+the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia.
+But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was
+destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.
+
+"You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see," said the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge.
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?"
+
+"Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it."
+
+"Did he say he had had it himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he had," continued ny host, "only a month ago, and the coat and
+trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he
+lay all the time he had it," was the pleasant reply.
+
+After this little revelation concerning Battenotte and his habiliments, I
+must admit that I was not quite as ready to look with pleasure upon his
+performance of the duties of cook, chambermaid, and general valet as I
+had been in the earlier stage of our acquaintance; but a little
+reflection made the hole thing right again, convincing one of the fact
+that travelling, like misery, "makes one acquainted with strange
+bedfellows," and that luck has more to do with our lives than we are wont
+to admit. After leaving Saddle Lake we entered a very rich and beautiful
+country, completely clear of snow and covered deep in grass and vetches.
+We travelled hard, and reached at nightfall a thick wood of pines and
+spruce-trees, in which we made a cosy camp. I had brought with me a
+bottle of old brandy from Red River in case of illness, and on this
+evening, not feeling all right, I drew the cork while the Cree was away
+with the horses, and drank a little with my companion. Before we had
+quite finished, the Cree returned to camp, and at once declared that he
+smelt grog. He became very lively at this discovery. We had taken the
+precaution to rinse out the cup that had held the spirit, but he
+nevertheless commenced a series of brewing which appeared to give him
+infinite satisfaction. Two or three times did he fill the empty cup with
+water and drain it to the bottom, laughing and rolling his head each time
+with delight, and in order to be sure that he had got the right one he
+proceeded in the same manner with every cup we possessed; then he
+confided to Battenotte that he had not tasted grog for a long time
+before, the last occasion being one on which he had divested himself of
+his shirt and buffalo robe, in other words, gone naked, in order to
+obtain the coveted fire-water.
+
+The weather had now become beautifully mild, and on the 23rd of November
+the thermometer did not show even one degree of frost. As we approached
+the neighbourhood of the White Earth River the aspect of the country
+became very striking: groves of spruce and pine crowned the ridges; rich,
+well-watered valleys lay between, deep in the long white grass of the
+autumn. The track wound in and out through groves and wooded declivities,
+and all nature looked bright and beautiful. Some of the ascents from the
+river bottoms were so steep that the united efforts of Battenotte and the
+Cree were powerless to induce Rouge or Noir, or even Jean l'Hcreux, to
+draw the cart to the summit. But the Cree was equal to the occasion. With
+a piece of shanganappi he fastened L'Hereux's tail to the shafts of the
+cart-shafts which had already between them the redoubted Noir. This new
+method of harnessing had a marked effect upon L'Hereux; he strained and
+hauled with a persistency and vigour which I feared must prove fatal to
+the permanency of his tail in that portion of his body in which nature
+had located it, but happily such was not the case, and by the united
+efforts of all parties the summit was reached.
+
+I only remained one day at Victoria, and the 25th of November found me
+again en route for Edmonton. Our Cree had, however, disappeared. One
+night when he was eating his supper with his scalping-knife--a knife, by
+the way, with which he had taken, he informed us, three Black feet scalps
+--I asked him why he had come away with us from Battle River. Because he
+wanted to get rid of his wife, of whom he was tired, he replied. He had
+come off without saying any thing to her. "And what will happen to the
+wife?" I asked. "Oh, she will marry another brave when she finds me
+gone," he answered, laughing at the idea. I did not enter into the
+previous domestic events which had led to this separation, but I presume
+they were of a nature similar to those which are not altogether unknown
+in more civilized society, and I make no hesitation in offering to our
+legislators the example of my friend the Cree as tending to simplify the
+solution, or rather the dissolution, of that knotty point, the separation
+of couples who, for reasons best known to themselves, have ceased to
+love. Whether it was that the Cree found in Victoria a lady suitad to his
+fancy, or whether he had heard of a war-party against the Sircies, I
+cannot say, but he vanished during the night of our stay in the fort, and
+we saw him no more.
+
+As we journeyed on towards Edmonton the country maintained its rich and
+beautiful appearance, and the weather continued fine and mild. Every
+where nature had written in unmistakable characters the story of the
+fertility of the soil over which we rode--every where the eye looked upon
+panoramas filled with the beauty of lake and winding river, and grassy
+slope and undulating woodland. The whole face of the country was indeed
+one vast park. For two days we passed through this beautiful land,-and on
+the evening of the 28th November drew near to Edmonton. My party had been
+increased by the presence of two gentlemen from Victoria, a Wesleyan
+minister and the Hudson Bay official in charge of the Company's post at
+that place. Both of these gentlemen had resided long in the Upper
+Saskatchewan, and were intimately acquainted with the tribes who inhabit
+The vast territory from the Rocky Mountains to Carlton House. It was late
+in the evening, just one month after I had started from the banks of the
+Red River, that I approached the high palisades of Edmonton. As one who
+looks back at evening from the summit of some lofty ridge over the long
+track which he has followed since the morning, so now did my mind travel
+back over the immense distance through which I had ridden in twenty-two
+days of actual travel and in thirty-three of the entire journey-that
+distance could not have been less than 1000 miles; and as each camp scene
+rose again before me, with its surrounding of snow and storm-swept
+prairie and lonely clump of aspens, it seemed as though something like
+infinite space stretched between me and that far-away land which one word
+alone can picture, that one word in which so many others centre--Home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French Missionaries--Westward still--A
+beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A "Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot
+Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the Rocky Mountains--The Mountain
+House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian Trade--M. la
+Combe--Fire-water--A Night Assault.
+
+EDMONTON, the head-quarters of the Hudson Bay Company's Saskatchewan
+trade, and the residence of a chief factor of the corporation, is a large
+five-sided fort with the usual flanking bastions and high stockades. It
+has within these stockades many commodious and well-built wooden houses,
+and differs in the cleanliness and order of its arrangements from the
+general run of trading forts in the Indian country. It stands on a high
+level bank 100 feet above the Saskatchewan River, which rolls below in a
+broad majestic stream, 300 yards in width. Farming operations,
+boat-building, and flour-milling are carried on extensively at the fort,
+and a blacksmith's forge is also kept going. My business with the officer
+in charge of Edmonton was soon concluded. It principally consisted in
+conferring upon him, by commission, the same high judicial functions
+which I have already observed had been entrusted to me before setting out
+for the Indian territories. There was one very serious drawback, however,
+to the possession of magisterial or other authority in the Saskatchewan,
+in as much as there existed no means whatever of putting that authority
+into force.
+
+The Lord High Chancellor of England, together with the Master of the
+Rolls and the twenty-four judges of different degrees, would be perfectly
+useless if placed in the Saskatchewan to put in execution the authority
+of the law. The Crees, Blackfeet, Peagins, and Sircies would doubtless
+have come to the conclusion that these high judicial functionaries were
+"very great medicines;" but beyond that conclusion, which they would have
+drawn more from the remarkable costume and head-gear worn by those
+exponents of the law than from the possession of any legal acumen, much
+would not have been attained. These considerations somewhat mollified the
+feelings of disappointment with which I now found myself face to face
+with the most desperate set of criminals, while I was utterly unable to
+enforce against them the majesty of my commission.
+
+First, there was the notorious Tahakooch-murderer, robber, and general
+scoundrel of deepest dye; then there was the sister of the above, a
+maiden of some twenty summers, who had also perpetrated the murder of two
+Black foot children close to Edmonton; then there was a youthful French
+half-breed who had killed his uncle at the settlement of Grand Lac, nine
+miles to the north-west; and, finally, there was my dinner companion at
+Saddle Lake, whose crime I only became aware of after I had left that
+locality. But this Tahakooch was a ruffian too desperate. Here was one of
+his murderous acts. A short time previous to my arrival two Sircies came
+to Edmonton. Tahakooch and two of his brothers were camped near the fort.
+Tahakooch professed friendship for the Sircies, and they went to his
+lodge. After a few days had passed the Sircies thought it was time to
+return to their tribe. Rumour said that the charms of the sister of
+Tahakooch had captivated either one or both of them, and that she had not
+been insensible to their admiration. Be this as it may, it was time to
+go; and so they prepared for the journey. An Indian will travel by night
+as readily as by day, and it was night when these men left the tent of
+Tahakooch.
+
+"We will go to the fort," said the host, "in order to get provisions for
+your journey."
+
+The party, three in number, went to the fort, and knocked at the gate for
+admittance. The man on watch at the gate, before unharring, looked from
+the bastion over the stockades, to see who might be the three men who
+sought an entrance. It was bright moonlight, and he noticed the shimmer
+of a gun-barrel under the blanket of Tahakooch. The Sircies were provided
+with some dried meat, and the party went away. The Sircies marched first
+in single file, then followed Tahakooch close behind them; the three
+formed one line. Suddenly, Tahakooch drew from beneath his blanket a
+short double-barrelled gun, and discharged both barrels into the back of
+the nearest Sircie. The bullets passed through one man into the body of
+the other, killing the nearest one instantly. The leading Sircie, though
+desperately wounded, ran fleetly along the moonlit path until, faint and
+bleeding, he fell. Tahakooch was close behind; but the villain's hand
+shook, and four times his shots missed the wounded wretch upon the
+ground. Summoning up all his strength, the Sircie sprung upon his
+assailant; a hand-to-hand struggle ensued; but the desperate wound was
+too much for him, he grew faint in his efforts, and the villain Tahakooch
+passed his knife into his victim's body. All this took place in the same
+year during which I reached Edmonton, and within sight of the walls of
+the fort. Tahakooch lived only a short distance away, and was a daily
+visitor at the fort.
+
+But to recount the deeds of blood enacted around the wooden walls of
+Edmonton Would be to fill a volume. Edmonton and Fort Pitt both stand
+within the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, and are consequently
+the scenes of many conflicts between these fierce and implacable enemies.
+Hitherto my route has led through the Cree country, hitherto we have seen
+only the prairies and woods through which the Crees hunt and camp; but my
+wanderings are yet far from their end. To the south-west, for many and
+many a mile, lie the wide regions of the Blackfeet and the mountain
+Assineboines; and into these regions I am about to push my way. It is a
+wild, lone land guarded by the giant peaks of mountains whose snow-capped
+summits lift themselves 17,000 feet above the sea level. It is the
+birth-place of waters which seek in four mighty streams the four distant
+oceans--the Polar Sea, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific.
+
+A few miles north-west of Edmonton a settlement composed exclusively of
+French half-breeds is situated on the shores of a rather extensive lake
+which bears the name of the Grand Lac, or St. Albert. This settlement is
+presided over by a mission of French Roman Catholic clergymen of the
+order of Oblates, headed by a bishop of the same order and nationality.
+It is a curious contrast to find in this distant and strange land men of
+culture and high mental excellence devoting their lives to the task of
+civilizing the wild Indians of the forest and the prairie--going far in
+advance of the settler, whose advent they have but too much cause to
+dread. I care not what may be the form of belief which the on-looker may
+hold--whether it be in unison or in antagonism with that faith preached
+by these men; but he is only a poor semblance of a man who can behold
+such a sight through the narrow glass of sectarian feeling, holding'
+opinions foreign to his own. He who has travelled through the vast
+colonial empire of Britain--that empire which covers one third of the
+entire habitable surface of the globe and probably half of the lone lands
+of the world must often have met with men dwelling in the midst of wild,
+savage peoples whom they tended with a strange and mother-like devotion.
+If you asked who was this stranger who dwelt thus among wild men in these
+Lone places, you were told he was the French missionary; and if you
+sought him in his lonely hut, you found ever the same surroundings, the
+same simple evidences of a faith which seemed more than human. I do not
+speak from hearsay or book-knowledge. I have myself witnessed the scenes
+I now try to recall. And it has ever been the same, East and West, far in
+advance of trader or merchant, of sailor or soldier, has gone this
+dark-haired, fragile man, whose earliest memories are thick with sunny
+scenes by bank of Loire or vine-clad slope of Rhone or Garonne, and whose
+vision in this life, at least, is never destined to rest again upon these
+oft-remembered places. Glancing through a pamphlet one day at Edmonton, a
+pamphlet which recorded the progress of a Canadian Wesleyan Missionary
+Society, I read the following extract from the letter of a Western
+missionary:--"These representatives of the Man of Sin, these priests, are
+hard-workers; summer and winter they follow the camps, suffering great
+privations. They are indefatigable in their efforts to make converts, but
+their converts," he adds, "have never heard of the Holy Ghost." "The man
+of sin "--which of us is without it? To these French missionaries at
+Grand Lac I was the bearer of terrible tidings. I carried to them the
+story of Sedan, the overwhelming rush of armed Germany into the heart of
+France, the closing of the high-schooled hordes of Teuton savagery around
+Paris; all that was hard home news to: hear. Fate had leant heavily upon
+their little congregation; out of 900 souls more than 300 had perished of
+small-pox up to the date of my arrival, and others were still sick in the
+huts along the lake. Well might the bishop and his priests bow their
+heads in the midst of such manifold tribulations of death and disaster.
+
+By the last day of November my preparations for further travel into the
+regions lying west of Edmonton were completed, and at midday on the 1st
+December I set out for the Rocky Mountain House. This station, the most
+Western and southern held by the Hudson Bay Company in the Saskatchewan,
+is distant from Edmonton about 180 miles by horse trail, and 211 miles by
+river. I was provided with five fresh horses, two good guides, and I
+carried letters to merchants in the United States, should fortune permit
+me to push through the great stretch of Blackfoot country lying on the
+northern borders of the American territory; for it was my intention to
+leave the Mountain House as soon as possible, and to endeavour to cross
+by rapid marches the 400 miles of plains to some of the mining cities of
+Montana or Idaho; the principal difficulty lay, however, in the
+reluctance of men to come with me into the country of the Blackfeet. At
+Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high
+wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke
+the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his
+relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought
+when asked to be my guide.
+
+"It is a work of peril," he said, "to pass the Blackfoot country all'
+pitching along the foot of the mountains; they will see our trail in the
+snow, follow it, and steal our horses, or perhaps worse still. At another
+time I would attempt it, but death has been too heavy upon my friends,
+and I don't feel that I can go."
+
+It was still possible, however, that at the Mountain House I might find
+a guide ready to attempt the journey, and my kind host at Edmonton
+provided me with letters to facilitate my procuring all supplies from his
+subordinate officer at that station. Thus fully accoutred and prepared to
+meet the now rapidly increasing severity of the winter, I started on the
+1st December for the mountains. It-was a bright, beautiful day. I was
+alone with my two retainers; before me lay an uncertain future, but so
+many curious scenes had been passed in safety during the last six months
+of my life, that I recked little of what was before me, drawing a kind of
+blind confidence from the thought that so much could not have been in
+vain. Crossing the now fast-frozen Saskatchewan, we ascended the southern
+bank and entered upon a rich country watered with many streams and
+wooded with park-like clumps of aspen and pine. My two retainers were
+first-rate fellows. One spoke English very fairly: he was a brother of
+the bright-eyed little beauty at Fort Pitt. The other, Paul Foyale, was a
+thick, stout-set man, a good voyageur, and excellent-in camp. Both were
+noted travellers, and both had suffered severely in the epidemic of the
+small-pox. Paul had lost his wife and child, and Rowland's children had
+all had the disease, but had recovered. As for any idea about taking
+infection from men coming out of places where that infection existed,
+that would have been the merest foolishness; at least, Paul and Rowland
+thought so, and as they were destined to be my close companions for some
+days, cooking for me, tying up my blankets, and sleeping beside me, it
+was just as well to put a good face upon the matter and trust once more
+to the glorious doctrine of chance. Besides, they were really such good
+fellows, princes among voyayeurs, that, small-pox or no small-pox, they
+were first-rate company for any ordinary mortal. For two days we jogged
+merrily along. The Musquashis or Bears Hill rose before us and faded away
+into blue distance behind us. After sundown on the 2nd we camped in a
+thicket of large aspens by the high bank of the Battle River, the same
+stream at whose mouth nearly 400 miles away I had found the Crees a
+fortnight before. On the 3rd December we crossed this river, and,
+quitting the Blackfeet trail, struck in a south-westerly direction
+through a succession of grassy hills with partially wooded valleys and
+small frozen lakes. A glorious country to ride over--a country in which
+the eye ranged across miles and miles of fair-lying hill and
+long-stretching valley; a silent, beautiful land upon which summer had
+stamped so many traces, that December had so far been powerless to efface
+their beauty. Close by to the south lay the country of the great
+Blackfeet nation--that wild, restless tribe whose name has been a terror
+to other tribes and to trader and trapper for many and many a year. Who
+and what are these wild dusky men who have held their own against all
+comers, sweeping like a whirlwind over the sand deserts of the central
+continent? They speak a tongue distinct from all other Indian tribes;
+they have ceremonies and feasts wholly different, too, from the feasts
+and ceremonies of other nations; they are at war with every nation that
+touches the wide circle of their boundaries; the Crows, the Flatheads,
+the Kootenies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, the Crees, the Plain
+Assineboines, the Minnitarrees, all are and have been the inveterate
+enemies of the five confederate nations which form together the great
+Blackfeet tribe. Long years ago, when their great forefather crossed the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun and settled along the sources of the
+Missouri and the South Saskatchewan, so runs the legend of their old
+chiefs, it came to pass that a chief had three sons, Kenna, or The Blood,
+Peaginou, or The Wealth, and a third who was nameless. The two first were
+great hunters, they brought to their father's lodge rich store of moose
+and elk meat, and the buffalo fell before their unerring arrows; but the
+third, or nameless one, ever returned empty-handed from the chase, until
+his brothers mocked him for his want of skill. One day the old chief said
+to this unsuccessful hunter, "My son, you cannot kill the moose, your
+arrows shun the buffalo, the elk is too fleet for your footsteps, and
+your brothers mock you because you bring no meat into the lodge; but see,
+I will make you a great hunter." And the old chief took from the
+lodge-fire a piece of burnt stick, and, wetting it, he rubbed the feet of
+his son with the blackened charcoal, and he named him Sat-Sia-qua, or The
+Blackfeet, and evermore Sat-Sia-qua was a mighty hunter, and his arrows
+flew straight to the buffalo, and his feet moved swift in the chase. From
+these three sons are descended the three tribes of Blood, Peaginou, and
+Blackfeet, but in addition, for many generations, two other tribes or
+portions of tribes have been admitted into the confederacy; These are the
+Sircies, on the north, a branch, or offshoot from the Chipwayans of the
+Athabasca; and the Gros Ventres, or Atsinas, on the southeast, a branch
+from the Arrapahoe nation who dwelt along the sources of the Platte. How
+these branches became detached from the parent stocks has never been
+determined, but to this day they speak the languages of their original
+tribe in addition to that of the adopted one. The parent tongue of the
+Sircies is harsh and guttural, that of the Blackfeet is rich and musical;
+and while the Sircies always speak Blackfeet in addition to their own
+tongue, the Blackfeet rarely master the language of the Sircies.
+
+War, as we have already said, is the sole toil and thought of the red
+man's life. He has three great causes of fight: to steal a horse, take a
+scalp, or get a wife. I regret to have to write that the possession of a
+horse is valued before that of a wife-and this has been the case for many
+years. "A horse," writes McKenzie, "is valued at ten guns, a woman is
+only worth one gun;" but at that time horses were scarcer than at
+present. Horses have been a late importation, comparatively speaking,
+into the Indian country. They travelled rapidly north from Mexico, and
+the prairies soon became covered with the Spanish mustang, for whose
+possession the red man killed his brother with singular pertinacity. The
+Indian to-day believes that the horse has ever dwelt with him on the
+Western deserts, but that such is not the case his own language
+undoubtedly tells. It is curious to compare the different names which the
+wild men gave the new-comer who was destined to work such evil among
+them. In Cree, a dog is called "Atim," and a horse, "Mistatim," or the
+"Big Dog." In the Assineboine tongue the horse is called "Sho-a-th-in-ga,"
+"Thongatch shonga," a great dog. In Blackfeet, "Po-no-ka-mi-taa" signifies
+the horse; and "Po-no-ko" means red deer, and "Emita," a dog--the "Red-deer
+Dog." But the Sircies made the best name of all for the new-comer; they
+called him the "Chistli" "Chis," seven, "Li," dogs "Seven Dogs." Thus
+we have him called the big dog, the great dog, the red-deer dog, the
+seven dogs, and the red dog, or "It-shou-ma-shungu," by the Gros Ventres.
+The dog was their universal beast of burthen, and so they multiplied the
+name in many ways to enable it to define the Superior powers of the
+new beast.
+
+But a far more formidable enemy than Crow or Cree has lately come in
+contact with the Blackfeet--an enemy before whom all his stratagem, all
+his skill with lance or arrow, all his dexterity of horsemanship is of no
+avail. The "Moka-manus" (the Big-knives), the white men, have pushed up
+the great Missouri River into the heart of the Blackfeet country, the
+fire-canoes have forced their way along the muddy waters, and behind them
+a long chain of armed posts have arisen to hold in check the wild roving
+races of Dakota and the Montana. It is a useless struggle that which
+these Indians wage against their latest and most deadly enemy, but
+nevertheless it is one in which the sympathy of any brave heart must lie
+on the side of the savage. Here, at the head-waters of the great River
+Missouri which finds its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico-here, pent up
+against the barriers of the "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the Blackfeet
+offer a last despairing struggle to the ever-increasing tide that hems
+them in. It is not yet two years since a certain citizen soldier of the
+United States made a famous raid against a portion of this tribe at the
+head-waters of the Missouri. It so happened that I had the opportunity of
+hearing this raid described from the rival points of view of the Indian
+and the white man, and, if possible, the brutality of the latter--brutality
+which was gloried in--exceeded the relation of the former. Here is
+the story of the raid as told me by a miner whose "pal" was present in
+the scene. "It was a little afore day when the boys came upon two
+redskins in a gulch near-away to the Sun River" (the Sun River flows into
+the Missouri, and the forks lie below Benton). "They caught the darned
+red devils and strapped them on a horse, and swore that if they didn't
+just lead the way to their camp that they'd blow their b---- brains out;
+and Jim Baker wasn't the coon to go under if he said he'd do it--no, you
+bet he wasn't. So the red devils showed the trail, and soon the boys came
+out on a wide gulch, and saw down below the lodges of the Pagans. Baker
+just says, 'Now, boys, says he, 'thar's the devils, and just you go in
+and clear them out. No darned prisoners, you know; Uncle Sam ain't agoin'
+to keep prisoners, I guess. No darned squaws or young uns, but just
+kill'em all, squaws and all; it's them squaws what breeds'em, and them
+young uns will only be horse-thieves or hair-lifters when they grows up;
+so just make a clean shave of the hull brood. Wall, mister, ye see, the
+boys jist rode in among the lodges afore daylight, and they killed every
+thing that was able to come out of the tents, for, you see, the redskins
+had the small-pox bad, they had, and a heap of them couldn't come out
+nohow; so the boys jist turned over the lodges and fixed them as they lay
+on the ground. Thar was up to 170 of them Pagans wiped out that mornin',
+and thar was only one of the boys sent under by a redskin firing out at
+him from inside a lodge. I say, mister, that Baker's a bell-ox among
+sodgers, you bet."
+
+One month after this slaughter on the Sun River a band of Peagins were
+met on the Bow River by a French missionary priest, the only missionary
+whose daring spirit has carried him into the country of these redoubled
+tribes. They told him of the cruel loss their tribe had suffered at the
+hands of the "Long-knives;" but they spoke of it as the fortune of war,
+as a thing to be deplored, but to be also revenged: it was after the
+manner of their own war, and it did not strike them as brutal or
+cowardly; for, alas! they knew no better. But what shall be said of these
+heroes--the outscourings of Europe--who, under the congenial guidance of
+that "bell-ox" soldier Jim Baker, "wiped out them Pagan redskins"? This
+meeting of the missionary with the Indians was in: its way singular. The
+priest, thinking that the loss of so many lives would teach the tribe how
+useless must be a war carried on against-the Americans, and how its end
+must inevitably be the complete destruction of the Indians, asked the
+chief to assemble his band to listen to his counsel and advice. They met
+together in the council-tent, and then the priest began. He told them
+that "their recent loss was only the beginning of their destruction, that
+the Long knives had countless braves, guns and rifles beyond number,
+fleet steeds, and huge war-canoes, and that it was useless for the poor
+wild man to attempt to stop their progress through the great Western
+solitudes." He asked them "why were their faces black and their hearts
+heavy? was it not for their relatives and friends so lately killed, and
+would it not be better to make peace while yet they could do it, and thus
+save the lives of their remaining friends?"
+
+While thus he spoke there reigned a deep silence through the council-tent,
+each one looked fixedly at the ground before him; but when the
+address was over the chief rose quietly, and, casting around a look full
+of dignity, he asked, "My brother, have you done, or is there aught you
+would like yet to say to us?"
+
+To this the priest made answer that he had no more to say.
+
+"It is well," answered the Indian; "and listen now to what I say to you;
+but first," he said, turning to his men, "you, my brethren, you, my sons,
+who sit around me, if there should be aught in my words from which you
+differ, if I say one word that you would not say yourselves, stop me, and
+say to this black-robe I speak with a forked tongue." Then, turning again
+to the priest, he continued, "You have spoken true, your words come
+straight; the Long-knives are too many and too strong for us; their guns
+shoot farther than ours, their big guns shoot twice" (alluding to shells
+which exploded after they fell); "their numbers are as the buffalo were
+in the days of our fathers. But what of all that? do you want us to
+starve on the land which is ours? to lie down as slaves to the white man,
+to die away one by one in misery and hunger? It is true that the
+long-knives must kill us, but I say still, to my children and to my
+tribe, fight on, fight on, fight on! go on fighting to the very last man;
+and let that last man go on fighting too, for it is better to die thus,
+as a brave man should die, than to live a little time and then die like a
+coward. So now, my brethren, I tell you, as I have told you before, keep
+fighting still. When you see these men coming along the river, digging
+holes in the ground and looking for the little bright sand" (gold), "kill
+them, for they mean to kill you; fight, and if it must be, die, for you
+can only die once, and it is better to die than to starve."
+
+He ceased, and a universal hum of approval running through the dusky
+warriors told how truly the chief had spoken the thoughts of his
+followers; Again he said, "What does the white man want in our land? You
+tell us he is rich and strong, and has plenty of food to eat; for what
+then does he come to our land? We have only the buffalo, and he takes
+that from us. See the buffalo, how they dwell with us; they care not for
+the closeness of our lodges, the smoke of our camp-fires does not fright
+them, the shouts of our young men will not drive them away; but behold
+how they flee from the sight, the sound, and the smell of the white man!
+Why does he take the land from us? who sent him here? He puts up sticks,
+and he calls the land his land, the river his river, the trees his trees.
+Who gave him the ground, and the water, and the trees? was it the Great
+Spirit? No; for the Great Spirit gave to us the beasts and the fish, and
+the white man comes to take the waters and the ground where these fishes
+and these beasts live--why does he not take the sky as well as the
+ground? We who have dwelt on these prairies ever since the stars fell"
+(an epoch from which the Blackfeet are fond of dating, their antiquity)
+"do not put sticks over the land and say, Between these sticks this land
+is mine; you shall not come here or go there."
+
+Fortunate is it for these Blackfeet tribes that their hunting grounds lie
+partly on British territory--from where our midday camp was made on the
+2nd December to the boundary-line at the 49th parallel, fully 180 miles
+of plain knows only the domination of the Blackfeet tribes. Here, around
+this midday camp, lies spread a fair and fertile land; but close by,
+scarce half a day's journey to the south, the sandy plains begin to
+supplant the rich grass-covered hills, and that immense central desert
+commences to spread out those ocean-like expanses which find their
+southern limits far down by the waters of the Canadian River,1200 miles
+due south of the Saskatchewan. This immense central sandy plateau is the
+true home of the bison. Here were raised for countless ages these huge
+herds whose hollow tramp shook the solid roof of America during the
+countless cycles which it remained unknown to man. Here, too, was the
+true home of the Indian: the Commanche, the Apache, the Kio-wa, the
+Arapahoe, the Shienne, the Crow, the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Omahaw, the
+Mandan, the Manatarree, the Blackfeet, the Cree, and the Assineboine
+divided between them the immense region, warring and wandering through
+the vast expanses until the white race from the East pushed their way
+into the land, and carved out states and territories from the Mississippi
+to the Rocky Mountains. How it came to pass in the building of the world
+that to the north of that great region of sand and waste should spread
+out suddenly the fair country of the Saskatchewan, I must leave to the
+guess-work of other and more scientific writers; but the fact remains,
+that alone, from Texas to the sub-Arctic forest, the Saskatchewan Valley
+lays its fair length for 800 miles in mixed fertility.
+
+But we must resume our Western way. The evening of the 3rd December found
+us crossing a succession of wooded hills which divide the water system of
+the North from that of the South Saskatchewan. These systems come so
+close together at this region, that while my midday kettle was filled
+with water which finds its way through Battle River into the North
+Saskatchewan, that of my evening meal was taken from the ice of the
+Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's; River, whose waters seek through Red Deer
+River the South Saskatchewan.
+
+It was near sunset when we rode by the lonely shores of the Gull Lake,
+whose frozen surface stretched beyond the horizon to the north. Before
+us, at a distance of some ten miles, lay the abrupt line of the Three
+Medicine Hills, from whose gorges the first view of the great range of
+the Rocky Mountains was destined to burst upon my sight; But not on this
+day was I to behold that long-looked-for vision. Night came quickly down
+upon the silent wilderness; and it was long after dark when we made our
+camps by the bank of the Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's River, and turned
+adrift the weary horses to graze in a well-grassed meadow lying in one of
+the curves of the river. We had ridden more than sixty miles that day.
+
+About midnight a heavy storm of snow burst upon us, and daybreak revealed
+the whole camp buried deep in snow. As I threw back the blankets from my
+head (one always lies covered up completely), the wet, cold mass struck
+chillily upon my face. The snow was wet and sticky, and therefore things
+were much more wretched than if the temperature had been lower; but the
+hot tea made matters seem brighter, and about breakfast-time the snow
+ceased to fall and the clouds began to clear away. Packing our wet
+blankets together, we set out for the three Medicine Hills, through whose
+defiles our course lay; the snow was deep in the narrow valleys, making
+travelling slower and more laborious than before. It was midday when,
+having rounded the highest of the three hills, we entered a narrow gorge
+fringed with a fire-ravaged forest. This gorge wound through the hills,
+preventing a far-reaching view ahead; but at length its western
+termination was reached, and there lay before me a sight to be long
+remembered. The great chain of the Rocky Mountains rose their snow-clad
+sierras in endless succession. Climbing one of the eminences, I gained a
+vantage-point on the summit from which some by-gone fire had swept the
+trees. Then, looking west, I beheld the great range in unclouded glory.
+The snow had cleared the atmosphere, the sky was coldly bright. An
+immense plain stretched from my feet to the mountain--a plain so vast
+that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one
+continuous level, and at the back of this level, beyond the pines and the
+lakes and the river-courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable,
+silent--a mighty barrier rising-midst an immense land, standing sentinel
+over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes
+of this Great Lone Land. Here, at last, lay the Rocky Mountains.
+
+Leaving behind the Medicine Hills, we descended into the plain and held
+our way until sunset towards the west. It was a calm and beautiful
+evening; far away objects stood out sharp and distinct in the pure
+atmosphere of these elevated regions. For some hours we had lost sight of
+the mountains, but shortly before sunset the summit of a long ridge was
+gained, and they burst suddenly into view in greater magnificence than at
+midday. Telling my men to go on and make the camp at the Medicine River,
+I rode through some fire-wasted forest to a lofty grass-covered height
+which the declining sun was bathing in floods of glory. I cannot hope to
+put into the compass of words the scene which lay rolled beneath from
+this sunset-lighted eminence; for, as I looked over the immense plain and
+watched the slow descent of the evening sun upon the frosted crest of
+these lone mountains, it seemed as if the varied scenes of my long
+journey had woven themselves into the landscape, filling with the music
+of memory the earth, the sky, and the mighty panorama of mountains. Here
+at length lay the barrier to my onward wanderings, here lay the boundary
+to that 4000 miles of unceasing travel which had carried me by so many
+varied scenes so far into the lone-land; and other thoughts were not
+wanting. The peaks on which I gazed were no pigmies; they stood the
+culminating monarchs of the mighty range of the Rocky Mountains. From the
+estuary of the Mackenzie to the Lake of Mexico no point of the American
+continent reaches higher to the skies. That eternal crust of snow seeks
+in summer widely-severed oceans. The Mackenzie, the Columbia, and the
+Saskatchewan spring from the peaks whose teeth-like summits lie grouped
+from this spot into the compass of a single glance. The clouds that cast
+their moisture upon this long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean
+which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic,
+Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness
+began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the
+pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in
+many-coloured silver, and then the lonely peaks grew dark and dim.
+
+As thus I watched from the silent hill-top this great mountain-chain,
+whose summits slept in the glory of the sunset, it seemed no stretch of
+fancy which made the red man place his paradise beyond their golden
+peaks. The "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the "Bridge of the World,"
+Thus he has named them, and beyond them the soul first catches a glimpse
+of that mystical land where the tents are pitched midst everlasting
+verdure and countless herds and the music of ceaseless streams.
+
+That night there came a frost, the first of real severity that had fallen
+upon us. At daybreak next morning, the 5th December, my thermometer
+showed 22 degrees below zero, and, in spite of buffalo boots and moose
+"mittaines," the saddle proved a freezing affair; many a time I got down
+and trotted on in front of my horse until feet and hands, cased as they
+were, began to be felt again. But the morning, though piercingly cold,
+was bright with sunshine, and the snowy range was lighted up in many a
+fair hue, and the contrasts of pine wood and snow and towering wind-swept
+cliff showed in rich beauty. As the day wore on we entered the pine
+forest which stretches to the base of the mountains, and emerged suddenly
+upon the high banks of the Saskatchewan. The river here ran in a deep,
+wooded valley, over the western extremity of which rose the Rocky
+Mountains; the windings of the river showed distinctly from the height on
+which we stood; and in mid-distance the light blue smoke of the Mountain
+House curled in fair contrast from amidst a mass of dark green pines.
+
+Leaving my little party to get my baggage across the Clear Water River, I
+rode on ahead to the fort. While yet a long way off we had been descried
+by the watchful eyes of some Rocky Mountain Assineboines, and our arrival
+had been duly telegraphed to the officer in charge. As usual, the
+excitement was intense to know what the strange party could mean. The
+denizens of the place looked upon themselves as closed up for the
+winter, and the arrival of a party with a baggage-cart at such a time
+betokened something unusual. Nor was this excitement at all lessened when
+in answer to a summons from the opposite bank of the Saskatchewan I
+announced my name and place of departure. The river was still open, its
+rushing waters had resisted so far the efforts of the winter to cover
+them up, but the ice projected a considerable distance from either shore;
+the open water in the centre was, however, shallow, and when the rotten
+ice had been cut away on each side I was able to force my horse into it.
+In he went with a great splash, but he kept his feet nevertheless; then
+at the other side the people of the fort had cut away the ice too, and
+again the horse scrambled safely up. The long ride to the West was over;
+exactly forty-one days earlier I had left Red River, and in twenty-seven
+days of actual travel I had ridden 1180 miles.
+
+The Rocky Mountain House of the Hudson Bay Company stands in a level
+meadow which is clear of trees, although dense forest lies around it at
+some little distance. It is indifferently situated with regard to the
+Indian trade, being too far from the Plain Indians, who seek in the
+American posts along the Missouri a nearer and more profitable exchange
+for their goods; while the wooded district in which it lies produces furs
+of a second-class quality, and has for years been deficient in game. The
+neighbouring forest, however, supplies a rich store of the white spruce
+for boat-building, and several full-sized Hudson Bay boats are built
+annually at the fort. Coal of very fair quality is also plentiful along
+the river banks, and the forge glows with the ruddy light of a real coal
+fire--a friendly sight when one has not seen it during many months. The
+Mountain House stands within the limits of the Rocky Mountain
+Assineboines, a branch of-the once famous Assineboines of the Plains
+whose wars in times not very remote made them the terror of the prairies
+which lie between the middle Missouri and the Saskatchewan. The
+Assineboines derive their name, which signifies "stone-heaters," from a
+custom in vogue among them before the advent of the traders into their
+country. Their manner of boiling meat was as follows: a round hole was
+scooped in the earth, and into the hole was sunk a piece of raw hide;
+this was filled with water, and the buffalo meat placed in it, then a
+fire was lighted close by and a number of round stones made red hot; in
+this state they were dropped into, or held in, the water, which was thus
+raised to boiling temperature and the meat cooked. When the white man
+came he sold his kettle to the stone-heaters, and henceforth the practice
+disappeared, while the name it had given rise to remained--a name which
+long after the final extinction of the tribe will still exist in the
+River Assineboine and its surroundings. Nothing testifies more
+conclusively to the varied changes and vicissitude's Indian tribes than
+the presence of this branch of the Assineboine nation in the pine forests
+of the Rocky Mountains. It is not yet a hundred years since the
+"Ossinepoilles" were found by one of the earliest traders inhabiting the
+country between the head of the Pasquayah or Saskatchewan and the
+country of the Sioux, a stretch of territory fully 900 miles in length.
+
+Twenty years later they still were numerous along the whole line of the
+North Saskatchewan, and their lodges were at intervals seen along a
+river line of 800 miles in length, but even then a great change had come
+upon them. In 1780 the first epidemic of small-pox swept over the Western
+plains, and almost annihilated the powerful Assineboines. The whole
+central portion of the tribe was destroyed, but the outskirting portions
+drew together and again made themselves a terror to trapper and trader.
+In 1821 they were noted for their desperate forays, and for many years
+later a fierce conflict raged between them and the Blackfeet; under the
+leadership of a chief still famous in Indian story--Tehatka, or the
+"Left-handed;" they for a long time more than held their own against
+these redoubtable warriors. Tehatka was a medicine-man of the first
+order, and by the exercise of his superior cunning and dream power he was
+implicitly relied on by his followers; at length fortune deserted him,
+and he fell in a bloody battle with the Gros Ventres near the Knife
+River, a branch of the Missouri, in 1837. About the same date small-pox
+again swept the tribe, and they almost disappeared from the prairies. The
+Crees too pressed down from the North and East, and occupied a
+great-portion of their territory; the Blackfeet smote them hard on the
+south-west frontier; and thus, between foes and disease, the Assineboines
+of to-day have dwindled down into far-scattered remnants of tribes.
+Warned by the tradition of the frightful losses of earlier times from the
+ravages of small-pox, the Assineboines this year kept far out in the
+great central prairie along the coteau, and escaped the infection
+altogether, but their cousins, the Rocky Mountain Stonies, were not so
+fortunate, they lost some of their bravest men during the pre ceding
+summer and autumn. Even under the changed circumstances of their present
+lives, dwelling amidst the forests and rocks instead of in the plains and
+open country, these Assineboines of the Mountains retain many of the
+better characteristics of their race; they are brave and skilful men,
+good hunters of red deer, moose, and big horn, and are still held in
+dread by the Blackfeet, who rarely venture into their country. They are
+well acquainted with the valleys and passes through the mountains, and
+will probably take a horse over as rough ground as any men in the
+creation.
+
+At the ford on the Clear Water River, half a mile from the Mountain
+House, a small clump of old pine-trees stands on the north side of the
+stream. A few years ago a large band of Blood Indians camped round this
+clump of pines during a trading expedition to the Mountain House. They
+were under the leadership of two young chiefs, brothers. One evening a
+dispute about some trifling matter arose, words ran high, there was a
+flash of a scalping-knife, a plunge, and one brother reeled back with a
+fearful gash in his side, the other stalked slowly to his tent, and sat
+down silent and impassive. The wounded man loaded his gun, and keeping
+the fatal wound closed together with one hand walked steadily to his
+brothers tent; pulling back the door-casing, he placed the muzzle of his
+gun to the heart of the man who sat immovable all the time, and shot him
+dead, then, removing his hand from his own mortal wound, he fell lifeless
+beside his brother's body. They buried the two brothers in the same grave
+by the shadow of the dark pine-trees. The band to which the chiefs
+belonged broke up and moved away into the great plains--the reckoning of
+blood had been paid, and the account was closed. Many tales of Indian war
+and revenge could I tell--tales gleaned from trader and missionary and
+voyageur, and told by camp-fire or distant trading post, but there is no
+time to recount them now, a long period of travel lies before me and I
+must away to enter upon it; the scattered thread must be gathered up and
+tied together too quickly, perhaps, for the success of this wandering
+story, but not an hour too soon for the success of another expedition
+into a still farther and more friendless region. Eight days passed
+pleasantly at the Mountain House; rambles by day into the neighbouring
+hills, stories of Indian life and prairie scenes at the evening fire
+filled up the time, and it was near mid-December before I thought of
+moving my quarters.
+
+The Mountain House is perhaps the most singular specimen of an Indian
+trading post to be found in the wide territory of the Hudson Bay Company.
+Every precaution known to the traders has been put in force to prevent
+the possibility of surprise during "a trade." Bars and bolts and places
+to fire down at the Indians who are trading abound in every direction; so
+dreaded is the name borne by the Black feet, that it is thus their
+trading post has been constructed. Some fifty years ago the Company had
+a post far south on the Bow River in the very heart of the Blackfeet
+country. Despite of all precautions it was frequently plundered And at
+last burnt down by the Blackfeet, and since that date no attempt has ever
+been made to erect another fort in their country.
+
+Still, I believe the Blackfeet and their confederates are not nearly so
+bad as they have been painted, those among the Hudson Bay Company who are
+best acquainted with them are of the same opinion, and, to use the words
+of Pe to-pee, or the Perched Eagle, to Dr. Hector in 1857, "We see but
+little of the white man," he said, "and our young men do not know how to
+behave; but if you come among us, the chiefs will restrain the young men,
+for we have power over them. But look at the Crees, they have long lived
+in the company of white men, and nevertheless they are just like dogs,
+they try to bite when your head is turned--they have no manners; but the
+Blackfeet have large hearts and they love to show hospitality." Without
+going the length of Pe-to-pee in this estimate of the virtues of his
+tribe, I am still of opinion that under proper management these wild
+wandering men might be made trusty friends. We have been too much
+inclined to believe all the bad things said of them by other tribes, and,
+as they are at war with every nation around them, the wickedness of the
+Blackfeet'has grown into a proverb among men. But to go back to the
+trading house. When the Blackfeet arrive on a trading visit to the
+Mountain House they usually come in large numbers, prepared for a brush
+with either Crees or Stonies. The camp is formed at some distance from
+the fort, and the braves, having piled their robes, leather, and
+provisions on the backs of their wives or their horses, approach in long
+cavalcade. The officer goes out to meet them, and the gates are closed.
+Many speeches are made, and the chief, to show his "big heart," usually
+piles on top of a horse a heterogeneous mass of buffalo robes, pemmican,
+and dried meat, and hands horse and all he carries over to the trader.
+After such a present no man can possibly enter tain for a moment a doubt
+upon the subject of the big-heartedness of the donor, but if, in the
+trade which ensues: after this present has been made, it should happen
+that fifty horses are bought by the Company, not one of all the band will
+cost so dear as that which demonstrates the large heartedness of the
+brave.
+
+Money-values are entirely unknown in these trades. The values of articles
+are computed by "skins;" for instance, a horse will be reckoned at 60
+skins; and these 60 skins will be given thus: a gun, 15 skins; a capote,
+10 skins; a blanket, 10 skins; ball and powder, 10 skins; tobacco, 15
+skins total, 60 skins. The Bull Ermine, or the Four Bears, or the Red
+Daybreak, or whatever may be the brave's name, hands over the horse, and
+gets in return a blanket, a gun, a capote, ball and powder, and tobacco.
+The term "skin" is a very old one in the fur trade; the original
+standard, the beaver skin or, as it was called, "the made beaver" was
+the medium of exchange, and every other skin and article of trade was
+graduated upon the scale of the beaver; thus a beaver, or a skin, was
+reckoned equivalent to 1 mink skin, one marten was equal to 2 skins, one
+black fox 20 skins, and so on; in the same manner, a blanket, a capote, a
+gun, or a kettle had their different values in skins. This being
+explained, we will now proceed with the trade.
+
+Sapoomaxica, or the Big Crow's Foot, having demonstrated the bigness of
+his heart, and received in return a tangible proof of the corresponding
+size of the trader's, addresses his braves, cautioning them against
+violence or rough behaviour. The braves, standing ready with their
+peltries, are in a high state of excitement to begin the trade. Within
+the fort all the preparations have been completed, communication cut off
+between the Indian room and the rest of the buildings, guns placed up in
+the loft overhead, and men all get ready for any thing that might turn
+up; then the outer gate is thrown open, and a large throng enters the
+Indian room. Three or four of the first-comers are now admitted through
+a narrow passage into the trading-shop, from the shelves of which most
+of the blankets, red cloth, and beads have been removed, for the red man
+brought into the presence of so much finery would unfortunately behave
+very much after the manner of a hungry boy put in immediate
+juxtaposition to bath-buns, cream-cakes, and jam-fritters, to the
+complete collapse of profit upon the trade to the Hudson Bay Company.
+The first Indians admitted hand in their peltries through a wooden
+grating, and receive in exchange so many blankets, beads, or strouds.
+Out they go to the large hall where their comrades are anxiously
+awaiting their turn, and in rush another batch, and the doors are locked
+again. The reappearance of the fortunate braves with the much-coveted
+articles of finery adds immensely to the excitement. What did they see
+inside? "Oh, not much, only a few dozen blankets and a few guns, and a
+little tea and sugar;" this is terrible news for the outsiders, and the
+crush to get\in increases tenfold, under the belief that the good things
+will all be gone. So the trade progresses, until at last all the
+peltries and provisions have changed hands, and there is nothing more to
+be traded; but some times things do not run quite so smoothly.
+Sometimes, when the stock of pemmican or robes is small, the braves
+object to see their "pile" go for a little parcel of tea or sugar. The
+steelyard and weighing-balance are their especial objects of dislike.
+"What for you put on one side tea or sugar, and on the other a little
+bit of iron?" they say; "we don't know what that medicine is-but, look
+here, put on one side of that thing that swings a bag of pemmican, and
+put on the other side blankets and tea and sugar, and then, when the two
+sides stop swinging, you take the bag of pemmican and we will take the
+blankets and the tea: that would be fair, for one side will be as big as
+the other." This is a very bright idea on the part of the Four Bears,
+and elicits universal satisfaction all round. Four Bears and his
+brethren are, however, a little bit put out of conceit when the trader
+observes, "Well, let be as you say. We will make the balance swing
+level between the bag of pemmican and the blankets, but we will carry
+out the idea still further. You will put your marten skins and your
+otter and fisher skins on one side, I will put against them on the other
+my blankets, and my gun and ball and powder; then, when both sides are
+level, you will take the ball and powder and the blankets, and I will
+take the marten and the rest of the fine furs." This proposition throws
+a new light upon the question of weighing-machines and steelyards, and,
+after some little deliberation, it is resolved to abide by the old plan
+of letting the white trader decide the weight himself in his own way,
+for it is clear that the steelyard is a great medicine which no brave
+can understand, and which can only be manipulated by a white
+medicine-man.
+
+This white medicine-man was in olden times a terrible demon in the eyes'
+of the Indian. His power reached far into the plains; he possessed three
+medicines of the very highest order: his heart could sing, demons sprung
+from the light of his candle, and he had a little box stronger than the
+strongest Indian. When a large band of the Blackfeet would assemble at
+Edmonton, years ago, the Chief Factor would-win-dup his musical box, get
+his magic lantern ready, and take out his galvanic battery. Imparting
+with the last-named article a terrific shock to the frame of the Indian
+chief, he would warn him that far out in the plains he could at will
+inflict the same medicine upon him if he ever behaved badly. "Look," he
+would say, "now my heart beats for you," then the spring of the little
+musical box concealed under his coat would be touched, and lo! the heart
+of the white trader would sing with the strength of his love for the
+Blackfeet. "To-morrow I start to cross the mountains against the Nez
+Perces," a chief would say, "what says my white brother, don't he dream
+that my arm will be strong in battle, and that the scalps and horses of
+the Nez Perces will be ours?" "I have dreamt that you are to draw one of
+these two little sticks which I hold in my hand. If you draw the right
+one, your arm will be strong, your eye keen, the horses of the Nez Perces
+will be yours; but, listen, the fleetest horse must come to me; you will
+have to give me the best steed in the band of the Nez Perces. Woe betide
+you if you should draw the wrong stick!" Trembling with fear, the
+Blackfoot would approach and draw the bit of wood. "My brother, you are a
+great chief, you have drawn the right stick--your fortune is assured,
+go." Three weeks later a magnificent horse, the pride of some Nez Perce
+chief on the lower Columbia, would be led into the fort on the
+Saskatchewan, and when next the Blackfoot chief came to visit the white
+medicine-man a couple of freshly taken scalps would dangle from his spear
+shaft.
+
+In former times, when rum was used in the trade, the most frightful
+scenes were in the habit of occurring in the Indian room. The fire-water,
+although freely diluted with water soon reduced the assemblage to a state
+of wild hilarity, quickly followed by stupidity and sleep. The fire-water
+for the Crees was composed of three parts of water to one of spirit,
+that of the Blackfeet, seven of water to one of spirit, but so potent is
+the power which alcohol in any shape his well-diluted liquor, was wont to
+become helplessly intoxicated. The trade usually began with a present
+of-fire water all round--then the business went on apace. 'Horses, robes,
+tents, provisions, all would be proffered for one more drink at the
+beloved poison. Nothing could exceed the excitement inside the tent,
+except it was the excitement outside. There the anxious crowd could only
+learn by hearsay what was going on within. Now and then a brave, with an
+amount of self-abnegation worthy of a better cause, would issue from the
+tent with his cheeks distended and his mouth full of the fire-water, and
+going along the ranks of his friends he would squirt a little of the
+liquor into the open mouths of his less fortunate brethren.
+
+But things did not always go so smoothly. Knives were wont to flash,
+shots to be fired--even-now the walls of the Indian rooms at Fort Pitt
+and Edmonton show many traces of bullet marks and knife hacking done in
+the wild fury of the intoxicated savage. Some ten years ago this most
+baneful distribution was stopped by the Hudson Bay Company in the
+Saskatchewan district, but the free traders still continued to employ
+alcohol as a means of acquiring the furs belonging to the Indians. I was
+the bearer of an Order in Council from the Lieutenant-Governor
+prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the sale, distribution, or possession
+of alcohol, and this law, if hereafter enforced, will do much to remove
+at least one leading source of Indian demoralization.
+
+The universal passion for dress is strangely illustrated in the Western
+Indian. His ideal of perfection is the English costume of some forty
+years ago. The tall chimney-pot hat with round narrow brim, the coat with
+high collar going up over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow.
+All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this
+ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all
+beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large
+feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago
+in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of
+considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at
+all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most
+ridiculous-looking costume a Blackfeet chief will readily exchange his
+beautifully-dressed deerskin Indian shirt embroidered with porcupine
+quills and ornamented with the raven locks of his enemies--his head-dress
+of ermine skins, his flowing buffalo robe: a dress in which he looks
+every inch a savage king for one in which he looks every inch a foolish
+savage. But the new dress does not long survive--bit by bit it is found
+unsuited to the wild work which its: owner has to perform; and although
+it never loses the high estimate originally set upon it, it,
+nevertheless, is discarded by virtue of the many inconveniences arising
+out of running buffalo in'a tall beaver,-or fighting in a tail coat
+against Crees.
+
+During the days spent in the Mountain House I enjoyed the society of the
+most enterprising and best informed missionary in the Indian countries-M.
+la Combe. This gentleman, a native of Lower Canada, has devoted himself
+for more than twenty years to the Blackfeet and Crees of the far-West,
+sharing their sufferings, their hunts, their summer journeys, and their
+winter camps--sharing even, unwillingly, their war forays and night
+assaults. The devotion which he has evinced towards these poor wild
+warriors has not been thrown away upon them, and Pèere la Combe is the
+only man who can pass and repass from Blackfoot camp to Cree camp with
+perfect impunity when these long-lasting enemies are at war. On one
+occasion he was camped with a small party of Blackfeet south of the. Red
+Deer River. It was night, and the lodges were silent and dark, all save
+one, the lodge of the chief, who had invited the black-robe to his tent
+for the night and was conversing with him as they lay on the buffalo
+robes, while the fire in the centre of the lodge burned clear and bright.
+Every thing was quiet, and no thought of war-party or lurking enemy was
+entertained. Suddenly a small dog put his head into the lodge. A dog is
+such an ordinary and inevitable nuisance in the camp of the Indians, that
+the missionary never even noticed the partial intrusion. Not so the
+Indian; he hissed out, "It is a Cree dog. We are surprised! run!" then,
+catching his gun in one hand and dragging his wife by the other, he
+darted from his tent into the darkness. Not one second too soon, for
+instantly there crashed through the leather lodge some score of bullets,
+and the wild war-whoop of the Crees broke forth through the sharp and
+rapid detonation of many muskets. The Crees were upon them in force.
+Darkness, and the want of a dashing leader on the part of the Crees,
+Saved the Blackfeet from total destruction, for nothing could have helped
+them had their enemies charged home; but as soon as the priest had
+reached the open which he did when he saw how matters stood-he called
+loudly to the Blackfeet not to run, but to stand and return the fire of
+their attackers. This timely advice checked the onslaught of the Crees,
+who were in numbers nmore than sufficient to make an end of the Blackfeet
+party in a few minutes. Mean time, the Blackfeet Women delved busily in
+the earth with knife and finger, while the men fired at random into the
+darkness. The lighted, semi-transparent tent of the chief had given a
+mark for the guns of the Crees; but that was quickly overturned, riddled'
+with balls and although the Crees continued to fire without intermission,
+their shots generally went high. Sometimes the Crees would charge boldly
+up to within a few feet of their enemies, then fire and rush back again,
+yelling all the time, and taunting their enemies. The père spent the
+night in attending to the wounded Blackfeet. When day dawned the Crees
+drew off to count their losses; but it was afterwards ascertained that
+eighteen of their braves had been killed or wounded, and of the small
+party of Blackfeet twenty had fallen--but who cared? Both sides kept
+their scalps, and that was every thing.
+
+This battle served not a little to increase the reputation in which the
+missionary was held as a "great medicine-man." The Blackfeet ascribed to
+his "medicine" what was really due to his pluck; and the Crees, when they
+learnt that he had been with their enemies during the fight, at once
+found in that fact a satisfactory explanation for the want of courage
+they had displayed.
+
+But it is time to quit the Mountain House, for winter has run on into
+mid-December, and 1500 miles have yet to be travelled, but not travelled
+towards the South. The most trusty guide, Piscan Munro, was away on the
+plains; and as day after day passed by, making the snow a little deeper
+and the cold a little colder, it was evident that the passage of the 400
+miles intervening between the Mountain House and the nearest American
+Fort had become almost an impossibility.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+On the 12th of December I said "Good-bye" to my friends at the Mountain
+House, and, crossing the now ice-bound torrent of the Saskatchewan,
+turned my steps, for the first time during many months towards the East.
+With the same two men, and eight horses, I passed quickly through
+the snow-covered country. One day later I looked my last look at the
+far-stretching range of the Rocky Mountains from the lonely ridges of
+the Medicine Hills. Henceforth there would be no mountains. That immense
+region through which I had traveled--from Quebec to these Three Medicine
+Hills--has not a single mountain ridge in its long 3000 miles; woods,
+streams, and mighty rivers, ocean-lakes, rocks, hills, and prairies,
+but no mountains, no rough cloud-seeking summit on which to rest the
+eye that loves the bold outlined of peak and precipice.
+
+"Ah! doctor, dear," Said an old Highland woman, dying in the Red River
+Settlement long years after she had left her Highland home--"Ah! doctor,
+dear, if I could but see a wee bit of hill I thinking I might get well
+again."
+
+Camped that night near a beaver lodge on the Pas-co-pe, the conversation
+turned upon the mountains we had just left.
+
+"Are they the greatest mountains in the world?" asked Paul Foyale.
+
+"No, there are others nearly as big again."
+
+"Is the Company there, too?" again inquired the faithful Paul.
+
+I was obliged to admit that the Company did not exist in the country of
+these very big mountains, and I rather fear that the admission somewhat
+detracted from the altitude of the Himalayas in the estimation of my
+hearers.
+
+About an hour before daybreak on the 16th of December a Very remarkable
+light was visible for some time in the zenith, A central orb, or heart of
+red and crimson light, became suddenly visible a little to the north of
+the zenith; around this most luminous centre was a great ring, or circle
+of bright light, and from this outer band there flashed innumerable rays
+far-into the surrounding darkness. As I looked at it, my thoughts
+traveled far away to the proud city by the Seine. Was she holding herself
+bravely against the German hordes? In olden times these weird lights of
+the sky were supposed only to flash forth when "kings or heroes" fell.
+Did the sky mirror the earth, even as the ocean mirrors the sky? While I
+looked at the gorgeous spectacle blazing above me, the great heart of
+France was red with the blood of her sons, and from the circles of the
+German league there flashed the glare of cannon round the doomed but
+defiant city.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The Cabri Sack--A Cold
+Day--Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Reach Fort Pitt--The blind Cree--A Feast or
+a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+I was now making my way back to Edmonton, with the intention of there
+exchanging my horses for dogs, and then endeavouring to make the return
+journey to Red River upon the ice of the River Saskatchewan. Dog
+travelling was a novelty. The cold had more than reached the limit at
+which the saddle is a safe mode of travel, and the horses suffered so
+much in pawing away the snow to get within reach of the grass lying
+underneath, that I longed to exchange them for the train of dogs, the
+painted cariole, and little baggage-sled. It took me four days to
+complete the arrangements necessary for my new journey; and, on the
+afternoon of the 20th December, I set out upon a long journey, with dogs,
+down the valley of the Saskatchewan. I little thought then of the
+distance before me; of the intense cold through which I was destined to
+travel during two entire months of most rigorous winter; how day by day
+the frost was to harden, the snow to deepen, all nature to sink more
+completely under the breath of the ice-king. And it was well that all
+this was hidden from me at the time, or perhaps I should have been
+tempted to remain during the winter at Edmonton, until the spring had set
+free once more the rushing waters of the Saskatchewan.
+
+Behold me then on the 20th of December starting from Edmonton with three
+trains of dogs--one to carry myself, the other two to drag provisions,
+baggage, and blankets and all the usual paraphernalia of winter travel.
+The cold which, with the exception of a few nights severe frost, had
+been so long-delayed now seemed determined to atone for lost time by
+becoming suddenly intense. On the night of the 21st December we reached,
+just at dusk, a magnificent clump of large pine-trees on the right bank
+of the river. During the afternoon the temperature had fallen below zero;
+a keen wind blew along-the frozen river, and the dogs and men were glad
+to clamber up the steep clayey bank into the thick shelter of the pine
+bluff', amidst whose dark-green recesses a huge fire was quickly alight.
+While here we sit in the ruddy blaze: of immense dry pine logs it will be
+well to say a few words on dogs and dog driving.
+
+Dogs in the territories of the North-west have but one function--to haul.
+Pointer, setter, lurcher, foxhound, greyhound, Indian mongrel, miserable
+cur or beautiful Esquimaux, all alike are destined to pull a sled of some
+kind or other during, the months of snow and ice: all are destined to
+howl under the driver's lash; to tug wildly at the moose-skin collar; to
+drag until they can drag no more, and then to die. At what age a dog is
+put to haul I could never satisfactorily ascertain, but I have seen dogs
+doing some kind of hauling long be fore the peculiar expression of the
+puppy had left their countenances. Speaking now with the experience of
+nearly fifty days of dog travelling, and the knowledge of some twenty
+different trains of dogs of all sizes, ages, and degrees, watching them
+closely on the track and in the camp during 1300 miles of travel, I may
+claim, I think, some right to assert that I possess no inconsiderable
+insight into the habits, customs, and thoughts (for a dog thinks far
+better than many of his masters) of the hauling dog. When I look back
+again upon the long list of "Whiskies," "Brandies," "Chocolats,"
+"Corbeaus," "Tigres," "Tete Noirs," "Cerf Volants," "Pilots,"
+"Capitaines," "Cariboos," "muskymotes," "Coffees," and "Nichinassis" who
+individually and collectively did their best to haul me and my baggage
+over that immense waste of snow and ice, what a host of sadly resigned
+faces rises up in the dusky light of the fire! faces seared by whip-mark
+and blow of stick, faces mutely conscious that that master for whom the
+dog gives up every thing in this life was treating him in a most brutal
+manner. I do not for an instant mean to assert that these dogs were not,
+many of them, great rascals and rank imposters; but Just as slavery
+produces certain vices in the slave which it would be unfair to hold him
+accountable for, so does this perversion of the dog from his true use to
+that of a beast of burthen produce in endless variety traits of cunning
+and deception in the hauling-dog. To be a thorough expert in dog-training
+a man must be able to imprecate freely and with considerable variety in
+at least three different languages. But whatever number of tongues the
+driver may speak, one is indispensable to perfection in the art, and that
+is French: curses seem useful adjuncts in any language, but curses
+delivered in French will get a train of dogs through or over any thing.
+There is a good story told which illustrates this peculiar feature in
+dog-training. It is said that a high dignitary of the Church was once
+making a winter tour through his missions in the North-west. The driver,
+out of deference for his freight's profession, abstained from the use of
+forcible language to his dogs, and the hauling was very indifferently
+performed. Soon the train came to the foot of a hill, and notwithstanding
+all the efforts of the driver with whip and stick the dogs were unable to
+draw the cariole to the summit.
+
+"Oh," said the Church dignitary, "this is not at all as good a train of
+dogs as the one you drove last year; why, they are unable to pull me up
+this hill!"
+
+"No, monseigneur," replied the owner of the dogs, "but I am driving them
+differently; if you will only permit me to drive them in the old way you
+will see how easily they will pull the cariole to the top of this hill;
+they do not understand my new method."
+
+"By all means," said the bishop; "drive them then in the usual manner."
+
+Instantly there rang out a long string of "sacré chien," "sacré diable,"
+and still more unmentionable phrases. The effect-upon the dogs was
+magical; the cariole flew to the summit; the progress of the episcopal
+tour was undeniably expedited, and a-practical exposition was given of
+the poet's thought, "From seeming evil still aducing good."
+
+Dogs in the Hudson Bay territories haul in various ways. The Esquimaux in
+the far North run their dogs abreast. The natives of Labrador and along
+the shores of Hudson Bay harness their dogs by many separate lines in a
+kind of band or pack, while in the Saskatchewan, and Mackenzie River
+territories the dogs are put one after the other, in tandem fashion. The
+usual number allowed to a complete train is four, but three, and
+sometimes even two are used. The train of four dogs is harnessed to the
+'cariole, or sled, by means of two long traces; between these traces the
+dogs stand one after the other, the head of one dog being about a foot
+behind the tail of the dog in front of him. They are attached to the
+traces by a round collar which slips on over the head and ears and then
+lies close on the swell of the neck; this collar buckles on each side to
+the traces, which are kept from touching the ground by a back-band of
+leather buttoned under the dog's ribs or stomach. This back band is
+generally covered with little brass bells; the collar is also hung with
+larger bells, and tufts of gay-coloured ribbons or fox-tails are put upon
+it. Great pride is taken in turning out a train of dogs in good style.
+Beads, bells, and embroidery are freely used to bedizen the poor brutes,
+and a most comical effect is produced by the appearance of so much finery
+upon the woefully frightened dog, who, when he is first put into his
+harness, usually looks the picture of fear. The fact is patent that in
+hauling the dog is put to a work from which his whole nature revolts,
+that is to say the ordinary dog; with the beautiful dog of the Esquimaux
+breed the case is very different. To haul is as natural to him as to
+point is natural to the pointer. He alone looks jolly over the work and
+takes to it kindly, and consequently he alone of all dogs is the best and
+most lasting hauler; longer than any other dog will his clean firm feet
+hold tough over the trying ice, and although other dogs will surpass him
+in the speed which they will maintain for a few days, he alone can travel
+his many hundreds of miles and finish fresh and hearty after all. It is a
+pleasure to sit behind such a train of dogs; it is a pain to watch the
+other poor brutes toiling at their traces. But, after all it is the same
+with dog-driving as with every other thing; there are dogs and there
+-are dogs, and the distance from one to the other is as, great as that
+between a Thames barge and a Cowes schooner.
+
+The hauling-dogs day is a long tissue of trial. While yet the night is
+in its small hours, and the aurora is beginning to think of hiding its
+trembling lustre in the earliest dawn, the hauling-dog has his slumber
+rudely broken by the summons of his driver. Poor beast! All night long he
+has lain curled up in the roundest of round balls hard by the camp;
+there, in the lea of tree-stumps or snow-drift, he has dreamt the dreams
+of peace and comfort. If the night has been one of storm, the
+fast-falling flakes have added to his sense of warmth by covering him
+completely beneath them. Perhaps, too, he will remain unseen by the
+driver when the fatal moment comes for harnessing-up. Not a bit of it. He
+lies ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his
+hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and
+moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or
+aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along
+through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it
+is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If
+there is no track in the snow a man goes in front on snow-shoes, and the
+leading dog, or "foregoer," as he is called, trots close behind him. If
+there should be a track, however faint, the dog-will follow it himself;
+and when sight fails to show it, or storm has hidden it beneath drifts,
+his sense of smell will enable him to keep straight. Thus through the
+long waste we journey on, by frozen lakelet, by willow copse, through
+pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter's day draws to
+its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place
+for the night. Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his
+day's work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful,
+he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists
+himself a bed and goes fast asleep. But the real moment of pleasure is
+still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe,
+on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish from
+the provision-sled, tells him that his is about to begin. He springs
+lightly up and watches eagerly these preparations for his supper. On
+the plains he receives a daily ration of 2 lbs. of pemmican. In the
+forest and lake country, where fish is the staple food, he gets two large
+white-fish raw. He prefers fish to meat, and will work better on it too.
+His supper is soon over; there is a short after-piece of growling and
+snapping at hungry comrade, and then he lies down out in the snow to
+dream that whips have been abolished and hauling is discarded for ever,
+sleeping peacefully until morning, unless indeed some band of wolves
+should prowl around and, scenting campfire, howl their long chorus to the
+midnight skies.
+
+And now, with this introductory digression on dogs, let us return to our
+camp in the thick pine-bluff on the river bank.
+
+The night fell very cold. Between supper and bed there is not much time
+when present cold and perspective early-rising are the chief features of
+the night and morning. I laid down my buffalo robe with more care than
+usual, and got into my sack of deer-skins with a notion that the night
+was going to be one of unusual severity. My sack of deer-skins--so far it
+has been scarcely mentioned in this journal, and yet it played no
+insignificant part in the nightly programme. Its origin and construction
+were simply these. Before leaving Red River I had received from a
+gentleman, well known in the Hudson Bay Company, some most useful
+suggestions as to winter travel. His residence of many years in the
+coldest parts of Labrador, and his long journey into the interior of that
+most wild and sterile land, had made him acquainted with all the
+vicissitudes of northern travel. Under his direction I had procured a
+number of the skins of the common cabri, or small deer, had them made
+into a large sack of some seven feet in length and three in diameter. The
+skin of this deer is very light, but possesses, for some reason with
+which I am unacquainted, a power of giving great warmth to the person it
+covers. The sack was made with the hair turned inside, and was covered on
+the outside with canvass. To make my bed, therefore, became a very simple
+operation: lay down a buffalo robe, unroll the sack, and the thing was
+done. To get into bed was simply to get into the sack, pull the hood over
+one's head, and go to sleep. Remember, there was no tent, no outer
+covering of any kind, nothing but the trees--sometimes not many of
+them--the clouds, or the stars.
+
+During the journey with horses I had generally found the bag too warm,
+and had for the most part slept on it, not in it; but now its time was
+about to begin, and this night in the pine-bluff was to record a signal
+triumph for the sack principle applied to shake-downs.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning the men got up, unable to sleep on
+account of the cold, and set the fire going. The noise soon awoke me, but
+I lay quiet inside the bag, knowing what was going on outside. Now,
+amongst its other advantages, the sack possessed one of no small value.
+It enabled me to tell at once on awaking what the cold was doing outside;
+if it was cold in the sack, or if the hood was fastened down by frozen
+breath to the opening, then it must be a howler outside; then it was time
+to get ready the greasiest breakfast and put on the thickest duffel-socks
+and mittens. On the morning of the 22nd all these symptoms were
+manifest; the bag was not warm, the hood was frozen fast against the
+opening, and one or two smooth-haired dogs were shivering close beside my
+feet and on top of the bag. Tearing under the frozen mouth of the sack, I
+got out into the open. Beyond a doubt it was cold; I don't mean cold in
+the ordinary manner, cold such as you can localize to your feet, or your
+fingers, or your nose, but cold all over, crushing cold. Putting on coat
+and moccassins as close to the fire as possible, I ran to the tree on
+which I had hung the thermometer on the previous evening; it stood at 37
+below zero at 3:30 in the morning. I had slept well; the cabri sack was a
+very Ajax among roosts; it defied the elements. Having eaten a tolerably
+fat breakfast and swallowed a good many cups of hot tea, we packed the
+sleds, harnessed the dogs, and got away from the pine bluff two hours
+before daybreak. Oh, how biting cold it was! On in the grey snow light
+with a terrible wind sweeping up the long reaches of the river; nothing
+spoken, for such cold makes men silent, morose, and savage. After four
+hours travelling, we stopped to dine. It was only 9:30, but we had
+breakfasted six hours before. We were some time before we could make
+fire, but at length it was set going, and we piled the dry driftwood fast
+upon the flames. Then I set up my thermometer again; it registered 39
+below zero, 71 degrees of frost. What it must have been at day break I
+cannot say; but it was sensibly colder than at ten o'clock, and I do not
+doubt must have been 45 below zero. I had never been exposed to any thing
+like this cold before. Set full in the sun at eleven o'clock, the
+thermometer rose only to 26 below zero, the sun seemed to have lost all
+power of warmth; it was very low in the heavens, the day being the
+shortest in the year; in fact, in the centre of the river the sun did not
+show above the steep south bank, while the wind had full sweep from the
+north-east. This portion of the Saskatchewan is the farthest north
+reached by the river in its entire course. It here runs for some distance
+a little north of the 51th parallel of north latitude, and its elevation
+above the sea is about 1801 feet. During the whole day we journeyed on,
+the wind still kept dead against us, and at times it was impossible to
+face its terrible keenness. The dogs began to tire out; the ice cut
+their feet, and the white surface was often speckled with the crimson
+icicles that fell from their wounded toes. Out of the twelve dogs
+composing my cavalcade, it would have been impossible to select four good
+ones. Coffee, Tête Noir, Michinass, and another whose name I forget,
+underwent repeated whalings at the hands of my driver, a half-breed from
+Edmonnton named Frazer. Early in the afternoon the head of Tête Noir was
+reduced to shapeless pulp from tremendous thrashings. Michinass, or the
+"Spotted One," had one eye wherewith to watch the dreaded driver, and
+coffee had devoted so much strength to wild lurches and sudden springs in
+order to dodge the descending whip, that he had none whatever to bestow
+upon his legitimate toil of hauling me. At length, so useless did he
+become, that he had to be taken out altogether from the harness and left
+to his fate on the river. "And this," I said to myself, "is dog-driving;
+this inhuman thrashing and varied cursing, this frantic howling of dogs,
+this bitter, terrible cold is the long-talked of mode of winter travel!"
+To say that I was disgusted and stunned by the prospect of such work for
+hundreds of Miles would be-only to speak a portion of what I felt. Was
+the cold always to be so crushing? were the dogs always to be the same
+wretched creatures? Fortunately, no; but it was only when I reached
+Victoria that night, long after dark, that I learned that the day had
+been very exceptionally severe, and that my dogs were unusually miserable
+ones.
+
+As at Edmonton so in the fort at Victoria the small-pox had again broken
+out; in spite of cold and frost the infection still lurked in many
+places, and in none more fatally than in this little settlement where,
+during the autumn, it had wrought so much havoc among the scanty
+community. In this distant settlement I spent the few days of Christmas;
+the weather had become suddenly milder, although the thermometer still
+stood below zero.
+
+Small-pox had not been the only evil from which Victoria had suffered
+during the year which was about to close; the Sircies had made many raids
+upon it during the summer, stealing-down the sheltering banks of a small
+creek which entered the Saskatchewan at the opposite side, and then
+swimming the broad river during the night and lying hidden at day in the
+high corn-fields of the mission. Incredible though it may appear, they
+continued this practice at a time when they were being; swept away by the
+small-pox; their bodies were found in one instance dead upon the bank of
+the river they had crossed by swimming when the fever of the disease had
+been at its height. Those who live their lives quietly at home, who sleep
+in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of
+what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test. With us,
+to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with
+the casual illnesses of our civilization: when he lies down it is to
+sleep for a few hours, or-for ever. Thus these Sircies had literally kept
+the war-trail till they died. When the corn-fields were being cut around
+the mission, the reapers found unmistakable traces of how these wild men
+had kept the field undaunted by disease. Long black hair was found where
+it had fallen from the head of some brave in the lairs from which he had
+watched the horses of his enemies; the ruling passion had been strong in
+death. In the end, the much-coveted horses were carried off by the few
+survivors, and the mission had to bewail the loss of some of its best
+steeds. One, a mare belonging to the missionary himself, had returned to
+her home after an absence of a few days, but she carried in her flank a
+couple of Sircie arrows. She had broken away from the band, and the
+braves had sent their arrows after her in an attempt to kill what they
+could not keep. To add to the-misfortunes of the settlement, the buffalo
+were far out in the great plains; so between disease, war, and famine,
+Victoria had had a hard time of it.
+
+In the farmyard of the mission-house there lay-a curious block of metal
+of immense weight'; it was ringed,-deeply indented, and polished on the
+outer edges of the indentations by the wear and friction of many years.
+Its history was a curious one. Longer than any man could say, it had lain
+on the summit of a hill far out in the southern prairies. It had been a
+medicine-stone of surpassing virtue among the Indians over a vast
+territory. No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity
+without paying a visit to this great-medicine: it was said to be
+increasing yearly in weight. Old men remembered having heard old men say
+that they had once lifted it easily from the ground. Now no single man
+could carry it. And it was no wonder that this metallic stone should be a
+Manito-stone and an object of intense veneration to the Indian; it had
+come down from heaven; it did not belong to the earth, but had descended
+out of the sky; it was, in fact an aerolite. Not very long before my,
+visit this curious stone had been removed from the hill upon which it had
+so long rested and brought to the Mission of Victoria by some person from
+that place: When the Indians found that it had been taken away, they
+were loud in the expression of their regret. The old medicine men
+declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes and that war,
+disease, and dearth of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the
+Saskatchewan. This was not a prophecy made after the occurrence of the
+plague of small-pox, for in a magazine published by the Wesleyan Society
+in Canada there appears a letter from the missionary, setting forth the
+predictions of the medicine-men a year prior to my visit. The letter
+concludes with an expression of thanks that their evil prognostications
+had not been attended with success. But a few months later brought all
+the three evils upon the Indians; and never, probably, since the first
+trader had reached the country had so many afflictions of war, famine,
+and plague fallen upon the _Crees and the Blackfeet as during the year
+which succeeded the useless removal of their Manito-stone from the lone
+hill-top upon which the skies had cast it.
+
+I spent the evening of Christmas Day in the house of the missionary. Two
+of his daughters sang very sweetly to the music of a small melodian. Both
+song and strain were sad--sadder, perhaps, than the words or music could
+make them; for the recollection of the two absent ones, whose
+newly-made graves, covered with their first snow, lay close outside,
+mingled with the hymn and deepened the melancholy of the music.
+
+On the day after Christmas Day I left Victoria, with three trains of
+dogs, bound for Fort Pitt. This time the drivers were all English
+half-breeds, and that tongue was chiefly used to accelerate the dogs. The
+temperature had risen considerably, and the snow was soft and clammy,
+making the "hauling" heavy upon the dogs. For my own use I had a very
+excellent train, but the other two were of the useless class.` As
+before, the beatings were incessant, and I witnessed the first example
+of a very common occurrence in dog-driving--I beheld the operation known
+as "sending a dog to Rome." This consists simply of striking him over the
+head with a large stick until he falls perfectly senseless to the
+ground; after a little he revives, and, with memory of the awful blows
+that took his consciousness away full upon him, he pulls franticly at his
+load. Oftentimes a dog is "sent to Rome" because he will not allow the
+driver to arrange some hitch in the harness; then, while he is
+insensible, the necessary alteration is carried out, and when the dog
+recovers he receives a terrible lash of the whip to set him going again.
+The half-breeds are a race easily offended, prone to sulk if reproved;
+but at the risk of causing delay and inconvenience I had to interfere'
+with a peremptory order that "sending to Rome" should be at once
+discontinued in my trains. The wretched "Whisky," after his voyage to the
+Eternal City, appeared quite overcome with what he had there seen, and
+continued to stagger along the trail, making feeble efforts to keep
+straight. This tendency to wobble caused the half-breeds to indulge in
+funny remarks, one of them calling the track a "drunken trail."
+Eventually, "Whisky" was abandoned to his fate. I had never been a
+believer in the pluck and courage of the men who are the descendants of
+mixed European and Indian parents. Admirable as guides, unequalled as
+voyageurs, trappers, and hunters, they nevertheless are wanting in those
+qualities which give courage or true manhood. "Tell me your friends and I
+will tell you what you are ": is a sound proverb, and in no sense more
+true than when the bounds of man's friendships are stretched Wide.
+enough to admit those dumb companions, the horse and the dog. I never
+knew a man yet, or for that matter a woman, worth much who did not like
+dogs and horses, and I would always feel inclined to suspect a man who
+was shunned by a dog. The cruelty so systematically practised upon dogs
+by their half-breed drivers is utterly unwarrantable. In winter the poor
+brutes become more than ever the benefactors of man, uniting in
+themselves all the services of horse and dog--by day they work, by night
+they watch, and the man must be a very cur in nature who would inflict,
+at such a time, needless cruelty upon the animal that renders him so much
+assistance. On this day, the 29th December, we made a night march in the
+hope of reaching Fort Pitt. For four hours we walked on through the dark
+until the trail led us suddenly into the midst of an immense band of
+animals, which commenced to dash around us in a high state of alarm. At
+first we fancied in the indistinct moonlight that they were buffalo, but
+another instant sufficed to prove them horses. We had, in fact, struck
+into the middle of the Fort Pitt band of horses, numbering some ninety or
+a hundred head. We were, however, still a long way from the fort, and as
+the trail was utterly lost in the confused medley of tracks all round us,
+we were compelled to halt for the night near midnight. In a small clump
+of willows we made a hasty camp and lay down to sleep. Daylight next
+morning showed that conspicuous landmark called the Frenchman's Knoll
+rising north-east; and lying in the snow close beside us was poor
+"Whisky." He had followed on during the night from the place where he had
+been abandoned on the previous day, and had come up again with his
+persecutors while they lay asleep; for, after all, there was one fate
+worse than being "sent to Rome," and that was being left to starve. After
+a few hours run we reached Fort Pitt, having travelled about 150 miles
+in three days and a half.
+
+Fort Pitt was destitute of fresh dogs or drivers, and consequently a
+delay of some days became necessary before my onward journey could be
+resumed. In the absence of dogs and drivers Fort Pitt, however, offered
+small-pox to its visitors. A case had broken out a few days previous to
+my arrival impossible to trace in any way, but probably the result of
+some infection conveyed into the fort during the terrible visitation of
+the autumn. I have already spoken of the power which the Indian possesses
+of continuing the ordinary avocations of his life in the presence of
+disease. This power he also possesses under that most terrible
+affliction-the loss of sight. Blindness is by no means an uncommon
+occurrence among the tribes of the Saskatchewan. The blinding glare of
+the snow-covered plains, the sand in summer, and, above all, the dense
+smoke of the tents, where the fire of wood, lighted in the centre, fills
+the whole lodge with a smoke which is peculiarly trying to the sight-all
+these causes render ophthalmic affections among the Indians a common
+misfortune. Here is the story of a blind Cree who arrived at Fort Pitt
+one day weak with starvation: From a distant camp he had started five
+days before, in company with his wife. They had some skins to trade, so
+they loaded their dog and set out on the march--the woman led the way,
+the blind man followed next, and the dog brought up the rear. Soon they
+approached a plain upon which buffalo were feeding. The dog, seeing the
+buffalo, left the trail, and, carrying the furs with him, gave chase.
+Away out of sight he went, until there was nothing for it but to set out
+in pursuit of him. Telling her husband to wait in this spot until she
+returned, the woman now started after the dog. Time passed,--it was
+growing late, and the wind swept coldly over the snow. The blind man began
+to grow uneasy; "She has lost her way," he said to himself; "I will go
+on, and we may meet." He walked on--he called aloud, but there was no
+answer; go back he could not; he knew by the coldness of the air that
+night had fallen on the plain, but day and night were alike to him. He
+was alone--he was lost. Suddenly he felt against his feet the rustle of
+long sedgy grass--he stooped down and found that he had reached the
+margin of a frozen lake. He was tired, and it was time to rest; so with
+his knife he cut a quantity of long dry grass, and, making a bed for
+himself on the margin of the lake, lay down and slept. Let us go back to
+the woman. The dog had led her a long chase, and it was very late when
+she got back to the spot where she had left her husband-he was gone, but
+his tracks in the snow were visible, and she hurried after him. Suddenly
+the wind arose, the light powdery snow began to drift in clouds over the
+surface of the plain, the track was speedily obliterated and night was
+coming on. Still she followed the general direction of the footprints,
+and at last came to the border of the same lake by which her husband was
+lying asleep, but it was at some distance from the spot. She too was
+tired, and, making a fire in a thicket, she lay down to sleep. About the
+middle of the night the man awoke and set out again on his solitary way.
+It snowed all night: the morning came, the day passed, the night closed
+again--again the morning dawned, and still he wandered on. For three days
+he travelled thus over an immense plain, without food, and having only
+the snow wherewith to quench his thirst. On the third day he walked into
+a thicket; he felt around, and found that the timber was dry; with his
+axe he cut down some wood, then struck a light and made a fire. When the
+fire was alight he laid his gun down beside it, and went to gather more
+wood; but fate was heavy against him, he was unable to find the fire
+which he had lighted, and by which he had left his gun. He made another
+fire, and again the same result. A third time he set to work; and now, to
+make certain of his getting back, again, he tied a line to a tree close
+beside his fire, and then set on to gather wood. Again the fates smote
+him-his line broke, and he had to grope his way in weary search. But
+chance, tired of ill-treating him so long, now stood his friend--he found
+the first fire, and with it his gun and blanket. Again he travelled on,
+but now his strength began to fail, and for the first time his heart sank
+within him--blind, starving, and utterly lost, there seemed no hope on
+earth for him. "Then," he said, "I thought of the Great Spirit of whom
+the white men speak, and I called aloud to him, 'O Great Spirit! have
+pity on me, and show me the path! and as I said it I heard close by the
+calling of a crow, and I knew that the road was not far off. I followed
+the call; soon I felt the crusted snow of a path under my feet, and the
+next day reached the fort." He had been five days without food.
+
+No man can starve better than the Indian--no man can feast better either.
+For long days and nights, he will go without sustenance of any kind; but
+see him when the buffalo are near, when the cows are fat; see him then if
+you want to know what quantity of food it is possible for a man to
+consume at a sitting. Here is one bill of fare:--Seven men in thirteen
+days consumed two buffalo bulls, seven cabri, 40 lbs. of pemmican, and a
+great many ducks and geese, and on the last day there was nothing to eat.
+I am perfectly aware that this enormous quantity could not have
+weighed less than 1600 lbs. at the very lowest estimate, which would
+give a daily ration to each man of 18 lbs.; but, incredible as this may
+appear, it is by no means impossible. During the entire time I remained
+at Fort Pitt the daily ration issued to each man was 10 lbs. of beef.
+Beef is so much richer and coarser food than buffalo meat, that 10 lbs.
+of the former would be equivalent-to 15lbs. or 16 lbs. of the latter, and
+yet every scrap of that 10 lbs. was eaten by the man who received it. The
+women got 5 lbs., and the children, no matter how small, 3 lbs. each.
+Fancy a child in arms getting 3 lbs. of beef for its daily sustenance!
+The old Orkney men of the Hudson Bay Company servants must have seen in
+such a ration the realization of the poet's lines, "O Caledonia, stern
+and wild! Meet nurse for a poetic child," etc. All these people at Fort
+Pitt were idle, and therefore were not capable of eating as much as if
+they had been on the plains. The wild hills that surround Fort Pitt are
+frequently the scenes of Indian ambush and attack, and on more than one
+occasion the fort itself has been captured by the Blackfeet. The region
+in which Fort Pitt stands is a favourite camping-ground of the Crees,
+and the Blackfeet cannot be persuaded that the people of the fort are not
+the active friends and allies of their enemies in fact, Fort Pitt and
+Carlton are looked upon by them as places belonging to another company
+altogether from the one which rules at the Mountain House and at
+Edmonton. "If it was the same company," they-say, "how could they give
+our enemies, the Crees, guns and powder; for do they not give us guns
+and powder too?" This mode of argument, which refuses to recognize that
+species of neutrality so dear to the English heart, is eminently
+calculated to lay Fort Pitt open to Blackfeet raid. It is only a few
+years since the place was plundered by a large band, but the general
+forbearance displayed by the Indians on that occasion is nevertheless
+remarkable. Here is the story:
+
+One morning the people in the fort beheld a small party of Blackfeet on a
+high hill at the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. The usual flag
+carried by the chief was waved to denote a wish to trade, and accordingly
+the officer in charge pushed off in his boat to meet and hold converse
+with the party. When he reached the other side he found the chief and a
+few men drawn up to receive him.
+
+"Are there Crees around the fort?" asked the chief.
+
+"No," replied the trader; "there are none with us."
+
+"You speak with a forked tongue," answered the Blackfoot--dividing his
+fingers as he spoke to indicate that the-other was speaking falsely.
+
+Just at that moment something caught the traders eye in the bushes along
+the river bank; he looked again and saw, close alongside, the willows
+swarming with naked Blackfeet. He made one spring back into his boat, and
+called to his men to shove off; but it was too late. In an instant two
+hundred braves rose out of the grass and willows and rushed into the
+water; they caught the boat and brought her back to the shore; then,
+filling her as full as she would hold with men, they pushed off for the
+other side. To put as good a face upon matters as possible, the trader
+commenced a trade, and at first the batch that had crossed, about forty
+in number, kept quiet enough, but some-of their number took the boat back
+again to the south shore and brought over the entire band; then the wild
+work commenced, bolts and bars were broken open, the trading-shop was
+quickly cleared out, and in the highest spirits, laughing loudly at the
+glorious fun they were having, the braves commenced to enter the houses,
+ripping up the feather beds to look for guns and tearing down calico
+curtains for finery. The men of the fort were nearly all away in the
+plains, and the women and children were in a high state of alarm.
+Sometimes the Indians would point their guns at the women, then drag them
+off the beds on which they were sitting and rip open bedding and
+mattress, looking for concealed weapons; but no further violence was
+attempted, and the whole thing was accompanied by such peals of laughter
+that it was evident the braves had not enjoyed such a "high old time" for
+a very long period. At last the chief, thinking, perhaps, that things had
+gone quite far enough, called out, in a loud voice, "Crees! Crees!" and,
+dashing out of the fort, was quickly followed by the whole band.
+
+Still in high good humour, the braves recrossed the river, and, turning
+round on the farther shore, fired a volley to Wards the fort; but as the
+distance was at least 500 yards, this parting salute was simply as a
+bravado. This band was evidently bent on mischief. As they retreated
+south to their own country they met the carts belonging to the fort on
+their way from the plains; the men in charge ran off with the fleetest
+horses, but the carts were all captured and ransacked, and an old
+Scotchman, a servant of the Company, who stood his ground, was reduced to
+a state bordering upon nudity by the frequent demands of his captors.
+
+The Blackfeet chiefs exercise great authority over their braves; some of
+them are men of considerable natural abilities, and all-must be brave and
+celebrated in battle. To disobey the mandate of a chief is at times to
+court instant death at his hands. At the present time the two most
+formidable chiefs of the Blackfeet nations are Sapoo-max-sikes, or "The
+Great Crow's Claw;" and Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, or "The Great Swan."
+These men are widely different in their characters; the Crow's Claw being
+a man whose word once given can be relied on to the death, but the
+other is represented as a man of colossal size and savage disposition,
+crafty and treacherous.
+
+During the year just past death had struck heavily among the Blackfeet
+chiefs. The death of one of their greatest men, Pe-na-koam, or "The
+Far-off Dawn," was worthy of a great brave. When he felt that his last
+night had come, he ordered his best horse to be brought to the door of
+the tent, and mounting him he rode slowly around the camp; at each
+corner he halted and called out, in a loud voice to his people, "The last
+hour of Pe-na-koam has come; but to his people he says, Be brave;
+separate into small parties, so that this disease will have less power
+to kill you; be strong to fight our enemies the Crees, and be able to
+destroy them. It is no matter now that this disease has come upon us, for
+our enemies have got it too, and they will also die of it. Pe-na-koam
+tells his people before he dies to live so that they may fight their
+enemies, and be strong." It is said that, having spoken thus, he died
+quietly. Upon the top of a lonely hill they laid the body of their chief
+beneath a tent hung round with scarlet cloth; beside him they put six
+revolvers and two American repeating rifles, an at the door of his tent
+twelve horses were slain, so that their spirits would carry him in the
+green prairies of the happy hunting-grounds; four hundred blankets were
+piled around as offerings to his memory, and then the tribe moved away
+from the spot, leaving the tomb of their dead king to the winds and to
+the wolves.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of Hunting--A Fight
+--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great Cold-Carlton--Family
+Responsibilities.
+
+WHEN the early Spanish adventurers penetrated from the sea-board of
+America into the great central prairie region, they beheld for the first
+time a strange animal whose countless numbers covered the face of the
+country. When De Soto had been buried in the dark waters of the
+Mississippi, the remnant of his band, pursuing their western way, entered
+the "Country of the Wild Cows." When in the same year explorers pushed
+their way northward from Mexico into the region of the Rio-del-Norte,
+they looked over immense plains black with moving beasts. Nearly 100
+years later settlers on the coasts of New England heard from
+westward-hailing Indians of huge beasts on the shores of a great lake not
+many days journey to the north-west. Naturalists in Europe, hearing of
+the new animal, named it the bison; but the colonists united in calling
+it the buffalo, and, as is usual in such cases, although science clearly
+demonstrated that it was a bison, and was not a buffalo, scientific
+knowledge had not a chance against practical ignorance, and "buffalo"
+carried the day. The true home of this animal lay in the great prairie
+region between the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the Texan forest,
+and the Saskatchewan River and although undoubted evidence exists to show
+that at some period the buffalo reached in his vast migrations the shores
+of the Pacific and the Atlantic; yet since the party of De Soto only
+entered the Country of the Wild Cows after they had crossed the
+Mississippi, it may fairly be inferred that the Ohio River and the lower
+Mississippi formed the eastern boundaries to the wanderings of the herds
+since the New World has been known to the white man. Still even within
+this immense region, a region not less than 1,000,000 of square miles in
+area, the havoc worked by the European has been terrible. Faster even
+than the decay of the Indian has gone on the destruction-of the bison and
+only a few years must elapse before this noble beast, hunted down in the
+last recesses of his breeding-grounds, will have taken his place in the
+long list of those extinct giants which once dwelt in our world. Many
+favourite spots had this huge animal throughout the great domain over
+which he roamed-many beautiful scenes where, along river meadows, the
+grass in winter was still succulent and the wooded "bays" gave food and
+shelter, but-no more favourite ground than this valley of the
+Saskatchewan; thither he wended his way from the bleak plains of the
+Missouri in herds that passed and passed for days and nights in seemingly
+never-ending numbers. Along the countless creeks and rivers that add
+their tribute to the great stream, along the banks of the Battle River
+and the Vermilion River, along the many White Earth Rivers and Sturgeon
+Creeks of the upper and middle Saskatchewan, down through the willow
+copses and aspen thickets of the Touchwood Hills and the Assineboine, the
+great beasts dwelt in all the happiness of calf-rearing and connubial
+felicity. The Indians who then occupied these regions killed only what
+was required for the supply of the camps-a mere speck in the dense herds
+that roamed up to the very doors of the wigwams; but when the trader
+pushed his adventurous way into the fur regions of the North, the herds
+of the Saskatchewan plains began to experience a change in their
+surroundings. The meat, pounded down` and mixed with fat into "pemmican,"
+was found to supply a most excellent food for transport service, and
+accordingly vast numbers of buffalo were destroyed to supply the demand
+of the fur traders. In the border-land between the wooded country and the
+plains, the Crees, not satisfied with the ordinary methods of destroying
+the buffalo, devised a plan by which great multitudes could be easily
+annihilated. This method of hunting, consists in the erection of strong
+wooden enclosures called pounds, into which the buffalo are guided by the
+supposed magic power of a medicine-man. Sometimes for two days the
+medicine-man will live with the herd, which he half guides and half
+drives into the enclosures; sometimes he is on the right, sometimes on
+the left, and sometimes, again, in rear of the herd, but never to
+windward of them. At last they approach the pound, which is usually
+concealed in a thicket of wood. For many miles from the entrance to this
+pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead
+out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the
+medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd,
+finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed,
+until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across
+the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. Then
+commences the slaughter. From the wooded fence around arrows and bullets
+are poured into the dense plunging mass of buffalo careering wildly round
+the ring. Always going in one direction, with the sun, the poor beasts
+race on until not a living thing is left; then, when there is nothing
+more to kill, the cutting-up commences, and pemmican-making goes on.
+
+Widely different from this indiscriminate slaughter is the fair hunt on
+horseback in the great open plains. The approach, the cautious survey
+over some hill-top, the wild charge on the herd, the headlong flight, the
+turn to bay, the flight and fall--all this contains a large share of that
+excitement which we call by the much abused term sport. It is possible,
+however, that many of those who delight in killing placid pheasants and
+stoical partridges might enjoy the huge battue of an Indian "pound" in
+preference to the wild charge over the sky bound prairie, but, for my
+part, not being of the privileged few who breed pheasants at the expense
+of peasants (what a difference the "h" makes in Malthusian theories!), I
+have been compelled to seek my sport in hot climates instead of in hot
+corners, and in the sandy bluffs of Nebraska and the Missouri have drawn
+many an hour of keen enjoyment from the long chase of the buffalo. One
+evening, shortly before sunset, I was steering my way through the sandy
+hills of the Platte Valley, in the State of Nebraska, slowly towards Fort
+Kearney; both horse and rider were tired after a long day over sand-bluff
+and meadow-land, for buffalo were plenty, and five tongues dangling to
+the saddle told that horse, man, and rifle had not been idle. Crossing a
+grassy ridge, I suddenly came in sight of three buffalo just emerging
+from the broken bluff. Tired as was my horse, the sight of one of these
+three animals urged me to one last chase. He was a very large bull,
+whose black shaggy mane and dewlaps nearly brushed the short prairie grass
+beneath him. I dismounted behind the hill, tightened the saddle-girths,
+looked to rifle and cartridge touch, and then remounting rode slowly
+over the intervening ridge. As I came in view of the three beasts
+thus majestically stalking their way towards the Platte for the luxury of
+an evening drink, the three shaggy heads were thrown up--one steady look
+given, then round went the animals and away for the bluffs again. With a
+whoop and a cheer I gave chase, and the mustang, answering gamely to my
+call, launched himself well over the prairie. Singling out the large
+bull, I urged the horse with spur and voice, then, rising in the stirrups
+I took a snap-shot at my quarry. The bullet struck him in the flanks, and
+quick as lightning he wheeled down upon me. It was now my turn to run. I
+had urged the horse with voice and spur to close with the buffalo, but
+still more vigorously did I endeavour, under the altered position of
+affairs, to make him increase the distance lying between us. Down the
+sandy incline thundered the huge beast, gaining on us at every stride.
+Looking back over my shoulder, I saw him close to my horse's tail, with
+head lowered and eyes flashing furiously-under their shaggy covering. The
+horse was tired; the buffalo was fresh, and it seemed as though another
+instant must bring pursuer and pursued into wild collision. Throwing back
+my rifle over the crupper; I laid it at arm's length, with muzzle full
+upon the buffalo's head. The shot struck the centre of his forehead, but
+he only shook his head when he received it; still it seemed to check his
+pace a little, and as we had now reached level ground the horse began to
+gain something upon his pursuer. Quite as suddenly as he had charged the
+bull now changed his tactics. Wheeling off he followed his companions,
+who by this time had vanished into the bluffs. It never would have done
+to lose him after such a fight, so Ii brought the mustang round again,
+and gave chase. This time a shot fired low behind the shoulder brought my
+fierce friend to bay. Proudly he turned upon me, but now his rage was
+calm and stately, he pawed the ground, and blew with short angry snorts
+the sand in clouds from the plain; moving thus slowly towards me, he
+looked the incarnation of strength and angry pride. But his doom was
+sealed. I remember so vividly all the wild surroundings of the scene--the
+great silent waste, the two buffalo watching from a hill-top the fight of
+their leader, the noble beast himself stricken but defiant, and beyond,
+the thousand glories of the prairie sunset. It was only to last an
+instant, for the giant bull, still with low-bent head and angry snorts,
+advancing slowly towards his puny enemy, sank quietly to the plain and
+stretched his limbs in death. Late that night I reached the American
+fort with six tongues hanging to my saddle, but never since that hour,
+though often but a two days ride from buffalo, have I sought to take the
+life of one of these noble animals. Too soon will the last of them have
+vanished from the great central prairie land; never again will those
+countless herds roam from the Platte to the Missouri, from the Missouri
+to the Saskatchewan; chased for his robe, for his beef, for sport, for
+the very pastime of his death, he is rapidly vanishing from the land. Far
+in the northern forests of the Athabasca a few buffaloes may for a time
+bid defiance to man, but they, too, must disappear and nothing be left of
+this giant beast save the bones that for many an age will whiten the
+prairies over which the great herds roamed at will in times before the
+white man came.
+
+It was the 5th of January before the return of the dogs from an Indian
+trade enabled me to get away from Fort Pitt. During the days I had
+remained in the fort the snow covering had deepened on the plains and
+winter had got a still firmer grasp upon the river and meadow. In two
+days travel we ran the length of the river between Fort Pitt and Battle
+River, travelling rapidly over the ice down the centre of the stream. The
+dogs were good ones, the drivers well versed in their work, and although
+the thermometer stood at 20 degrees below zero on the evening of the 6th,
+the whole run tended in no small degree to improve the general opinion
+which I had previously formed upon the delights of dog-travel. Arrived at
+Battle River, I found that the Crees had disappeared since my former
+visit; the place was now tenanted only by a few Indians and half-breeds.
+It seemed to be my fate to encounter cases of sickness at every post on
+my return journey. Here a woman was lying in a state of complete
+unconsciousness with intervals of convulsion and spitting of blood. It
+was in vain that I represented my total inability to deal with such a
+case. The friends of the lady all declared that it was necessary that I
+should see her, and accordingly I was introduced into the miserable hut
+in which she lay. She was stretched upon a low bed in one corner of a
+room about seven feet square; the roof approached so near the ground that
+I was unable to stand straight in any part of the place; the rough floor
+was crowded with women squatted thickly upon it, and a huge fire blazed
+in a corner, making the heat something terrible. Having gone through the
+ordinary medical programme of pulse feeling, I put some general
+questions to the surrounding bevy of women which, being duly interpreted
+into Cree, elicited the fact that the sick woman had been engaged in
+carrying a very heavy load of wood on her back for the use of her lord
+and master, and that while she had been thus employed she was seized with
+convulsions and became senseless. "What is it?" said the Hudson Bay man,
+looking at me in a manner which seemed to indicate complete confidence in
+my professional sagacity. "Do you think it's small-pox?" Some
+acquaintance with this disease enabled me to state my deliberate
+conviction that it was not small-pox, but as to what particular form of
+the many "ills that flesh is heir to" it really was, I could not for the
+life of me determine. I had not even that clue which the Yankee
+practitioner is said to have established for his guidance in the case of
+his infant patient, whose puzzling ailment he endeavoured to
+diagnosticate by administering what he termed "a convulsion powder,"
+being a whale at the treatment of convulsions. In the case now before me
+convulsions were unfortunately of frequent occurrence, and I could not
+lay claim to the high powers of pathology which the Yankee had asserted
+himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circumstances I judged it
+expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a
+compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of
+infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next
+morning that--whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to
+state the patient had shown decided symptoms of rallying, and took my
+departure from Battle River with the reputation of being a "medicine-man"
+of the very first order.
+
+I now began to experience the full toil and labour of a winter journey.
+Our course lay across a bare, open region on which for distances of
+thirty to forty miles not one tree or bush was visible; the cold was very
+great, and the snow, lying loosely as it had fallen, was so soft that the
+dogs sank through the drifts as they pulled slowly at their loads. On the
+evening of the 10th January we reached a little clump of poplars on the
+edge of a large plain on which no tree was visible. It was piercingly
+cold, a bitter wind swept across the snow, making us glad to find even
+this poor shelter against the coming night. Two hours after dark the
+thermometer stood at minus 38 degrees, or 70 degrees of frost. The wood
+was small and poor; the wind howled through the scanty thicket, driving
+the smoke into our eyes as we cowered over the fire. Oh, what misery it
+was! and how blank seemed the prospect before me! 900 miles still to
+travel, and to-day I had only made about twenty miles, toiling from dawn
+to dark through blinding drift and intense cold. On again next morning
+over the trackless plain, thermometer at minus 20 in morning, and minus
+12 at midday, with high wind, snow, and heavy drift. One of my men, a
+half-breed in name, an Indian in reality, became utterly done up from
+cold and exposure-the others would have left him behind to make his own
+way through the snow, or most likely to lie down and die, but I stopped
+the doggs until he came up, and then let him lie on one of the sleds for
+the remainder of the day. He was a miserable-looking wretch, but he ate
+enormous quantities of pemmican at every meal. After four days of very
+arduous travel we reached Carlton at sunset on the 12th January. The
+thermometer had kept varying between 20 and 38 degrees below zero every
+night, but on the night of the 12th surpassed any thing I had yet
+experienced. I spent that night in a room at Carlton, a room in which a
+fire had been burning until midnight, nevertheless at daybreak on the 13th
+the thermometer showed -20 degrees on the table close to my bed. At
+half-past ten o'clock, when placed outside, facing north, it fell to -44
+degrees, and I afterwards ascertained that an instrument kept at the
+mission of Prince Albert, 60 miles east from Carlton, showed the enormous
+amount of 51 degrees below zero at daybreak that morning, 83 degrees of
+frost. This was the coldest night during the winter, but it was clear,
+calm, and fine. I now determined to leave the usual winter route from
+Carlton to Red River, and to strike out a new line of travel, which,
+though very much longer than the trail via Fort Pelly, had several
+advantages to recommend it to my choice. In the first place, it promised a
+new line of country down the great valley of the Saskatchewan River to its
+expansion into the sheet of water called Cedar Lake, and from thence
+across the dividing ridge into the Lake Winnipegosis, down the length of
+that water and its southern neighbour, the Lake Manitoba, until the
+boundary of the new province would be again reached, fully 700 miles from
+Carlton. It was a long, cold travel, but it promised the novelty of
+tracing to its delta in the vast marshes of Cumberland and the Pasquia,
+the great river whose foaming torrent I had forded at the Rocky Mountains,
+and whose middle course I had followed for more than a month of wintry
+travel.
+
+Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had
+nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those
+instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude
+had commenced--that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all
+rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself
+round and round before he lies down to sleep--the instinct bred in him in
+that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the
+long grasses of the primeval prairies--so man, in the midst of his
+civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of
+the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt. My
+lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely
+coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds
+himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination
+and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it
+is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee
+at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago
+time "When wild in woods the noble savage ran." But be this as it may,
+-this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under
+the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown
+monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long
+before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one
+to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings
+like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from
+that long  total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of
+the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would
+relish with keen appetite the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious
+tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the
+fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and
+pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of
+enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow
+without one feeling of despondency. These icy nights, too, were often
+filled with the strange meteors of the north. Hour by hour have I watched
+the many-hued shafts of the aurora trembling from their northern home
+across the starlight of the zenith, till their lustre lighted up the
+silent landscape of the frozen river with that weird light which the
+Indians name "the dance of the dead spirits." At times, too, the "sun
+dogs" hung about the sun so close, that it was not always easy to tell
+which was the real sun and which the mock one; but wild weather usually
+followed the track of the sun dogs; and whenever I saw them in the
+heavens I looked for deeper snow and colder bivouacs.
+
+Carlton stands on the edge of the great forest region whose shores, if we
+may use the expression, are washed by the waves of the prairie ocean
+lying south of it; but the waves are of fire, not of water. Year by year
+the great torrent of flame moves on deeper and deeper into the dark ranks
+of the solemn-standing pines; year by year a wider region is laid open to
+the influences of sun and shower, and soon the traces of the conflict are
+hidden beneath the waving grass, and clinging vetches, and the clumps of
+tufted prairie roses. But another species of vegetation also springs up
+in the track of the fire; groves of aspens and poplars grow out of the
+burnt soil, giving to the country that park-like appearance already
+spoken of. Nestling along the borders of the innumerable lakes that stud
+the face of the Saskatchewan region, these poplar thickets sometimes
+attain large growth, but the fire too frequently checks their progress,
+and many of them stand bare and dry to delight the eye of the traveller
+with the assurance of an ample store of bright and warm firewood for his
+winter camp when the sunset bids him begin to make all cosy against the
+night.
+
+After my usual delay of one day, I set out from Carlton, bound for the
+pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan. My first stage was to be a short
+one. Sixty miles east from Carlton lies the small Presbyterian mission
+called Prince Albert. Carlton being destitute of dogs, I was obliged to
+take horses again into use; but the distance was only a two days march,
+and the track lay all the way upon the river. The wife of one of the
+Hudson Bay officers, desirous of visiting the mission, took advantage of
+my escort to travel to Prince Albert; and thus a lady, a nurse, and an
+infant aged eight months, became suddenly added to my responsibilities,
+with the thermometer varying between 70 and 80 degrees of frost I must
+candidly admit to having entertained very grave feelings at the
+contemplation of these family liabilities. A baby at any period of a
+man's life is a very serious affair, but a baby below zero is something
+appalling.
+
+The first night passed over without accident.` I resigned my deerskin bag
+to the lady and her infant, and Mrs. Winslow herself could not have
+desired a more peaceful state of slumber than that enjoyed by the
+youthful traveller. But the second night was a terror long to be
+remembered; the cold was intense. Out of the inmost recesses of my
+abandoned bag came those dire screams which result from infantile
+disquietude. Shivering, under my blanket, I listened to the terrible
+commotion going on in the interior of that cold-defying construction that
+so long had stood my warmest friend.
+
+At daybreak, chilled to the marrow, I rose, and gathered the fire together
+in speechless agony: no wonder, the thermometer stood at 40 degrees
+below zero; and yet, can it be believed? the baby seemed to be perfectly
+oblivious to the benefits of the bag, and continued to howl unmercifully.
+Such is the perversity of human nature even at that early age! Our
+arrival at the mission put an end to my family responsibilities, and
+restored me once more to the beloved bag; but the warm atmosphere of a
+house soon revealed the cause of much of the commotion of the night.
+"Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" displayed two round red marks upon its
+chubby countenance! "Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" had, in fact, been
+frost-bitten about the region of the nose and cheeks, and hence the
+hubbub. After a delay of two days at the mission, during which the
+thermometer always showed more than 60 degrees of frost in the early
+morning, I continued my journey towards the east, crossing over from the
+North to the South Branch of the Saskatchewan at a point some twenty
+miles from the junction of the two rivers--a rich and fertile land, well
+wooded and watered, a region destined in the near future to hear its
+echoes wake to other sounds than those of moose-call or wolf-howl. It was
+dusk in the evening of the 19th of January when we reached the high
+ground which looks down upon the "forks" of the Saskatchewan River. On
+some low ground at the farther side of the North Branch a camp-fire
+glimmered in the twilight. On the ridges beyond stood the dark pines of
+the Great Sub-Arctic Forest, and below lay the two broad converging
+rivers whose immense currents; hushed beneath the weight of ice, here
+merged into the single channel of the Lower Saskatchewan--a wild, weird
+scene it looked as the shadows closed around it. We descended with
+difficulty the steep bank and crossed the river to the camp-fire on the
+north shore. Three red-deer hunters were around it; they had some freshly
+killed elk meat, and potatoes from Fort-à-la-Corne, eighteen miles below
+the forks; and with so many delicacies our supper à-la-fourchette,
+despite a snow-storm, was a decided success.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois
+--Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The
+solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+AT the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the
+Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where
+the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling
+north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From
+Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region
+of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an
+ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch
+far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires
+sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the
+forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of
+autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place
+to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the
+extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of
+the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded
+tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the
+great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a
+circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp
+and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded
+tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great
+preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the
+marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest
+mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here
+are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to
+precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur
+trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan,
+the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the
+systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and
+thee Arctic Ocean.
+
+This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or
+other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men
+shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the shores
+of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two
+great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the
+trader! Less than 100 miles of canal through low alluvial soil have only
+to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the
+head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible
+supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the
+height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have
+rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the
+harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have
+risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral
+wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will
+ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the
+mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of
+the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the
+arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible
+that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave
+unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east
+have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the
+countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the
+Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become
+the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on
+the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters
+the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another
+picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and
+man's labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of
+plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and
+the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the
+buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter
+before us.
+
+As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan
+and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their
+most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans,
+at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error,
+and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of
+the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of
+Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on
+the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of
+Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des
+Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more
+conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to
+have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact
+that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took
+possession of it.
+
+During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay
+Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to
+the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The
+descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different
+portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in
+all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable
+warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have
+they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of
+Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech
+addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary
+station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
+
+"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told
+us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white
+tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in
+different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other
+towards the setting sun?"
+
+"Well, it is true."
+
+"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for
+evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in
+the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point
+out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the
+man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a
+savage!
+
+Fort-à-la-Corne lies some twenty miles below the point of junction of the
+rivers. Towards Fort-à-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety,
+for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from
+Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie
+River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and
+travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and Cumberland, was due
+at Fort-à-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on
+to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose
+echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes
+of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could
+accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river,
+'close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the
+packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his
+head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a
+musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had
+not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected,
+and I determined to await its arrival.
+
+Two days passed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally
+through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the
+board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things,
+although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand
+heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening
+of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the
+raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his
+hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many
+miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to
+move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow
+was very deep to Cumberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200
+miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such
+was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
+Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held
+out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris,
+and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain
+on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So
+the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon
+before I ceased to read.
+
+Early on the following morning, the express was hauled from its cache and
+brought to the fort; but it failed to throw much later light upon the
+meagre news of the previous evening. Old Adam was tried for verbal
+intelligence, but he too proved a failure. He had carried the packet from
+Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Carlton for more than a score of
+winters, and, from the fact of his being the bearer of so much news in
+his lifetime, was looked upon by his compeers as a kind of condensed
+electric telegraph; but when the question of war was fairly put to him,
+he gravely replied that at the forts he had heard there was war, and
+"England," he added, "was gaining the day." This latter fact was too much
+for me, for I was but too well aware that had war been declared in
+November, an army organization based upon the Parliamentary system was
+not likely to have "gained the day" in the short space of three weeks.
+
+To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry
+Became now the chief object of my life. I lightened my baggage as much as
+possible, dispensing with many comforts of clothing and equipment, and on
+the morn ing of the 23rd January started for Cumberland. I will not dwell
+on the seven days that now ensued, or how from long before dawn to verge
+of evening we toiled down the great silent river. It was the close of
+January, the very depth of winter. With heads bent down to meet the
+crushing blast, we plodded on, oft times as silent as the river and the
+forest, from whose bosom no sound ever came, no ripple ever broke, no
+bird, no beast, no human face, but ever the same great forest-fringed
+river whose majestic turns bent always to the north-east. To tell, day
+after day, the extreme of cold that now seldom varied would be to inflict
+on the reader a tiresome record; and, in truth, there would be no use in
+attempting it; 40 below zero means so many things impossible to picture
+or to describe, that it would be a hopeless task to enter upon its
+delineation. After one has gone through the list of all those things that
+freeze; after one has spoken of the knife which burns the hand that would
+touch its blade, the tea that freezes while it is being dlrunk, there
+still remains a sense of having said nothing; a sense which may perhaps
+be better understood by saying that 40 degrees below zero means just one
+thing more than all these items--it means death, in a period whose duration
+would expire in the hours of a winter's daylight, if there was no fire or
+means of making it on the track.
+
+Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one
+Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be
+able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The
+fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would
+I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus,
+doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at Cumberland, I
+Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his
+fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I
+hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by
+the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new
+constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles
+on the long road upon which I was travelling.
+
+On the 29th January we reached the shore of Pine Island Lake, and saw in
+our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we
+stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within
+sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man
+was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds,
+marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the
+fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped
+and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the
+conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man
+still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the
+Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"
+a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to
+the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in
+Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had
+died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and
+the men from Cumberland had taken away the body a few hours before.
+Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat
+moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man
+said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to
+die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces
+from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff
+well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly
+rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of
+language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the
+dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange antithesis
+appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the
+fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor
+Joe Miller conferred on me--the dog-sled that had carried his body had
+made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it
+to the Fort of Cumberland.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
+
+Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of Dogs--The great
+Marsh--Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a Medicine-man--
+Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his Boots--We reach the
+Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+CUMBERLAND HOUSE, the oldest post of the Company in the interior, stands
+on the south shore of Pine Island Lake; the waters of which seek the
+Saskatchewan by two channels--Tearing River and Big-stone River. These
+two rivers form, together with the Saskatchewan and the lake, a large
+island, upon which stands Cumberland. Time moves slowly at such places
+as Cumberland, and change is almost unknown. To-day it is the same as it
+was 100 years ago. An old list of goods sent to Cumberland, from England
+in 1783 had precisely the same items as one of 1870. Strouds, cotton,
+beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still
+traded for marten and musquash. In its day Cumberland has had
+distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a
+sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great
+explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the
+fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked
+earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to
+grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the
+light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The
+graveyard and the funeral had few of those accessories of the modern
+mortuary which are supposed to be the characteristics of civilized
+sorrow. There was no mute, no crape, no parade--nothing of that imposing
+array of hat-bands and horses by which man, even` in the face of the
+mighty mystery, seeks still to glorify the miserable conceits of life;
+but the silent snow-laden pine-trees, the few words of prayer read in the
+flickering light of the lantern, the hush of nature and of night, made
+accessions full as fitting, as all the muffled music and craped sorrow of
+church and city.
+
+At Cumberland I beheld for the first time a genuine train of dogs. There
+was no mistake about them in shape or form, from fore-goer to hindermost
+hauler. Two of them were the pure Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed,
+fox-headed, long-furred, clean-legged animals whose ears, sharp-pointed
+and erect, sprung from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair;
+Pomeranians multiplied by four; the other two were a curious compound of
+Esquimaux and Athabascan, with hair so long that eyes were scarcely
+'visible. I had suffered so long from the wretched condition and
+description of the dogs of the Hudson Bay Company, that I determined to
+become the possessor of those animals, and, although I had to pay
+considerably more than had ever been previously demanded as the price of
+a train of dogs in the North, I was still glad, to get them at any
+figure. Five hundred miles yet lay between me and Red River-five hundred
+miles of marsh and frozen lakes, the delta of the Saskatchewan and the
+great Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba.
+
+It was the last day of January when I got away from Cumberland with this
+fine train of dogs and another 2 serviceable set which belonged to a
+Swampy Indian named Bear, who had agreed to accompany me to Red River.
+Bear was the son of the old man whose evolutions with the three pegs had
+caused so much commotion among the Indians at Red River on the occasion
+of my visit to Fort Garry eight months earlier. He was now to be my close
+companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place
+here to anticipate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a
+voyageur, snow-shoer and camp-maker a place second to none in the long
+list of my employees. Soon after quitting Cumberland we struck the
+Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great
+region of marsh and swamp. During five days our course lay through vast
+expanses of stiff frozen reeds, whose corn-like stalks rattled harshly
+against the parchment sides of the cariole as the dog-trains wound along
+through their snow-covered roots. Bleak and dreary beyond expression
+stretched this region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. The cold
+remained all the time at about the same degree--20 below zero. The camps
+were generally poor and miserable ones. Stunted willow is the chief
+timber of the region, and fortunate did we deem ourselves when at
+nightfall a low line of willows would rise above the sea of reeds to bid
+us seek its shelter for the night. The snow became deeper as we
+proceeded. At the Pasquia three feet lay level over the country, and the
+dogs sank deep as they toiled along. Through this great marsh the
+Saskatchewan winds in tortuous course, its flooded level in summer scarce
+lower than the alluvial shores that line it. The bends made by the river
+would have been too long to follow, so we held a straight track through
+the marsh, cutting the points as we travelled. It was difficult to
+imagine that this many-channelled, marsh-lined river could be the same
+noble stream whose mountain birth I had beheld far away in the Rocky
+Mountains, and whose central course had lain for so many miles through
+the bold precipitous bank of the Western prairies.
+
+On the 7th February we emerged from this desolate region of lake and
+swamp, and saw before us in the twilight a ridge covered with dense
+woods. It was the west shore of the Cedar Lake, and on the wooded
+promontory towards which we steered some Indian sturgeon-fishers had
+pitched their lodges. But I had not got thus far without much trouble and
+vexatious resistance. Of the three men from Cumberland, one had utterly
+knocked up, and the other two had turned mutinous. What cared they for my
+anxiety to push on for Red River? What did it matter if the whole world
+was at war? Nay, must I not be the rankest of impostors; for if there was
+war away beyond the big sea, was that not the very reason why any man
+possessing a particle of sense should take his time over the journey, and
+be in no hurry to get back again to his house?
+
+One night I reached the post of Moose Lake a few hours before daybreak,
+having been induced to make the flank march by representations of the
+wonderful train of dogs at that station, and being anxious to obtain
+them in addition to my own: It is almost needless to remark that these
+dogs had no existence except in the imagination of Bear and his
+companion. Arrived at Moose Lake (one of the most desolate spots-I had'
+ever looked upon), I found out that the dog-trick was not the only one
+my men intended playing upon me, for a message was sent in by Bear to
+the effect that his dogs were unable to stand the hard travel of the
+past week, and that he could no longer accompany me. Here was a pleasant
+prospect--stranded on the wild shores of the Moose Lake with one train of
+dogs, deserted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and
+fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway
+House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then
+tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.
+I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though
+it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red
+River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole
+North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there;
+for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to
+put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious institution
+is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the
+eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly assured that
+the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at
+my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the
+wooded shores of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great
+marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the
+Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.
+
+The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on
+all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the
+question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was
+attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A
+loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine,
+and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the
+Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of
+Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"
+I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to
+drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point
+had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the
+morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that
+could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the
+efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that
+seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad
+time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the
+"Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and
+relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery,
+but its eight-by-ten of superficial space held some eighteen persons, the
+greater number of whom were greasy with the oil of the sturgeon. Meantime
+a supper of sturgeon had been prepared for me, and great was the
+excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have
+reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not
+at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and
+many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but
+even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers
+towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon
+in the eyes of such a whale as Chicag.
+
+Glad to escape from the suffocating hole, I emptied my fire-bag of
+tobacco among the group and got out into the cold night-air. What a
+change! Over the silent snow-sheeted lake, over the dark isles and the
+cedar shores, the moon was shining amidst a deep blue sky. Around were
+grouped a few birch-bark wigwams. My four dogs, now well known and trusty
+friends, were holding high carnival over the heads and tails of Chicag's
+feast. In one of the wigwams, detached from the rest, sat a very old man
+wrapped in a tattered blanket. He was splitting wood into little pieces,
+and feeding a small fire in the centre of the lodge, while he chattered
+to himself all the time. The place was clean, and as I watched the little
+old fellow at his work I decided to make my bed in his lodge. He was no
+other than Parisiboy, the medicine-man of the camp, the quaintest little
+old savage I had ever encountered. Two small white mongrels alone shared
+his wigwam. "See," he said, "I have no one with me but these two dogs."
+The curs thus alluded to felt themselves bound to prove that they were
+cognizant of the fact by shoving forward their noses one on each side of
+old Parisiboy, an impertinence on their part which led to their sudden
+expulsion by being pitched headlong out of the door. Parisiboy now
+commenced a lengthened exposition of his woes. "His blanket was old and
+full of holes, through which the cold found easy entrance. He was a very
+great medicine-man, but he was very poor, and tea was a luxury which he
+seldom tasted." I put a handful of tea into his little kettle, and his
+bright eyes twinkled with delight under their shaggy brows. "I never go
+to sleep," he continued; "it is too cold to go to sleep; I sit up all
+night splitting wood and smoking and keeping the fire alight; if I had
+tea I would never lie down at all." As I made my bed he continued to sing
+to himself, chatter and laugh with a peculiar low chuckle, watching me
+all the time. His first brew of tea was quickly made; hot and strong, he
+poured it into a cup, and drank it with evident delight; then in went
+more water on the leaves and down on the fire again went the little
+kettle.` But I was not permitted to lie down without interruption. Chicag
+headed a deputation of his brethren, and grew loud over the recital of
+his grievances. Between the sturgeon and the Company he appeared to think
+himself victim, but I was unable to gather whether the balance of
+ill-treatment lay on the side of the fish or of the corporation. Finally
+I got rid of the lot, and crept into my bag. Parisiboy sat at the other
+side of the fire, grinning and chuckling and sipping his tea. All night
+long I heard through my fitful sleep his harsh chuckle and his song.
+Whenever I opened my eyes, there was the little old man in the same
+attitude, crouching over the fire, which he sedulously kept alight. How
+many brews of tea he made, I can't say; but when daylight came he was
+still at the work, and as I replenished the kettle the old leaves seemed
+well-nigh bleached by continued boilings.
+
+That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of
+Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar
+Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three
+Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since
+that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores.
+The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake
+from those of Lake Winnipegoosis. From one lake to the other is a
+distance of about four miles. Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is
+quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis,
+when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of
+the latter lake. These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same
+level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their
+respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than
+its neighbour the Winnipegoosis. The question is one of considerable
+interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line
+of communication between the waters of Red River and those of
+Saskatchewan.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of
+Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until
+the sky alone bounded the prospect. But there were many islands scattered
+over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the
+pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the
+dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay. On one of these islands we
+camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a
+huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms. This Lake Winnipegoosis, or
+the "Small Sea,'" is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120
+miles in length and some 30 in width. Its shores and islands are densely
+wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the
+black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern shores he
+beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.
+This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line
+between civilization and savagery. Within the limit of the oak lies the
+country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which
+my steps have wandered so far. Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal
+Lake, I passed across the belt of forest which. Lies between the two
+lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day's
+journey to the Waterhen River. This river carries the surplus water of
+Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba. For another
+hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the
+pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the shores.
+Along the whole line of the western shores of these lakes the bold ridges
+of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the
+forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water. These four
+mountain ranges never exceed an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea.
+They are wooded to the summits, and long ages ago their rugged cliffs
+formed, doubtless, a fitting shore-line to that great lake whose
+fresh-water billows were nursed in a space twice larger than even
+Superior itself can boast of; but, as has been stated in an earlier
+chapter, that inland ocean has long since shrunken into the narrower
+limits of Winnipeg, Winnipegoosis, and Manitoba-the Great Sea, the Little
+Sea, and the Straits of the God.
+
+I have not dwelt upon the days of travel during which we passed down the
+length of these lakes. From the camp of Chicag I had driven my own train
+of dogs; with Bear the sole companion of the journey. Nor were these days
+on the great lakes by any means the dullest of the journey, Cerf Volant,
+Tigre, Cariboo, and Muskeymote gave ample occupation to their driver.
+Long before Manitoba was reached they had learnt a new lesson-that men
+were not all cruel to dogs in camp or on the road. It is true that in the
+learning of that lesson some little difficulty was occasioned by the
+sudden loosening and disruption of ideas implanted by generations of
+cruelty in the dog-mind of my train. It is true that Muskeymote, in
+particular, long held aloof from offers of friendship, and then suddenly
+passed from the excess of caution to the extreme of imprudence,
+imagining, doubtless, that the millennium had at length arrived, and
+that dogs were henceforth no more to haul. But Muskeymote was soon set
+right upon that point, and showed no inclination to repeat his mistake.
+Then there was Cerf Volant, that most perfect Esquimaux. Cerf Volant
+entered readily into friendship, upon an under-standing of an additional
+half-fish at supper every evening. No alderman ever loved his turtle
+better than did Cerf Volant love his white fish; but I rather think that
+the white fish was better earned than the turtle--however we will let
+that be matter of opinion. Having satisfied his hunger, which, by the
+way, is a luxury only allowed to the hauling-dog once a day, Cerf Volant
+would generally establish himself in close proximity to my feet,
+frequently on the top of the bag, from which coigne of vantage he would
+exchange fierce growls with any dog who had the temerity to approach us.
+None of our dogs were harness-eaters, a circumstance that saved us the
+nightly trouble of placing harness and cariole in the branches of a tree.
+On one or two occasions Muskeymote, however, ate his boots. "Boots!" the
+reader will exclaim; "how came Muskeymote to possess boots? We have heard
+of a puss in boots, but a dog, that is something new." Nevertheless
+Muskeymote had his boots, and ate them, too. This is how a dog is put in
+boots. When the day is very cold--I don't mean in your reading of that
+word, reader, but in its North-west sense--when the morning, then, comes
+very cold, the dogs travel fast, the drivers run to try and restore the
+circulation, and noses and cheeks which grow white beneath the bitter
+blast are rubbed with snow caught-quickly from the ground without pausing
+in the rapid stride; on such mornings, and they are by no means uncommon,
+the particles of snow which adhere to the feet of the dog form sharp
+icicles between his toes, which grow larger and larger as he travels. A
+nowing old hauler will stop every now and then, and tear out these
+icicles with his teeth, but a young dog plods wearily along leaving his
+footprints in crimson stains upon the snow behind him. When he comes into
+camp, he lies down and licks his poor wounded feet, but the rest is only
+for a short time, and the next start makes them worse than before. Now
+comes the time for boots. The dog-boot is simply a fingerless glove drawn
+on over the toes and foot, and tied by a running string of leather round
+the wrist or ankle of the animal; the boot itself is either made of
+leather or strong white cloth. Thus protected, the dog will travel for
+days and days with wounded feet, and get no worse, in fact he will
+frequently recover while still on the journey. Now Muskeymote, being a
+young dog, had not attained to that degree of wisdom which induces older
+dogs to drag the icicles from their toes, and consequently Muskeymote had
+to be duly booted every morning--a cold operation it was too, and many a
+run had I to make to the fire while it was being performed, holding my
+hands into the blaze for a moment and then back again to the dog. Upon
+arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet,
+and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with moccassins of the men, to dry.
+It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote
+performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.
+
+The night-camps along the lakes were all good ones; it took some time to
+clear away the deep snow and to reach the ground, but wood for fire and
+young spruce tops for bedding were plenty, and fifteen minutes axe work
+sufficed to fell as many trees as our fire needed for night and morning.
+From wooded point to wooded point we journeyed on over the frozen lakes;
+the snow lying packed into the crevices and uneven places of the ice
+formed a compact level surface, upon which the dogs scarce marked the
+impress of their feet, and the sleds and cariole bounded briskly after
+the train, jumping the little wavelets of hardened snow to the merry
+jingling of innumerable bells. On snow such as this dogs will make a run
+of forty miles in a day, and keep that pace for many days in succession,
+but in the soft snow of the woods or the river thirty miles will form a
+fair day's work for continuous travel.
+
+On the night of the 19th of February we made our last camp on the ridge
+to the south of Lake Manitoba, fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without
+a feeling of regret was the old work gone through for the last time--the
+old work of tree-cutting, and fire-making, and supper-frying, and
+dog-feeding. Once more I had reached those confines of civilization on
+whose limits four months earlier I had made my first camp on the
+shivering Prairie of the Lonely Grave; then the long journey lay before
+me, now the unnumbered scenes of nigh 3000 miles of travel were spread
+out in that picture which memory sees in the embers of slow-burning
+fires, when the night-wind speaks in dreamy tones to the willow branches
+and waving grasses. And if there be those among my readers who can il
+comprehend such feelings, seeing only in this return the escape from
+savagery to civilization--from the wild Indian to the Anglo-American,
+from the life of toil and hardship to that of rest and comfort-then words
+would be useless to throw light upon the matter, or to better enable
+such men to understand that it was possible to look back with keen regret
+to the wild days of the forest and the prairie. Natures, no matter how we
+may mould them beneath the uniform pressure of the great machine called
+civilization, are not all alike, and many men's minds echo in some shape
+or other the voice of the Kirghis woman, which says, "Man must keep
+moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are
+in movement: it is but the dead and the earth that remain in one place."
+
+There are many who have seen a prisoned lark sitting on its perch,
+looking listlessly through the bars, from some brick wall against which
+its cage was hung; but at times, when the spring comes round, and a bit
+of grassy earth is put into the narrow cage, and, in spite of smoke and
+mist, the blue sky looks a moment on the foul face of the city, the little
+prisoner dreams himself free, and, with eyes fixed on the blue sky
+and feet clasping the tiny turf of green sod, he pours forth into the dirty
+street those notes which nature taught him in the never-to-be-forgotten
+days of boundless freedom. So I have seen an Indian, far down
+in Canada, listlessly watching the vista of a broad river whose waters
+and whose shores once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him
+of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the
+wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting
+sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his
+listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo
+from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the
+shores of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners of
+our civilization. He who has once tasted the unworded freedom of the
+Western wilds must ever feel a sense of constraint within the boundaries
+of civilized life. The Russian is not the only man who has the Tartar
+close underneath his skin. That Indian idea of the earth being free to
+all men catches quick and lasting hold of the imagination--the mind
+widens out to grasp the reality of the lone space and cannot shrink again
+to suit the requirements of fenced divisions. There is a strange
+fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my
+home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or
+power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly
+remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of
+churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again
+to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the
+portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land.
+
+It is time to close. It was my lot to shift the scene of life with
+curious rapidity. In a shorter space of time than it had taken to
+traverse the length of the Saskatchewan, I stood by the banks of that
+river whose proud city had just paid the price of conquest in blood and
+ruin--yet I witnessed a still heavier ransom than that paid to German
+robbers. I saw the blank windows of the Tuileries red with the light of
+flames fed from five hundred years of history, and the flagged courtyard
+of La Roquette running deep in the blood of Frenchmen spilt by France,
+while the common enemy smoked and laughed, leaning on the ramparts of St.
+Denis.
+
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.'.
+
+GOVERNOR ARCHIBALD'S INSTRUCTIONS.
+
+Fort Garry, 10th October, 1870.
+
+W. F. Butler, Esq., 69th Regiment.
+
+SIR,--Adverting to the interviews between his honour the
+Lieutenant-Governor and yourself on the subject of the proposed mission
+to the Saskatchewan, I have it now in command to acquaint you with the
+objects his honour has in view in asking you to undertake the mission,
+and also to define the duties he desires you to perform.
+
+In the first place, I am to say that representations have been made from
+various quarters that within the last two years much disorder has
+prevailed in the settlements along the line of the Saskatchewan, and
+that the local authorities are utterly powerless for the protection of
+life and property within that region. It is asserted to be absolutely
+necessary for the protection, not only of the Hudson Bay Company's Forts,
+but for the safety of the settlements along the river, that a small body
+of troops should be sent to some of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company,
+to assist the local authorities in the maintenance of peace and order.
+
+I am to enclose you a copy of a communication on this subject from Donald
+A. Smith, Esq., the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and also. an
+extract of a letter from W. J. Christie, Esq., a chief factor stationed
+at Fort Carlton, which will give you some of the facts which have been
+adduced to show the representations to be well grounded.
+
+The statements made in these papers come from the officers of the Hudson
+Bay Company, whose views may be supposed to be in some measure affected
+by their pecuniary interests.
+
+It is the desire of the Lieutenant-Governor that you should examine the
+matter entirely from an independent point of view, giving his honour for
+the benefit of the Government of Canada your views of the state of
+matters on the Saskatchewan in reference to the necessity of troops being
+sent there, basing your report upon what you shall find by actual
+examination.
+
+You will be expected to report upon the whole question of the existing
+state of affairs in that territory, and to state your views on what may
+be necessary to be done in the interest of peace and order.
+
+Secondly, you are to ascertain, as far as you can, in what places and
+among what tribes of Indians, and what settlements of whites, the
+small-pox is now prevailing, including the extent of its ravages and
+every particular you can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the
+spread of the disease. You are to take with you such small supply of
+medicines as shall be considered by the Board of Health here suitable and
+proper for the treatment of small-pox, and you will obtain written
+instructions for the proper treatment of the disease, and will leave a
+copy thereof with the chief officer of each fort you pass, and with any
+clergyman or other intelligent person belonging to settlements outside
+the forts.
+
+You will also ascertain, as far as in your power, the number of Indians
+on the line between Red River and the Rocky Mountains; the different
+nations and tribes into which they are divided and the particular
+locality inhabited, and the language spoken, and also the names of the
+principal chiefs of each tribe.
+
+In doing this you will be careful to obtain the information without in
+any manner leading the Indians to suppose you are acting under authority,
+or inducing them to form any expectations based on your inquiries.
+
+You will also be expected to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature of
+the trade in furs conducted upon the Saskatchewan, the number and
+nationality of the persons employed in what has been called the Free
+Trade there, and what portion of the supplies, if any, come from the
+United States territory, and what portion of the furs are sent thither;
+and generally to make such inquiries as to the source of trade in that
+region as may enable the Lieutenant-Governor to form an accurate idea of
+the commerce of the Saskatchewan.
+
+You are to report from time to time as you proceed westward, and forward
+your communications by such opportunities as may occur. The
+Lieutenant-Governor will rely upon your executing this mission with all
+reasonable despatch.
+
+(Signed) S. W. HILL, P. Secretary.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIEUTENANT BUTLER'S REPORT.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+The Hon. Adams G. Archibald, Lieut.-Governor, Manitoba.
+
+SIR,--Before entering into the questions contained in the written
+instructions under which I acted, and before attempting to state an
+opinion upon the existing situation of affairs in the Saskatchewvan, I
+will briefly allude to the time occupied in travel, to the route
+followed, and to the general circumstances attending my journey.
+
+Starting from Fort Garry on the 25th October, I reached Fort Ellice at
+junction of Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers on the 30th of the same
+month. On the following day I continued my journey towards Carlton, which
+place was reached on the 9th November, a detention of two days having
+occurred upon the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, the waters of
+which were only partially frozen. After a delay of five days in Carlton,
+the North Branch of the Saskatchewan was reported fit for the passage of
+horses, and on the morning of the 14th November I proceeded on my western
+journey towards Edmonton. By this time snow had fallen to the depth of
+about six inches over the country, which rendered it necessary to
+abandon the use of wheels for the transport of baggage, substituting a
+light sled in place of the cart which had hitherto been used, although I
+still retained the same mode of conveyance, namely the saddle, for
+personal use. Passing the Hudson Bay Company Posts of Battle River, Fort
+Pitt and Victoria, I reached Edmonton on the night of the 26th November.
+For the last 200 miles the country had become clear of snow, and the
+frosts, notwithstanding the high altitude of the region, had decreased in
+severity. Starting again on the afternoon of the 1st December, I
+recrossed the Saskatchewan River below Edmonton and continued in a
+south-westerly direction towards the Rocky Mountain House, passing
+through a country which, even at that advanced period of the year, still
+retained many traces of its summer beauty. At midday on the 4th December,
+having passed the gorges of the Three Medicine Hills, I came in sight of
+the Rocky Mountains, which rose from the western extremity of an immense
+plain and stretched their great snow-clad peaks far away to the northern
+and southern horizons.
+
+Finding it impossible to procure guides for the prosecution of my journey
+south to Montana, I left the Rocky Mountain House on the 12th December
+and commenced my return travels to Red River along the valley of the
+Saskatchewan. Snow had now fallen to the depth of about a foot, and the
+cold had of late begun to show symptoms of its winter intensity. Thus on
+the morning of the 5th December my thermometer indicated 22 degrees below
+zero, and again on the 13th 16 below zero, a degree of cold which in itself
+was not remarkable, but which had the effect of rendering the saddle by no
+means a comfortable mode of transport.
+
+Arriving at Edmonton on the 16th December, I exchanged my horses for
+dogs, the saddle for a small cariole, and on the 20th December commenced
+in earnest the winter journey to Red River. The cold, long delayed, now\
+began in all its severity. On the 22nd December my thermometer at ten
+o'clock in the morning indicated 39 degrees below zero, later in the day a
+biting wind swept the long reaches of the Saskatchewan River and rendered
+travelling on the ice almost insupportable. To note here the long days of
+travel down the great valley of the Saskatchewan, at times on the frozen
+river and at times upon the neighbouring plains, would prove only a
+tiresome record. Little by little the snow seemed to deepen, day by day
+the frost to obtain a more lasting power and to bind in a still more
+solid embrace all visible Nature. No human voice, no sound of bird or
+beast, no ripple of stream to break the intense silence of these vast
+solitudes of the Lower Saskatchewan. At length, early in the month of
+February, I quitted the valley of Saskatchewan at Cedar Lake, crossed the
+ridge which separates that sheet of water from Lake Winnipegoosis, and,
+descending the latter lake to its outlet at Waterhen River, passed from
+thence to the northern extremity of the Lake Manitoba. Finally, on the
+18th February, I reached the settlement of Oak Point on south shore of
+Manitoba, and two days later arrived at Fort Garry.
+
+In following the river and lake route from Carlton, I passed in
+succession the Mission of Prince Albert, Forts-à-la-Corne and Cumberland,
+the Posts of the Pas, Moose Lake, Shoal River and Manitoba House, and,
+with a few exceptions, travelled upon ice the entire way.
+
+The journey from first to last occupied 119 days and embraced a distance
+of about 2700 miles.
+
+I have now to offer the expression of my best acknowledgements to the
+officers of the various posts of the Hudson Bay Company passed en route.
+To Mr. W. J. Christie, of Edmonton, to Mr. Richard Hardistry, of
+Victoria, as well as to Messrs. Hackland, Sinclair, Ballenden, Trail,
+Turner, Belanger, Matheison, McBeath, Munro, and MacDonald, I am indebted
+for much kindness and hospitality, and I have to thank Mr. W. J. Christie
+for information of much value regarding statistics connected with his
+district. I have also to offer to the Rev. Messrs. Lacombe, McDougall,
+and Nisbet the expression of the obligations which I am under towards
+them for uniform kindness and hospitality.
+
+
+
+GENERAL REPORT.
+
+Having in the foregoing pages briefly alluded to the time occupied in
+travel, to the route followed, and to the general circumstances attending
+my journey, I now propose entering upon the subjects contained in the
+written instructions under which I acted, and in the first instance to
+lay before you the views which I have formed upon the important question
+of the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+The institutions of Law and Order, as understood in civilized
+communities, are wholly unknown in the regions of the Saskatchewan,
+insomuch as the country is without any executive organization, and
+destitute of any means to enforce the authority of the law.
+
+I do not mean to assert that crime and outrage are of habitual occurrence
+among the people of this territory, or that a state of anarchy exists in
+any particular portion of it, but it is an undoubted fact that crimes of
+the most serious nature have been committed, in various places, by
+persons of mixed and native blood, without any vindication of the law
+being possible, and that the position of affairs rests at the present
+moment not on the just power of an executive authority to enforce
+obedience, but rather upon the passive acquiescence of the majority of a
+scant population who hitherto have lived in ignorance of those
+conflicting interests which, in more populous and civilized communities,
+tend to anarchy and disorder.
+
+But the question may be asked, If the Hudson Bay Company represent the
+centres round which the half-breed settlers have gathered, how then does
+it occur that that body should be destitute of governing power, and
+unable to repress crime and outrage? To this question I would reply that
+the Hudson Bay Company, being a commercial corporation, dependent for its
+profits on the suffrages of the people, is of necessity cautious in the
+exercise of repressive powers; that, also, it is exposed in the
+Saskatchewan to the evil influence which free trade has ever developed
+among the native races; that, furthermore, it is brought in contact with
+tribes long remarkable for their lawlessness and ferocity; and that,
+lastly, the elements of disorder in the whole territory of Saskatchewan
+are for many causes, yearly on the increase. But before entering upon
+the subject into which this last-consideration would lead me, it will be
+advisable to glance at the various elements which comprise the population
+of this Western region. In point of numbers, and in the power which they
+possess of committing depredations, the aboriginal races claim the
+foremost place among the inhabitants of the Saskatchewan. These tribes,
+like the Indians of other portions of Rupert's Land and the North-west,
+carry on the pursuits of hunting, bringing the produce of their hunts to
+barter for the goods of the Hudson Bay Company; but, unlike the Indians
+of more northern regions, they subsist almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+and they carry on among themselves an unceasing warfare which has long
+become traditional. Accustomed to regard murder as honourable war,
+robbery and pillage as the traits most ennobling to man hood, free from
+all restraint, these warring tribes of Crees, Assineboines, and Blackfeet
+form some of the most savage among even the races of Western America.
+
+Hitherto it maybe said that the Crees have looked upon the white man as
+their friend, but latterly indications have not been wanting to
+foreshadow a change in this respect--a change which I. have found many
+causes to account for, and which, if the Saskatchewan remains in its
+present condition, must, I fear, deepen into more positive enmity. The
+buffalo, the red man's sole means of subsistence, is rapidly
+disappearing; year by year the prairies, which once shook beneath the
+tread of countless herds of bisons, are becoming denuded of animal life,
+and year by year the affliction of starvation comes with an
+ever-increasing intensity upon the land. There are men still living who
+remember to have hunted buffalo on the shores of Lake Manitoba. It is
+scarcely twelve years since Fort Ellice, on the Assineboine River, formed
+one of the principal posts of supply for the Hudson Bay Company; and the
+vast prairies which flank the southern and western spurs of the Touchwood
+Hills, now utterly silent and deserted, are still white with the bones of
+the migratory herds which, until lately, roamed over their surface.
+
+Nor is this absence of animal life confined to the plains of the
+Qu'Appelle and of the Upper Assineboine--all along the line of the North
+Saskatchewan, from Carlton to Edmonton House, the same scarcity prevails;
+and if further illustration of this decrease of buffalo be wanting, I
+would state that, during the present winter, I have traversed the plains
+from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains without seeing even one
+solitary animal upon 1200 miles of prairie. The Indian is not slow to
+attribute this lessening of his principal food to the presence of the
+white and half-breed settlers, whose active competition for pemmican
+(valuable as supplying the transport service of the Hudson Bay Company)
+has led to this all but total extinction of the bison.
+
+Nor does he fail to trace other grievances--some real, some imaginary-to
+the same cause. Wherever the half-breed settler or hunter has established
+himself he has resorted to the use of poison as a means of destroying the
+wolves and foxes which were numerous on the prairies. This most
+pernicious practice has had the effect of greatly embittering the Indians
+against the settler, for not only have large numbers of animals been
+uselessly destroyed, inasmuch as fully one-half the animals thus killed
+are lost to the trapper, but also the poison is frequently communicated
+to the Indian dogs, and thus a very important mode of winter transport is
+lost to the red man. It is asserted, too, that horses are sometimes
+poisoned by eating grasses which have become tainted by the presence of
+strychnine; and although this latter assertion may not be true, yetits
+effects are the same, as the Indian fully believes it. In consequence of
+these losses a threat has been made, very generally, by the natives
+against the half-breeds, to the effect that if the use of poison was
+persisted in, the horses belonging to the settlers would be shot.
+
+Another increasing source of Indian discontent is to be found in the
+policy pursued by the American Government in their settlement of the
+countries lying south of the Saskatchewan. Throughout the territories of
+Dakota and Montana a state of hostility has long existed between the
+Americans and the tribes of Sioux, Black feet, and Peagin Indians. This
+state of hostility has latterly degenerated on the part of the Americans,
+into a war of extermination; and the policy of "clearing out" the red man
+has now become a recognized portion of Indian warfare. Some of these acts
+of extermination find their way into the public records, many of them
+never find publicity. Among the former, the attack made during the
+spring of 1870 by a large party of troops upon a camp of Peagin Indians
+close to the British boundary-line will be fresh in the recollection of
+your Excellency. The tribe thus attacked was suffering severely from
+small-pox, was surprised at daybreak by the soldiers, who, rushing in
+upon the tents, destroyed 170 men, women, and children in a few moments.
+This tribe forms one of the four nations comprised in the Blackfeet
+league, and have their hunting-grounds partly on British and partly on
+American territory. I have mentioned the presence of small-pox in
+connexion with these Indians. It is very generally believed in the
+Saskatchewan that this disease was originally communicated to the
+Blackfeet tribes by Missouri traders with a view to the accumulation of
+robes; and this opinion, monstrous though it may appear, has been
+somewhat terrified by the Western press when treating of the epidemic
+last year. As I propose to enter at some length into the question of this
+disease at a later portion of this report, I now only make allusion to it
+as forming one of the grievances which the Indian affirms he suffers at
+the hands of the white man.
+
+In estimating the causes of Indian discontent as bearing upon the future
+preservation of peace and order in the Saskatchewan, and as illustrating
+the growing difficulties which a commercial corporation like the Hudson
+Bay Company have to contend against when acting in an executive capacity,
+I must now allude to the subject of Free Trade. The policy of a free
+trader in furs is essentially a short-sighted one-he does not care about
+the future--the continuance and partial well-being of the Indian is of no
+consequence to him. His object is to obtain possession of all the furs
+the Indian may have at the moment to barter, and to gain that end he
+spares no effort. Alcohol, discontinued by the Hudson Bay Company in
+their Saskatchewan district for many years, has been freely used of late
+by free traders from Red River; and, as great competition always exists
+between the traders and the employees of the Company, the former have not
+hesitated to circulate among the natives the idea that they have suffered
+much injustice in their intercourse with the Company. The events which
+took place in the Settlement of Red River during the winter of '69 and '70
+have also tended to disturb the minds of the Indians--they have heard of
+changes of Government, of rebellion and pillage of property, of the
+occupation of forts belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and the stoppage
+of trade and ammunition. Many of these events have been magnified and
+distorted--evil-disposed persons have not been wanting to spread abroad
+among the natives the idea of the downfall of the Company, and the
+threatened immigration of settlers to occupy the hunting-grounds and
+drive the Indian from the land. All these rumours, some of them vague and
+wild in the extreme, have found ready credence by camp-fires and in
+council-lodge, and thus it is easy to perceive how the red man, with many
+of his old convictions and beliefs rudely shaken, should now be more
+disturbed and discontented than he has been at any former period.
+
+In endeavouring to correctly estimate the present condition of Indian
+affairs in the Saskatchewan the efforts and influence of the various
+missionary bodies must not be overlooked. It has only been during the
+last twenty years that the Plain Tribes have been brought into contact
+with the individuals whom the contributions of European and Colonial
+communities have sent out on missions of religion and civilization. Many
+of these individuals have toiled with untiring energy and undaunted
+perseverance in the work to which they have devoted themselves, but it is
+unfortunately true that the jarring interests of different religious
+denominations have sometimes induced them to introduce into the field of
+Indian theology that polemical rancour which so unhappily distinguishes
+more civilized communities.
+
+To fully understand the question of missionary enterprise, as bearing
+upon the Indian tribes of the Saskatchewan valley, I must glance for a
+moment at the peculiarities in the mental condition of the Indians which
+render extreme caution necessary in all inter course between him and the
+white man. It is most difficult to make the Indian comprehend the true
+nature of the foreigner with whom he is brought in contact, or rather, I
+should say, that having his own standard by which he measures truth and
+falsehood, misery and happiness, and all the accompaniments of life, it
+is almost impossible to induce him to look at the white man from any
+point of view but his own. From this point of view every thing is
+Indian. English, French, Canadians, and Americans are so many tribes
+inhabiting various parts of the world, whose land is bad, and who are not
+possessed of buffalo--for this last desideratum they (the strangers) send
+goods, missions, etc., to the Indians of the Plains. "Ah!" they say, "if
+it was not for our buffalo where would you be? You would starve, your
+bones would whiten the prairies." It is useless to tell them that such is
+not the case, they answer, "Where then does all the pemmican go to that
+you take away in your boats and in your carts?" With the Indian, seeing
+is believing, and his world is the visible one in which his wild life is
+cast. This being understood, the necessity for caution in communicating
+with the native will at once be apparent-yet such caution on the part of
+those who seek the Indians as missionaries is not always observed. Too
+frequently the language suitable for civilized society has been addressed
+to the red man. He is told of governments, and changes in the political
+world, successive religious systems are laid before him by their various
+advocates. To-day he is told to believe one religion, to-morrow to have
+faith in another. Is it any wonder that, applying his own simple tests to
+so much conflicting testimony, he becomes utterly confused, unsettled,
+and suspicious? To the white man, as a white man, the Indian has no
+dislike; on the contrary, he is pretty certain to receive him with
+kindness and friendship, provided always that the new-comer will adopt
+the native system, join the hunting-camp, and live on the plains; but to
+the white man as a settler, or hunter on his own account, the Crees and
+Blackfeet are in direct antagonism. Ownership in any particular portion
+of the soil by an individual is altogether foreign to men who, in the
+course of a single summer, roam over 500 miles of prairie. In another
+portion of this report I hope to refer again to the Indian question, when
+treating upon that clause in my instructions which relates exclusively to
+Indian matters. I have alluded here to missionary enterprise and to the
+Indian generally, as both subjects are very closely connected with the
+state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+Next in importance to the native race is the half-breed element in the
+population which now claims our attention.
+
+The persons composing this class are chiefly of French descent originally
+of no fixed habitation, they have, within the last few years, been
+induced by their clergy to form scattered settlements along the line of
+the North Saskatchewan. Many of them have emigrated from Red River, and
+others are either the discharged servants of the Hudson Bay Company or
+the relatives of persons still in the employment of the Company. In
+contradistinction to this latter class they bear the name of "free men"
+and if freedom from all restraint, general inaptitude for settled
+employment, and love for the pursuits of hunting be the characteristics
+of free men, then they are eminently entitled to the name they bear. With
+very few exceptions, they have preferred adopting the exciting but
+precarious means of living, the chase, to following the more certain`
+methods of agriculture. Almost the entire summer is spent by them upon
+the plains, where they carry on the pursuit of the buffalo in large and
+well organized bands, bringing the produce of their hunt to trade with
+the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+In winter they generally reside at their settlements, going to the nearer
+plains in small parties and dragging the frozen buffalo meat for the
+supply of the Company's posts. This preference for the wild life of the
+prairies, by bringing them more in contact with their savage brethren,
+and by removing them from the means of acquiring knowledge and
+civilization, has tended in no small degree to throw them back in the
+social scale, and to make the establishment of a prosperous colony almost
+an impossibility--even starvation, that most potent inducement to toil,
+seems powerless to promote habits of industry and agriculture. During
+the winter season they frequently undergo periods of great privation,
+but, like he Indian, they refuse to credit the gradual extinction of the
+buffalo, and persist in still depending on that animal for their food.
+Were I to sum up the general character of the Saskatchewan half-breed
+population, I would say: They are gay, idle, dissipated, unreliable, and
+ungrateful, in a measure brave, hasty to form conclusions and quick to
+act upon them, possessing extra ordinary power-of endurance, and capable
+of undergoing immense fatigue, yet scarcely-ever to be depended on in
+critical moments, superstitious and ignorant, having a very deep-rooted
+distaste to any fixed employment, opposed to the Indian, yet widely
+separated from the white man--altogether a race presenting, I fear, a
+hopeless prospect to those who would attempt to frame, from such
+materials, a future nationality. In the appendix will be found a
+statement showing the population and extent of the half-breed settlements
+in the West. I will here merely remark that the principal settlements are
+to be found in the Upper Saskatchewan, in the vicinity of Edmonton House,
+at which post their trade is chiefly carried on.
+
+Among the French half-breed population there exists the same political
+feeling which is to be found among their brethren in Manitoba, and the
+same sentiments which produced the outbreak of 1869-70 are undoubtedly
+existing in the small communities of the Saskatchewan. It is no easy
+matter to understand how the feeling of distrust towards Canada, and a
+certain hesitation to accept the Dominion Government, first entered into
+the mind of the half-breed, but undoubtedly such distrust and hesitation
+have made themselves apparent in the Upper Saskatchewan, as in Red River,
+though in a much less formidable degree; in fact, I may fairly close this
+notice of the half-breed population by observing that an exact
+counterpart of French political feeling in Manitoba may be found in the
+territory of the Saskatchewan, but kept in abeyance both by the isolation
+of the various settlements, as well as by a certain dread of Indian
+attack which presses equally upon all classes.
+
+The next element of which I would speak is that composed of the white
+settler, European and American,` not being servants of the Hudson Bay
+Company. At the present time this class is numerically insignificant,
+and were it not that causes might at any moment arise which would
+rapidly develop it into consequence, it would not now claim more than a
+passing notice. These causes are to be found in the existence of gold
+throughout a large extent of the territory lying at the eastern base of
+the Rocky Mountains, and in the effect which the discovery of gold-fields
+would have in inducing a rapid movement of miners from the already
+over-worked fields of the Pacific States and British Columbia. For some
+years back indication of gold, in more or less quantities, have been
+found in almost every river running east from the mountains. On the
+Peace, Athabasca, McLeod, and Pembina Rivers, all of which drain their
+waters into the Arctic Ocean, as well as on the North Saskatchewan, Red
+Beer, and Bow Rivers, which shed to Lake Winnipeg, gold has been
+discovered. The obstacles which the miner has to contend with are,
+however, very great, and preclude any thing but the most partial
+examination of the country. The Blackfeet are especially hostile towards
+miners, and never hesitate to attack them, nor is the miner slow to
+retaliate; indeed he has been too frequently the aggressor, and the
+records of gold discovery are full of horrible atrocities committed upon
+the red man. It has only been in the neighbourhood of the forts of the
+Hudson Bay Company that continued washing for gold could be carried on.
+In the neighbourhood of Edmonton from three to twelve dollars of gold
+have frequently been "washed" in a single day by one man; but the miner
+is not satisfied with what he calls "dirt washing," and craves for the
+more exciting work in the dry diggings where, if the "strike" is good,
+the yield is sometimes enormous. The difficulty of procuring provisions
+or supplies of any kind has also prevented "prospecting" parties from
+examining the head-waters of the numerous streams which form the sources
+of the North and South Saskatchewan. It is not the high price of
+provisions that deters the miner from penetrating these regions, but the
+absolute impossibility of procuring any. Notwithstanding the many
+difficulties which I have enumerated, a very determined effort will in
+all probability be made, during the coming summer, to examine the
+head-waters of the North Branch of the Saskatchewan. A party of miners,
+four in number, crossed the mountains late in the autumn of 1870, and are
+now wintering between Edmonton and the Mountain House, having laid in
+large supplies for the coming season. These men speak with confidence of
+the existence of rich diggings in some portion of the country lying
+within the outer range of the mountains. From conversations which I have
+held with these men, as well as with others who have partly investigated
+the country, I am of opinion that there exists a very strong probability
+of the discovery of gold-fields in the Upper Saskatchewan at no distant
+period. Should this opinion be well founded, the effect which it will
+have upon the whole Western territory will be of the utmost consequence.
+
+Despite the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of such
+discoveries, or the plains or passes leading to them, a general influx of
+miners will take place into the Saskatchewan, and in their track will
+come the waggon or pack-horse of the merchant from the towns of Benton or
+Kootenais, or Helena. It is impossible to say what effect such an influx
+of strangers would have upon the plain Indians; but of one fact we may
+rest assured, namely, that should these tribes exhibit their usual spirit
+of robbery and murder they would quickly be exterminated by the miners.
+
+Every where throughout the Pacific States and along the central
+territories of America, as well as in our own colony of British Columbia,
+a war of extermination has arisen, under such circum stances, between the
+miners and the savages, and there is good reason to suppose that similar
+results would follow contact with the proverbially hostile tribe of
+Blackfeet Indians.
+
+Having in the foregoing remarks reviewed the various elements which
+compose the scanty but widely extended population of the Saskatchewan,
+outside the circle of the Hudson Bay Company, I have now to refer to that
+body, as far as it is connected with the present condition of affairs in
+the Saskatchewan.
+
+As a governing body the Hudson Bay Company has ever had to contend
+against the evils which are inseparable from monopoly of trade combined
+with monopoly of judicial power, but so long as the aboriginal
+inhabitants were the only people with whom it came in contact its
+authority could be preserved; and as it centred within itself whatever
+knowledge and enlightenment existed in the country, its officials were
+regarded by the aboriginals as persons of a superior nature, nay, even in
+bygone times it was by no means unusual for the Indians to regard the
+possession of some of the most ordinary inventions of civilization on the
+part of the officials of the Company as clearly demonstrating a close
+affinity between these gentlemen and the Manitou, nor were these
+attributes of divinity altogether distasteful to the officers, who found
+them both remunerative as to trade and conducive to the exercise of
+authority. When, however, the Free Traders and the missionary reached the
+Saskatchewan this primitive state of affairs ceased-with the
+enlightenment of the savage came the inevitable discontent of the'
+Indian, until there arose the condition of things to which I have already
+alluded. I am aware that there are persons who, while admitting the
+present unsatisfactory state of the Saskatchewan, ascribe its evils more
+to mistakes committed by officers of the Company, in their management of
+the Indians, than to any material change in the character of the people;
+but I believe such opinion to be founded in error. It would be
+impossible to revert to the old management of affairs. The Indians and
+the half-breeds are aware of their strength, and openly speak of it; and
+although I am far from asserting that a more determined policy on the
+part of the officer in charge of the Saskatchewan District would not be
+attended by better results, still it is apparent that the great isolation
+of the posts, as well as the absence of any fighting element in the class
+of servants belonging to the Company, render the forts on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in a very great degree, helpless, and at the mercy of the
+people of that country. Nor are the engaged servants of the Company a
+class of persons with whom it is at all easy to deal. Recruited
+principally from the French half-breed population, and exposed, as I
+have already shown, to the wild and lawless life of the prairies, there
+exists in reality only a very slight distinction between them and their
+Indian brethren, hence it is not surprising that acts of insubordination
+Should be of frequent occurrence among these servants, and that personal
+violence towards superior officers should be by no means an unusual event
+in the forts of the Saskatchewan; indeed it has only been by the exercise
+of manual force on the part of the officials in charge that the semblance
+of authority has sometimes been preserved. This tendency towards
+insubordination is still more observable among the casual servants or
+"trip men" belonging to the Company. These persons are in the habit of
+engaging for a trip or journey, and-frequently select the most critical
+moments to demand an increased rate of pay, or to desert en masse.
+
+At Edmonton House, the head-quarters of the Saskatchewan District, and at
+the posts of Victoria and Fort Pitt, this state of lawlessness is more
+apparent than on the lower portion of the river. Threats are frequently
+made use of by the Indians and half-breeds as a means of extorting
+favourable terms from the officers in charge, the cattle belonging to the
+posts are uselessly killed, and altogether the Hudson Bay Company may be
+said to retain their tenure of the Upper Saskatchewan upon a base which
+appears insecure and unsatisfactory.
+
+In the foregoing remarks I have entered at some length into the question
+of the materials comprising the population of the Saskatchewan, with a,
+view to demonstrate that the condition of affairs in-that territory is
+the natural result of many causes, which have been gradually developing
+themselves, and which must of necessity undergo still further
+developments if left in their present state. I have endeavoured to point
+out how from the growing wants of the aboriginal inhabitants, from the
+conflicting nature of the interests of the half-breed and Indian
+population, as well as from the natural constitution of the Hudson Bay
+Company, a state of society has arisen in the Saskatchewan which
+threatens at no distant day to give rise to grave complications; and
+which now has the effect of rendering life and property insecure and
+preventing the settlement of those fertile regions which in other
+respects are so admirably suited to colonization.
+
+As matters at present rest, the region of the Saskatchewan is without
+law, order, or security for life or property; robbery and murder for
+years have gone unpunished; Indian massacres are unchecked even in the
+close vicinity of the Hudson Bay Company's posts, and all civil and legal
+institutions are entirely unknown.
+
+I now enter upon that portion of your Excellency's instructions which has
+reference to the epidemic of small-pox in the Saskatchewan. It is about
+fifty years since the first great epidemic of small pox swept over the
+regions of the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, committing great ravages
+among the tribes of Sioux, Gros-Ventres, and Flatheads upon American
+territory; and among the Crees and Assineboines of the British. The
+Blackfeet Indians escaped that epidemic, while, on the other hand, the
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Qu'Appelle Plains, were almost entirely
+destroyed. Since that-period the disease appears to have visited some of
+the tribes at intervals of greater or less duration; but until this and
+the previous year its ravages were confined to certain localities and did
+not extend universally throughout the country. During the summer and
+early winter of '69 and '70 reports reached the Saskatchewan of the
+prevalence of small-pox of a very malignant type among the South Peagin
+Indians, a branch of the great Blackfeet nation. It was hoped, however,
+that the disease would be confined to the Missouri River, and the Crees
+who, as usual, were at war with their traditional enemies, were warned
+by Missionaries and others that the prosecution of their predatory
+expeditions into the Blackfeet country would in all probability carry
+the infection into the North Saskatchewan. From the South Peagin tribes,
+on the head-waters of the Missouri, the disease spread rapidly through
+the kindred tribes of Blood, Blackfeet, and Lucee Indians, all which new
+tribes have their hunting-grounds north of the boundary-line.
+Unfortunately for the Crees, they failed to listen to the advice of those
+persons who had recommended a suspension of hostilities. With the opening
+of spring the war-parties commenced their raids; a band of seventeen
+Crees penetrated, in the month of April, into the Blackfeet country, and
+coming upon a deserted camp of their enemies in which a tent was still
+standing, they proceeded to ransack it, This tent contained the dead
+bodies of some Blackfeet, and although these bodies presented a very
+revolting spectacle, being in an advanced stage of decomposition, they
+were nevertheless-subjected to the usual process of mutilation, the
+scalps and clothing being also carried away.
+
+For this act the Crees paid a terrible penalty; scarcely had they
+reached their own country before the disease appeared among them, in its
+most virulent and infectious form. Nor were the consequences of this raid
+less disastrous to the whole Cree nation. At the period of the-year to
+which I allude, the early summer, these Indians usually assemble together
+from different directions in large numbers, and it was towards one of
+those numerous assemblies that the returning war-party, still carrying
+the scalps and clothing of the Blackfeet, directed their steps. Almost
+immediately upon their arrival the disease broke out amongst them in its
+most malignant form. Out of the seventeen men who took part in the raid,
+it is asserted that not one escape the infection, and only two of the
+number appear to have survived. The disease, once-introduced into the
+camp, spread with the utmost rapidity; numbers of men, women, and
+children fell victims to it during the month of June; the cures of the
+medicine-men were found utterly-unavailing to arrest it, and, as a last
+resource, the camp broke up into small parties, some directing their
+march towards Edmonton, and others to Victoria, Saddle Lake, Fort Pitt,
+and along the whole line of the North Saskatchewan. Thus, at the same
+period, the beginning of July, small-pox of the very worst description
+was spread throughout some 500 miles of territory, appearing almost
+simultaneously at the Hudson Bay Company's posts from the Rocky Mountain
+House to Carlton.
+
+It is difficult to imagine, a state of pestilence more terrible than
+that which kept pace with these moving parties of Crees during the summer
+months of 1870. By streams and lakes, in willow copses,'! and upon bare
+hill-sides, often shelterless from the fierce rays of the summer sun and
+exposed to the rains and dews of night, the poor plague-stricken wretches
+lay down to die--no assistance of any kind, for the ties of family were
+quickly loosened, and mothers abandoned their helpless children upon the
+wayside, fleeing onward to some fancied place of safety. The district
+lying between Fort Pitt and Victoria, a distance of about 140 miles, was
+perhaps the scene of the greatest suffering.
+
+In the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Pitt two camps of Crees
+established themselves, at first in the hope of obtaining medical
+assistance, and failing in that--for the officer in charge soon exhausted
+his slender store--they appear to have endeavoured to convey the
+infection into the fort, in the belief that by doing so they would cease
+to suffer from it themselves. The dead bodies were left unburied close to
+the stockades, and frequently Indians in the worst stage of the disease
+might be seen trying to force an entrance into the houses, or rubbing
+portions of the infections matter from their persons against the
+door-handles and window-frames of the dwellings. It is singular that only
+three persons within the fort should have been infected with the disease,
+and I can only attribute the comparative immunity enjoyed by the
+residents at that post to the fact that Mr. John Sinclair had taken the
+precaution early in the summer to vaccinate all the persons residing
+there, having obtained the vaccine matter from a Salteaux Indian who had
+been vaccinated at the Mission of Prince Albert, presided over by Rev.
+Mr. Nesbit, sometime during the spring. In this matter of vaccination a
+very important difference appears to have existed between the Upper and
+Lower Saskatchewan. At the settlement of St. Albert, near Edmonton, the
+opinion prevails that vaccination was of little or no avail to check-the
+spread of the disease, while, on the contrary, residents on the lower
+portion of the Saskatchewan assert that they cannot trace a single case
+in which death had ensued after vaccination had been properly performed.
+I attribute this difference of opinion on the benefits resulting from
+vaccination to the fact that the vaccine matter used at St. Albert and
+Edimonton was of a spurious description, having been brought from Fort
+Benton, on the Missouri River, by traders during the early summer, and
+that also it was used when the disease had reached its height, while, on
+the other hand, the vaccination carried on from Mr. Nesbit's Mission
+appears to have been commenced early in the spring, and also to have been
+of a genuine description.
+
+At the Mission of St. Albert, called also "Big Lake," the disease
+assumed a most malignant form; the infection appears to have been
+introduced into the settlement from two different sources almost at the
+same period. The summer hunting-party met the Blackfeet on the plains and
+visited the Indian camp (then infected with small-pox) for the purpose of
+making peace and trading. A few days later the disease appeared among
+them and swept off half their number in a very short space of time. To
+such a degree of helplessness were they reduced that when the prairie
+fires broke out in the neighbourhood of their camp they were unable to do
+any thing towards arresting its progress or saving their property. The
+fire swept through the camp, destroying a number of horses, carts, and
+tents, and the unfortunate people returned to their homes at Big Lake
+carrying the disease with them. About the same time some of the Crees
+also reached the settlement, and the infection thus communicated from
+both quarters spread with amazing rapidity. Out of a total population
+numbering about 900 souls, 600 caught the disease, and up to the date of
+my departure from Edmonton (22nd December) 311 deaths had occurred. Nor
+is this enormous percentage of deaths very much to be wondered at when we
+consider the circumstances attending this epidemic. The people, huddled
+together in small hordes, were destitute of medical assistance or of even
+the most ordinary requirements of the hospital. During the period of
+delirium incidental to small-pox, they frequently wandered forth at night
+into the open air, and remained exposed for hours to dew or rain; in the
+latter stages of the disease they took no precautions against cold, and
+frequently died from relapse produced by exposure; on the other hand,
+they appear to have suffered but little pain after the primary fever
+passed away. "I have frequently," says Père André, "asked a man in the
+last stages of small pox,-whose end was close at hand, if he was
+suffering much pain; and the almost invariable reply was, None
+whatever." They seem also to have died without suffering, although the
+fearfully swollen appearance of the face, upon which scarcely a feature
+was visible, would lead to the supposition that such a condition must of
+necessity be accompanied by great pain.
+
+The circumstances attending the progress of the epidemic at Carlton House
+are worthy of notice, both on account of the extreme virulence which
+characterized the disease at that post, and also as no official record
+of this visitation of small-pox would be complete which failed to bring
+to the notice of your Excellency the undaunted: heroism displayed by a
+young officer of the Hudson Bay Company who was in temporary charge of
+the station. At the breaking out of the disease, early in the month of
+August, the population of Carlton: numbered about seventy souls. Of these
+thirty-two persons caught the infection, and twenty-eight persons died.
+Throughout the entire period of the epidemic the officer already alluded
+to, Mr. Wm. Traill, laboured with untiring perseverance in ministering to
+the necessities of the sick, at whose bedsides he was to be found both
+day and night, undeterred by the fear of infection, and undismayed by the
+unusually loathsome nature of the disease. To estimate with any thing
+like accuracy the losses caused among the Indian tribes is a matter of
+considerable difficulty. Some tribes and portions of tribes suffered much
+more severely than others. That most competent authority, Père Lacombe,
+is of opinion that neither the Blood nor Blackfeet Indians had, in
+proportion to their numbers, as many casualties as the Crees, whose
+losses may be safely stated at from 600 to 800 persons. The Lurcees, a
+small tribe in close alliance with the Blackfeet, suffered very severely,
+the number of their tents being reduced from fifty to twelve. On the.'
+other hand, the Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, warned by the
+memory of the former epidemic, by which they were almost annihilated,
+fled at the first approach of the disease, and, keeping far out in the
+south-eastern prairies, escaped the infection altogether. The very heavy
+loss suffered by the Lurcees to which I have just alluded was, I
+apprehend, due to the fact that the members of this tribe have long been
+noted as persons possessing enfeebled constitutions, as evidenced by the
+prevalence of goitre almost universally amongst them. As a singular
+illustration of the intractable nature of these Indians, I would mention
+that at the period when the small-pox was most destructive among them
+they still continued to carry on their horse-stealing raids against the
+Crees and half-breeds in the neighbourhood of Victoria Mission. It was
+not unusual to come upon traces of the disease in the corn-fields around
+the settlement, and even the dead bodies of some Lurcees were discovered
+in the vicinity of a river which they had been in the habit of swimming
+while in the prosecution of their predatory attacks. The Rocky Mountain
+Stonies are stated to have lost over fifty souls. The losses sustained by
+the Blood, Blackfeet, and Peagin tribes are merely conjectural; but, as
+their loss in leading men or chiefs has been heavy, it is only reasonable
+to presume that the casualties suffered generally by those tribes have
+been proportionately severe. Only three white persons appear to have
+fallen victims to the disease, one an officer of the Hudson Bay Company
+service at Carlton, and two members of the family of the Rev. Mr.
+McDougall, at Victoria. Altogether, I should be inclined to estimate the
+entire loss along the North Saskatchewan, not including Blood, Blackfeet,
+or Peagin Indians, at about 1200 persons. At the period of my departure
+from the Saskatchewan, the beginning of-the present year, the disease
+which committed such terrible havoc among the scanty population of that
+region still lingered in many localities. On my upward journey to the
+Rocky Mountains I had found the forts of the Hudson Bay Company free from
+infection: On my return journey I found cases of small-pox in the Forts,
+of Edmonton, Victoria, and Pitt--cases which, it is true, were of a
+milder description than those of the autumn and summer, but which,
+nevertheless, boded ill for the hoped for disappearance of the plague
+beneath the snows and cold of winter. With regard to the supply of
+medicine sent by direction of the Board of Health in Manitoba to the
+Saskatchewan, I have only to remark that I conveyed to Edmonton the
+portion of the supply destined for that station. It was found, however,
+that many of the bottles had been much injured by frost, and I cannot in
+any way favourably notice either the composition or general selection of
+these supplies.
+
+Amongst the many sad traces of the epidemic existing in the Upper
+Saskatchewan I know of none so touching as that which is to be found in
+an assemblage of some twenty little orphan children gathered together
+beneath the roof of the sisters of charity at the settlement of St.
+Albert. These children are of all races, and even in some instances the
+sole survivors of what was lately a numerous family. They are fed,
+clothed, and taught at the expense of the Mission; and when we consider
+that the war which is at present raging in France has dried up the
+sources of charity from whence the Missions of the North-west derived
+their chief support, and that the present winter is one of unusual
+scarcity and distress along the North Saskatchewan, then it will be
+perceived what a fitting object for the assistance of other communities
+is now existing in this distant orphanage of the North.
+
+I cannot close this notice of the epidemic without alluding to the danger
+which will arise in the spring of introducing the infection into
+Manitoba. As soon as the prairie route becomes practicable there will be
+much traffic to and from the Saskatchewan--furs and robes will be
+introduced into the settlement despite the law which prohibits their
+importation. The present quarantine establishment at Rat Creek is
+situated too near to the settlement to admit of a strict enforcement of
+the sanitary regulations. It was only in the month of October last year
+that a man coming direct from Carlton died at-this Rat Creek, while his
+companions, who were also from the same place, and from whom he caught
+the infection, passed on into the province. If I might suggest the course
+which appears to me to be the most efficacious, I would say that a
+constable stationed at Fort Ellice during the spring and summer months
+who would examine freighters and others, giving them bills of health to
+enable them to enter the province, would effectually meet the
+requirements of the situation. All persons coming from the West are
+obliged to pass close to the neighbourhood of Fort Ellice. This station
+is situated about 170 miles west of the provincial boundary, and about
+300 miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan, forming the only post of
+call upon the road between Carlton and Portage la-Prairie. I have only to
+add that, unless vaccination is made compulsory among the half-breed
+inhabitants, they will, I fear, be slow to avail themselves of it. It
+must not be forgotten that with the disappearance of the snow from the
+plains a quantity of infected matter--clothing, robes, and portions of
+skeletons--will again be come exposed to the atmosphere, and also that
+the skins of wolves, etc., collected during the present winter will be
+very liable to contain infection of the most virulent description.
+
+The portion of-your Excellency's instructions which has reference to the
+Indian tribes of the Assineboine and Saskatchewan regions now claims my
+attention.
+
+The aboriginal inhabitants of the country lying between Red River and
+the Rocky Monntains are divided into tribes of Salteaux, Swampies, Crees,
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, Blackfeet and Assineboines of the
+Mountains. A simpler classification, and one which will be found more
+useful when estimating the relative habits of these tribes, is to divide
+them into two great classes of Trairie Indians and Thickwood Indians--the
+first comprising the Blackfeet with their kindred tribes of Bloods,
+Lurcees, and Peagins, as also the Crees of the Saskatchewan and the
+Assineboines of the Qu'Appelle; and the last being composed of the Rocky
+Mountain Stonies, the Swampy Crees, and the Salteaux of the country lying
+between Manitoba and Fort Ellice. This classification marks in reality
+the distinctive characteristics of the Western Indians. On the one hand,
+we find the Prairie tribes subsisting almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+assembling together in large camps, acknowledging the leadership and
+authority of men conspicuous by their abilities in war or in the chase,
+and carrying on a perpetual state\of warfare with the other Indians of
+the plains. On the other hand, we find the Indians of the woods
+subsisting by fishing and by the pursuit of moose and deer, living
+together in small parties, admitting only a very nominal authority on
+the part of one man, professing to entertain hostile feelings towards
+certain races, but rarely developing such feelings into positive
+hostilities--altogether a much more peacefully disposed people, because
+less exposed to the dangerous influence of large assemblies.
+
+Commencing with the Salteaux, I find that they extend westward from
+Portage-la-Prairie to Fort Ellice, and from thence north to Fort Pelly
+and the neighbourhood of Fort-à-la-Corne, where they border and mix with
+the kindred race of Swampy or Muskego Crees. At Portage-la-Prairie and in
+the vicinity of Fort Ellice a few Sioux have appeared since the outbreak
+in Minnesota and Dakota in 1862. It is probable that the number of this
+tribe on British territory will annually increase with the prosecution of
+railroad enterprise and settlement in the northern portion of the United
+States. At present, however, the Sioux are strangers at Fort Ellice, and
+have not yet assumed those rights of proprietorship which other tribes,
+longer resident, arrogate to themselves. The Salteaux, who inhabit the
+country lying west of Manitoba, partake partly of the character of
+Thickwood, and partly of Prairie Indians--the buffalo no longer exists in
+that portion of the country, the Indian camps are small, and the
+authority of the chief merely nominal. The language spoken by this tribe
+is the same dialect of the Algonquin tongue which is used in the
+Lac-la-Pluie District and throughout the greater portion of the
+settlement.
+
+Passing north-west from Fort Ellice, we enter the country of the Cree
+Indians, having to the north and east the Thickwood Crees, and to the
+south and west the Plain Crees. The former, under the various names of
+Swampies or Muskego Indians, inhabit the country west of Lake Winnipeg,
+extending as far as Forts Pelly and à-la-Corne, and from, the latter
+place, in a north-westerly direction, to Carlton and Fort Pitt. Their
+language, which is similar to that spoken by their cousins, the Plain
+Crees, is also a dialect of the Algonquin tongue. They are seldom found
+in large numbers, usually forming camps of from four to ten families.
+They carry on the pursuit of the moose and red deer, and are, generally
+speaking, expert hunters and trappers.
+
+Bordering the Thickwood Crees on the south and west lies the country of
+the Plain Crees--a land of vast treeless expanses, of high rolling
+prairies, of wooded tracts lying in valleys of many-sized streams, in a
+word, the land of the Saskatchewan. A line running direct from the
+Touchwood Hills to Edmonton House would measure 500 miles in length, yet
+would lie altogether within the country of the Plain Crees. They inhabit
+the prairies which extend from the Qu'Appelle to the South Saskatchewan,
+a portion of territory which was formerly the land of the Assineboine,
+but which became the country of the Crees through lapse of time and
+chance of war. From the elbow of the South Branch of the Saskatchewan the
+Cree nation extends in a west and north-west direction to the vicinity
+of the Peace Hills, some fifty miles south of Edmonton. Along the entire
+line there exists a state of perpetual warfare during the months of
+summer and autumn, for here commences the territory over which roams the
+great Blackfeet tribe, whose southern boundary lies be yond the Missouri
+River, and whose western limits are guarded by the giant peaks of the
+Rocky Mountains. Ever since these tribes became known to the fur-traders
+of the North-west and Hudson Bay Companies there has existed this state
+of hostility amongst them. The Crees, having been the first to obtain
+fire-arms from the white traders, quickly-extended their boundaries, and
+moving from the Hudson Bay and the region of the lakes overran the
+plains of the Upper Saskatchewan. Fragments of other tribes scattered at
+long intervals through the present country of the Crees attest this
+conquest, and it is-probable that the whole Indian territory lying
+between the Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line would have been
+dominated over by this tribe had they not found themselves opposed by the
+great Blackfeet nation, which dwelt along the sources of the Missouri.
+
+Passing west from Edmonton, we enter the country of the Rocky Mountain
+Stonies, a small tribe of Thickwood Indians dwelling along the source of
+the North Saskatchewan and in the outer ranges of the Rocky Mountains,-a
+fragment, no doubt, from the once-powerful Assineboine nation which has
+found a refuge amidst the forests and mountains of the West. This tribe
+is noted as possessing hunters and mountain guides of great energy and
+skill. Although at war with the Blackfeet, collisions are not frequent
+between them, as the Assineboines never go upon war-parties; and the
+Blackfeet rarely venture into the wooded country.
+
+Having spoken in detail of the Indian tribes inhabiting the line of
+fertile country lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains, it only
+remains for me to allude to the Blackfeet with the confederate tribes of
+Blood, Lurcees and Peagins. These tribes inhabit the great plains lying
+between the Red Deer River and the Missouri, a vast tract of country
+which, with few exceptions, is treeless, and sandy--a portion of the
+true American desert, which extends from the fertile belt of the
+Saskatchewan to the borders of Texas. With the exception of the Lurcees,
+the other confederate tribes speak the same language--the Lurcees, being
+a branch of the Chipwayans of the North, speak a language peculiar to
+themselves, while at the same time understanding and speaking the
+Blackfeet tongue. At war with their hereditary enemies, the Crees, upon
+their northern and eastern boundaries--at war with Kootanais and
+Flathead tribes on south and west--at war with Assineboines on the
+south-east and north-west--carrying on predatory excursions against the
+Americans on the Missouri, this Blackfeet nation forms a people of whom
+it may truly be said that they are against every man, and that every man
+is against them. Essentially a wild, lawless, erring race, whose natures
+have received the stamps of the region in which they dwell; whose
+knowledge is read from the great book which Day, Night, and the Desert
+unfold to them; and who yet possess a rude eloquence, a savage pride,
+and a wild love of freedom of their own. Nor are there other indications
+wanting to lead to the hope that this tribe may yet be found to be
+capable of yielding to influences to which they have heretofore been
+strangers, namely, Justice and Kindness.
+
+Inhabiting, as the Blackfeet do, a large extent of country which, from
+the arid nature of its soil mist ever prove useless for purposes of
+settlement and colonization, I do not apprehend that much difficulty will
+arise between them and the whites, provided always that measures are
+taken to guard against certain possibilities of danger, and that the
+Crees are made to unnderstand that the forts and settlements along the
+Upper Saskatchewan must be considered as neutral ground upon which
+hostilities cannot be waged against the Black feet. As matters at present
+stand, whenever the Blackfeet venture in upon a trading expedition to the
+forts of the Hudson Bay Company they are generally assaulted by the
+Crees, and savagely murdered. Pèe Lacombe estimates the nunber of
+Blackfeet killed in and around Edmonton alone during his residence in the
+West, at over forty men, and he has assured me that to his knowledge the
+Blackfeet have never killed a Cree at that place, except in self-defence.
+Mr. W. J. Christie, chief factor at Edmonton house, confirms this
+statement. He says, "The Blackfeet respect the whites more than the Crees
+do, that is, a Blackfoot will never attempt the life of a Cree at our
+forts, and bands of them are more easily controlled in an excitement,
+than Crees. It would be easier for one of us to save the life of a Cree
+among a band of Blackfeet than it would be to save a Blackfoot in a band
+of Crees." In consequence of these repeated assaults in the vicinity of
+the forts, the Blackfeet can with difficulty be persuaded that the whites
+are not in active alliance with the Crees. Any person who studies the
+geographical position of the posts of the Hudson Bay Company cannot fail
+to notice the immense extent of country intervening between the North
+Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line in which there exists no fort
+or trading post of the Company. This blank space upon the maps is the
+country of the Blackfeet. Many years ago a post was established upon the
+Bow River, in the heart of the Blackfeet country, but at that time they
+were even more lawless than at present, and the position had to be
+abandoned on account of the expenses necessary to keep up a large
+garrison of servants. Since that time (nearly forty years ago) the
+Blackfeet have only had the Rocky Mountain House to depend on for
+supplies, and as it is situated far from the centre of their country it
+only receives a portion of their trade. Thus we find a very active
+business carried on by the Americans upon the Upper Missouri, and there
+can be little doubt that the greater portion of robes, buffalo leather,
+etc. traded by the Blackfeet finds its way down the waters of the
+Missouri. There is also another point connected with Americau trade
+amongst the Blackfeet to which I desire to draw special attention.
+Indians visiting the Rocky Mountain House during the fall of 1870 have
+spoken of the existence of a trading post of Americans from Fort Benton,
+upon the Belly River, sixty miles within the British bounndary-line. They
+have asserted that two American traders, well-known on the Missouri,
+named Culverston and Healy, have established themselves at this post for
+the purpose of trading alcohol, whiskey, and arms and ammunition of the
+most improved description, with the Blackfeet Indians; and that an active
+trade is being carried on in all these articles, which, it is said, are
+constantly smuggled across the boundary-line by people from Fort Benton.
+This story is apparently confirmed by the absence of the Blackfeet from
+the Rocky Mountain House this season, and also from the fact of the arms
+in question (repeating rifles) being found in possession of these
+Indians. The town of Benton on the Missouri River has long been noted for
+supplying the Indians with arms and ammunition; to such an extent has
+this trade been carried on, that miners in Montana, who have suffered
+from Indian attack, have threatened on some occasions to burn the stores
+belonging to the traders, if the practice was continued. I have already
+spoken of the great extent of the Blackfeet country; some idea of the
+roamings of these Indians may be gathered from a circumstance connected
+wit the trade of the Rocky Mountain House. During the spring and summer
+raids which the Blackfeet make upon the Crees of the Middle Saskatchewan,
+a number of horses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company and to settlers
+are yearly carried away. It is a general practice for persons whose
+horses have been stolen to send during the fall to the Rocky Mountain
+House for the missing animals, although that station is 300 to 600 miles
+distant from the places where the thefts have been committed. If the
+horse has not perished from the ill treatment to which he has been
+subjected by his captors, he is usually found at the above-named station,
+to which he has been brought for barter in a terribly worn out condition.
+In the Appendix marked B will be found information regarding the
+localities occupied by-the Indian tribes, the names of the principal
+chiefs, estimate of numbers in each tribe, and other information
+connected with the aboriginal inhabitants, which for sake of clearness I
+have arranged in a tabular form.
+
+It now only remains for me to refer to the last clause in the
+instructions under which I acted, before entering into an expression of
+the views which I have formed upon the subject of what appears necessary
+to be done in the interests of peace and order in the Saskatchewan.
+The fur trade of the Saskatchewan District has long been in a declining
+state, great scarcity of the richer descriptions of furs, competition of
+free traders, and the very heavy expenses incurred in the maintenance of
+large establishments, have combined to render the district a source of
+loss to the Hudson Bay Company. This loss has, I believe, varied annually
+from 2000 to 6000 pounds, but heretofore it has been somewhat
+counter-balanced by the fact that the Inland Transport Line of the
+Company was dependent for its supply of provisions upon the buffalo meat,
+which of late years has only been procurable in the Saskatchewan. Now,
+however; that buffalo can no longer be procured in numbers, the Upper
+Saskatchewan becomes more than ever a burden to the Hudson Bay Company;
+still the abandonment of it by the Company might be attended by more
+serious loss to the trade than that which is incurred in its retention,
+Undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, if abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company,
+would be speedily occupied by traders from the Missouri, who would also
+tap the trade of the richer fur-producing districts of Lesser Slave Lake
+and the North. The products-of the Saskatchewan proper principally
+consists of provisions, including pemmican and dry meat, buffalo robes
+and leather, linx, cat, and wolf skins. The richer furs; such as otters,
+minks, beavers, martins, etc., are chiefly procured in the Lesser Slave
+Lake Division of the Saskatchewan District. With regard to the subject of
+Free Trade in the Saskatchewan, it is at present conducted upon
+principles quite different from those existing in Manitoba. The free men
+or "winterers" are, strictly speaking, free traders, but they dispose of
+the greater portion of their furs, robes, etc., to the Company. Some, it
+is true, carry the produce of their trade or hunt (for they are both
+hunters and traders) to Red River, disposing of it to the merchants in
+Winnipeg, but I do not imagine that more than one-third of their trade
+thus finds its way into the market. These free men are nearly all French
+half-breeds, and are mostly outfitted by the Company. It has frequently
+occurred that a very considerable trade has been carried on with alcohol,
+brought by free men from the Settlement of Red River; and distributed to
+Indians and others in the Upper Saskatchewan. This trade has been
+productive of the very worst consequences, but the law prohibiting the
+sale or possession of liquor is now widely known throughout the Western,
+territory, and its beneficial effects have already been experienced.
+
+I feel convinced that if the proper means are taken the suppression of
+the liquor traffic of the West can be easily accomplished.
+
+A very important subject is that which has reference to the communication
+between the Upper Saskatchewan and Missouri Rivers.
+
+Fort Benton on the Missouri has of late become a place of very
+considerable importance as a post for the supply of the mining districts
+of Montana. Its geographical position is favourable. Standing at the head
+of the navigation of the Missouri, it commands: the trade of Idaho and
+Montana.-'A steamboat, without breaking bulk, can go from New Orleans to
+Benton, a distance of 4000 miles. Speaking from the recollection of
+information obtained at Omaha three years ago, it takes about thirty days
+to ascend the river from that town to Benton, the distance being about
+2000 miles. Only boats drawing two or three feet of water can perform the
+journey, as there are many shoals and shifting sands to obstruct heavier
+vessels. It has been estimated that between thirty or forty steamboats
+reached Benton during the course of last summer. The season, for
+purposes of navigation, may be reckoned as having a duration of about
+four months. Let us now travel north of the American boundary-line, and
+see what effect Benton is likely to produce upon the trade of the
+Saskatchewan. Edmonton lies N.N.W. from Benton about 370 miles. Carlton
+about the same distance north-east. From both Carlton and Edmonton to
+Fort Benton the country presents no obstacle whatever to the passage of
+loaded carts or waggons, but the road from Edmonton is free from
+Blackfeet during the summer months, and is better provided with wood and
+water. For the first time in the history of the Saskatchewan, carts
+passed safely from Edmonton to Benton during the course of last summer.
+These carts, ten in number, started from Edmonton in the month of May,
+bringing furs, robes, etc., to the Missouri. They returned in the month of
+June with a cargo consisting of flour and alcohol.
+
+The furs and robes realized good prices, and altogether the journey was
+so successful as to hold out high inducements to other persons to attempt
+it during the coming summer. Already the merchants of Benton are bidding
+high for the possession of the trade of the Upper Saskatchewan, and
+estimates have been received by missionaries offering to deliver goods at
+Edmonton for 7 (American currency) per 100 lbs., all risks being insured.
+In fact it has only been on account of the absence of a frontier custom
+house that importations of bonded goods have not already been made via
+Benton.
+
+These facts speak for themselves.
+
+Without doubt, if the natural outlet to the trade of the Saskatchewan,
+namely the River Saskatchewan itself, remains in its present neglected
+state, the trade of the Western territory will seek a new source, and
+Benton will become to Edmonton what St. Paul in Minnesota is to Manitoba.
+
+With a view to bringing the regions of the Saskatchewan into a state of
+order and security, and to establish the authority and jurisdiction of
+the Dominion Government, as well as to promote the colonization of the
+country known as the "Fertile Belt," and particularly to guard against
+the deplorable evils arising out of an Indian war, I would recommend the
+following course for the consideration of your Excellency. 1st--The
+appointment of a Civil Magistrate or Commissioner, after the model of
+similar appointments in Ireland and in India. This official would be
+required to make semi-annual tours through the Saskatchewan for the
+purpose of holding courts; he would be assisted in the discharge of his
+judicial functions by the civil magistrates of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have been already nominated, and by others yet to be appointed from
+amongst the most influential and respected persons of the French and
+English half-breed population. This officer should reside in the Upper
+Saskatchewan.
+
+2nd. The organization of a well-equipped force of from 100 to 150 men,
+one-third to be mounted, specially recruited and engaged for service in
+the Saskatchewan; enlisting for two or three years service, and at
+expiration of that period to become military settlers, receiving grants
+of land, but still remaining as a reserve force should their services be
+required.
+
+3rd. The establishment of two Government stations, one on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in the neighbourhood of Edmonton, the other at the
+junctions of the North and South Branches of the River Saskatchewan,
+below Carlton. The establishment of these stations to be followed by the
+extinguishment of the Indian title, within certain limits, to be
+determined by the geographical features of the locality; for instance,
+say from longitude of Carlton House eastward to junction of-two
+Saskatchewans, the northern and southern limits being the river banks.
+Again, at Edmonton, I would recommend the Government to take possession
+of both banks of the Saskatchewan River, from Edmonton House to Victoria,
+a distance of about 80 miles, with a depth of, say, from six to eight
+miles. The districts thus taken possession of would immediately become
+available for settlement, Government titles being given at rates which
+would induce immigration. These are the three general propositions, with
+a few additions to be mentioned hereafter, which I believe will, if
+acted upon, secure peace and order to the Saskatchewan, encourage
+settlement, and open up to the influences of civilized man one of the
+fairest regions of the earth. For the sake of clearness, I have em
+bodied these three suggestions in the shortest possible forms. I will now
+review the reasons which recommend their adoption and the benefits likely
+to accrue from them.
+
+With reference to the first suggestion, namely, the appointment of a
+resident magistrate, or civil commissioner. I would merely observe that
+the general report which I have already made on the subject of the state
+of the Saskatchewan, as well as the particular statement to be found in
+the Appendix marked D, will be sufficient to prove the necessity of that
+appointment. With regard, however, to this appointment as connected with
+the other suggestion of military force and Government stations or
+districts, I have much to advance. The first pressing necessity is the
+establishment, as speedily as possible, of some civil authority which
+will give a distinct and tangible idea of Government to the native and
+half-breed population, now so totally devoid of the knowledge of what law
+and civil government may pertain to. The establishment of such an
+authority, distinct from, and independent of, the Hudson Bay Company, as
+well as from any missionary body situated in the country, would
+inaugurate a new series of events, a commencement, as it were, of
+civilization in these vast regions, free from all associations connected
+with the former history of the country, and separate from the rival
+systems of missionary enterprise, while at the same time lending
+countenance and support to all. Without some material force to render
+obligatory the ordinances of such an authority matters would, I believe,
+become even worse than they are at present, where the wrong-doer does not
+appear to violate any law, because there is no law to violate. On the
+other hand, I am strongly of opinion that any military force which would
+merely be sent to the forts of the Hudson Bay Company would prove only a
+source of useless expenditure to the Dominion Government, leaving matters
+in very much the same state as they exist at present, affording little
+protection outside the immediate circle of the forts in question, holding
+out no inducements to the establishment of new settlements, and liable to
+be mistaken by the ignorant people of the country for the-hired defenders
+of the Hudson Bay Company. Thus it seems to me that force without
+distinct civil government would be useless, and that civil government
+would be powerless without a material force. Again, as to the purchase of
+Indian rights upon certain localities and the formation of settlements,
+it must be borne in mind that no settlement is possible in the
+Saskatchewan until some such plan is adopted.
+
+People will not build houses, rear stock, or cultivate land in places
+where their cattle are liable to be killed and their crops stolen. It
+must also be remembered that the Saskatchewan offers at present not only
+a magnificent soil and a fine climate, but also a market for all farming
+produce at rates which are exorbitantly high. For instance, flour sells
+from 2 pounds 10 shillings to 5 pounds per 100 lbs.; potatoes from 5
+shillings to 7 shillings a bushel; and other commodities in proportion.
+No apprehension need be entertained that such settlements would remain
+isolated establishments. There are at the present time many persons
+scattered through the Saskatchewan who wish to become farmers and
+settlers, but hesitate to do so in the absence of protection and
+security. These persons are old servants of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have made money, or hunters whose lives have been passed in the great
+West, and who now desire to settle down. Nor would another class of
+settler be absent. Several of the missionaries in the Saskatchewan have
+been in correspondence with persons in Canada who desire to seek a home
+in this western land, but who have been advised to remain in their
+present country until matters have become more settled along the
+Saskatchewan. The advantages of the localities which I have specified,
+the junction of the branches of the Saskatchewan River and the
+neighbourhood of Edmonton, may be stated as follows:--Junction of north
+and south branch--a place of great future military and commercial
+importance, commanding navigation of both rivers; enjoys a climate
+suitable to the production of all cereals and roots, and a soil of
+unsurpassed fertility; is situated about midway between Red River and the
+Rocky Mountains, and possesses abundant and excellent supplies of timber
+for building and fuel; is below the presumed interruption to steam
+navigation on Saskatchewan River known as "Coal Falls," and is situated
+on direct cart-road from Manitoba to Carlton.
+
+Edmonton, the centre of the Upper Saskatchewan, also the centre of a
+large population (half-breed)-country lying between it and Victoria very
+fertile, is within easy reach of Blackfeet, Cree, and Assineboine
+country; summer frosts often injurious to wheat, but all other crops
+thrive well, and even wheat is frequently a large and productive crop;
+timber for fuel plenty, and for building can be obtained in large
+quantities ten miles distant; coal in large quantities on bank of river
+and gold at from three to ten dollars a day in sand bars.
+
+Only one other subject remains for consideration (I presume that the
+establishment of regular mail communication and steam navigation would
+follow the adoption of the course I have recommended, and, therefore,
+have not thought fit to introduce them), and to that subject I will now
+allude before closing this Report, which has already reached proportions
+very much larger than I had anticipated. I refer to the Indian question,
+and the best mode of dealing with it. As the military protection of the
+linq of the Saskatchewan against Indian attack would be a practical
+impossibility without a very great expenditure of money, it becomes
+necessary that all precautions should be taken to prevent the outbreak of
+an Indian war, which, if once commenced, could not fail to be productive
+of evil consequences. I would urge the advisability of sending a
+Commissioner to meet the tribes of the Saskatchewan during their summer
+assemblies.
+
+It must be borne in mind that the real Indian Question exists many
+hundred miles west of Manitoba, in a region where the red man wields a
+power and an influence of his own. Upon one point I would recommend
+particular caution, and that is, in the selection of the individual for
+this purpose. I have heard a good deal of persons who were said to
+possess great knowledge of the Indian character, and I have seen enough
+of the red man to estimate at its real worth the possession of this
+knowledge. Knowledge of Indian character has too long been synonymous
+with knowledge of how to cheat the Indian--a species of cleverness which,
+even in the science of chicanery, does not require the exercise of the
+highest abilities. I fear that the Indian has already had too many
+dealings with persons of this class, and has now got a very shrewd idea
+that those who possess this knowledge of his character have also managed
+to possess themselves of his property.
+
+With regard to the objects to be attended to by a Commission of the kind
+I have referred to, the principal would be the establishment of peace
+between the warring tribes of Crees and Blackfeet. I believe that a peace
+duly entered into, and signed by the chiefs of both nations, in the
+presence and under the authority of a Government Commissioner, with that
+show of ceremony and display so dear to the mind of the Indian, would be
+lasting in its effects. Such a peace should be made on the basis of
+restitution to Government in case of robbery. For instance, during time
+of peace a Cree steals five horses from a Black-foot. In that case the
+particular branch of the Cree nation to which the thief belonged would
+have to give up ten horses to Government, which would be handed over to
+the Black-feet as restitution and atonement. The idea of peace on some
+such understanding occurred to me in the Saskatchewan, and I questioned
+one of the most influential of the Cree chiefs upon the subject. His
+answer to me-was that his band would agree to such a proposal and abide
+by it, but that he could not speak for the other bands. I would also
+recommend that medals, such as those given to the Indian chiefs of Canada
+and Lake Superior many years ago, be distributed among the leading men of
+the Plain Tribes. It is astonishing with what religious veneration these
+large silver medals have been preserved by their owners through all the
+vicissitudes of war and time, and with what pride the well-polished
+effigy is still pointed out, and the words "King George" shouted by the
+Indian, who has yet a firm belief in the present existence of that
+monarch. If it should be decided that a body of troops should be
+despatched to the West, I think it very advisable that the officer in
+command of such body should make himself thoroughly acquainted with the
+Plain Tribes, visiting them at least annually in their camps, and
+conferring with them on points connected with their interest. I am also
+of opinion that if the Government establishes itself in the Saskatchewan,
+a third post': should be formed, after the lapse of a year, at the
+junction of the Medicine and Red Deer Rivers in latitude 52.18 north, and
+longitude 114.15 west, about 90 miles south of Edmonton. This position is
+well within the Blackfeet country, possesses a good soil, excellent
+timber, and commands the road to Benton. This post need not be the centre
+of a settlement, but merely a military, customs, missionary, and trading
+establishment.
+
+Such, Sir, are the views which I have formed upon the whole question of
+the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan. They result from the
+thought and experience of-many long days of travel through a large
+portion of the region to which they have reference. If I were asked
+from what point of view I have looked upon this question, I would answer
+From that point which sees a vast country lying, as it were, silently
+awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls
+unceasingly from Europe to America. Far off as lie the regions of the
+Saskatchewan from the Atlantic sea-board on which that wave is thrown,
+remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern slopes of the
+Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is destined to reach those
+beautiful solitudes, and to convert the wild luxuriance of their now
+Useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence. And
+If it-be matter for desire that across this immense continent, resting
+upon the two greatest oceans of the world, a powerful nation should.
+arise with the strength and the manhood which race and climate and
+tradition would assign to it--a nation which would look with no evil eye
+upon the old mother land from whence it sprung, a nation which, having no
+bitter memories to recall would have no idle prejudices to perpetuate
+then surely it is worthy of all toil of hand and brain, on the part of
+those who to-day rule, that this great link in the chain of such a future
+nationality should no longer remain undeveloped, a prey to the conflicts
+of savage races, at once the garden and the wilderness of the Central
+Continent.
+
+W. F. BUTLER, Lieutenant, 69th Regiment. Manitoba, 10th March, 1871.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A
+
+Settlements (Half-breed) in Saskatchewan.
+
+PRINCE ALBERT.--English half-breed. A Presbyterian Mission presided over
+by Rev. Mr. Nesbit. Small post of Hudson Bay Company with large farm
+attached. On North Branch of Saskatchewan River, 35 miles above junction
+of both branches; a fine soil, plenty of timber, and good wintering
+ground for stock; 50 miles east of Carlton, and 60 west of
+Fort-à-la-Corne.
+
+WHITEFISH LAKE.--English. Wesleyan Mission--only a few settlers--soil
+good--timber plenty. Situated north-east of Victoria 60 miles.
+
+LAC LA BICHE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission. Large farm
+attached to mission with water grist mill, etc. Soil very good and timber
+abundant; excellent fishery. Situated at 70 miles north-west from Fort
+Pitt.
+
+VICTORIA.--English half-breed. Wesleyan Mission. Large farm, soil good,
+altogether a rising little colony. Situated on North Branch of
+Saskatchewan River, 84 miles below Edmonton Mission, presided over by
+Rev. J. McDougall.
+
+ST. ALBERT.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission and residence of
+Bishop (Grandin); fine church building, school and convent, etc. Previous
+to epidemic, 900 French, the largest settlement in Saskatchewan; very
+little farming done, all hunters. Situated 9 miles north of Edmonton;
+orphanage here.
+
+ST. ANNE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic. Settlers mostly emigrated
+to St. Albert. Good fishery; a few farms existing and doing well. Timber
+plenty, and soil (as usual) very good; 50 miles north-west from Edmonton.
+
+
+
+Information concerning Native Tribes of Saskatchewan River Living
+between Red River and Rocky Mountains. (Transcriber's Note: The original
+presents this in tabular form. Where a field is blank, I have shown this
+by . . . Fields are: Name of Tribe. Locality Occupied. No. by Pellitier
+Pressent Estimate. Language. Where Trading. Names of Chiefs.)
+
+Salteaux-Assiniboine River--. . .--. . .-Salteaux--Forts Ellice and
+Pelly. Koota. . . . .
+
+Crees--N. Saskatchewan--11,500-7000-Cree--Carlton, Pitt, Victoria,
+Edmonton, Battle River-Sgamnat, Sweet Grass--. . .
+
+Blackfeet--S. Saskatchewan-6000-4000-Blackfeet--R. Mount. House--The Big
+Crow--Represented as being a good man.
+
+Blood-S. Saskatchewan-2800-2000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Swan--A great
+villain.
+
+Peagin--49 Parallel-4400-3000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Horn--. . . .
+
+Lorcees--Red Deer River-1100-200-Ditto, Chipawayan--R. Mount. House,
+Edmonton.
+
+Assineboine--S. of Qu'Appelle-1000-500-Assineboine--Qu'Appelle--. . . --. .
+
+Wood Crees--North of Carlton-425--. . . Cree-Forts-à-la-Corne and
+Carlton-Misstawasis--A good man.
+
+Rocky Mountain Assimneboine--Rocky Mountains-225--. . . Assineboine--R.
+Mount. House, Assineboine--The Bear's Paw--. . .
+
+Estimated population of half-breed about 2000 souls, forming many
+scattered settlements not permanently located.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+Names of persons whose appointment to the Commission of the Peace would
+be recommended:
+
+All officers of Hudson Bay Company in charge of posts. Mr. Chanletain, of
+St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. Brazeau. Mr. McKenzie, of Victoria. Mr.
+Wm. Borwick, St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. McGillis, residing near
+Fort Pitt.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX D.
+
+List of some of the crimes which have been committed in Saskatchewan
+without investigation or punishment:
+
+Murder of a man named Whitford near Rocky Mountains.
+
+Murder of George Daniels by George Robertson at White Mud River, Near
+Victoria.
+
+Murder of French half-breed by his nephew at St. Albert.
+
+Murder of two Lurcee Indians by half-breed close to Edmonton House.
+
+Murderous attack upon a small party of Blackfeet Indians (men, women,
+and children), made by Crees, near Edmonton, in April, 1870, by which
+several of the former were killed and wounded. This attack occurred after
+the safety of these Indians had been purchased from the Crees by the
+officer of the Hudson Bay Company in charge at Edmonton, and a guard
+provided for their safe passage across the rivers. This guard, composed
+of French half-breeds from St. Albert opened out to right and left when
+the attack commenced, and did nothing towards saving the lives of the
+Blackfeet, who were nearly all killed or wounded. There is now living
+close to Edmonton a woman who beat out the brain of a little child aged
+two years on this occasion; also a half-bred man who is the foremost
+instigator to all these atrocities. Besides these murders and acts of
+violence robbery is of continual occurrence in the Saskatchewan. The
+outrages specified above have taken place during the last few years.
+
+
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15401-8.txt or 15401-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/0/15401/
+
+Produced by Col Choat
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/15401-8.zip b/15401-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c27aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-8.zip
diff --git a/15401-h.zip b/15401-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aff5ad5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h.zip
diff --git a/15401-h/15401-h.htm b/15401-h/15401-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08734d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/15401-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11724 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<title>The Great Lone Land</title>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+body {background: #ffffcc; margin:10%; text-align:justify}
+h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {color:green; text-align:center}
+blockquote {font-size: .9em}
+p.poem {text-align:center}
+p.external {font-weight: bold}
+-->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<p><a name="home"></a></p>
+
+<pre>The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Lone Land
+       A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
+
+Author: W. F. Butler
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15401]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+</pre>
+
+<h2>THE GREAT LONE LAND: A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE IN THE NORT-WEST OF AMERICA.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY COLONEL W. F. BUTLER, C.B., F.R.G.S.</h3>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE SIXTY-NINTH REGIMENT," ETC.</h4>
+
+<hr align="center" width="50%">
+
+<blockquote>"A full fed river winding slow,
+By herds-upon an endless plain."</blockquote>
+
+<hr align="center" width="15%">
+
+<blockquote><p>"And some one pacing there alone
+Who paced for ever in a glimmering land,
+Lit with a low, large moon."</p>
+
+<p><b>TENNYSON.</b></blockquote>
+
+<hr align="center" width="50%">
+
+<h3>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ROUTE MAP.</h3>
+
+<h4>LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON and COMPANY Limited<br>
+St. Dunstan's House FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET,</h4>
+
+<h4>First Published 1872 (All rights reserved)</h4>
+
+<h4>PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIFINGTON, LD.,<br>
+ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKEMWELL ROAD, E.C.</h4>
+
+<hr align="center" width="50%">
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-01"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-01.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>The Great Lone Land showing the route of Captain W F Butler F.R.G.S.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<p>At York Factory on Hudson Bay there lived, not very long ago, a man who
+had stored away in his mind one fixed resolution it was to write a book.
+
+<p>"When I put down," he used to say, "all that I have seen, and all that I
+havn't seen, I will be able to write a good book."
+
+<p>It is probable that had this man carried his intention into effect the
+negative portion of his vision would have been more successfal than the
+positive. People are generally more ready to believe what a man hasn't
+seen'than what he has seen. So, at least, thought Karkakonias the
+Chippeway Chief at Pembina.
+
+<p>Karkakonias was taken to Washington during the great Southern War, in
+order that his native mind might be astonished by the grandeur of the
+United States, and by the strength and power of the army of the Potomac.
+
+<p>Upon his return to his tribe he remained silent and impassive; his days
+were spent in smoking, his evenings in quiet contemplation; he spoke not
+of his adventures in the land of the great white medicine-man. But at
+length the tribe grew discontented; they had expected to hear the recital
+of the wonders seen by their chief, and lo! he had come-back to them as
+silent as though his wanderings had ended on the Coteau of the Missouri,
+or by the borders of the Kitchi-Gami. Their discontent found vent in
+words.
+
+<p>"Our father, Karkakonias, has come back to us," they said; "why does he
+not tell his children of the medicine of the white man? Is our father
+dumb that he does not speak to us of these things?"
+
+<p>Then the old chief took his calumet from his lips, and replied, "'If
+Karkakonias told his children of the medicines of the white man--of his
+war-canoes moving by fire, and making thunder as they move, of his
+warriors more numerous than the buffalo in the days of our fathers, of
+all the wonderful things he has looked upon-his children would point and
+say, Behold! Karkakonias has become in his old age a maker of lies! No,
+my children, Karkakonias has seen many wonderful things, and his tongue
+is still able to speak; but, until your eyes have travelled as far as has
+his tongue, he will sit silent and smoke the calumet, thinking only of
+what he has looked upon."
+
+<p>Perhaps I too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway
+chief, not because of any wonders I have looked upon; but rather because
+of that well-known prejudice against travellers tales, and of that
+terribly terse adjuration-".O that mine enemy might write a book!" Be
+that as it may, the book has been written; and it only remains to say a
+few words about its title and its theories.
+
+<p>The "Great Lone Land" is no sensational name. The North-west fulfils, at
+the present time, every essential of that title. There is no other
+portion of the globe in which travel is possible where loneliness can be
+said to live so thoroughly. One may wander 500 miles in a direct line
+without seeing a human being, or an animal larger than a wolf. And if
+vastness of plain, and magnitude of lake, mountain, and river can mark a
+land as great, then no region possesses higher claims to that
+distinction.
+
+<p>A word upon more personal matters. Some two months since I sent to the
+firm from whose hands this work has emanated a portion of the unfinished
+manuscript. I received in reply a communication to the effect that their
+Reader thought highly of my descriptions of real occurrences, but less
+of my theories. As it is possible that the general reader may fully
+endorse at least the latter portion of this opinion, I have only one
+observation to make.
+
+<p>Almost every page of this book has been written amid the ever-present
+pressure of those feelings which spring from a sense of unrequited
+labour, of toil and service theoretically and officially recognized, but
+practically and professionally denied. However, a personal preface is not
+my object, nor should these things find allusion here, save to account in
+some manner, if account be necessary, for peculiarities of language or
+opinion which may hereafter make themselves apparent to the reader. Let
+it be.
+
+<p>In the solitudes of the Great Lone Land, whither I am once more about to
+turn my steps, the trifles that spring from such disappointments will
+cease to trouble.
+
+<p>April 14th 1872.
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p><a href="#ch1">CHAPTER ONE.</a></p>
+Peace--Rumours of War--Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+<p><a href="#ch2">CHAPTER TWO.</a></p>
+<p>The "Samaria"--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of
+the Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+<p><a href="#ch3">CHAPTER THREE.</a></p>
+<p>Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in
+Quebec--A Summons--A Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An
+Expedition--Poor Canada--An Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival
+Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early
+Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"--M. Louis Riel--The Murder of
+Scott
+
+<p><a href="#ch4">CHAPTER FOUR.</a></p>
+<p>Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great
+Fusion-Wisconsin--The Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I
+start for Lake Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The
+End of the Track
+
+<p><a href="#ch5">CHAPTER FIVE.</a></p>
+<p>Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North
+Pacific Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A
+Plan to dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and
+its Neighbourhood.
+
+<p><a href="#ch6">CHAPTER SIX.</a></p>
+<p>Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud-Sauk
+Rapids--"Steam Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the
+Red River.
+
+<p><a href="#ch7">CHAPTER SEVEN.</a></p>
+<p>North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival
+Savages-Abercrombie--News from the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red
+River-Prairies-Sunset-Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A
+Thunder-storm--A Prussian-Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer
+"International "--Pembina.
+
+<p><a href="#ch8">CHAPTER EIGHT.</a></p>
+<p>Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of
+Hudson--Rival Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west
+Company--How the Half-breeds came--The Highlanders
+defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+<p><a href="#ch9">CHAPTER NINE.</a></p>
+<p>Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief
+ahead-Preparations--A Night March--The Steamer captured--The
+Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower Fort--The Red Indian at last--The Chief's
+Speech--A Big Feed--Making ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort
+Garry--Mr. President Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night
+out--My Crew.
+
+<p><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER TEN.</a></p>
+<p>The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a
+Rapid--A Camp--No Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat
+Portage--A far-fetched Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+<p><a href="#ch11">CHAPTER ELEVEN.</a></p>
+<p>The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A
+close Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The
+Officer commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+<p><a href="#ch12">CHAPTER TWELVE.</a></p>
+<p>To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal
+Mail--Grilling a Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary
+Bivouac--The President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular
+Troops.
+
+<p><a href="#ch13">CHAPTER THIRTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my
+Steps--An Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland
+Ocean--Preparations-Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely
+Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine River--Rossette.
+
+<p><a href="#ch14">CHAPTER FOURTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort
+Ellice--Quick Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A
+Snow-storm--The South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of
+poor Blackie--Carlton.
+
+<p><a href="#ch15">CHAPTER FIFTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our
+Way--A long Ride--Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+<p><a href="#ch16">CHAPTER SIXTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A
+long Ride--Fort Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant
+Companion--An easy Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+<p><a href="#ch17">CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French
+Missionaries--Westward still--A beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A
+"Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the
+Rocky Mountains--The Mountain House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian
+Trade--M. la Combe--Fire-water-A Night Assault.
+
+<p><a href="#ch18">CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.</a></p>
+<p>Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+<p><a href="#ch19">CHAPTER NINETEEN.</a></p>
+<p>I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The
+Cabri Sack--A cold Day-Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Battle Fort Pitt--The
+blind Cree--A Feast or a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+<p><a href="#ch20">CHAPTER TWENTY.</a></p>
+<p>The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of
+Hunting--A Fight--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great
+Cold-Carlton--Family Responsibilities.
+
+<p><a href="#ch21">CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.</a></p>
+<p>The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the
+Saskatchewan--An Iroquois--Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside
+World--All haste for Home--The solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+<p><a href="#ch22">CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.</a></p>
+<p>Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of
+Dogs--The great Marsh-Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a
+Medicine-man--Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his
+Boots--We reach the Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+<p><a href="#appendix">APPENDIX.</a></p>
+
+<h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h3>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-01">Map of the Great Lone Land.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-02">Working up the Winnipeg.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-03">I waved to the leading Canoe.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-04">Across the Plains in November.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-05">The Rocky Mountains at the Sources of the Saskatchewan.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-06">Leaving a cosy Camp at dawn.</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#loneland-07">The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan.</a></p>
+
+<h2>THE GREAT LONE LAND.</h2>
+
+<p><a name="ch1"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER ONE.</h3>
+
+<p>Peace--Rumours of War-Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant
+Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+<p>IT was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a
+shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was
+not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, a
+Burmese, or any other of the many "eses" or "eas" forming the great
+colonial empire of Britain who seemed capable of kicking up the semblance
+of a row. Newspapers had never been so dull; illustrated journals had to
+content themselves with pictorial representations of prize pigs,
+foundation stones, and provincial civic magnates. Some of the great
+powers were bent upon disarming; several influential persons of both
+sexes had decided, at a meeting held for the suppression of vice, to
+abolish standing armies. But, to be more precise as to the date of this
+epoch, it will be necessary to state that the time was the close of the
+year 1869, just twenty-two months ago. Looking back at this most-piping
+period of peace from the stand-point of today, it is not at all
+improbable that even at that tranquil moment a great power, now, very
+much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the
+dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at
+each other's throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more
+unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the
+part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known
+Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power
+that possessed a deeper insight into the future than did its neighbours.
+It is hardly to be gainsaid that there was, about that period, another
+great power popularly supposed to dwell amidst darkness-a power which is
+said also to possess the faculty of making Scriptural quotations to his
+own advantage. It is not at all unlikely that amidst this scene of
+universal quietude he too was watching certain little snow-wrapt hamlets,
+scenes of straw-yard and deep thatched byre in which cattle munched their
+winter provender-watching them with the perspective scent of death and
+destruction in his nostrils; gloating over them with the knowledge of
+what was to be their fate before another snow time had come round. It
+could not be supposed that amidst such an era of tranquillity the army of
+England should have been allowed to remain in a very formidable position.
+When other powers were talking of disarming, was it not necessary that
+Great Britain should actually disarm? of course there was a slight
+difference existing between the respective cases, inasmuch as Great
+Britain had never armed; but that distinction was not taken into account,
+or was not deemed of sufficient importance to be noticed, except by a few
+of the opposition journals; and is not every one aware that when a
+country is governed on the principle of parties, the party which iscalled
+the opposition must be in the wrong? So it was decreed about this time
+that the fighting force of the British nation should be reduced. It was
+useless to speak of the chances of war, said the British tax-payer,
+speak-ing through the mouths of innumerable members of the British
+Legislature. Had not the late Prince Consort and the late Mr. Cobden
+come to the same conclusion from the widely different points of great
+exhibitions and free trade, that war could never be? And if; in the face
+of great exhibitions and universal free trade-even if war did become
+possible, had we not ambassadors, and legations, and consulates all over
+the world; had we not military attaches at every great court of Europe;
+and would we not know all about it long before it commenced? No, no, said
+the tax-payer, speaking through the same medium as before, reduce the
+army, put the ships of war out of commission, take your largest and most
+powerful transport steamships, fill them full with your best and most
+experienced skilled military and naval artisans and labourers, send them
+across the Atlantic to forge guns, anchors, and material of war in the
+navy-yards of Norfolk and the arsenals of Springfield and Rock Island;
+and let us hear no more of war or its alarms. It is true, there were some
+persons who thought otherwise upon this subject, but many of them were
+men whose views had become warped and deranged in such out-of-the-way
+places as Southern Russia, Eastern China, Central Hindoostan, Southern
+Africa, and Northern America military men, who, in fact, could not be
+expected to understand questions of grave political economy, astute
+matters of place.-and party, upon which the very existence of the
+parliamentary system depended; and who, from the ignorance of these nice
+distinctions of liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal, had
+imagined that the strength and power of the empire was not of secondary
+importance to the strength and power of a party. But the year 1869 did
+not pass altogether into the bygone without giving a faint echo of
+disturbance in one far-away region of the earth. It is true, that not the
+smallest breathing of that strife which was to make: the succeeding year
+crimson through the centuries had yet sounded on the continent of Europe.
+No; all was as quiet there as befits the mighty hush which precedes
+colossal conflicts. But far away in the very farthest West, so far that
+not one man in fifty could tell its whereabouts, up somewhere between the
+Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Superior, along a river called the
+Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who or what
+they were, had risen in insurrection. Well-informed persons said these
+insurgents were only Indians; others, who had relations in America,
+averreed that they were Scotchmen, and one journal, well-known for its
+clearness upon all subjects connected with the American Continent,
+asserted that they were Frenchmen. Amongst so much conflicting testimony,
+it was only natural that the average Englishman should possess no very
+decided opinions upon the matter; in fact, it came to pass that the
+average Englishman, having heard that somebody was rebelling against him
+somewhere or other, looked to his atlas and his journal for information
+on the subject, and having failed in obtaining any from either source,
+naturally concluded that the whole thing was something which no fellow
+could be expected to understand. As, however, they who follow the writer
+of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
+to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it
+will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the
+last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon. Bookmark About the
+time when Napoleon was carrying half a million of men through the snows
+of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the
+idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the
+vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that
+entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in
+earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the
+imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century,
+had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico
+the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord
+Selkirk's experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded
+it. The earlier adventurers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic
+upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the
+very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day
+is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast
+wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles
+between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the
+cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Indeed,
+so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the
+Atlantic that all means of communication in that direction was utterly
+unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the
+ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world
+should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of
+lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its
+descent of 700 feet, lay between them and the ocean, and then only to
+reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice-bound
+outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
+latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
+for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
+summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
+raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
+before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in
+spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were
+married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the
+outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years
+after its formation, it rose in insurrection.
+
+<p>And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the
+positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must
+undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain
+so until the end; if you be cruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me,
+it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the individual
+"I," and to retain it until we part.
+
+<p>It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having
+experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a
+distinguished military functionary an intimation to the effect that a
+company in Her Majesty's service would be at my disposal, provided I
+could produce the sum of 1100 pounds. Some dozen years previous to the
+date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process
+of existence had reached-a position among the subalterns of the regiment
+technically known as first for purchase; but now, when the moment arrived
+to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 1100 pounds of
+regulation amount nor the 400 pounds of over-regulation items (terms
+very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obsolete) were
+forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in
+the race of life. What was to be done? What course lay open? Serve on;
+let the dull routine of barrack-life grow duller; go from Canada to the
+Cape, from the Cape to the Mauritius, from Mauritius to Madras, from
+Madras goodness knows where, and trust to delirium tremens, yellow fever,
+or: cholera morbus for promotion and advancement; or, on the other hand,
+cut the service, become in the lapse of time governor of a penitentiary,
+secretary to a London club, or adjutant of militia. And yet-here came the
+rub-when every fibre of one's existence beat in unison with the true
+spirit of military adventure, when the old feeling which in boyhood had
+made the study of history a delightful pastime, in late years had grown
+into a fixed unalterable longing for active service, when the whole
+current of thought ran in the direction of adventure-no matter in what
+climate, or under what circumstances-it was hard beyond the measure of
+words to sever in an instant the link that bound one to a life where such
+aspirations were still possible of fulfilment; to separate one's destiny
+for ever from that noble profession of arms; to become an outsider, to
+admit that the twelve best years of life had been a useless dream, and
+to bury oneself far away in some Western wilderness out of the reach or
+sight of red coat or sound of bugle-sights and sounds which old
+associations would have made unbearable. Surely it could not be done; and
+so, looking abroad into the future, it was difficult to trace a path
+Which could turn the flank of this formidable barrier flung thus suddenly
+into the highway of life.
+
+<p>Thus it was that one, at least, in Great Britain watched with anxious
+gaze this small speck of revolt rising so far away in the vast wilderness
+of the North-West; and when, about the beginning of the month of April,
+1870, news came of the projected despatch of an armed force from Canada
+against the malcontents of Red River, there was one who beheld in the
+approaching expedition the chance of a solution to the difficulties which
+had beset him in his career. That one was myself.
+
+<p>There was little time to be lost, for already; the cable said, the
+arrangements were in a forward state; the staff of the little force had
+been organized, the rough outline of the expedition had been sketched,
+and with the opening of navigation on the northern lakes the first move
+would be commenced. Going one morning to the nearest telegraph station, I
+sent the following message under the Atlantic to America:--"To: Winnipeg
+Expedition. Please remember me." When words cost at the rate of four
+shillings each, conversation and correspondence become of necessity
+limited. In the present instance I was only allowed the use of ten words
+to convey address, signature, and substance, and the five words of my
+message were framed both with a view to economy and politeness, as well
+as in a manner which by calling for no direct answer still left undecided
+the great question of success. Having despatched my message under the
+ocean, I determined to seek the Horse Guards in a final effort to procure
+unattached promotion in the army. It is almost unnecessary to remark that
+this attempt failed; and as I issued from the audience in which I had
+been informed of the utter hopelessness of my request, I had at least the
+satisfaction of having reduced my chances of fortune to the narrow limits
+of a single throw. Pausing at the gate of the Horse Guards I reviewed in
+a moment the whole situation; whatever was to be the result there was no
+time for delay and so, hailing a hansom, I told the cabby to drive to the
+office of the Cunard Steamship Company, Old Broad Street, City.
+
+<p>"What steamer sails on Wednesday for America?"
+
+<p>"The 'Samaria for Boston, the 'Marathon for New York."
+
+<p>"The 'Samaria broke her shaft, didn't she, last voyage, and was a
+missing ship for a month?" I asked.
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," answered the clerk.
+
+<p>"Then book me a passage in her," I replied; "she's not likely to play
+that prank twice in two voyages."
+
+<p><a name="ch2"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TWO.</h3>
+
+<p>The "Samaria "--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of the
+Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+<p>POLITICAL economists and newspaper editors for years have dwelt upon the
+unfortunate fact that Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, and does not
+export largely the products of her soil. But persons who have lived in
+the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern
+shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail
+daily from the United Kingdom, must have arrived at a conclusion totally
+at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under
+the sun which manufactures the material called man so readily as does
+that grass-covered island. Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, says
+the political economist. Indeed, my good sir, you are wholly mistaken.
+She is not only a manufacturing nation, but she manufactures nations. You
+do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines,
+but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her
+daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as
+for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me
+on board this ocean steamship "Samaria", and look at them. The good ship
+has run down the channel during the night and now lies at anchor in
+Queenstown harbour, waiting for mails and passengers. The latter came,
+quickly and thickly enough. No poor, ill-fed, miserably dressed crowd,
+but fresh, and fair, and strong, and well clad, the bone and muscle and
+rustic beauty of the land; the little steam-tender that plies from the
+shore to the ship is crowded at every trip, and you can scan them as they
+come on board in batches of seventy or eighty. Some eyes among the girls
+are red with crying, but tears dry quickly on young cheeks, and they will
+be laughing before an hour is over. "Let them go," says the economist;
+"we have too many mouths to feed in these little islands of ours; their
+going will give us more room, more cattle, more chance to keep our acres
+for the few'; let them go." My friend, that is just half the picture, and
+no more; we may get a peep at the other half before you and I part.
+
+<p>It was about five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the
+"Samaria" steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and
+rounding out into Atlantic turned her head towards the western horizon.
+The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland's southmost
+shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked
+the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A
+hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off
+summit of some inland mountain; and as evening came down over the still
+tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through
+phosphorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in
+distance till there lay around only the unbroken circle of the sea.
+
+<p>ON BOARD.-A trip across the Atlantic is now-a-days a very ordinary
+business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost
+count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue
+skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but
+don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of
+discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that
+north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such
+thing as pleasant sailing.
+
+<p>But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not
+more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one
+meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life,
+and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who,
+nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in
+ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been
+eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good
+Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a
+subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth
+voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the
+voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to
+cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this
+intimacy has been on the decline for some days, and, as he has committed
+the unpardonable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a
+subject connected with the general direction and termination of the Gulf
+Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate.
+Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going
+to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port
+negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband
+received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two
+years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a
+grateful nation, for three youthful Fusbies, who now serve their country
+in various parts of the world. She does not suffer from sea-sickness, but
+occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the
+administration of the stimulant already referred to. It is a singular
+fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable
+events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a
+porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence of the early
+career of the major; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an
+iceberg, has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense
+suffering undergone by the major during the period of his wound, owing to
+the scarcity of the article ice in tropical countries. Then on deck
+we have the inevitable old sailor who is perpetually engaged in scraping
+the vestiges of paint from your favourite seat, and who, having arrived
+at the completion of his monotonous task after four days incessant
+labour, is found on the morning of the fifth engaged in smearing the
+paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to
+ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and
+jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the
+roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all
+about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a
+chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there
+is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever wielded
+such power, what czar or kaiser had ever such obedience yielded to their
+decrees? This man, who on shore is nothing, is here on his deck a very
+pope; he is infallible. Canute could not stay the tide, but our sea-king
+regulates the sun. Charles the Fifth could not make half a dozen clocks
+go in unison, but Captain Smith can make it twelve o'clock any time he
+pleases; nay, more, when the sun has made it twelve o'clock no tongue of
+bell or sound of clock can proclaim time's decree until it has been
+ratified by the fiat of the captain; and even in his misfortunes what
+gran deur, what absence of excuse or crimination of others in the hour of
+his disaster! Who has not heard of that captain who sailed away from
+Liverpool one day bound for America? He had been hard worked on shore,
+and it was said that when he sought the seclusion of his own cabin he was
+not unmindful of that comfort which we are told the first navigator of
+the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The
+Isle of Man was passed; but unfortunately, on the second day out, the
+good ship struck the shore of the north-east coast of Ireland and became
+a total wreck. As the weather was extremely fine, and there appeared to
+be no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for
+investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade.
+During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man had been passed at
+such an hour on such a day, and the circumstance duly reported to the
+captain, who, it was said, was below. It was also stated that having
+received the report of the passage of the Calf of Man the captain had
+ordered the ship to be kept in a north-west course until further orders.
+About six hours later the vessel went ashore on the coast of Ireland.
+Such was the evidence of the first officer. The captain was shortly after
+called and examined.
+
+<p>"It appears, sir," said the president of the court, "that the passing of
+the Calf of Man was duly reported to you by the first officer. May I ask,
+sir, what course you ordered to be steered upon receipt of that
+information?"
+
+<p>"North-west, sir," answered the captain; "I said, 'Keep her north-west."'
+
+<p>"North-west," repeated the president; "a very excellent general course
+for making the coast of America, but not until you had cleared the
+channel and were well into the Atlantic. Why, sir, the whole of Ireland
+lay between you and America on that course."
+
+<p>"Can't help that, sir; can't help that, sir," replied the sea-king in a
+tone of half-contemptuous pity, that the whole of Ireland should have
+been so very unreasonable as to intrude itself in such a position.
+
+<p>And yet, with all the despotism of the deck, what kindly spirits are
+these old sea-captains with the freckled hard knuckled hands and the grim
+storm-seamed faces! What honest genuine hearts are lying buttoned beneath
+those rough pea-jackets! If all despots had been of that kind perhaps we
+shouldn't have known quite as much about Parliamentary Institutions as we
+do.
+
+<p>And now, while we have been talking thus, the "Samaria" has been getting
+far out into mid Atlantic, and yet we know not one among our
+fellow-passengers, although they do not number much above a dozen: a
+merchant from Maryland, a sea-captain-from Maine, a young doctor from
+Pennsylvania, a Massachusetts man, a Rhode Islander, a German geologist
+going to inspect seams in Colorado, a priest's sister from Ireland going
+to look after some little property left her by her brother, a poor fellow
+who was always ill, who never appeared at table, and who alluded to the
+demon sea-sickness that preyed upon him as "it". "It comes on very bad at
+night. It prevents me touching food. It never leaves me," he would say;
+and in truth this terrible "it" never did leave him until the harbour of
+Boston was reached, and even then, I fancy, dwelt in his thoughts during
+many a day on shore.
+
+<p>The sea-captain from Maine was a violent democrat, the Massachusetts man
+a rabid republican; and many a fierce battle waged between them on the
+vexed questions of state rights, negro suffrage, and free trade in
+liquor. To many Englishmen the terms republican and democrat may seem
+synonymous; but not between radical and conservative, between outmost
+Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these
+great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of
+sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so
+these units of American political controversy were microscopic
+representatives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what
+a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words.
+The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation; the democrat held
+opinions not very easy of description, something of a universalist and
+semi-unitarian tendency; these opinions became frequently intermixed with
+their political jargon, forming that curious combination of ideas which
+to unaccustomed ears sounds slightly blasphemous. I recollect a very
+earnest American once saying that he considered all religious, political,
+social, and historical teaching should be reduced to three subjects: the
+Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the
+Chicago Republican Platform of 1860.
+
+<p>On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves
+were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat
+being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency
+towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain
+an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it
+was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted
+for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been
+ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little
+village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of
+Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us,
+with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that
+we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our
+destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship
+had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
+prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
+knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
+this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
+our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
+expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
+repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
+take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
+induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
+and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
+the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
+trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
+priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
+announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
+the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
+called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
+generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
+member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
+countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
+silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more
+forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which
+those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish
+"darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or
+amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm
+and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life
+itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of
+New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over
+the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island,
+who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away
+and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as
+these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the
+man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly
+uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of
+ocean: small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain
+crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness Of which
+prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound
+vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain
+summit-one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the
+Cape be St. Ann's or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip
+of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland
+lie scattered many landscapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and
+forest, all unseen, all unknown to the wanderer who for the first time
+seeks the American shore; yet instinctively their presence is felt in
+that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the
+ocean; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as
+it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these
+immense inland seas; these mighty rivers whose waters seek their mother
+ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast
+though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as
+strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western
+horizon of the Atlantic.
+
+<p>The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the
+shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of
+steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port
+was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston
+harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island
+can make it. If ever that much talked-of conflict between the two great
+branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to quit the realms of fancy
+for those of fact, Boston, at least, will rest as safe from the
+destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the
+Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should
+have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within
+sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle
+of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution
+of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped
+gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in
+the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the
+landscape. "There, serais Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners
+during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of
+Bunker's Hill;" and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to
+some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
+
+<p>Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her
+lamps, before the "Samaria," swinging round in the fast-running tide,
+lay, with quiet screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New
+England's oldest city.
+
+<p>"Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker's Hill," said
+the sea-captain from Maine; "just like the ill-mannered republican cuss!"
+It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the
+information given me by his political opponent. "Never mind," he said,
+"to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned
+liquor law in every hotel in their city."
+
+<p>Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all
+the cities in the United States. Its streets, running in curious curves,
+as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of
+prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair
+idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have
+combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the
+western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New
+England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a
+glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their
+colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man
+in "Hudibras,"
+
+<p>"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"
+
+<p>and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard
+of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that
+this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston
+should not have been found capable of association with the duties of
+domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better
+understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most
+eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are
+nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the
+inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home
+truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious
+Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female
+excellence, should not be forgotten.
+
+<p>There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more
+likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or
+system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I
+cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in
+this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to
+insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes
+that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual
+characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not
+strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are
+simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die
+sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at
+once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning;
+but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of
+resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the
+part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American
+social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the
+earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in
+the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the
+day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup,
+and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door
+is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to
+do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition
+of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the
+event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this
+document-such as not getting up very early-you will not be sent to the
+penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would
+imply a necessity for trouble and exertion on the part of the
+richly-apparelled gentleman who does you the honour of receiving your
+petitions and grossly overcharging you at the office-no, you have simply
+to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a
+jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your
+bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were
+occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the
+rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expectorate
+profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is
+paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the
+bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is apparently the one saving
+clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to
+the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine-you, who have never
+yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction-that this tyranny is
+confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay money in the ordinary
+travelling transactions of life-your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor,
+your steamboat-clerk-takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a
+manner which tells you plainly enough that he is conferring a very great
+favour by so doing. He is in all probability realizing a profit of from
+three to four hundred-per cent. on whatever the transaction may be; but,
+all the same, although you are fully aware of this fact, you are
+nevertheless almost overwhelmed with the sense of the very deep
+obligation which you owe to the man who thus deigns to receive your
+money.
+
+<p>It was about ten o'clock at night when the steamer anchored at the wharf
+at Boston. Not until midday. On the following day were we (the
+passengers) allowed to leave the vessel. The cause of this delay arose
+from the fact that the collector of customs of the port of Boston was an
+individual of great social importance; and as it would have been
+inconvenient for him to attend at an earlier hour for the purpose of
+being present at the examination of our baggage, we were detained
+prisoners until the day was far enough advanced to suit his convenience.
+From a conversation which subsequently I had with this gentleman at our
+hotel, I discovered that he was more obliging in his general capacity of
+politician and prominent citizen than he was in his particular duties of
+customs collector. Like many other instances of the kind in the United
+States, his was a case of evident unfitness for the post he held. A.
+socially smaller man would have made a much better customs official.
+Unfortunately for the comfort of the public, the remuneration attached to
+appointments in the postal and customs departments is frequently very
+large, and these situations are eagerly sought as prizes in the lottery
+of political life-prizes, too, which can only be held for the short term
+of four years. As. A consequence, the official who holds his situation by
+right of political service rendered to the chief of the predominant
+clique or party in his state does not consider that he owes to the public
+the service of his office. In theory he is a public servant; in reality
+he becomes the master of the public. This is, however, the fault of the
+system and not of the individual.
+
+<p><a name="ch3"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER THREE</h3>
+
+<p>Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in Quebec--A Summons--A
+Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An Expedition--Poor Canada--An
+Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River
+Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"-M.
+Louis Riel--The Murder of Scott
+
+<p>When a city or a nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with
+all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or
+parrot. Boston-supreme over any city in the Republic-can boast of
+possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has
+long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to
+remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character
+and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker-perhaps he couldn't
+write!-are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in
+Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in
+the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in
+full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped
+soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork
+on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before
+them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure
+that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as
+valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic "bauble" of
+our own constitution.
+
+<p>Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told
+frequently enough-and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them.
+The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and
+houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the
+stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property
+in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into
+the great heart of the past.
+
+<p>Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward stream of empire
+in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it
+into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther
+still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still
+reigns in savage supremacy.
+
+<p>NIAGARA--They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to
+Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet,
+put all together, they have not said much about it; description depends
+so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If
+there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this
+one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are
+generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however,
+comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that
+analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the
+Battle of the Nile-a statement not likely to be challenged, as the
+survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one
+we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another
+writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this
+similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the
+one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly
+bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit
+the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a
+thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to
+Egypt--what Vesuvius is to Naples--what the field of Waterloo has been
+for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of
+North America.
+
+<p>It was early in the month of September, three years prior to the time I
+now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season
+was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and
+dance; tourists were doing the falls, and touts were doing the tourists.
+Newly-married couples were conducting themselves in that demonstrative
+manner characteristic of such as responded freely to the invitation
+contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work;
+itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws; free and
+enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract, who should have
+been sent over it; spiritualists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had
+made the place their own. Shoddy and petroleum were having "a high old
+time of it," spending the dollar as though that "almighty article had
+become the thin end of nothing whittled fine:" altogether, Niagara was a
+place to be instinctively shunned.
+
+<p>Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to a
+close. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange
+wonders with the scene. Folly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy
+and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly
+demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had vanished, the monster hotels were
+silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to
+Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of
+yore, "under de light of de moon." Well, Niagara was worth seeing
+then-and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. "Pat," said an
+American to a staring Irishman lately landed, "did you ever see such a
+fall as that in the old country?" "Begarra! I niver did; but look here
+now, why wouldn't it fall? what's to hinder it from falling?"
+
+<p>When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, I
+found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered,
+previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters
+of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again
+with a "You should have been here last week; every soul wants to get on
+the Expedition, and you hav'n't a chance. The whole thing is complete; we
+start to-morrow." Thus I encountered those few friends who on such
+occasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your
+neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that
+the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.
+
+<p>"My good fellow, there's not a vacant berth for you," he said; "I got
+your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the
+Expedition."
+
+<p>"I think, sir, there is one berth still vacant," I answered.
+
+<p>"What is it?"
+
+<p>"You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the
+flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you," I said.
+
+<p>"You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal
+by first train to-morrow; by to night's mail I will write to the general,
+recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may
+yet be all right."
+
+<p>I thanked him, said "Good-bye," and in little more than twenty-four hours
+later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.
+
+<p>"Let me see," said the general next morning, when I presented myself
+before him, "you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last
+month, didn't you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will
+require a man there, but the thing doesn't rest with me; it will have to
+be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your
+regiment, pending the receipt of an answer."
+
+<p>So I went back to my regiment to wait.
+
+<p>Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec-that portion of America
+known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the
+Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees
+begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it
+quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green;
+the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol
+of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its
+earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds,
+sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are
+drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and
+flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring.
+When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at
+Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow.
+Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists
+a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes
+the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form,
+as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a
+landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the
+whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp
+of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome
+his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to
+look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of
+gladness--"the birch-tree," as the old Saxon said, "becomes beautiful in
+its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro
+by the breath of heaven "--the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their
+mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the
+transparent waters--far into the depths of the great forest speeds the
+glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss,
+and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and
+wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many
+landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but
+which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again And again in
+after-time-these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not
+easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye
+sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found
+in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far stretching river,
+foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of
+many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its
+fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour
+from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field in what other spot on
+the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many
+of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves to feast on and to place
+in memory as joys-for ever?
+
+<p>I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one
+morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal
+to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my
+further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and
+fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It
+was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch
+of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to
+the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the
+broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the
+citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed
+with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant
+thought at the prospect before me. I little knew then the limits of my
+wanderings-I little thought that for many and many a day my track would
+lie with almost undeviating precision towards the setting sun, that
+summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and
+that still the nightly bivouac would be made a little nearer to that west
+whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.
+
+<p>But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in
+the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem
+laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening
+Cataraqui. "We must leave matters to yourself, I think," said the
+General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, "you will be best
+judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground. I will not ask
+you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if
+you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the
+place. You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave altogether to
+yourself. For the rest, you can draw on us for any money you require.
+Take care of those northern fellows. Good-bye, and success."
+
+<p>This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by
+the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West. On that morning the Grand
+Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement. It was about
+to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for
+Toronto; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of
+the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capital was
+drawing to a close. The Lightning Express was not attended with the
+glowing success predicted for it by its originators. At some thirty or
+forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some
+misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the
+rough uneven track. A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning
+Express got into motion again, and jolted along with tolerable celerity
+to Kingston. When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of
+fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity
+which promised disaster. The car in which I travelled was one belonging
+to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumberland, and
+we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of education, a governor of a
+province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a
+distinguished rifle regiment. Being the last car of the train, the
+vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails
+was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little
+unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the
+track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said
+to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into
+the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an
+embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is
+usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as
+those I have already mentioned. Whether a speaker of a house of commons
+and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of
+fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being
+"telescoped through colliding," I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto
+without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished
+fellow-travellers.
+
+<p>I remained long enough in the city of Toronto to provide myself with a
+wardrobe suitable to the countries I was about to seek. In one of the
+principal commercial streets of the flourishing capital of Ontario I
+found a small tailoring establishment, at the door of which stood an
+excellent representation of a colonial. The garments be longing to this
+figure appeared to have been originally designed from the world-famous
+pattern of the American flag, presenting above a combination of stars,
+and below having a tendency to stripes. The general groundwork of the
+whole rig appeared to be shoddy of an inferior-description, and a small
+card attached to the figure intimated that the entire fit-out was
+procurable at the very reasonable sum of ten dollars. It was impossible
+to resist the fascination of this attire. While the bargain was being
+transacted the tailor looked askance at the garments worn by his
+customer, which, having only a few months before emanated from the
+establishment of a well-known London cutter, presented a considerable
+contrast to the new investment; he even ventured upon some remarks which
+evidently had for their object the elucidation of the enigma, but a word
+that such clothes as those worn by me were utterly un suited to the bush
+repelled all further questioning-indeed, so pleased did the noor fellow
+appear in a pecuniary point of view, that he insisted upon presenting me
+gratis with a neck-tie of green and yellow, fully in keeping with the
+other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging
+these little preliminary matters so essential to the work I was about to
+engage in, let us examine for a moment the objects and scope of that
+work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my
+journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected
+that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started
+some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort William, on
+the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between
+Toronto and Thunder Bay is about 600 miles, 100 being by railroad
+conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded expanse of Lake Huron,
+known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of
+the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards
+of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of
+fresh water has rendered necessary the construction of a canal of
+considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory-a
+fact which gives our friendly cousins the exclusive possession of the
+great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the
+Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition.
+Poor Canada! when one looks at you along the immense length of your noble
+river boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your
+youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding
+colonial minister through the particular whig, or tory spectacles of his
+party, subject to violent and radical alterations of policy because of
+some party vote in a Legislative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest
+coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the
+limits of your possible future, parties every where in your provinces,
+and of every kind, except a national party; no breadth, no depth, no
+earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for
+himself and no-one for the country; men fighting for a sect, for a
+province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this
+while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth,
+looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with
+perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time,'
+digging his canals and grading, his railroads, with one eye on the
+Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing,
+annexing, outmanoeuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in
+solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy proclamations and
+despatches anent boundary-lines, of which they knew next to nothing.
+Macaulay laughs at poor Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out
+that Cape Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were other
+and later Newcastles whose geographical knowledge of matters American
+were not a whit superior. Poor Canada! they muddled you out of Maine,
+and the open harbour of Portland, out of Rouse's Point, and the command
+of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the Rocky
+Mountains. It little matters whether it was the treaty of 1783, or 1818,
+or '21, or '48, or '71, the worst of every bargain, at all times, fell to
+you.
+
+<p>I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault St. Marie
+enabled the Americans to delay the progress of the Red River Expedition.
+The embargo put upon the Canadian vessels originated, however, in the
+State, and not the Federal, authorities; that is to say, the State of
+Michigan issued the prohibition against the passage of the steam boat,
+and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally, Washington overruled the
+decision of Michigan-a feat far more feasible now than it would have been
+prior to the Southern war-and the steamers were permitted to pass through
+into the waters of Lake Superior. From thence to Thunder Bay was only the
+steaming of four-and-twenty hours through a lake whose vast bosom is the
+favourite playmate of the wild storm-king of the North. But although
+full half the total distance from Toronto to the Red River had been
+traversed when the Expedition reached Thunder Bay, not a twentieth of the
+time nor one hundredth part of the labour and fatigue had been
+accomplished. For a distance of 600 miles there stretched away to the
+northwest a vast tract of rock-fringed lake, swamp, and forest; lying
+spread in primeval savagery, an untravelled wilderness; the home of the
+Ojibbeway, who here, entrenched amongst Nature's fastnesses, has long
+called this land his own. Long before Wolfe had scaled the heights of
+Abraham, before even Marlborough, and Eugene, and Villers, and V'endome,
+and Villeroy had commenced to fight their giants fights in divers
+portions of the low countries, some adventurous subjects of the Grand
+Monarque were forcing their way, for the first time, along the northern
+shores of Lake Superior, nor stopping there: away to the north-west there
+dwelt wild tribes to be sought out by two classes of men-by the black
+robe, who laboured for souls; by the trader, who sought for skins-and a
+hard race had these two widely different pioneers who sought at that
+early day these remote and friendless regions, so hard that it would
+almost seem as though the great powers of good and of evil had both
+despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain
+dominion over these distant savages. It was a curious contest: on the one
+hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the other,
+the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary--a
+contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with
+the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain
+ramble away into its depths; but it must not be, or else the journey I
+have to travel myself would never even begin.
+
+<p>Vast as is the accumulation of fresh water in Lake Superior, the area of
+the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its
+northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or "divide" of
+the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence
+the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the
+voyageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the
+many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the
+north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic Ocean and
+Hudson Bay. Here, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the sea level, and
+of 900 above Lake Superior, he launches his canoe upon water flowing
+north and west; then he has before him hundreds of miles of quiet-lying
+lake, of wildly rushing river, of rock-broken rapid, of foaming cataract,
+but through it all runs ever towards the north the ocean-seeking current.
+As later on we shall see many and many a mile of this wilderness--living
+in it, eating in it, sleeping in it-although reaching it from a different
+direction altogether from the one spoken of now, I anticipate, by
+alluding to it here, only as illustrating the track of the Expedition
+between Lake Superior and Red River. For myself, my route was to be
+altogether a different one. I was to follow the lines of railroad which
+ran-out into the frontier territories of the United States, then, leaving
+the iron horse, I was to make my way to the settlements on the west shore
+of Lake Superior, and from thence to work Round to the American
+boundary-line at Pembina on the Red River; so far through American
+territory, and with distinct and definite instructions; after that,
+altogether to my own resources, but with this summary of the general's
+wishes: "I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but however you manage
+it, try and reach Wolseley-before he gets through from Lake Superior, and
+let him know what these Red River men are going to do." Thus the military
+Expedition under Colonel Wolseley was to work its way Across from Lake
+Superior to Red River, through British territory; I was to pass round by
+the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of Fenian
+intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, endeavour to reach
+Colonel Wolseley beyond Red River, with all tidings as to state of
+parties and chances of fight. But as the reader has heard only a very
+brief mention of the state of affairs in Red River, and as he may very
+naturally be inclined to ask, What is this Expedition going to do--why
+are these men sent through swamp and wilderness at all? A few explanatory
+words may not be out of place, serving to make matters now and at a later
+period much more intelligible. I have said in the opening chapter of this
+book, that the little community, or rather a portion of the little
+community, of Red River Settlement had risen in insurrection, protesting
+vehemently against certain arrangements made between the Governor of
+Canada and the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company relative to the cession of
+territorial rights and governing powers. After forcibly expelling the
+Governor of the country appointed by Canada, from the frontier station at
+Pembina, the French malcontents had proceeded to other and still more
+questionable proceedings. Assembling in large numbers, they had fortified
+portions of the road between Pembina and Fort Garry, and had taken armed
+possession of the latter place, in which large stores of provisions,
+clothing, and merchandise of all descriptions had been stored by the
+Hudson Bay Company. The occupation of this fort, which stands close to
+the confluence of the Red and Assineboine Rivers, nearly midway between
+the American boundary-line and the southern shore of Lake Winnipeg, gave
+the French party the virtual command of the entire settlement. The
+abundant stores of clothing and provisions were not so important as the
+arms and ammunition which also fell into their hands--a battery of
+nine-pound bronze guns, complete in every respect, besides several
+smaller pieces of ordnance, together with large store of Enfield rifles
+and old brown-bess smooth bores. The place was, in fact, abundantly
+supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing
+to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this
+point had characterized all the movements of the originator and
+mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to see a
+thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion,
+becomes respectable when it is carried out with courage, energy, and
+decision.
+
+<p>And, in truth, up to this point in the little insurrection it is not easy
+to condemn the wild Metis of the North-west--wild as the bison which he
+hunted, unreclaimed as the prairies he loved so well, what knew he of
+State duty or of loyalty? He knew that this land was his, and that strong
+men were coming to square it into rectangular farms and to push him
+farther west by the mere pressure of civilization. He had heard of
+England and the English, but it was in a shadowy, vague, unsubstantial
+sort of way, unaccompanied by any fixed idea of government or law. The
+Company--not the Hudson Bay Company, but the Company-represented for him
+all law, all power, all government. Protection he did not need-his quick
+ear, his unerring eye, his untiring horse, his trading gun, gave him
+that; but a market for his taurreau, for his buffalo robe, for his lynx,
+fox, and wolf skins, for the produce of his summer hunt and winter trade,
+he did need, and in the forts of the Company he found it. His wants were
+few-a capôte of blue cloth, with shining brass buttons; a cap, with beads
+and tassel; a blanket; a gun, and ball and powder; a box: of matches, and
+a knife, these were all he wanted, and at every fort, from the mountain
+to the banks of his well-loved River Rouge, he found them, too. What were
+these new people coming to do with him? Who could tell? If they meant him
+fair, why did they not say so? why did they not come up and tell him what
+they wanted, and what they were going to do for him, and ask him what he
+wished for? But, no; they either meant to outwit him, or they held him of
+so small account that it mattered little what he thought about it; and,
+with all the pride of his mother's race, that idea of his being slighted
+hurt him even more than the idea of his being wronged. Did not every
+thing point to his disappearance under the new order of things? He had
+only to look round him to verify the fact; for years before this
+annexation to Canada had been carried into effect stragglers from the
+east had occasionally reached Red River. It is true that these new-comers
+found much to foster the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon settler. They
+found a few thousand occupants, half-farmers, half-hunters, living under
+a vast commercial monopoly, which, though it practically rested upon a
+basis of the most paternal kindness towards its subjects, was
+theoretically hostile to all opposition. Had these men settled quietly to
+the usual avocations of farming, clearing the wooded ridges, fencing the
+rich expanses of prairie, covering the great swamps and plains with
+herds and flocks, it is probable that all would have gone well between
+the new-comers and the old proprietors. Over that great western thousand
+miles of prairie there was room for all. But, no; they came to trade and
+not to till, and trade on the Red River of the North was conducted upon
+the most peculiar principles. There was, in fact, but one trade, and that
+was the fur trade. Now, the fur trade is, for some reason or other, a
+very curious description of barter. Like some mysterious chemical agency,
+it pervades and permeates every thing it touches. If a man cuts off legs,
+cures diseases, draws teeth, sells whiskey, cotton, wool, or any other
+commodity of civilized or uncivilized life, he will be as sure to do it
+with a view to furs as any doctor, dentist, or general merchant will be
+sure to practise his particular calling with a view to the acquisition of
+gold and silver. Thus, then, in the first instance were the new-comers
+set in antagonism to the Company, and finally to the inhabitants
+themselves. Let us try and be just to all parties in this little oasis of
+the Western wilderness.
+
+<p>The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much
+given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice; and
+it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to
+do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out
+so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their not being able
+to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the
+advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming
+race. Obstacles of any kind are their peculiar detestation-if it is a
+tree, cut it down; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a
+half-breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said
+they act up to their convictions.
+
+<p>'Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled
+wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the
+North-west from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown
+to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but,
+unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in
+peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000
+persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed
+away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than
+that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain
+half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events
+had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would
+dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western
+region, the Company would dis appear, and all the institutions of New
+World progress would shed-prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to
+the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the
+new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community,
+resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got
+their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns,
+and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several
+anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling
+the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily
+informing Mr. Governor M'Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his
+presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its
+inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had
+worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and
+directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis
+Riel--a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of
+parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of
+political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has
+followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the
+assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds-it has
+occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the
+mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who
+surrendered for 300,000 pounds their territorial rights? was it the
+Imperial Government who accepted that surrender? or was it the Dominion
+Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial
+authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business
+belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. Any ordinary
+matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few
+hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen
+despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the
+whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and
+carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing
+would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to
+Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would
+have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country
+relative to` the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of
+their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might
+be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead
+ignorance upon any matter pertaining to the people it governs, or expects
+to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such
+matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea
+put forward by the Dominion Government of Canada, and yet the Dominion
+Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving
+at a-correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they had
+only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that
+warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling
+amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, "they are only eaters of
+pemmican," so cutting to the Metis, was then first originated by a
+distinguished Canadian politician.
+
+<p>And now let us see what the "eaters of pemmican" proceeded to do after
+their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitted they
+behaved in a very indifferent manner, going steadily from bad to worse,
+and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft
+repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of
+December, 1869, Mr. M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at
+Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor
+of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the
+other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the
+high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest,
+-disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to
+assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were
+to be found." Now, of the first proclamation it will be only necessary to
+remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind,
+imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the
+reader that the title of "Conservator of the Peace" was singularly
+inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers
+as was the holder of this commission, who was to "assault, fire upon,
+and break into houses, and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse
+people," and generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila,
+Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of
+ancient or modern times. The officer holding this destructive commission
+thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French
+adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other
+rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty
+miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but
+unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, not finding within its walls the
+same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry
+senior.
+
+<p>The Indians, ever ready to have a hand in any fighting which may be
+"knocking around," came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and
+pow-wow; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place.
+Some hundreds of English and Scotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off
+to companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing
+pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course.
+But, in truth, the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in
+this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney
+and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen,
+these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had
+been only fighting the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had
+hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of
+Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers
+began to melt away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had
+disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became
+apparent in the increasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his
+followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the
+Scotch and English half-breeds against him served only to add strength to
+his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much
+increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their manifest
+functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of
+religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened
+by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel
+determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This
+was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement
+already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the
+people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the
+certain advance of the English force upon Fort Garry, had taken up a
+position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from
+the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents previous to
+making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more
+than a match for his antagonists; marching quickly out of his stronghold,
+he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a
+gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to
+surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such
+occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were
+ordered, and marching out-with or without side-arms and military honours
+history does not relate-were forthwith conducted into close confinement
+within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession
+not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many
+valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr.
+Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine
+himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are
+sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man's
+property is only to confiscate it, and to take his life is merely to
+execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and
+requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable
+share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having
+particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent
+Jamaica rum. The proverb which has reference to a mendicant suddenly
+Placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the case
+of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily
+from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a
+very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial
+debauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1870, disregarding
+some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless
+cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott.
+This act, committed in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name:
+the red name of murder-a name which instantly and for ever drew between
+Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable
+gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and
+which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is
+needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising
+which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless
+and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoners death a foregone
+conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which
+characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting
+subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to
+illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves. On the
+night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had
+been dug within the walls of the fort. Two clergymen had asked permission
+to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had
+been denied. On the anniversary of the murder, namely, the 4th March,
+1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd
+gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the
+purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to
+an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was
+empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the
+final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one
+thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his
+immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed
+they had committed, for had they believed that the taking of this man's
+life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or
+political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes
+committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held
+its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless
+lie. The murderer and the law both take life--it is only the murderer who
+hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.
+
+<p><a name="ch4"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER FOUR.</h3>
+
+<p>Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great Fusion-Wisconsin--The
+Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I start for Lake
+Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The End of the Track.
+
+<p>ALAS! I have to go a long way back to the city of Toronto, where I had
+just completed the purchase of a full costume of a Western borderer. On
+the 10th of June I crossed the Detroit River from Western Canada to the
+State of Michigan, and travelling by the central railway of that state
+reached the great city of Chicago on the following day. All Americans,
+but particularly all Western Americans, are very proud of this big city,
+which is not yet as old as many of its inhabitants, and they are justly
+proud of it. It is by very much the largest and the richest of the new
+cities of the New World. Maps made fifty years ago will be searched in
+vain for Chicago. Chicago was then a swamp where the skunks, after whom
+it is called, held undisputed revels. To-day Chicago numbers about
+300,000 souls, and it is about "the livest city in our great Republic;
+sir."
+
+<p>Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York. A traveller leaving
+the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday
+at eight o'clock in the evening in Chicago-one thousand miles in
+thirty-four hours. In the meantime he will have eaten three meals and
+slept soundly "on board" his palace-car, if he is so minded. For many
+hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have
+noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and
+settlements interspersed between; and then, when these tracts of swamp
+and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he
+comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full-grown, bustling city, with tall
+chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great: drays
+of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall-masted
+ships and whole fleets of steamers lying packed against the crowded
+quays. He has begun to dream himself in the West, and lo! there rises up
+a great city. "But is not this the West?" will ask the new-comer from the
+Atlantic states. "Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New
+York, by water 1500 miles to Quebec; surely this must be the West?" No;
+for in this New World the West is ever on the move. Twenty years ago
+Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City,
+and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.
+
+<p>This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new
+scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An
+American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on many
+social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very
+shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of
+ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact
+that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub
+every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will
+find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your
+peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you the details of
+every item connected with his business--altogether a very jolly every-day
+companion when met on even basis. If you happen to be a military man, he
+will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition: of rank
+by virtue of his volunteer services in the 44th: Illinois, or 55th
+Missourian. At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a
+safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with "I
+say, General," and on no account ever to get below the rank of field
+officer when addressing anybody holding a socially smaller position than
+that of bar-keeper. Indeed major-generals were as plentiful in the United
+States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in
+the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign. It was at
+Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was established by a youngster on
+the score that he really could not spit out of his own window without
+hitting a brevet major outside; and it was in a Western city that the man
+threw his stick at a dog across the road, "missed that dawg, sir, but hit
+five major-generals on t'other side, and 'twasn't a good day for
+major-generals either, sir." Not less necessary than knowledge of social
+position is knowledge of the political institutions and characters of the
+West. Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is
+simply to argue yourself utterly unknown. My first experience of Chicago
+fully impressed me with this fact. I had made the acquaintance of an
+American gentleman "on board" the train, and as we approached the city
+along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the
+buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.
+
+<p>"There, sir," he finally said, "there is our new monument to Stephen B.
+Douglas."
+
+<p>I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in
+course of erection into a pedestal. I confess to having been entirely
+ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to
+this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my informant's
+voice was sufficient to warn me that everybody knew Stephen B. Douglas,
+and that ignorance of his career might prove hurtful to the feelings of
+my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or
+look the drawback under which I laboured. There was with me, however, a
+travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to
+mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours
+should be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint across the
+Atlantic. Looking partly at the monument, partly at our American
+informant, and partly at me, he hastily ejaculated, "Who the devil was
+Stephen B. Douglas?"
+
+<p>Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggravating form. I hastily
+attempted a rescue. "Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?" I exclaimed,
+in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise. "Is it possible you don't know
+who Stephen B. Douglas was?"
+
+<p>Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my
+fellow-traveller was not to be done. "All deuced fine," he went on, "I'll
+bet you a fiver you don't know who he was either!"
+
+<p>I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he
+persisted in his reckless offers of "laying fivers," and our united
+ignorance stood fatally revealed.
+
+<p>Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level
+prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as
+fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under
+a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles
+from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The
+Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its
+western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich
+burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on
+its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the
+Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, unwaters the
+south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse
+the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant
+fact--5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state!
+More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage
+of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion
+Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have
+striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day,
+thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of
+the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own
+produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely
+inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago
+since William Cobbett laboured long and earnestly to prove that English
+emigrants who pushed on into the "wilderness of the Illinois went
+straight to misery and ruin."
+
+<p>Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north
+along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in
+the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of
+Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100
+miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being, also some 100
+miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by
+water to New York and the Atlantic, Milwaukie caries off no small share
+of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling
+prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing
+states of the American Union. Scandinavia, Germany, and Ireland have made
+this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one
+hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish
+Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is
+one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern
+Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie
+between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Mississippi. No one
+stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill
+the sheds at the depot, the sight is too common to cause interest now,
+and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the
+promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd
+of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food
+while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the
+most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can
+devise--such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like
+boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or
+Christian--clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray
+of mid-Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since
+New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and
+seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion; altogether a homely people,
+but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits
+under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast
+human machine Which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth
+into the same image and likeness of the inevitable Yankee--grinds him too
+into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it
+without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language
+or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the
+various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American
+people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so
+gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going
+on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of
+dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race
+the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the
+noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling
+of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human
+family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the
+human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve
+it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success.
+Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die
+out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his
+love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt,
+Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those
+traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be
+that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old
+distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from
+it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--
+
+<p>"Sin itself be found,
+A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun."
+
+<p>But at present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American
+society, there seems little reason to hope for required alteration. The
+dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that
+"honesty is the best policy" must once more come into fashion.
+
+<p>Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of
+Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of
+Minnesota. About half that distance lies through the State of Wisconsin,
+and the remaining half is somewhat unequally divided between Iowa and
+Minnesota. Leaving Milwaukie at eleven o'clock a.m., one reaches the
+Mississippi at Prairie-du-Chien at ten o'clock same night; here a steamer
+ferries the broad swift-running stream, and at North Macgregor, on the
+Iowa shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy
+passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American
+institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable
+and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the
+other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under
+the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses
+would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc violently along over
+rough and uneven iron when he could select a stationary resting-place. On
+the other hand, it is a very great saving of time and expense to travel
+for some eighty or one hundred consecutive hours, and this can only be
+effected by means of the sleeping-car. Take this distance, from New York
+to St. Paul, as an instance. It is about 1450 miles, and it can be
+accomplished in sixty-four hours. Of course one cannot expect to find
+oneself as comfortably located as in an hotel; but, all things
+considered, the balance of advantage is very much on the side of the
+sleeping-car. After a night or two one becomes accustomed to the noise
+and oscillation; the little peculiarities incidental to turning-in in
+rather a promiscuous manner with ladies old and young, children in arms
+and out of arms, vanish before the force of habit; the necessity of
+making an early rush to the lavatory appliances in the morning, and there
+securing a plentiful supply of water and clean towels, becomes quickly
+apparent, and altogether the sleeping-car ceases to be a thing of
+nuisance and is accepted as an accomplished fact. The interior
+arrangements of the car are conducted as follows. A passage runs down the
+centre from one door to the other; on either side are placed the berths
+or "sections" for sleeping; during the day-time these form seats, and are
+occupied by such as care to take them in the ordinary manner of railroad
+cars. At night, however, the whole car undergoes a complete
+transformation. A negro attendant commences to make down the beds. This
+operation is performed by drawing out, after the manner of telescopes,
+portions of the car heretofore looked upon as immoveable; from various
+receptacles thus rendered visible he extracts large store of blankets,
+mattresses, bolsters, pillows, sheets, all which he arranges after the
+usual method of such articles. His work is done speedily and without
+noise or bustle, and in a very short time the interior of the car
+presents the spectacle of a long, dimly lighted passage, having on either
+side the striped damask curtains which partly shroud the berths behind
+them. Into these berths the passengers soon withdraw themselves, and all
+goes quietly till morning-unless, indeed, some stray turning bridge has
+been left turned over one of the numerous creeks that underlie the track,
+or the loud whistle of "brakes down" is the short prelude to one of the
+many disasters of American railroad travel. There are many varieties of
+the sleeping-car, but the principle and mode of procedure are identical
+in each. Some of those constructed by Messrs. Pullman and Wagner are as
+gorgeously decorated as gilding, plating, velvet, and damask can make
+them. The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the
+title of his cars. One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a
+Pullman) as one takes a Hansom. Pullman and sleeping-car have become
+synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time. Travelling from sunrise
+to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and
+at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an
+hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupation; still it has much to
+relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel
+would be almost insupportable. The fact of easy communication being
+maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to
+another during motion a most feasible undertaking. One can visit the
+various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to
+obtain information this is no small boon. Americans are always ready to
+enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met
+with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons
+from all parts of the Union--easters, Southerners, Western men, and
+Californians--the experiment of "knocking around the cars" is well worth
+the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take
+the weather, just as it comes.
+
+<p>The individual known by the title of "train-boy" is also worth some
+study. He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most
+precocious boy; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago,
+New York, or Philadelphia, or some other large town, and his aim is to
+dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily
+nourishment. He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which
+he serves round in several courses. The first course consists of works of
+a high moral character standard English novels in American reprints, and
+works of travel or biography. These he lays beside each passenger,
+stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular
+excellence of morality or binding. Having distributed a portion through
+the car, he passes into the next car, and so through the train. After a
+few minutes delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle
+with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one. After the
+lapse of a very short time he reappears with the second course of
+literature. This usually consists of a much lower standard of excellence
+--Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap
+reprints of popular works. The third course, which soon follows, is,
+however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the
+part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a
+little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high
+moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of
+the "Last Sensation," "The Dime Illustrated," "New York under Gas
+light," "The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains," and other similar
+productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the
+train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from
+him no further effort; he relinquishes that portion of his labour and
+devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment,
+consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly
+and uninviting description; these he follows with sugar in various
+preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and
+crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance;
+one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his
+vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He
+gets, he will tell you, a percentage on his sales of ten cents in the
+dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a
+dollar's worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents.
+Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral literature than
+present him at once with this ten cents, stipulating that on no account
+is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy,
+condiment, or book during the remainder of the journey. If you do this
+you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.
+
+<p>Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which lead
+to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi
+one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in
+the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is
+very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer,
+deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into
+stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into
+uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the
+sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the-most
+northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great
+wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far
+within the territories where yet the red man holds his own. Here, in the
+south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region.
+Far beyond the northern limit of the state it stretches away into
+latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes
+which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey
+into together.
+
+<p>The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota,
+gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade
+centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the
+Mississippi River, about 2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great
+river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to
+the north, 700 miles along the stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a
+few miles above St. Paul, interrupt all navigation, and the course of the
+river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and
+obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River
+receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north west;
+the St. Peter's or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the
+Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which
+lies West of Lake Superior; but it is not alone to water communication
+that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless
+energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the
+future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching
+out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited
+prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the
+world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the
+life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken
+"straight," the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting
+accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a
+hurry, all tend to cut short the term of man's life in the New World.'
+Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. "Yes, sir, we live fast here,"
+said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast
+too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of
+course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid
+seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere
+from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity
+of the surrounding prairies, its hotels--and they are many--are crowded
+with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they
+seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die.
+
+<p>Business connected with the supply of the troops during the coming winter
+in Red River, detained me for some weeks in Minnesota, and as the
+letters which I had despatched upon my arrival giving the necessary
+particulars regarding the proposed arrangements, required at least a week
+to obtain replies to, I determined to visit in the interim the shores of
+Lake Superior. Here I would glean what tidings I could of the progress of
+the Expedition, from whose base at Fort William, I would be only 100
+miles distant, as well as examine the% chances of Fenian intervention, so
+much talked of in the American newspapers, as likely to place in peril
+the flank of the expeditionary force as it followed the devious track of
+swamp and forest which has on one side Minnesota, and on the other the
+Canadian Dominion.
+
+<p>Since my departure from Canada the weather had been intensely warm:
+pleasant in Detroit, warm in Chicago, hot in Milwaukie, and sweltering,
+blazing in St. Paul, would have aptly described the temperature, although
+the last named city is some hundred miles more to the north than the
+first. But latitude is no criterion of summer heat in America, and the
+short Arctic summer of the Mackenzie River knows often a fiercer heat
+than the swamp lands of the Carolinas. So, putting together a very light
+field-kit, I started early one morning from St. Paul for the new town of
+Duluth, on the extreme westerly end of Lake Superior.
+
+<p>Duluth, I was told, was the very newest of new towns, in fact it only had
+an existence of eighteen months; as may be inferred, it had no past, but
+any want in that respect was compensated for in its marvellous future. It
+was to be the great grain emporium of the North-west; it was to kill St.
+Paul, Milwaukie, Chicago, and half-a-dozen other thriving towns; its
+murderous propensities seemed to have no bounds; lots were already
+selling at fabulous prices, and everybody seemed to have Duluth in some
+shape or other on the brain. To reach this paradise of the future I had
+to travel 100 miles by the Superior and Mississippi railroad, to a
+halting-place known as the End of the Track-a name which gave a very
+accurate idea of its whereabouts and general capabilities. The line was,
+in fact, in course of formation, and was being rapidly pushed forward
+from both ends with a view to its being opened through by the 1st day of
+August. About forty miles north-east of St. Paul we entered the region of
+pine forest. At intervals of ten or twelve miles the train stopped at
+places bearing high-sounding titles, such as Rush City, Pine City; but
+upon examination one looked in vain for any realization of these names,
+pines and rushes certainly were plentiful enough, but the city part of
+the arrangement was nowhere visible. Upon asking a fellow-passenger for
+some explanation of the phenomena, he answered, "Guess there was a city
+hereaway last year, but it busted up or gone on." Travellers unacquainted
+with the vernacular of America might have conjured up visions of a
+catastrophe not less terrible than that of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but
+an earlier acquaintance of Western cities had years before taught me to
+comprehend such phrases. In the autumn of 1867 I had visited the prairies
+of Nebraska, along the banks of the Platte River. Buffalo were numerous
+on the sandy plains which form the hunting-grounds of the Shienne and
+Arapahoe Indians, and amongst the vast herds the bright October days
+passed quickly enough. One day, in company with an American officer, we
+were following, as usual, a herd of buffalo, when we came upon a town
+standing silent and deserted in the middle the Trairie. "That," said the
+American, "is Kearney City; it did a good trade in the old wagon times,
+but it busted up when the railroad went on farther west; the people moved
+on to North Platte and Julesburg--guess there's only one man left in it
+now, and he's got snakes in his boots the hull season." Marvelling what
+manner of man this might be who dwelt alone in the silent city, we rode
+on. One house showed some traces of occupation, and in this house dwelt
+the man. We had passed through the deserted grass-grown street, and were
+again on the prairie, when a shot rang out behind us, the bullet cutting
+up the dust away to the left. "By G---- he's on the shoot," cried our
+friend; "ride, boys!" and so we rode. Much has been written and said of
+cities old and new, of Aztec and Peruvian monuments, but I venture to
+offer to the attention of the future historian of America this sample of
+the busted up city of Kearney and its solitary indweller, who had snakes
+in his boots and was on the shoot.
+
+<p>After that explanation of a "busted-up" and "gone-on" city, I was of
+course sufficiently well "posted" not to require further explanation as
+to the fate of Pine and Rush Cities; but had I entertained any doubts
+upon the subject, the final stoppage of the train at Moose Lake, or City,
+would have effectually dispelled them. For there stood the portions of
+Rush and Pine Cities which had not "bust up," but had simply "gone
+on." Two shanties, with a few outlying sheds, stood on either side of the
+track, which here crossed a clear running forest stream. Passenger
+communication ended at this point; the rails were laid down for a
+distance of eight miles farther, but only the "construction train," with
+supplies, men, etc. proceeded to that point. Track-laying was going on at
+the rate of three miles a day, I was informed, and the line would soon be
+opened to the Dalles of the St. Louis River, near the hecad of Lake
+Superior. The heat all day had been very great, and it was refreshing to
+get out of the dusty car, even though the shanties, in which eating,
+drinking, and sleeping were supposed to be carried on, were of the very
+lowest description. I had made the acquaintance of the express agent, a
+gentleman connected with the baggage department of the train, and during
+the journey he had taken me somewhat into his confidence on the matter of
+the lodging and entertainment which were to be found in the shanties.
+"The food ain't bad," he said, "but that there shanty of Tom's licks
+creation for bugs." This terse and forcibly expressed opinion made me
+select the interior of a wagon, and some fresh hay, as a place of rest,
+where, in spite of vast numbers of mosquitoes, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.
+
+<p>The construction train started from Moose City at six o'clock a.m., and
+as the stage, which was supposed to connect with the passenger train and
+carry forward its human freight to Superior City was filled to
+overflowing, I determined to take advantage of the construction train,
+and travel on it as far as it would take me. A very motley group of
+lumberers, navvies, and speculators assembled for breakfast at five
+o'clock a.m. at Tom's table, and although I cannot quite confirm the
+favourable opinion of my friend the express agent as to the quality of
+the viands which graced it, I can at least testify to the vigour with
+which the "guests" disposed of the pork and beans, the molasses and
+dried apples which Tom, with foul fingers, had set before them. Seated on
+the floor of a waggon in the construction train, in the midst of navvies
+of all countries and ages, I reached the end of the track while the
+morning sun was yet low in the east. I had struck up a kind of
+partnership for the journey with a pedlar Jew and an Ohio man, both going
+to Duluth, and as we had a march of eighteen miles to get through
+between the end of the track and the town of Fond-du-Lac, it became
+necessary to push on before the sun had reached his midday level; so,
+shouldering our baggage, we left the busy scene of track-laying and
+struck out along the graded line for the Dalles of the St. Louis. Up to
+this point the line had been fully levelled, and the walking was easy
+enough, but when the much-talked of Dalles were reached a complete
+change took place, and the toil became excessive. The St. Louis River,
+which in reality forms the headwater of the great St. Lawrence, has its
+source in the dividing ridge between Minnesota and the British territory.
+From these rugged Laurentian ridges it foams down in an impetuous torrent
+through wild pine-clad steeps of rock and towering precipice, apparently
+to force an outlet into the valley of the Mississippi, but at the Dalles
+it seems to have suddenly preferred to seek the cold waters of the
+Atlantic, and, bending its course abruptly to the east, it pours its
+foaming torrent into the great Lake Superior below the old French
+trading-post of Fond-du-Lac. The load which I carried was not of itself a
+heavy one, but its weight became intolerable under the rapidly increasing
+heat of the sun and from the toilsome nature of the road. The deep narrow
+gorges over which the railway was to be carried were yet unbridged, and
+we had to let ourselves down the steep yielding embankment to a depth of
+over 100 feet, and then clamber up the other side almost upon hands and
+knees-this under a sun that beat down between the hills with terrible
+intensity on the yellow sand of the railway cuttings! The Ohio man
+carried no baggage, but the Jew was heavily laden, and soon fell behind.
+For a time I kept pace with my light companion; but soon I too was
+obliged to lag, and about midday found myself alone in the solitudes of
+the Dalles. At last there came a gorge deeper and steeper than any thing
+that had preceded it, and I was forced to rest long before attempting its
+almost perpendicular ascent. When I did reach the top, it was to find
+myself thoroughly done up--the sun came down on the side of the
+embankment as though it would burn the sandy soil into ashes, not a
+breath of air moved through the silent hills, not a leaf stirred in the
+forest. My load was more than I could bear, and again I had to lie down
+to avoid falling down. Only once before had I experienced a similar
+sensation of choking, and that was in toiling through a Burmese swamp,
+snipe-shooting under a midday sun. How near that was to sun-stroke, I
+can't say; but I don't think it could be very far. After a little time, I
+saw, some distance down below, smoke rising from a shanty. I made my way
+with no small difficulty to the door, and found the place full of some
+twenty or more rough-bearded looking men sitting down to dinner.
+
+<p>"About played out, I guess?" said one. "Wall, that sun is h--; any how,
+come in and have a bit. Have a drink of tea or some vinegar and water."
+
+<p>They filled me out a literal dish of tea, black and boiling; and I
+drained the tin with a feeling of relief such as one seldom knows. The
+place was lined round with bunks like the forecastle of a ship. After a
+time I rose to depart and asked the man who acted as cook how much there
+was to pay.
+
+<p>"Not a cent, stranger;" and so I left my rough hospitable friends, and,
+gaining the railroad, lay down to rest until the fiery sun had got lower
+in the west. The remainder of the road was thronged with gangs of men at
+work along it, bridging, blasting, building, and levelling--strong
+able-bodied fellows fit for any thing. Each gang was under the
+superintendence of a railroad "boss," and all seemed to be working well.
+But then two dollars a head per diem will make men work well even under
+such a sun.
+
+<p><a name="ch5"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER FIVE.</h3>
+
+<p>Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North Pacific
+Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A Plan to
+dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and its
+Neighbourhood.
+
+<p>ALMOST in the centre of the Dalles I passed the spot where the Northern
+Pacific Railroad had on that day turned its first sod, commencing its
+long course across the continent. This North Pacific Railroad is destined
+to play a great part in the future history of the United States; it is
+the second great link which is to bind together the Atlantic and Pacific
+States (before twenty years there will be many others). From Puget Sound
+on the Pacific to Duluth on Lake Superior is about 2200 miles, and across
+this distance the North Pacific Railroad is to run. The immense plains of
+Dakota, the grassy uplands of Montana and Washington, and the centre of
+the State of Minnesota will behold ere long this iron road of the North
+Pacific Company piercing their lonely wilds. "Red Cloud" and "Black
+Eagle" and "Standing Buffalo" may gather their braves beyond the Coteau
+to battle against this steam-horse which scares their bison from his
+favourite breeding grounds on the scant pastures of the great Missouri
+plateau; but all their efforts will be in vain, the dollar will beat them
+out. Poor Red Cloud! in spite of thy towering form and mighty strength,
+the dollar is mightier still, and the fiat has gone forth before which
+thou and thy braves must pass away from the land! Very tired and covered
+deep with the dust of railroad cuttings, I reached the collection of
+scattered houses which bears the name of Fond-du Lac. Upon inquiring at
+the first house which I came to as to the whereabouts of the hotel, I was
+informed by a sour-visaged old female, that if I wanted to drink and get
+drunk, I must go farther on; but that if I wished to behave in a quiet
+and respectable manner, and could live %without liquor, I could stay in
+her house, which was at once post office, Temperance Hotel, and very
+respectable. Being weary and footsore, I. did not feel disposed to seek
+farther, for the place looked clean, the river was close at hand, and the
+whole aspect of the scene was suggestive of rest. In the evening hours
+myriads of mosquitoes and flying things of minutest size came forth from
+the wooded hills and did their best towards making life a misery; so bad
+were they that I welcomed a passing navvy who dropped in as a real
+godsend.
+
+<p>"You're come up to look after work on this North Pacific Railroad, I
+guess?" he commenced-he was a Southern Irish man, but "guessed" all the
+same--"well, now, look here, the North Pacific Railroad will never be
+like the U.P. (Union Pacific) I worked there, and I know what it was; it
+was bully, I can tell you. A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two
+dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and bit the boss on the head with
+his shovel if the boss gave him any d---- chat. No, sirree, the North
+Pacific will never be like that."
+
+<p>I could not help thinking that it was perhaps quite as well for the North
+Pacific Railroad Company and the boss if they never were destined to
+rival the Union Pacific Company as pictured by my companion; but I did
+not attempt to say so, as it might have come under the heading of
+"d---- chat," worthy only of being replied to by that convincing argument,
+the shovel.
+
+<p>A good night's sleep and a swim in the St. Louis river banished all trace
+of toil. I left Fond-du-Lac early in the afternoon, and, descending by a
+small steamer the many-winding St. Louis River, soon came in sight of the
+town of Duluth. The heat had become excessive; the Bay of St. Louis, shut
+in on all sides by lofty hills, lay under a mingled mass of thunder-cloud
+and sunshine; far out in Lake Superior vivid lightnings flashed over the
+gloomy water and long rolls of thunder shook the hills around. On board
+our little steamboat the atmosphere was stifling, and could not have been
+short of 100 degrees in the coolest place (it was 93 at six o'clock same
+evening in the hotel at Duluth); there was nothing for it but to lie
+quietly on a wooden bench and listen to the loud talking of some
+fellow-passengers. Three of the hardest of hard cases were engaged in the
+mental recreation of "'swapping lies;" their respective exchanges
+consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing; the experiences of one
+I recollect in particular. He had stolen an axe from a man on the North
+Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article. This
+Piece of knavery was received as the acme of cuteness; and I well
+recollect the language in which the brute wound up his self-laudations:
+"If any chap can steal faster than me, let him."
+
+<p>As we emerged from the last bend of the river and stood across the Bay of
+St. Louis, Duluth, in all its barrenness, stood before us. The future
+capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town
+whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of
+Japan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorriest
+spectacle of city that eye of man could look upon-wooden houses scattered
+at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only
+partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out of
+a reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and lumber
+standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs
+and passable only by crazy looking planks of tilting proclivities--over
+all, a sun fit for a Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in
+whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever.
+Still, in spite of rock and swamp and icy winter, Yankee energy will
+triumph here as it has triumphed else where over kindred difficulties.
+
+<p>"There's got to be a Boss City hereaway on this end of the lake," said
+the captain of the little boat; and though he spoke with much labour of
+imprecation, both needless then and now, taking what might be termed a
+cursory view of the situation, he summed up the prospects of Duluth
+conclusively and clearly enough.
+
+<p>I cannot say I enjoyed a stay of two days in Duluth. Several new saloons
+(name for dram-shops, gaming-houses, and generally questionable places)
+were being opened for the first time to the public, and free drinks were
+consequently the rule. Now "free drinks" have generally a demoralizing
+tendency upon a community, but taken in connexion with a temperature of
+98 degrees in the shade, they quickly develop into free revolvers and
+freer bowie-knives. Besides, the spirit of speculation was rampant in the
+hotel, and so many men had corner lots, dock locations, pine forests, and
+pre-empted lands to sell me, that nothing but flight prevented my
+becoming a large holder of all manner of Duluth securities upon terms
+that, upon the clearest showing, would have been ridiculously favourable
+to me. The principal object of my visit to Duluth was to discover if any
+settlement existed at the Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles to the north and
+not far from the track of the Expedition, a place which had been named to
+the military authorities in Canada as likely to form a base of attack for
+any filibusters who would be adventurous enough to make a dash at the
+communication of the expeditionary force. A report of the discovery of
+gold and silver mines around the Vermilion Lakes had induced a rush of
+miners there during the previous year; but the mines had all "bust up,"
+and the miners had been blown away to other regions, leaving the plant
+and fixtures of quartz-crushing machinery standing drearily in the
+wilderness. These facts I ascertained from the engineer, who had
+constructed a forest track from Duluth to the mines, and into whose
+office I penetrated in quest of information. He, too, looked upon me as a
+speculator.
+
+<p>"Don't mind them mines," he said, after I had questioned him on all
+points of distance and road; "don't touch them mines; they're clean gone
+up. The gold in them mines don't amount to a row of pines, and there's
+not a man there now."
+
+<p>That evening there came a violent thunder-storm, which cleared and cooled
+the atmosphere; between ten o'clock in the morning and three in the
+afternoon the thermometer fell 30 degrees. Lake Superior had asserted its
+icy influence over the sun. Glad to get away from Duluth, I crossed the
+bay to Superior City, situated on the opposite, or Wisconsin shore of the
+lake. A curious formation of sand and shingle runs out from the shore of
+Duluth, forming a long narrow spit of land projecting far into Lake
+Superior. It bears the name of Minnesota Point, and has evidently been
+formed by the opposing influence of the east wind over the great expanse
+of the lake, and the current of the St. Louis River from the West. It has
+a length of seven miles, and is only a few yards in width. Close to the
+Wisconsin shore a break occurs in this long narrow spit, and inside this
+opening lies the harbour and city of Superior incomparably a better
+situation for a city and lake-port, level, sheltered, capacious; but,
+nevertheless, Superior City is doomed to delay, while eight miles off its
+young rival is rapidly rushing to wealth. This anomaly is easily
+explained. Duluth is pushed forward by the capital of the State of
+Minnesota, while the legislature of Wisconsin looks with jealous eye upon
+the formation of a second lake-port city which might draw off to itself
+the trade of Milwaukie.
+
+<p>In course of time, however, Superior City must rise, in spite of all
+hostility, to the very prominent position to which its natural advantages
+entitle it. I had not been many minutes in the hotel at Superior City
+before the trying and unsought character of land speculator was again
+thrust upon me.
+
+<p>"Now, stranger," said a long-legged Yankee, who, with his boots on the
+stove---the day had got raw and cold--and his knees considerably higher
+than his head, was gazing intently at me, "'I guess I've fixed you." I
+was taken aback by the sudden identification of my business, when he
+continued, "Yes, I've just fixed you. You air a Kanady speculator, ain't
+ye?" Not deeming it altogether wise to deny the correct ness of his
+fixing, I replied I had lived in Kanady for some time, but that I was not
+going to begin speculation until I had knocked round a little. An
+invitation to liquor soon followed. The disagreeable consequence
+resulting from this admission soon became apparent. I was much pestered
+towards evening by offers of investment in things varying from a
+sand-hill to a city-square, or what would infallibly in course of time
+develop into a city-square. A gentleman rejoicing in the name of Vose
+Palmer insisted upon inter viewing me until a protracted hour of the night,
+with a view towards my investing in straight drinks for him at the bar and
+in an extensive pine forest for myself some where on the north shore of
+Lake Superior. I have no doubt the pine forest is still in the market; and
+should any enterprising capitalist in this country feel disposed to enter
+into partnership on a basis of bearing all expenses himself, giving only
+the profits to his partner, he will find "Vose Palmer, Superior City,
+Wisconsin, United States," ever ready to attend to him.
+
+<p>Before turning our steps westward from this inland ocean of Superior, it
+will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its bosom.
+It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal. Four
+Hundred English miles in length, 50 miles across it, 600 feet above
+Atlantic level, 900 feet in depth-one vast spring of purest crystal
+water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself,
+and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out
+as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the
+outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron,
+Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes
+Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, in the quiet
+loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar
+Rapids; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the
+foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, down where the lone
+Laurentian Hills come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest
+beginnings they cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close
+to the sounding billows of the Atlantic, 2000 miles from Superior, these
+hills--the only ones that ever last-guard the great gate by which the St.
+Lawrence seeks the sea.
+
+<p>There are rivers whose current, running red with the silt and mud of
+their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the ocean the record of their
+muddy progress; but this glorious river system, through its many lakes
+and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from
+the fountain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but
+they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steamships
+cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not the
+beauty of the water-no more than the fleets of the world mark the waves
+of the ocean. Any person looking at the map's of the region bounding the
+great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers
+flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron from the south; in fact,
+the drainage of the states bordering these lakes on the south is
+altogether carried off by the valley of the Mississippi-it follows that
+this valley of Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface of
+the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some 73,000 square miles,
+are therefore an immense reservoir held high over the level of the great
+Mississippi valley, from which they are separated by a barrier of slight
+elevation and extent.
+
+<p>It is not many years ago since an enterprising Yankee proposed to
+annihilate Canada, dry up Niagara, and "fix British creation" generally,
+by diverting the current of Lake Erie, through a deep canal, into the
+Ohio River; but should nature, in one of her freaks of earthquake, ever
+cause a disruption to this intervening barrier on the southern shores of
+the great northern lakes, the drying up of Niagara, the annihilation of
+Canada, and the divers disasters to British power, will in all
+probability be followed by the submersion of half of the Mississippi
+states under the waters of these inland seas.
+
+<p>On the 26th June I quitted the shores of Lake Superior and made my way
+back to Moose Lake. Without any exception, the road thither was the very
+worst I had ever travelled over--four horses essayed to drag a stage-waggon
+over, or rather, I should say, through, a track of mud and ruts
+impossible to picture. The stage fare amounted to $6, or 4s. for 34
+miles. An extra dollar reserved the box-seat and gave me the double
+advantage of knowing what was coming in the rut line and taking another
+lesson in the idiom of the American stage-driver. This idiom consists of
+the smallest possible amount of dictionary words, a few Scriptural names
+rather irreverently used, a very large intermixture of "git-ups" and
+ejaculatory "his," and a general tendency to blasphemy all round. We
+reached Tom's shanty at dusk. As before, it was crowded to excess, and
+the memory of the express man's warning was still sufficiently strong to
+make me prefer the forest to "bunking in" with the motley assemblage; a
+couple of Eastern Americans shared with me the little camp. We made a
+fire, laid some boards on the ground, spread a blanket upon them, pulled
+the "mosquito bars" over our heads, and lay down to attempt to sleep. It
+was a vain effort; mosquitoes came out in myriads, little atoms of gnats
+penetrated through the netting of the "bars," and rendered rest or sleep
+impossible. At last, when the gnats seemed disposed to retire, two
+Germans came along, and, seeing our fire, commenced stumbling about our
+boards. To be roused at two o'clock a.m., when one is just sinking into
+obliviousness after four hours of useless struggle with unseen enemies,
+is provoking enough, but to be roused under such circumstances by Germans
+is simply unbearable.
+
+<p>At last daylight came. A bathe in the creek, despite the clouds of
+mosquitoes, freshened one up a little and made Tom's terrible table see
+less repulsive. Then came a long hot day in the dusty cars, until at
+length St. Paul was reached.
+
+<p>I remained at St. Paul some twelve days, detained there from day to day
+awaiting the arrival of letters from Canada relative to the future supply
+of the Expedition. This delay was at the time most irksome, as I too
+frequently pictured the troops pushing on towards Fort Garry while I was
+detained inactive in Minnesota; but one morning the American papers came
+out with news that the expeditionary forces had met with much delay in
+their first move from Thunder Bay; the road over which it was necessary
+for them to transport their boats, munitions, and supplies for a distance
+of forty-four miles from Superior to Lake Shebandowan was utterly
+impracticable, portions of it, indeed, had still to be made, bridges to
+be built, swamps to be corduroyed, and thus at the very outset of the
+Expedition a long delay became necessary. Of course, the American press
+held high jubilee over this check, which was represented as only the
+beginning of the end of a series of disasters. The British Expedition was
+never destined to reach Red River--swamps would entrap it, rapids would
+engulf it; and if, in spite of these obstacles, some few men did succeed
+in piercing the rugged wilderness, the trusty rifle of the Metis would
+soon annihilate the presumptive intruders. Such was the news and such
+were the comments I had to read day after day, as I anxiously scanned the
+columns of the newspapers for intelligence. Nor were these comments on
+the Expedition confined to prophecy of its failure from the swamps and
+rapids of the route: Fenian aid was largely spoken of by one portion of
+the press. Arms and ammunition, and hands to use them, were being pushed
+towards St. Cloud and the Red River to aid the free sons of the
+North-west to follow out their manifest destiny, which, of course, was
+annexation to the United States. But although these items made reading a
+matter of no pleasant description, there were other things to be done in
+the good city of St. Paul not without their special interest. The Falls
+of the Mississippi at St. Anthony, and the lovely little Fall of
+Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect
+little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy
+threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so
+light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming
+through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The
+Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly
+disfigured by the various sawmills that surround them.
+
+<p>The hotel in which I lodged at St. Paul was a very favourable specimen
+of the American hostelry; its proprietor was, of course, a colonel, so it
+may be presumed that he kept his company in excellent order. I had but
+few acquaintances in St. Paul, and had little to do besides study
+American character as displayed in dining-room, lounging-hall, and
+verandah, during the hot fine days; but when the hour of sunset came it
+was my wont to ascend to the roof of the building to look at the glorious
+panorama spread out before me-for sunset in America is of itself a sight
+of rare beauty, and the valley of the Mississippi never appeared to
+better advantage than when the rich hues of the western sun were gilding
+the steep ridges that over hang it.
+
+<p><a name="ch6"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER SIX.</h3>
+
+<p>Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud--Sauk Rapids--"Steam
+Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the Red River.
+
+<p>ENGLISHMEN who visit America take away with them two widely different
+sets of opinions. In most instances they have rushed through the land,
+note-book in hand, recording impressions and eliciting information. The
+visit is too frequently a first and a last one; the thirty-seven states
+are run over in thirty-seven days; then out comes the book, and the great
+question of America, socially and politically considered, is sealed for
+evermore. Now, if these gentlemen would only recollect that impressions,
+which are thus hastily collected must of necessity share the
+imperfection of all things done in a hurry, they would not record these
+hurriedly gleaned facts with such an appearance of infallibility, or,
+rather, they might be induced to try a second rush across the Atlantic
+before attempting that first rush into print. Let them remember that even
+the genius of Dickens was not proof against such error, and that a
+subsequent visit to the States caused no small amount of alteration in
+his impressions of America. This second visit should be a rule with every
+man who wishes to read aright, for his own benefit, or for that of
+others, the great book which America holds open to the traveller. Above
+all, the English traveller who enters the United States with a portfolio
+filled with letters of introduction will generally prove the most
+untrustworthy guide to those who follow him for information. He will
+travel from city to city, finding everywhere lavish hospitality and
+boundless kindness; at every hotel he will be introduced to several of
+"our leading citizens;" newspapers will report his progress,
+general-superintendents of railroads will pester him with free passes
+over half the lines in the Union; and he will take his departure from New
+York after a dinner at Delmonico's, the cartes of which will cost a
+dollar each. The chances are extremely probable that his book will be
+about as fair a representation of American social and political
+institutions as his dinner at Delmonico's would justly represent the
+ordinary cuisine throughout the Western States.
+
+<p>Having been fêted and free-passed through the Union, he of course comes
+away delighted with everything. If he is what is called a Liberal in
+politics, his political bias still further strengthens his favourable
+impressions of democracy and Delmonico; if he is a rigid Conservative,
+democracy loses half its terrors when it is seen across the
+Atlantic--just as widow-burning or Juggernaut are institutions much better
+suited to Bengal than they would be to Berkshire. Of course Canada and
+things Canadian are utterly beneath the notice of our traveller. He may,
+however, introduce them casually with reference to Niagara, which has a
+Canadian shore, or Quebec, which possesses a fine view; for the rest,
+America, past, present, and to come, is to be studied in New York,
+Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and half a dozen other big places, and,
+with Niagara, Salt Lake City and San Francisco thrown in for scenic
+effect, the whole thing is complete. Salt Lake City is peculiarly
+valuable to the traveller, as it affords him much subject-matter for
+questionable writing. It might be well to recollect, however, that there
+really exists no necessity for crossing the Atlantic and travelling as
+far west as Utah in order to compose questionable books upon
+unquestionable subjects; similar materials in vast quantities exist much
+nearer home, and Pimlico and St. John's Wood will be found quite as
+prolific in "Spiritual Wives" and "Gothic" affinities as any creek or
+lake in the Western wilderness. Neither is it to be wondered at that so
+many travellers carry away with them a fixed idea that our cousins are
+cousins in heart as well as in relationship-the friendship is of the
+Delmonico type too. Those speeches made to the departing guest, those
+Pledges of brotherhood over the champagne glass, this "old lang syne"
+with hands held in Scotch fashion, all these are not worth much in the
+markets of brotherhood. You will be told that the hostility of the
+inhabitants of the United States towards England is confined to one
+class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically
+insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant: the hostility to
+England is universal; it is more deep rooted than any other feeling; it
+is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged
+strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you
+pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with
+your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the
+most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whose grip was
+around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that English-speaking
+cousin of yours over the Atlantic whose language is your language, whose
+literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your
+digests of law would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat
+over your agony, would keep the ring while you were, being knocked out of
+all semblance of nation and power, and would not be very far distant when
+the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast disjointed
+limbs. Make no mistake in this matter, and be not blinded by ties of
+kindred or belief. You imagine that because he is your cousin-sometimes
+even your very son-that he cannot hate you, and you nurse yourself in the
+belief that in a moment of peril the stars and stripes would fly
+alongside the old red cross. Listen one moment; we cannot go five miles
+through any State in the American Union without coming upon a square
+substantial building in which children are being taught one universal
+lesson-the history of how, through long years of blood and strife, their
+country came forth a nation from the bungling tyranny of Britain. Until
+five short years ago that was the one bit of history that went home to
+the heart of Young America, that Was the lesson your cousin learned, and
+still learns, in spite of later conflicts. Let us see what was the lesson
+your son had laid to heart. Well, your son learned his lesson, not from
+books, for too often he could not read, but he learned it in a manner
+which perhaps stamps it deeper into the mind than even letter-press or
+schoolmaster. He left you because you would not keep him, because you
+preferred grouse-moors and deer-forests in Scotland, or meadows and
+sheep-walks in Ireland to him or his. He did not leave you as one or two
+from a household--as one who would go away and establish a branch
+connexion across the ocean; he went away by families, by clans, by kith
+and kin, for ever and for aye and he went away with hate in his heart and
+dark thoughts towards you who should have been his mother. It matters
+little that he has bettered himself and grown rich in the new land; that
+is his affair; so far as you were concerned, it was about even betting
+whether he went to the bottom of the Atlantic or to the top of the
+social tree-so, I say, to close this subject, that son and cousin owe you
+and give you, scant and feeblest love. You will find themn the firm
+friend of the Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your
+enemy in Herat, in Cabool, in Kashgar, or in Constantinople; you will
+find him the ally of the Prussian whenever Kaiser William, after the
+fashion of his tribe, orders his legions to obliterate the line between
+Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you
+spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first
+Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore
+strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's
+friend, for the simple reason that he is your enemy.
+
+<p>But a study of American habits and opinions, however interesting in
+itself, was not calculated to facilitate in any way the solving of the
+problem which now beset me, namely, the further progress of my journey to
+the Northwest. The accounts which I daily received were not encouraging.
+Sometimes there came news that M. Riel had grown tired of his
+pre-eminence and was anxious to lay down his authority; at other times I
+heard of preparation made and making to oppose the Expedition by force,
+and of strict watch being maintained along the Pembina frontier to arrest
+and turn back all persons except such as were friendly to the Provisional
+Government.
+
+<p>Nor was my own position in St. Paul at all a pleasant one. The inquiries
+I had to make on subjects connected with the supply of the troops in Red
+River had made so many persons acquainted with my identity, that it soon
+became known that there was a British officer in the place--a knowledge
+which did not tend in any manner to make the days pleasant in themselves
+nor hopeful in the anticipation of a successful prosecution of my journey
+in the time to come. About the first week in July I left St. Paul for
+St. Cloud, seventy miles higher up on the Mississippi, having decided to
+wait no longer'` for instructions, but to trust to chance for further
+progress towards the North-west. "You will meet with no obstacle at this
+side of the line," said an American gentleman who was acquainted with the
+object of my journey, "but I won't answer for the other side;" and so,
+not knowing exactly how I was to get through to join the Expedition, but'
+determined to try it some way or other, I set out for Sauk Rapids and St.
+Cloud. Sauk Rapids, on the Mississippi River, is a city which has neither
+burst up nor gone on. It has thought fit to remain, without monument of
+any kind, where it originally located itself-on the left bank of the
+Mississippi, opposite the confluence of the Sauk River with the "Father
+of Waters." It takes its name partly from the Sauk River and partly from
+the rapids of the Mississippi which lie abreast of the town. Like many
+other cities, it had nourished feelings of the most deadly enmity.
+against its neighbours, and was to "kill creation" on every side; but
+these ideas of animosity have decreased considerably in lapse of time: Of
+course it possessed a newspaper--I believe it also possessed a church,
+but I did not see that edifice; the paper, however, I did see, and was
+much struck by the fact that the greater portion of the first page--the
+paper had only two-was taken up with a pictorial delineation of what
+Sauk Rapids would attain to in the future, when it had sufficiently
+developed its immense water-power; In the mean time previous to the
+development of said water-power-Sauk Rapids was not a bad sort of place:
+a bath at an hotel in St. Paul was a more expensive luxury than a dinner;
+but the Mississippi flowing by the door of the hotel at Sauk Rapids
+permitted free bathing in its waters. Any traveller in the United States
+will fully appreciate this condescension on the part of the great river.
+If a man wishes to be clean, he has to pay highly for the luxury. The
+baths which exist in the hotels are evidently meant for very rare and
+important occasions.
+
+<p>"I would like," said an American gentleman to a friend of mine travelling
+by railway, "I would like to show % you round our city, and I will call
+for you at the hotel."
+
+<p>"Thank you," replied my friend; "I have only to take a bath, and will be
+ready in half an hour."
+
+<p>"Take a bath!" answered the American; "why, you ain't sick, air you?"
+
+<p>There are not many commandments strictly adhered to in the United
+States; but had there ever existed a "Thou shalt not tub," the implicit
+obedience rendered to it would have been delightful, but perhaps, in that
+case, every American would have been a Diogenes.
+
+<p>The Russell House at Sauk Rapids was presided over by Dr. Chase.
+According to his card, Dr. Chase conferred more benefactions upon the
+human race for the very smallest remuneration than any man living. His
+hotel was situated in the loveliest portion of Minnesota, commanding the
+magnificent rapids of the Mississippi; his board and lodging were of the
+choicest description; horses and buggies were free, gratis, and medical
+attendance was also uncharged for. Finally, the card intimated that, upon
+turning over, still more astonishing revelations would meet the eye of
+the reader. Prepared for some terrible instance of humane abnegation on
+the part of Dr. Chase, I proceeded to do, as directed, and, turning over
+the card, read, "Present of a $500 greenback"!!! The gift of the green
+back was attended with some little drawback, inasmuch as it was
+conditional upon paying to Dr. Chase the sum of $20,000 for the goodwill,
+etc., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for
+them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low
+one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of
+his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the
+frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually
+pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more
+observable than in this Doctor's establishment; whether it was from the
+fact that each guest suffered under a painful knowledge of the superhuman
+efforts which the Doctor was making for his or her benefit, I cannot say;
+but I never witnessed the proverbially frightened appearance of the
+American people at meals to such a degree as at the dinner-table of the
+Sauk Hotel. When the damsels before alluded to commenced their
+peregrinations round the table, giving in terribly terse language the
+choice of meats, the solemnity of the proceeding could not have been
+exceeded. "Pork or beef?" "Pork," would answer the trembling feeder;
+"Beef or pork?" "Beef," would again reply the guest, grasping eagerly at
+the first name which struck upon his ear. But when the second course came
+round the damsels presented us with a choice of a very mysterious nature
+indeed. I dimly heard two names being uttered into the ears of my
+fellow-eaters, and I just had time to notice the paralyzing effect which
+the communication appeared to have upon them, when presently over my own
+shoulder I heard the mystic sound-I regret to say that at first these
+sounds entirely failed to present to my mind any idea of food or
+sustenance of known description, I therefore begged for a repetition of
+the words; this time there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or
+pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in
+her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness,
+but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The
+female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after
+communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not
+thought of much account for the remainder of the meal.
+
+<p>Upon the day of my arrival at Sauk Rapids I had let it be known pretty
+widely that I was ready to become the purchaser of a saddle-horse, if any
+person had such an animal to dispose of. In the three following days the
+amount of saddle-horses produced in the neighbourhood was perfectly
+astonishing; indeed the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any
+thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required animal; even
+a German--a "Dutchman'" came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh,
+sand-cracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of
+$100. Two livery stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated
+stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior
+description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of
+the animals brought up for inspection, I found there was little chance of
+being able to get over the 400 miles which lay between St. Cloud and Fort
+Garry. It was now the 12th of July; I had reached the farthest limit of
+railroad communication, and before me lay 200 miles of partly settled
+country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River. It is true that
+a four-horse stage ran from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie on Red River,
+but that would only have conveyed me to about 300 miles distant from Fort
+Garry, and over that last 300 miles I could see no prospect of
+travelling. I had therefore determined upon procuring a horse and riding
+the entire way, and it was with this object that I had entered into these
+inspections of horseflesh already mentioned. Matters were in this
+unsatisfactory state on the 12th of July, when I was informed that the
+solitary steamboat which plied upon the waters of the Red River was about
+to make a descent to Fort Garry, and that a week would elapse before she
+would start from her moorings below Georgetown, a. station of the Hudson
+Bay Company situated 250 miles from St. Cloud. This was indeed the best
+of good news to me; I saw in it the long-looked-for chance of bridging
+this great stretch of 400 miles and reaching at last the Red River
+Settlement. I saw in it still more the prospect of joining at no very
+distant time the expeditionary force itself, after I had run the gauntlet
+of M. Riel and his associates, and although many obstacles yet remained
+to be overcome, and distances vast and wild had to be covered before that
+hope could be realized, still the prospect of immediate movement overcame
+every perspective difficulty; and glad indeed I was when from the top of
+a well-horsed stage I saw the wooden houses of St. Cloud disappear
+beneath the prairie behind me, and I bade good-bye for many a day to the
+valley of the Mississippi,
+
+<p><a name="ch7"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER SEVEN.</h3>
+
+<p>North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival Savages-Abercrombie--News from
+the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red River--Prairies--Sunset--
+Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A Thunder-storm--A Prussian--
+Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer "International"--Pembina.
+
+<p>The stage-coach takes three days to run from St. Cloud to Fort
+Abercrombie, about 180 miles. The road was tolerably good, and many
+portions of the country were very beautiful to look at. On the second day
+one reaches the height of land between the Mississippi and Red Rivers, a
+region abounding in clear crystal lakes of every size and shape, the old
+home of the great Sioux nation, the true Minnesota of their dreams.
+Minnesota ("sky-coloured water"), how aptly did it describe that home
+which was no longer theirs! They have left it for ever; the Norwegian and
+the Swede now call it theirs, and nothing remains of the red man save
+these sounding names of lake and river which long years ago he gave them.
+Along the margins of these lakes many comfortable dwellings nestle
+amongst oak openings and glades, and hill and valley are golden in
+summer with fields of wheat and corn, and little towns are springing up
+where twenty years ago the Sioux lodge-poles were the only signs of
+habitation; but one cannot look on this transformation without feeling,
+with Longfellow, the terrible surge of the white man, "whose breath, like
+the blast of the east wind, drifts evermore to the west the scanty smoke
+of the wigwams." What savages, too, are they, the successors of the old
+race--savages! not less barbarous because they do not scalp, or
+war-dance, or go out to meet the Ojibbeway in the woods or the
+Assineboine in the plains.
+
+<p>We had passed a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Osakis, and reached
+another lake not less lovely, the name of which I did not know.
+
+<p>"What is the name of this place?" I asked the driver who had stopped to
+water his horses.
+
+<p>"I don't know," he answered, lifting a bucket of water to his thirsty
+steeds; "some God-dam Italian name, I guess." This high rolling land
+which divides the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from those of
+Hudson Bay lies at an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea level. It is
+rich in every thing that can make a country prosperous; and that portion
+of the "down-trodden millions," who "starve in the garrets of Europe,"
+and have made their homes along that height of land, have no reason to
+regret their choice.
+
+<p>On the evening of the second day we stopped for the night at the old
+stockaded post of Pomme-de-Terre, not far from the Ottertail River. The
+place was foul beyond the power of words to paint it, but a "shake down"
+amidst the hay in a cow-house was far preferable to the society of man
+close by.
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock on the following morning we reached and crossed the
+Ottertail River, the main branch of the Red River, and I beheld with joy
+the stream upon whose banks, still many hundred miles distant, stood Fort
+Garry. Later in the day, having passed the great level expanse known as
+The Breckenridge Flats, the stage drew up at Fort Abercrombie, and I saw
+for the first time the yellow, muddy waters of the Red River of the
+North. Mr. Nolan, express agent, stage agent, and hotel keeper in the
+town of McAulyville, put me up for that night, and although the room
+which I occupied was shared by no less than five other individuals, he
+nevertheless most kindly provided me with a bed to myself. I can't say
+that I enjoyed the diggings very much. A person lately returned from Fort
+Garry detailed his experiences of that place and his interview with the
+President at some length. A large band of the Sioux Indians was ready to
+support the Dictator against all comers, and a vigilant watch was
+maintained upon the Pembina frontier for the purpose of excluding
+strangers who might attempt to enter from the United States; and
+altogether M. Riel was as securely established in Fort Garry as if there
+had not existed a red-coat in the universe. As for the Expedition, its
+failure was looked upon as a foregone conclusion; nothing had been heard
+of it excepting a single rumour, and that was one of disaster. An Indian
+coming from beyond Fort Francis, somewhere in the wilderness north of
+Lake Superior, had brought tidings to the Lake of the Woods, that forty
+Canadian soldiers had already been lost in one of the boiling rapids of
+the route. "Not a man will get through!" was the general verdict of
+society, as that body was represented at Mr. Nolan's hotel, and, truth'
+to say, society seemed elated at its verdict. All this, told to a roomful
+of Americans, had no very exhilarating effect upon me as I sat, unknown
+and unnoticed, on my portmanteau, a stranger to every one. When our luck
+seems at its lowest there is only one thing to be done, and that is to go
+on and try again. Things certainly looked badly, obstacles grew bigger as
+I got nearer to them--but that is a way they have, and they never grow
+smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my plans for rapid
+movement. There was no horse or conveyance of any kind to be had from
+Abercrombie; but I discovered in the course of questions that the captain
+of the "International" steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a
+week before, and was expected to return to Abercrombie by the next stage,
+two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at
+Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart
+for his steamboat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul.
+Now the boat "International" was lying at a part of the Red River known
+as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I
+had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of
+this horse and cart of the captain's, it became a question of the very
+greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that
+a Red River cart is a very limited conveyance, and a Red River horse, as
+we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of
+impossibilities. To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for
+conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it-by the stage
+back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two
+days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set
+out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the
+Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud.
+This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Abercrombie, which for
+many reasons was a matter for congratulation, and put me in a position to
+intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie. So-on the 13th of July I
+left Nolan's hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary house
+which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and
+Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler's
+log-hut which stood out upon the level sea of grass and was visible miles
+and miles before one reached it. Here had rested one of those unquiet
+birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude nest of such
+material as the oak-wooded "bays" of the Red River afforded, and
+multiplying--in spite of much opposition to the contrary. His eldest had
+been struck dead in his house only a few months before by the
+thunderbolt, which so frequently hurls destruction upon the valley of the
+Red River. The settler had seen many lands since his old home in Cavan
+had been left behind, and but for his name it would have been difficult
+to tell his Irish nationality. He had wandered up to Red River Settlement
+and wandered back again, had squatted in Iowa, and finally, like some
+bird which long wheels in circles ere it settles upon the earth, had
+pitched his tent on the Red River.
+
+<p>The Red River--let us trace it while we wait the coming captain who is to
+navigate us down its tortuous channel. Close to the Lake Ithaska, in
+which the great river Mississippi takes its rise, there is a small sheet
+of water known as Elbow Lake. Here, at an elevation of 1689 feet above
+the sea level, nine feet higher than the source of the Mississippi, the
+Red River has its birth. It is curious that the primary direction of both
+rivers should be in courses diametrically opposite to their afterlines;
+the Mississippi first running to the north, and the Red River first
+bending towards the south; in fact, it is only when it gets down here,
+near the Breckenridge Prairies, that it finally determines to seek a
+northern outlet to the ocean. Meeting the current of the Bois-des-Sioux,
+which has its source in Lac Travers, in which the Minnesota River, a
+tributary of the Mississippi, also takes its rise, the Red River hurries
+on into the level prairie and soon commences its immense windings. This
+Lac Travers discharges in wet seasons north and south, and is the only
+sheet of water on the Continent which sheds its waters into the tropics
+of the Gulf of Mexico and into the polar ocean of the Hudson Bay. In
+former times the whole system of rivers bore the name of the great Dakota
+nation the Sioux River and the title of Red River was only borne by that
+portion of the stream which flows from Red Lake to the forks of the
+Assineboine. Now, however, the whole stream, from its source in Elbow
+Lake to its estuary in Lake Winnipeg fully 900 miles by water, is called
+the Red River: people say that the name is derived from a bloody Indian
+battle which once took place upon its banks, tinging the waters with
+crimson dye. It certainly cannot be called red from the hue of the water,
+which is of a dirty-white colour. Flowing towards the north with
+innumerable twists and sudden turnings, the Red River divides the State
+of Minnesota, which it has upon its right, from the great territory of
+Dakota, receiving from each side many tributary streams which take their
+source in the Leaf Hills of Minnesota and in the Coteau of the Missouri.
+Its tributaries from the east flow through dense forests, those from the
+west wind through the vast sandy wastes of the Dakota Prairie, where
+trees are almost unknown. The plain through which Red River flows is
+fertile beyond description. At a little distance it looks one vast level
+plain through which the windings of the river are marked by a dark line
+of woods fringing the whole length of the stream--each tributary has also
+its line of forest--a line visible many miles away over the great sea of
+grass. As one travels on, there first rise above the prairie the summits
+of the trees; these gradually'! grow larger, until finally, after many
+hours, the river is reached. Nothing else breaks the uniform level.
+Standing upon the ground the eye ranges over many miles of grass,
+standing on a waggon, one doubles the area of vision, and to look over
+the plains from an elevation of twelve feet above the earth is to survey
+at a glance a space so vast that distance alone seems to bound its
+limits. The effect of sunset over these oceans of verdure is very
+beautiful; a thousand hues spread themselves upon the grassy plains; a
+thousand tints of gold are cast along the heavens, and the two oceans of
+the sky and of the earth intermingle in one great blaze of glory at the
+very gates of the setting sun. But to speak of sunsets now is only to
+anticipate. Here at the Red River we are only at the threshold of the
+sunset, its true home yet lies many days journey to the west: there,
+where the long shadows of the vast herds of bison trail slowly over the
+immense plains, huge and dark against the golden west; there, where the
+red man still sees in the glory of the setting sun the realization of his
+dream of heaven.
+
+<p>Shooting the prairie plover, which were numerous around the solitary
+shanty, gossipping with Mr. Connelly on Western life and Red River
+experiences--I passed the long July day until evening came to a close.
+Then came the time of the mosquito; he swarmed around the shanty, he came
+out from blade of grass and up from river sedge, from the wooded bay and
+the dusky prairie, in clouds and clouds, until the air hummed with his
+presence. My host "made a smoke," and the cattle came close around and
+stood into the very fire itself, scorching their hides in attempting to
+escape the stings of their ruthless tormentors. My friend's house was not
+a large one, but he managed to make me a shake-down on the loft overhead,
+and to it he led the way. To live in a country infested by mosquitoes
+ought to insure to a person the possession of health, wisdom, and riches,
+for assuredly I know of nothing so conducive to early turning in and
+early turning out as that most pitiless pest. On the present occasion I
+had not long turned in before I became aware of the presence of at least
+two other persons within the limits of the little loft, for only a few
+feet distant soft whispers became fintly audible. Listening attentively,
+I gathered the following dialogue:
+
+<p>"Do you think he has got it about him?"
+
+<p>"Maybe he has," replied the first speaker with the voice of a woman.
+
+<p>"Are you shure he has it at all at all?"
+
+<p>"Didn't I see it in his own hand?"
+
+<p>Here was a fearful position! The dark loft, the lonely shanty miles away
+from any other habitation, the mysterious allusions to the possession of
+property, all naturally combined to raise the most dreadful suspicions in
+the mind of the solitary traveller. Strange to say, this conversation had
+not the terrible effect upon me which might be supposed. It was evident
+that my old friends, father and mother of Mrs. C----, occupied the loft in
+company with me, and the mention of that most suggestive word,
+"crathure," was sufficient to neutralize all suspicions connected with
+the lonely surroundings of the place. It was, in fact, a drop of that
+much-desired "crathure" that the old couple were so anxious to obtain.
+
+<p>About three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday the 17th July I left the
+house of Mr. Connelly, and journeyed back to Abercrombie in the stage
+waggon from St. Cloud. I had as a fellow-passenger the captain of the
+"International" steamboat, whose acquaintance was quickly made. He had
+received my letter at Pomme-de-Terre, and most kindly offered his pony
+and cart for our joint conveyance to George town that evening; so, having
+waited only long enough at Abercrombie to satisfy hunger and get ready
+the Red River cart, we left Mr. Nolan's door some little time before
+sunset, and turning north along the river held our way towards
+Georgetown. The evening was beautifully fine and clear; the plug trotted
+steadily on, and darkness soon wrapped its mantle around the prairie. My
+new acquaintance had many questions to ask and much information to
+impart, and although a Red River cart is not the easiest mode of
+conveyance to one who sits amidships between the wheels, still when I
+looked to the northern skies and saw the old pointers marking our course
+almost due north, and thought that at last I was launched fair on a road
+whose termination was the goal for which I had longed so earnestly, I
+little recked the rough jolting of the wheels whose revolutions brought
+me closer to my journey's end. Shortly after leaving Abercrombie we
+passed a small creek in whose leaves and stagnant waters mosquitoes were
+numerous.
+
+<p>"If the mosquitoes let us travel," said my companion, as we emerged upon
+the prairie again, "we should reach Georgetown to breakfast."
+
+<p>"If the mosquitoes let us travel?" thought I. "Surely he must be
+joking!"
+
+<p>I little knew then the significance of the captain's words. I thought
+that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps,
+to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught
+me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that
+night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the
+possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may
+appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about ten o'clock at night when
+there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud scarcely visible
+above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the
+north-east; so when my attention had been called to the speck of cloud by
+my companion I naturally concluded that it could in no way concern us,
+but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time the
+little cloud grew bigger, the wind died away altogether, and the stars
+began to look mistily from a sky no longer blue. Every now and again my
+companion looked towards this increasing cloud, and each time his opinion
+seemed to be less favourable. But another change also occurred of a
+character altogether different. There came upon us, brought apparently by
+the cloud, dense swarms of mosquitoes, humming and buzzing along with us
+as we journeyed on, and covering our faces and heads with their sharp
+stinging bites. They seemed to come with us, after us, and against us,
+from above and from below, in volumes that ever increased. It soon began
+to dawn upon me that this might mean something akin to the "mosquitoes
+allowing us to travel," of which my friend had spoken some three hours
+earlier. Meantime the cloud had increased to large proportions; it was no
+longer in the south-west; it occupied the whole west, and was moving on
+towards the north. Presently, from out of the dark heavens, streamed
+liquid fire, and long peals of thunder rolled far away over the gloomy
+prairies. So sudden appeared the change that one could scarce realize
+that only a little while before the stars had been shining so brightly
+upon the ocean of grass. At length the bright flashes came nearer and
+nearer, the thunder rolled louder and louder, and the mosquitoes seemed
+to have made up their minds that to achieve the maximum of torture in the
+minimum of time was the sole end and aim of their existence. The
+captain's pony showed many signs of agony; my dog howled with pain, and
+rolled himself amongst the baggage in useless writhings.
+
+<p>"I thought it would come to this," said the captain. "We must unhitch
+and lie down."
+
+<p>It was now midnight. To loose the horse from the shafts, to put the
+oil-cloth over the cart, and to creep underneath the wheels did-not take
+my friend long. I followed his movements, crept in and drew a blanket over
+my head. Then came the crash; the fire seemed to pour out of the clouds.
+It was impossible to keep the blanket on, so raising it every now and
+again I. looked out from between the spokes of the wheel. During three
+hours the lightning seemed to run like a river of flame out of the
+clouds. Sometimes a stream would descend, then, dividing into two
+branches, would pour down on the prairie two distinct channels of fire.
+The thunder rang sharply, as though the metallic clash of steel was about
+it, and the rain descended in torrents upon the level prairies. At about
+three o'clock in the morning the storm seemed to lull a little. My
+companion crept out from underneath the cart; I followed. The plug, who
+had managed to improve the occasion by stuffing himself with grass, was
+soon in the shafts again, and just as dawn began to streak the dense
+low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion. Still for
+a couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the
+lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten
+flat by the rain-torrent. What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us
+when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low
+upon the dank prairie.
+
+<p>Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was
+I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty
+for Food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name
+of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the
+bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.'
+Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general
+should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted
+the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrangements of
+limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfelds in particular.
+While the Herr was thus engaged in illuminating our minds, the Frau was
+much more agreeably employed in preparing something for our bodily
+comfort. I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the
+future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the
+Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. Many youthful
+Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a
+continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion
+of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future.
+It is more than probable that Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just
+at that moment, when the sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds
+over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen
+were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special
+furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind-it is most probable, I
+say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no
+ways lessened.
+
+<p>Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night storm on the
+prairie, and it was midday on the 18th when we reached the Hudson Bay
+Company Post which stood at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red
+Rivers. Food and fresh horses were all we required, and after these
+requisites had been obtained the journey was prosecuted with renewed
+vigour. Forty miles had yet to be traversed before the point at which
+the Steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran
+on the left or Dakota side of the Red River. As we journeyed along the
+Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it
+a Scene of magical beauty. The sun resting on the rim of the prairie
+cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light. On the east lay
+the darker green of the trees of the Red River. The whole western sky
+was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of
+sunlight shot upward in great trembling shafts of glory. Being on
+horseback and alone, for my companion had trotted on in his waggon, I
+had time to watch and note this brilliant spectacle; but as soon as the
+sun had dipped beneath the sea of verdure an ominous sound caused me
+to gallop on with increasing haste. The pony seemed to know the
+significance of that sound much better than its rider. He no longer
+lagged, nor needed the spur or whip to urge him to faster exertion, for
+darker and denser than on the previous night there rose around us vast
+numbers of mosquitoes--choking masses of biting insects, no mere cloud
+thicker and denser in one place than in another, but one huge wall of
+never-ending insects filling nostrils, ears, and eyes. Where they came
+from I cannot tell; the prairie seemed too small to hold them; the air
+too limited to yield them space. I had seen many vast accumulations of
+insect life in lands old and new, but never any thing that approached to
+this mountain of mosquitoes on the prairies of Dakota. To say that they
+covered the coat of the horse I rode would be to give but a faint idea
+of their numbers; they were literally six or eight deep upon his skin,
+and with a single sweep of the hand one could crush myriads from his
+neck. Their hum seemed to be in all things around. To ride for it was
+the sole resource. Darkness came quickly down, but the track knew no
+turn, and for seven miles I kept the pony at a gallop; my face, neck,
+and hands cut and bleeding.
+
+<p>At last in the gloom I saw, down in what appeared to be the bottom of a
+valley, a long white wooden building, with lights showing out through
+the windows. Riding quickly down this valley we reached, followed by
+hosts of winged pursuers, the edge of some water lying amidst
+tree-covered banks-the water was the Red River, and the white wooden
+building the steamboat "International."
+
+<p>Now one word about mosquitoes in the valley of the Red River. People will
+be inclined to say, "We know well what a mosquito is--very troublesome
+and annoying, no doubt, but you needn't make so much of what every one
+understands." People reading what I have written about this insect will
+probably say this. I would have said so myself before the occurrences of
+the last two nights, but I will never say so again, nor perhaps will my
+readers when they have read the following: It is no unusual event during
+a wet summer in that portion of Minnesota and Dakota to which I refer for
+oxen and horses to perish from the bites of mosquitoes. An exposure of a
+very few hours duration is sufficient to cause death to these animals.
+It is said, too, that not many years ago the Sioux were in the habit of
+sometimes killing their captives by exposing them at night to the attacks
+of the mosquitoes; and any person who has experienced the full intensity
+of a mosquito night along the American portion of the Red River will not
+have any difficulty in realizing how short a period would be necessary to
+cause death.
+
+<p>Our arrival at the "International" was the cause of no small amount of
+discomfort to the persons already on board that vessel. It took us but
+little time to rush over the gangway and seek safety from our pursuers
+within the precincts of the steamboat: but they were not to be baffled
+easily; they came in after us in millions; like Bishop Haddo's rats, they
+came "in at the windows and in at the doors," until in a very short space
+of time the interior of the boat became perfectly black with insects.
+Attracted by the light they flocked into the saloon, covering walls and
+ceiling in one dark mass. We attempted supper, but had to give it up.
+They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter,
+until at length, feverish, bitten, bleeding, and hungry, I sought refuge
+beneath the gauze curtains in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer
+exhaustion.
+
+<p>And in truth there was reason enough for sleep independently of
+mosquitoes bites. By dint of hard travel we had accomplished 104 miles
+in twenty-seven hours. The midnight storm had lost us three hours and
+added in no small degree to discomfort. Mosquitoes had certainly caused
+but little thought to be bestowed upon fatigue during the last two hours;
+but I much doubt if the spur-goaded horse, when he stretches himself at
+night to rest his weary limbs, feels the less tired because the miles
+flew behind him all unheeded under the influence of the spur-rowel. When
+morning broke we were in motion. The air was fresh and cool; not a
+mosquito was visible. The green banks of Red River looked pleasant to the
+eye as the "International" puffed along between them, rolling the
+tranquil water before her in a great muddy wave, which broke amidst the
+red and grey willows on the shore. Now and then the eye caught glimpses
+of the prairies through the skirting of oak woods on the left, but to the
+right there lay an unbroken line of forest fringing deeply the Minnesota
+shore. The "International" was a curious craft; she measured about 130
+feet in length, drew only two feet of water, and was propelled by an
+enormous wheel placed over her stern. Eight summers of varied success and
+as many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river
+worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the
+Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a
+perfect marvel of patchwork--pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank
+and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and
+spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not
+supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on
+fire seemed to be very great; each gust of wind sent showers of sparks
+from the furnaces flying along the lower deck, the charred beams of which
+attested the frequency of the occurrence. Alarmed at the prospect of
+seeing my conveyance wrapped in flames, I shouted vigorously for
+assistance, and will long remember the look of surprise and pity with
+which the native regarded me as he leisurely approached with the
+water-bucket and cast its contents along the smoking deck.
+
+<p>I have already mentioned the tortuous course which the Red River has
+wound for itself through these level northern prairies. The windings of
+the river more than double the length of its general direction, and the
+turns are so sharp that after steaming a mile the traveller will often
+arrive at a spot not one hundred yards distant from where he started.
+
+<p>Steaming thus for one day and one night down the Red River of the North,
+enjoying no variation of scene or change of prospect, but nevertheless
+enjoying beyond expression a profound sense of mingled rest and
+progression, I reached at eight o'clock on the morning of the-20th of
+July the frontier post of Pembina.
+
+<p>And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red
+River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my
+readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into earlier
+times. For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the
+latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of
+Assineboine without any preliminary-acquaintance with its history or its
+inhabitants.
+
+<p><a name="ch8"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER EIGHT.</h3>
+
+<p>Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of Hudson--Rival
+Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west Company--How the
+Half-breeds came--The Highlanders defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+<p>WE who have seen in our times the solution of the long-hidden secret
+worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the
+excitement which for nigh 400 years vexed the minds of European kings and
+peoples--how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild
+realms of Cathay and Hindostan--how from every port, from the Adriatic to
+the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest of this ocean strait, to find
+in succession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the
+human race.
+
+<p>Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly
+entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger
+than canal-boats. And how long and how tenaciously did they hold that
+some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached! Not a
+creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to
+the Pacific.
+
+<p>Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought
+they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the
+path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which
+bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac. Two hundred years
+had passed away from the time of Columbus ere his dream of an open sea to
+the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers. This immense
+inlet of Hudson Bay must lead to the Western Ocean. So, at least, thought
+a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into
+the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island,
+which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never
+think or care about again. Nor were these anticipations of reaching the
+East held only by the sailors.
+
+<p>La Salle, when he fitted out his expeditions from the Island of Montreal
+for the West, named his point of departure La Chine, so certain was he
+that his canoes would eventually reach Cathay. And La Chine still exists
+to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent,
+reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt
+another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast
+volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their
+unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water
+must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might
+the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of
+arduous toil through swamp and forest, he stood at last on the low shores
+of the Mississippi and beheld in thought the enormous space which lay
+between him and the spot where such a river had its birth.
+
+<p>The East--it was always the East. Columbus had said the world was not so
+large as the common herd believed it, and yet when he had increased it by
+a continent he tried to make it smaller than it really was. So fixed were
+men's minds upon the East, that it was long before they would think of
+turning to account the discoveries of those early navigators. But in time
+there came to the markets of Europe the products of the New World. The
+gold and the silver of Mexico and the rich sables of the frozen North
+found their way into the marts of Western Europe. And while Drake
+plundered galleons from the Spanish Main, England and France commenced
+their career of rivalry for the possession of that trade in furs and
+peltries which had its sources round the icy shores of the Bay of Hudson.
+It was reserved however for the fiery Prince Rupert to carry into effect
+the idea of opening up the North-west. Through the ocean of Hudson Bay.
+
+<p>Somewhere about 200 years ago a ship sailed away from England bearing in
+it a company of adventurers sent out to form a colony upon the southern
+shores of James's Bay. These men named the new land after the Prince who
+sent them forth, and were the pioneers of that "Hon. Company of
+Adventurers from England trading into Hudson Bay."
+
+<p>More than forty years previous to the date of the charter by which
+Charles II. conferred the territory of Rupert's Land upon the London
+company, a similar grant had been made by the French monarch, Louis
+XIII, to "La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France." Thus there had arisen
+rival claims to the possession of this sterile region, and although
+treaties had at various times attempted to rectify boundaries or to
+rearrange watersheds, the question of the right of Canada or of the
+Company to hold a portion of the vast territory draining into Hudson Bay
+had never been legally solved.
+
+<p>For some eighty years after this settlement on James's Bay, the
+Company held a precarious tenure of their forts and factories. Wild-looking
+men, more Indian than French, marched from Canada over the height of
+land and raided upon the posts of Moose and Albany, burning the stockades
+and carrying off the little brass howitzers mounted thereon. The same
+wild-looking men, pushing on into the interior from Lake Superior, made
+their way into Lake Winnipeg, up the great Saskatchewan River, and
+across to the valley of the Red River; building their forts for war
+and trade by distant lake-shore and confluence of river current, and
+drawing off the valued trade in furs to France; until all of a sudden
+there came the great blow struck by Wolfe under the walls of Quebec, and
+every little far-away post and distant fort throughout the vast interior
+continent felt the echoes of the guns of Abraham. It might have been
+imagined that now, when the power of France was crushed in the Canadas,
+the trade which she had carried on with the Indian tribes of the Far West
+would lapse to the English company trading Into Hudson Bay; but such was
+not the case.
+
+<p>Immediately upon the capitulation of Montreal, fur traders from the
+English cities of Boston and Albany appeared in Montreal and Quebec, and
+pushed their way along the old French route to Lake Winnipeg and into the
+valley of the Saskatchewan. There they, in turn, erected their little
+posts and trading-stations, laid out their beads and blankets, their
+strouds and cottons, and exchanged their long-carried goods for the
+beaver and marten and fisher skins of the Nadow, Sioux, Kinistineau, and
+Osinipoilles. Old maps of the North-west still mark spots along the
+shores of Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan with names of Henry's House,
+Finlay's House, and Mackay's House. These "houses" were the
+Trading-posts of the first English free-traders, whose combination in
+1783 gave rise to the great North-west Fur Company, so long the fierce
+rival of the Hudson Bay. To picture here the jealous rivalry which during
+forty years raged throughout these immense territories would be to fill a
+volume with tales of adventure and discovery.
+
+<p>The zeal with which the North-west Company pursued the trade in furs
+quickly led to the exploration of the entire country. A Mackenzie
+penetrated to the Arctic Ocean down the immense river which bears his
+name--a Frazer and a Thompson pierced the tremendous masses of the Rocky
+Mountains and beheld the Pacific rolling its waters against the rocks of
+New Caledonia. Based upon a system which rewarded the efforts of its
+employees by giving them a share in the profits of the trade, making them
+partners as well as servants, the North-west Company soon put to sore
+straits the older organization of the Hudson Bay. While the heads of both
+companies were of the same nation, the working men and voyageurs were of
+totally different races, the Hudson Bay employing Highlanders and Orkney
+men from Scotland, and the North-west Company drawing its recruits from
+the hardy French inhabitants of Lower Canada. This difference of
+nationality deepened the strife between them, and many a deed of cruelty
+and bloodshed lies buried amidst the oblivion of that time in those
+distant regions. The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and
+servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from
+Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life
+in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of
+inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of
+excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow
+limits of civilization. Besides, he had taken to himself an Indian wife,
+and although the ceremony by which that was effected was frequently
+wanting in those accessories of bell, book, and candle so essential to
+its proper well-being, nevertheless the voyageur and his squaw got on
+pretty well together, and little ones, who jabbered the smallest amount
+of English or French, and a great deal of Ojibbeway, or Cree, or
+Assineboine, began to multiply around them.
+
+<p>Matters were in this state when, in 1812, as we have already seen in an
+earlier chapter, the Earl of Selkirk, a large proprietor of the Hudson
+Bay Company, conceived the idea of planting a colony of Highlanders on
+the banks of the Red River near the lake called Winnipeg.
+
+<p>Some great magnate was intent on making a deer forest in Scotland about
+the period that this country was holding its own with difficulty against
+Napoleon. So, leaving their native parish of Kildonan in Sutherlandshire,
+these people established another Kildonan in the very heart of North
+America, in the midst of an immense and apparently boundless prairie.
+Poor people! they had a hard time of it-inundation and North-west Company
+hostility nearly sweeping them off their prairie lands. Before long
+matters reached a climax. The North-west Canadians and half-breeds
+sallied forth one day and attacked the settlers; the settlers had a small
+guard in whose prowess they placed much credence; the guard turned out
+after the usual manner of soldiers, the half-breeds and Indians lay in
+the long grass after the method of savages. For once the Indian tactics
+prevailed. The Governor of the Hudson Bay Company and the guard were shot
+down, the fort at Point Douglas on the Red River was taken, and the
+Scotch settlers driven out to the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+<p>To keep the peace between the rival companies and the two nationalities
+was no easy matter, but at last Lord Selkirk came to the rescue; they
+were disbanding regiments after the great peace of 1815, and portions of
+two foreign corps, called De Muiron's and De Watteville's Regiments,
+were induced to attempt an expedition to the Red River.
+
+<p>Starting in winter from the shores of Lake Superior, these hardy fellows
+traversed the forests and frozen lakes upon snow-shoes, and, entering
+from the Lake of the Woods, suddenly appeared in the Selkirk Settlement,
+and took possession of Fort Douglas.
+
+<p>A few years later the great Fur Companies became amalgamated, or rather
+the North-west ceased to exist, and henceforth the Hudson Bay Company
+ruled supreme from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Russian
+America.
+
+<p>From that date, 1822, the progress of the little colony had been gradual
+but sure. Its numbers were constantly increased by the retired servants
+of the Hudson Bay Company, who selected it as a place of settlement when
+their period of active service had expired. Thither came the voyageur and
+the trader to spend the winter of their lives in the little world of
+Assineboine. Thus the Selkirk Settlement grew and flourished, caring
+little for the outside earth-"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
+
+<p>But the old feelings which had their rise in earlier years never wholly
+died out. National rivalry still existed, and it required no violent
+effort to fan the embers into flame again. The descendants of the two
+nationalities dwelt apart; there were the French parishes and the Scotch
+and English parishes, and, although each nationality spoke the same
+mother tongue, still the spread of schools and churches fostered the
+different languages of the fatherland, and perpetuated the distinction of
+race which otherwise would have disappeared by lapsing into savagery. In
+an earlier chapter I have traced the events immediately pre ceding the
+breaking out of the insurrectionary movement among the French
+half-breeds, and in the foregoing pages I have tried to sketch the early
+life and history of the country into which I am about to ask the reader
+to follow me. Into the immediate sectional disputes and religious
+animosities of the present movement it is not my intention to enter; as I
+journey on an occasional arrow may be shot to the right or to the left at
+men and things; but I will leave to others the details of a petty
+provincial quarrel, while-I have before me, stretching far and wide, the
+vast solitudes which await in silence the footfall of the future.
+
+<p><a name="ch9"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER NINE.</h3>
+
+<p>Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief ahead-Preparations--A
+Night March--The Steamer captured--The Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower
+Fort--The Red-Indian at last--The Chief's Speech--A Big Feed--Making
+ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort Garry--Mr. President
+Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night out--My Crew.
+
+<p>THE steamer "International" made only a short delay at the frontier post
+of Pembina, but it was long enough to impress the on-looker with a sense
+of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the
+leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches'
+pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and
+defensive alliance with the arms, never again to permit the hands to
+emerge into daylight unless it should be in the vicinity of the ankles.
+
+<p>Upon inquiring for the post-office, I was referred to the Postmaster
+himself, who, in his-capacity of leading citizen, was standing by. Asking
+if there were any letters lying at his office for me, I was answered in a
+very curt negative, the postmaster retiring immediately up the steep bank
+towards the collection of huts which calls itself Pembina. The boat soon
+cast off her moorings and steamed on into British territory. We were at
+length within the limits of the Red River Settlement, in the land of M.
+Louis Riel, President, Dictator, Ogre, Saviour of Society, and New
+Napoleon; as he was variously named by friends and foes in the little
+tea-cup of Red River whose tempest had cast him suddenly from dregs to
+surface. "I wasn't so sure that they wouldn't have searched the boat for
+you," said the captain from his wheel-house on the roof-deck, soon after
+we had passed the Hudson Bay Company's post, whereat M. Riel's frontier
+guard was supposed to hold its head-quarters. "Now, darn me, if them
+whelps had stopped the boat, but I'd have just rounded her back to
+Pembina and tied up under the American post yonder, and claimed
+protection as an American citizen." As the act of tying up under the
+American post would in no way have forwarded my movements, however
+consolatory it might have proved to the wounded feelings of the captain,
+I was glad that we had been permitted to proceed without molestation. But
+I had in my possession a document which I looked upon as an "open sesame"
+in case of obstruction from any of the underlings of the Provisional
+Government.
+
+<p>This document had been handed to me by an eminent ecclesiastic whom I met
+on the evening preceding my departure at St. Paul, and who, upon hearing
+that it was my intention to proceed to the Red River, had handed me,
+unsolicited, a very useful notification. So far, then, I had got within
+the outer circle of this so jealously protected settlement. The guard,
+whose presence had so often been the theme of Manitoban journals, the
+picquet line which extended from Pembina Mountain to Lake of the Woods
+(150 miles), was nowhere visible, and I. began to think that the whole
+thing was only a myth, and that the Red River revolt was as unsubstantial
+as the Spectre of the Brocken. But just then, as I stood on the high roof
+of the "International," from whence a wide view was obtained, I saw
+across the level prairie outside the huts of Pembina the figures of two
+horsemen riding at a rapid pace towards the north. They were on the road
+to Fort Garry. The long July day passed slowly away, and evening began to
+darken over the level land, to find us still steaming down the widening
+reaches of the Red River.
+
+<p>But the day had shown symptoms sufficient to convince me that there was
+some reality after all in the stories of detention and resistance, so
+frequently mentioned; more than once had the figures of the two horsemen
+been visible from the roof-deck of the steamer, still keeping the Fort
+Garry trail, and still forcing their horses at a gallop.
+
+<p>The windings of the river enabled these men to keep ahead of the boat, a
+feat which, from their pace and manner, seemed the object they had in
+view. But there were other indications of difficulty lying ahead: an
+individual connected with the working of our boat had been informed by
+persons at Pembina that my expected arrival had been notified to Mr.
+President Riel and the members of his triumvirate, as I would learn to my
+cost upon arrival at Fort Garry.
+
+<p>That there was mischief ahead appeared probable enough, and it was with
+no pleasant feelings that when darkness came I mentally surveyed the
+situation, and bethought me of some plan by which to baffle those who
+sought my detention.
+
+<p>In an hour's time the boat would reach Fort Garry. I was a stranger in a
+strange land, knowing not a feature in the locality, and with only an
+imperfect map for my guidance. Going down to my cabin, I spread out the
+map before me. I saw the names: of places familiar in imagination--the
+winding river, the junction of the Assineboine and the Red River, and
+close to it Fort Garry and the village of Winnipeg; then, twenty miles
+farther to the north, the Lower Fort Garry and the Scotch and English
+Settlement. My object was to reach this lower fort; but in that lay all
+the difficulty. The map showed plainly enough the place in which safety
+lay; but it showed no means by which it could be reached, and left me, as
+before, to my own resources. These were not large.
+
+<p>My baggage was small and compact, but weighty; for it had in it much shot
+and sporting gear for perspective swamp and prairie work at wild duck and
+sharp-tailed grouse. I carried arms available against man and beast a
+Colt's six-shooter and a fourteen-shot repeating carbine, both light,
+good, and trusty; excellent weapons when things came to a certain point,
+but useless before that point is reached.
+
+<p>Now, amidst perplexing prospects and doubtful expedients, one course
+appeared plainly prominent; and that was that there should be no capture
+by Riel. The baggage and the sporting gear might go, but, for the rest,
+I was bound to carry myself and my arms, together with my papers and a
+dog, to the Lower Fort and English Settlement. Having decided on this
+course, I had not much time to lose in putting it into execution. I
+packed my things, loaded my arms, put some extra ammunition into pocket,
+handed over my personal effects into the safe custody of the captain, and
+awaited whatever might turn up.
+
+<p>When these preparations were completed, I had still an hour to spare.
+There happened to be on board the same boat as passenger a gentleman
+whose English proclivities had marked him during the late disturbances at
+Red River as a dangerous opponent to M. Riel, and who consequently had
+forfeited no small portion of his liberty and his chattels. The last two
+days had made me acquainted-with his history and opinions, and, knowing
+that he could supply the want I was most in need of--a horse--I told him
+the plan I had formed for evading M. Ril, in case his minions should
+attempt my capture. This was to pass quickly from the steamboat on its
+reaching the landing-place and to hold my way across the country in the
+direction of the Lower Fort, which I hoped to reach before daylight. If
+stopped, there was but one course to pursue--to announce name and
+profession, and trust to the Colt and sixteen-shooter for the rest. My
+new acquaintance, however, advised a change of programme, suggested by
+his knowledge of the locality.
+
+<p>At the point of junction of the Assineboine and Red Rivers the steamer,
+he said, would touch the north shore. The spot was only a couple of
+hundred yards distant from Fort Garry, but it was sufficient in the
+darkness to conceal any movement at that point; we would both leave the
+boat and, passing by the flank of the fort, gain the village of Winnipeg
+before the steamer would reach her landing place; he would seek his home
+and, if possible, send a horse to meet me at the first wooden bridge upon
+the road to the Lower Fort. All this was simple enough, and supplied me
+with that knowledge of the ground which I required.
+
+<p>It was now eleven o'clock p.m., dark but fine. With my carbine concealed
+under a large coat, I took my station near the bows of the boat, watching
+my companion's movements. Suddenly the steam was shut off, and the boat
+began to round from the Red River into the narrow Assineboine. A short
+distance in front appeared lights and figures moving to and fro along the
+shore--the lights were those of Fort Garry, the figures those of Riel,
+O'Donoghue, and Lepine, with a strong body of guards.
+
+<p>A second more, and the boat gently touched the soft mud of the north
+shore. My friend jumped off to the beach; dragging the pointer by chain
+and collar after me, I too, sprang to the shore just as the boat began to
+recede from it. As I did so, I saw my companion rushing up a very steep
+and lofty bank. Much impeded by the arms and dog, I followed him up the
+ascent and reached the top. Around stretched a dead black level plain, on
+the left the fort, and figures were dimly visible about 200 yards away.
+There was not much time to take in all this, for my companion, whispering
+me to follow him closely, commenced to move quickly along an irregular
+path which led from the river bank. In a short time we: had reached the
+vicinity of a few straggling houses whose white walls showed distinctly
+through the darkness; this, he told me, was Winnipeg. Here was his
+residence, and here we were to separate. Giving me a few hurried
+directions for further guidance, he pointed to the road before me as a
+starting-point, and then vanished into the gloom. For a moment I stood at
+the entrance of the little village half irresolute what to do. One or two
+houses showed lights in single windows, behind gleamed the lights of the
+steamer which had now reached the place of landing. I commenced to walk
+quickly through the silent houses.
+
+<p>As I emerged from the farther side of the village I saw, standing on the
+centre of the road, a solitary figure. Approaching nearer to him, I found
+that he occupied a narrow wooden bridge which opened out upon the
+prairie. To pause or hesitate would only be to excite suspicion in the
+mind of this man, sentinel or guard, as he might be. So, at a sharp pace,
+I advanced towards him. He never moved; and without word or sign I passed
+him at arm's length. But here the dog, which I had unfastened when
+parting from my companion, strayed away, and, being loth to lose him, I
+stopped at the farther end of the bridge to call him back. This was
+evidently the bridge of which my companion had spoken, as the place where
+I was to await the horse he would send me.
+
+<p>The trysting-place seemed to be but ill-chosen-close to the village, and
+already in possession of a sentinel, it would not do. "If the horse
+comes," thought I, "he will be too late; if he does not come, there can
+be no use in waiting," so, giving a last whistle for the dog (which I
+never saw again), I turned and held my way into the dark level plain
+lying mistily spread around me. For more than an hour I walked hard along
+a black-clay track bordered on both sides by prairie. I saw no one, and
+heard nothing save the barking of some stray dogs away to my right.
+
+<p>During this time the moon, now at its last quarter, rose above trees to
+the east, and enabled me better to discern the general features of the
+country through which I was passing. Another hour passed, and still I
+held on my way. I had said to myself that for three hours I must keep up
+the same rapid stride without pause or halt. In the meantime I was
+calculating for emergencies. If followed on horseback, I must become
+aware of the fact while yet my enemies were some distance away. The black
+capote flung on the road would have arrested their attention, the
+enclosed fields on the right of the track would afford me concealment, a
+few shots from the fourteen shooter fired in the direction of the party,
+already partly dismounted deliberating over the mysterious capote, would
+have occasioned a violent demoralization, probably causing a rapid
+retreat upon Fort Garry, darkness would have multiplied numbers, and a
+fourteen-shooter by day or night is a weapon of very equalizing
+tendencies.
+
+<p>When the three hours had elapsed I looked anxiously around for water, as
+I was thirsty in the extreme. A creek soon gave me the drink I thirsted
+for, and, once more refreshed, I kept on my lonely way beneath the waning
+moon. At the time when I was searching for water along the bottom of the
+Middle Creek my pursuers were close at hand--probably not five minutes
+distant--but in those things it is the minutes which make all the
+difference one way or the other.
+
+<p>We must now go back and join the pursuit, just to see what the followers
+of M. Riel were about.
+
+<p>Sometime during the afternoon preceding the arrival of the steamer at
+Fort Garry, news had come down by mounted express from Pembina, that a
+stranger was about to make his entrance into Red River.
+
+<p>Who he might be was not clearly discernible; some said he was an officer
+in Her Majesty's Service, and others, that he was somebody connected
+with the disturbances of the preceding winter who was attempting to
+revisit the settlement.
+
+<p>Whoever he was, it was unanimously decreed that he should be captured;
+and a call was made by M. Riel for "men not afraid to fight" who would
+proceed up the river to meet the steamer. Upon after-reflection, however,
+it was resolved to await the arrival of the boat, and, by capturing
+captain, crew, and passengers, secure the person of the mysterious
+stranger.
+
+<p>Accordingly, when the "International" reached the landing-place beneath
+the walls of Fort Garry a strange scene was enacted.
+
+<p>Messrs. Riel, Lepine, and O'Donoghue, surrounded by a body-guard of
+half-breeds and a few American adventurers, appeared upon the
+landing-place. A select detachment, I presume, of the "men not afraid to
+fight'" boarded the boat and commenced to ransack her from stem to stern.
+While the confusion was at its height, and doors, etc., were being broken
+open, it became known to some of the searchers that two persons had left
+the boat only a few minutes previously. The rage of the petty Napoleon
+became excessive, he sarcéed and stamped and swore, he ordered pursuit on
+foot and on horseback; and altogether conducted himself after the manner
+of rum-drunkenness and despotism based upon ignorance and "straight
+drinks."
+
+<p>All sorts of persons were made prisoners upon the spot. My poor companion
+was seized in his house twenty minutes after he had reached it, and,
+being hurried to the boat, was threatened with instant hanging. Where had
+the stranger gone to? and who was he? He had asserted himself to belong
+to Her Majesty's Service, and he had gone to the Lower Fort.
+
+<p>"After him!" screamed the President; "bring him in dead or alive."
+
+<p>So some half-dozen men, half-breeds and American filibusters, started out
+in pursuit. It was averred that the man who left the boat was of
+colossal proportions, that he carried arms of novel and terrible
+construction, and, more mysterious still, that he was closely followed by
+a gigantic dog.
+
+<p>People shuddered as they listened to this part of the story-a dog of
+gigantic size! What a picture, this immense man and that immense
+dog--stalking through the gloom-wrapped prairie, goodness knows where!
+Was it to be wondered at, that the pursuit, vigorously though it
+commenced, should have waned faint as it reached the dusky prairie and
+left behind the neighbourhood and the habitations of men? The party,
+under the leadership of Lepine the "Adjutant-general," was seen at one
+period of its progress besides the moments of starting and return. Just
+previous to daybreak it halted at a house known by the suggestive title
+of "Whisky Tom's," eight miles from the village of Winnipeg; whether it
+ever got farther on its way remains a mystery, but I am inclined to
+think that the many attractions of Mr. Tom's residence, as evinced by
+the prefix to his name, must have proved a powerful obstacle to such
+thirsty souls.
+
+<p>Daylight breaks early in the month of July, and I had been but little
+more than three hours on the march when the first sign of dawn began to
+glimmer above the tree tops of the Red River. When the light became
+strong enough to afford a clear view of the country, I found that I was
+walking along a road or track of very black soil with poplar groves at
+intervals on each side.
+
+<p>Through openings in these poplar groves I beheld a row of houses built
+apparently along the bank of the river, and soon the steeple of a church
+and a comfortable-looking glebe became visible about a quarter of a mile
+to the right. Calculating by my watch, I concluded that I must be some
+sixteen miles distant from Fort Garry, and therefore not more than four
+miles from the Lower Fort. However, as it was now quite light, I thought'
+I could not do better than approach the comfortable-looking glebe with a
+double view towards refreshment and information. I reached the gate and,
+having run the gauntlet of an evilly-intentioned dog, pulled a bell at
+the door.
+
+<p>Now it had never occurred to me that my outward appearance savoured not a
+little of the bandit--a poet has written about "the dark Suliote, in his
+shaggy capote" etc., conveying the idea of a very ferocious-looking fellow
+but I believe that my appearance fully realized the description, as far
+as outward semblance was concerned; so, evidently, thought the worthy
+clergyman when, cautiously approaching his hall-door, he beheld through
+the glass window the person whose reiterated ringing had summoned him
+hastily from his early slumbers. Half opening his door, he inquired my
+business.
+
+<p>"How far," asked I, "to the Lower Fort?"
+
+<p>"About four miles."
+
+<p>"Any conveyance thither?"
+
+<p>"None whatever."
+
+<p>He was about to close the door in my face, when I inquired his country,
+and he replied, "I am English."
+
+<p>"And I am an English officer, arrived last night in the Red River, and
+now making my way to the Lower Fort."
+
+<p>Had my appearance been ten times more disreputable than it was, had I
+carried a mitrailleuse instead of a fourteen-shooter, I would have been
+still received with open arms after that piece of information was given
+and received. The door opened very wide and the worthy clergyman's hand
+shut very close. Then suddenly there became apparent many facilities for
+reaching the Lower Fort not before visible, nor was the hour deemed too
+early to preclude all thoughts of refreshment.
+
+<p>It was some time before my host could exactly realize the state of
+affairs, but when he did, his horse and buggy were soon in readiness, and
+driving along the narrow road which here led almost uninterruptedly
+through little clumps and thickets of poplars, we reached the Lower Fort
+Garry not very long after the sun had begun his morning work of making
+gold the forest summits. I had run the gauntlet of the lower settlement;
+I was between the Expedition and its destination, and it was time to lie
+down and rest.
+
+<p>Up to this time no intimation had reached the Lower Fort of pursuit by
+the myrmidons of M. Riel. But soon there came intelligence. A farmer
+carrying corn to the mill in the fort had been stopped by a party of men
+some seven miles away, and questioned as to his having seen a stranger;
+others had also seen the mounted scouts. And so while I slept the sleep
+of the tired my worthy host was receiving all manner of information
+regarding the movements of the marauders who were in quest of his
+sleeping guest.
+
+<p>I may have been asleep some two hours, when I became aware of a hand laid
+on my shoulder and a voice whispering something into my ear. Rousing
+myself from a very deep sleep, I beheld the Hudson Bay officer in charge
+of the fort standing by the bed repeating words which failed at first to
+carry any meaning along with them.
+
+<p>"The French are after you," he reiterated.
+
+<p>"The French"-where was I, in France?
+
+<p>I had been so sound asleep, that it took some seconds to gather up-the
+different threads of thought where I had left them off a few hours
+before, and "the French" was at that time altogether a new name in my
+ears for the Red River natives. "The French are after you!" altogether it
+was not an agreeable prospect to open my eyes upon, tired, exhausted, and
+sleepy as I was. But, under the circumstances, breakfast seemed the best
+preparation for the siege, assault, and general battery which, according
+to all the rules of war, ought to have followed the announcement of the
+Gallic Nationality being in full pursuit of me.
+
+<p>Seated at breakfast, and doing full justice to a very excellent mutton
+chop and cup of Hudson Bay Company Souchong (and where does there exist
+such tea; out of China?), I heard a digest of the pursuit from the lips
+of my host. The French had visited him in his fort once before with evil
+intentions, and they might come again, so he proposed that we should
+drive down to the Indian Settlement, where the ever-faithful Ojibbeways
+would, if necessary, roll back the tide of Gallic pursuit, giving the
+pursuers a reception in which Pahaouza-tau-ka, or "The Great
+Scalp-taker," would play a prominent part.
+
+<p>Breakfast over, a drive of eight miles brought us to the mission of the
+Indian Settlement presided over by Archdeacon Cowley.
+
+<p>Here, along the last few miles of the Red River ere it seeks, through
+many channels, the waters of Lake Winnipeg, dwell the remnants of the
+tribes whose fathers in times gone by claimed the broad lands of the Red
+River; now clothing themselves, after the fashion of the white man, in
+garments and in religion, and learning a few of his ways and dealings,
+but still with many wistful hankerings towards the older era of the paint
+and feathers, of the medicine bag and the dream omen.
+
+<p>Poor red man of the great North-west, I am at last in your land! Long as
+I have been hearing of you and your wild doings, it is only here that I
+have reached you on the confines of the far-stretching Winnipeg. It is no
+easy task to find you now, for one has to travel far into the lone
+spaces of the Continent before the smoke of your wigwam or of your tepie
+blurs the evening air.
+
+<p>But henceforth we will be companions for many months, and through many
+varied scenes, for my path lies amidst the lone spaces which are still
+your own; by the rushing rapids where you spear the great "namha" (
+sturgeon) will we light the evening fire and lie down to rest, lulled by
+the ceaseless thunder of the torrent; the lone lake shore will give us
+rest for the midday meal, and from your frail canoe, lying like a
+sea-gull on the wave, we will get the "mecuhaga" (the blueberry) and the
+"wa-wa," (the goose) giving you the great medicine of the white man, the
+thé and suga in exchange. But I anticipate.
+
+<p>On the morning following my arrival at the mission house a strange sound
+greeted my ears as I arose. Looking through the window, I beheld for the
+first time the red man in his glory.
+
+<p>Filing along the outside road came some two hundred of the warriors and
+braves of the Ojibbeways, intent upon all manner of rejoicing. At their
+head marched Chief Henry Prince, Chief "Kechiwis" (or the Big Apron) "Sou
+Souse" (or Little Long Ears); there was also "We-we-tak-gum Na-gash" (or
+the Man who flies round the Feathers), and Pahaouza-tau-ka, if not
+present, was represented by at least a dozen individuals just as fully
+qualified to separate the membrane from the top of the head as was that
+most renowned scalp-taker.
+
+<p>Wheeling into the grass-plot in front of the mission house, the whole
+body advanced towards the door shouting, "Ho, ho!" and firing off their
+flint trading-guns in token of welcome. The chiefs and old men advancing
+to the front, seated themselves on the ground in a semi-circle, while the
+young men and braves remained standing or lying on the ground farther
+back in two deep lines. In front of all stood Henry Prince the son of
+Pequis, Chief of the Swampy tribe, attended by his interpreter and
+pipe-bearer.
+
+<p>My appearance upon the door-step was the signal for a burst of deep and
+long-rolling, "Ho, ho's," and then the ceremony commenced. There Was no
+dance or "pow wow;" it meant business at once. Striking his hand upon
+his breast the chief began; as he finished each sentence the interpreter
+took up the thread, explaining with difficulty the long rolling, words of
+the Indian.
+
+<p>"You see here," he said, "the most faithful children of the Great Mother;
+they have heard that you have come from the great chief who is bringing
+thither his warriors from the Kitchi-gami" (Lake Superior), "and they
+have come to bid you welcome, and to place between you and the enemies
+of the Great Mother their guns and their lives. But these children are
+sorely puzzled; they know not what to do. They have gathered in from the
+East, and the North, and the West, because bad men have risen their hands
+against the Great Mother and robbed her goods and killed her sons and put
+a strange flag over her fort. And these bad men are now living in plenty
+on what they have robbed, and the faithful children of the Great Mother
+are starving and very poor, and they wish to know what they are to do. It
+is said that a great chief is coming across from the big sea-water with
+many mighty braves and warriors, and much goods and presents for the
+Indians. But though we have watched long for him, the lake is still
+clear of his canoes, and we begin to think he is not coming at all;
+therefore we were glad when we were told that you had come, for now you
+will tell us what we are to do and what message the great Ogima has sent
+to the red children of the Great Mother."
+
+<p>The speech ended, a deep and prolonged "Ho!"--a sort of universal "thems
+our sentiments "--ran round the painted throng of warriors, and then they
+awaited my answer, each looking with stolid indifference straight before
+him.
+
+<p>My reply was couched in as few words as possible. "It was true what they
+had heard. The big chief was coming across from the Kitchi-gami at the
+head of many warriors. The arm of the Great Mother was a long one, and
+stretched far over'seas and forests; let them keep quiet, and when the
+chief would arrive, he would give them store of presents and supplies; he
+would reward them for their good behaviour. Bad men had set themselves
+against the Great Mother; but the Great Mother would feel angry if any of
+her red children moved against these men. The big chief would soon be
+with them, and all would be made right. As for myself, I was now on my
+way to meet the big chief and his warriors, and I would say to him how
+true had been the red children, and he would be made glad thereat.
+Meantime, they should have a present of tea, tobacco, flour, and
+pemmican; and with full stomachs their harts would feel fuller still."
+
+<p>A universal "Ho!" testified that the speech was good; and then the
+ceremony of hand-shaking began. I intimated, however, that time would
+only permit of my having that honour with a few of the large assembly--in
+fact, with the leaders and old men of the tribe.
+
+<p>Thus, in turns, I grasped the bony hands of the "Red Deer'" and the "Big
+Apron," of the "Old Englishman" and the "Long Claws," and the "Big Bird;"
+and, with the same "Ho, ho!" and shot-firing, they filed away as they had
+come, carrying with them my order upon the Lower Fort for one big feed
+and one long pipe, and, I dare say, many blissful visions of that life
+the red man ever loves to live-the life that never does come to him the
+future of plenty and of ease.
+
+<p>Meantime, my preparations for departure, aided by my friends at the
+mission, had gone on apace. I had got a canoe and five stout English
+half-breeds, blankets, pemmican, tea, flour, and biscuit. All were being
+made ready, and the Indian Settlement was alive with excitement on the
+subject of the coming man--now no longer a myth--in relation to a general
+millennium of unlimited pemmican and tobacco.
+
+<p>But just when all preparations had been made complete an unexpected event
+occurred which postponed for a time the date of my departure; this was
+the arrival of a very urgent message from the Upper Fort, with an
+invitation to visit that place before quitting the settlement. There had
+been an error in the proceedings on the night of my arrival, I was told,
+and, acting under a mistake, pursuit had been organized. Great excitement
+existed amongst the French half breeds, who were in reality most loyally
+disposed; it was quite a mistake to imagine that there was any thing
+approaching to treason in the designs of the Provisional Government and
+much more to the same effect. It is needless now to enter into the
+question of how much all this was worth: at that time so much conflicting
+testimony was not easily reduced into proper limits. But on three points,
+at all events, I could form a correct opinion for myself. Had not my
+companion been arrested and threatened with instant death? Was he not
+still kept in confinement? and had not my baggage undergone confiscation
+(it is a new name for an old thing)? And was there not a flag other than
+the Union Jack flying over Fort Garry? Yes, it was true; all these things
+were realities.
+
+<p>Then I replied, "While these things remain, I will not visit Fort Garry."
+
+<p>Then I was told that Colonel Wolseley had written, urging the
+construction of a road between Fort Garry and Lake of the Woods, and that
+it could not be done unless I visited the upper settlement.
+
+<p>I felt a wish, and a very strong one, to visit this upper Fort Garry and
+see for myself its chief and its garrison, if the thing could be managed
+in any possible way.
+
+<p>From many sources I was advised that it would be dangerous to do so; but
+those who tendered this counsel had in a manner grown old under the
+despotism of M. Riel, and had, moreover, begun to doubt that the
+expeditionary force would ever succeed in overcoming the terrible
+obstacles of the long route from Lake Superior. I knew better. Of Riel I
+knew nothing, or next to nothing; of the progress of the expeditionary
+force, I knew only that it was led by a man who regarded impossibilities
+merely in the light of obstacles to be cleared from his path; and that it
+was composed of soldiers who, thus led, would go any where, and do any
+thing, that men in any shape of savagery or of civilization can do or
+dare. And although no tidings had reached me of its having passed the
+rugged portage from the shore of Lake Superior to the height of land and
+launched itself fairly on the waters which flow from thence into Lake
+Winnipeg, still its ultimate approach never gave me one doubtful thought.
+I reckoned much on the Bishop's letter, which I had still in my
+possession, and on the influence which his last communication to the
+"President" would of necessity exercise; so I decided to visit Fort
+Garry, upon the conditions that my baggage was restored intact, Mr.
+Dreever set at liberty, and the nondescript flag taken down. My
+interviewer said he could promise the first two propositions, but of the
+third he was not so certain. He would, however, despatch a message to me
+with full information as to how they had been received. I gave him until
+five o'clock the following evening, at which hour, if his messenger had
+not appeared, I was to start for the Winnipeg River, en route for the
+Expedition.
+
+<p>Five o'clock came on the following day, and no messenger. Every thing
+was in readiness for my departure: the canoe, freshly pitched, was
+declared fit for the Winnipeg itself; the provisions were all ready to be
+put on board at a moment's notice. I gave half an hour's law, and that
+delay brought the messenger; so, putting off my intention of starting, I
+turned my face back towards Fort Garry. My former interviewer had sent me
+a letter; all was as I wished-Mr. Dreever had been set at liberty, my
+baggage given up, and he would expect me on the following morning.
+
+<p>The Indians were in a terrible state of commotion over my going. One of
+their chief medicine-men, an old Swampy named Bear, laboured long and
+earnestly to convince me that Riel had got on what he called "the track
+of blood," the devil's track, and that he could not get off of it. This
+curious proposition he endeavoured to illustrate by means of three small
+pegs of wood, which he set up on the ground. One represented Riel,
+another his Satanic Majesty, while the third was supposed to indicate
+myself.
+
+<p>He moved these three pegs about-very much after the fashion of a
+thimble-rigger; and I seemed to have, through my peg, about as bad a time
+of it as the pea under the thimble usually experiences. Upon the most
+conclusive testimony, Bear proceeded to show that I hadn't a chance
+between Riel and the devil, who, according to an equally clear
+demonstration, were about as bad as bad could be.
+
+<p>I had to admit a total inability to follow Bear in the reasoning which
+led to his deductions; but that only proved that I was not a
+"medicine-man," and knew nothing whatever of the peg theory.
+
+<p>So, despite of the evil deductions drawn by Bear from the three pegs, I
+set out for Fort Garry, and, journeying along the same road which I had
+travelled two nights previously, I arrived in sight of the village of
+Winnipeg before midday on the 23rd of July. At a little distance from the
+village rose the roof and flag-staffs of Fort Garry, and around in
+unbroken verdure stretched-the prairie lands of Red River.
+
+<p>Passing from the village along the walls of the fort, I crossed the
+Assineboine River and saw the "International" lying at her moorings
+below the floating bridge. The captain had been liberated, and waved his
+hand with a cheer as I crossed the bridge. The gate of the fort stood
+open, a sentry was leaning lazily against the wall, a portion of which
+leant in turn against nothing. The whole exterior of the place looked old
+and dirty. The muzzles of one or two guns protruding through the
+embrasures in the flanking bastions failed even to convey the idea
+of-fort or fortress to the mind of the beholder.
+
+<p>Returning from the east or St. Boniface side of the Red River, I was
+conducted by my companion into the fort. His private residence was
+situated within the walls, and to it we proceeded. Upon entering the gate
+I took in at a glance the surroundings-ranged in a semi-circle with their
+muzzles all pointing towards the entrance, stood some six or eight
+field-pieces; on each side and in front were bare looking, white-washed
+buildings. The ground and the houses looked equally dirty, and the whole
+aspect of the place was desolate and ruinous.
+
+<p>A few ragged-looking dusky men with rusty firelocks, and still more
+rusty bayonets, stood lounging about. We drove through without stopping,
+and drew up at the door of my companion's house, which was situated at
+the rear of the buildings I have spoken of. From the two flag-staffs flew
+two flags, one-the Union Jack in shreds and tatters, the other a
+well-kept bit of bunting having the fleur-de-lis and a shamrock on a
+white field. Once in the house, my companion asked me if I would see Mr.
+Riel.
+
+<p>"To call on him, certainly not," was my reply.
+
+<p>"But if he calls on you?"
+
+<p>"Then I will see him," replied I.
+
+<p>The gentleman who had spoken thus soon left the room. There stood in the
+centre of the apartment a small billiard table, I took up a cue and
+commenced a game with the only other occupant of the room-the same
+individual who had on the previous evening acted as messenger to the
+Indian Settlement. We had played some half a dozen strokes when the door
+opened, and my friend returned. Following him closely came a short stout
+man with a large head, a sallow, puffy face, a sharp, restless,
+intelligent eye, a square-cut massive forehead overhung by a mass of long
+and thickly clustering hair, and marked with well-cut eyebrows--altogether,
+a remarkable-looking face, all the more so, perhaps, because it was to be
+seen in a land where such things are rare sights.
+
+<p>This was M. Louis Riel, the head and front of the Red River Rebellion-the
+President, the little Napoleon, the Ogre, or whatever else he may be
+called. He was dressed in a curious mixture of clothing--a black
+frock-coat, vest, and trousers; but the effect of this somewhat clerical
+costume was not a little marred by a pair of Indian mocassins, which
+nowhere look more out of place than on a carpeted floor.
+
+<p>M. Riel advanced to me, and we shook hands with all that empressement so
+characteristic of hand-shaking on the American Continent. Then there came
+a pause. My companion had laid his cue down. I still retained mine in my
+hands, and, more as a means of bridging the awkward gulf of silence which
+followed the introduction, I asked him to continue the game--another
+stroke or two, and the mocassined President began to move nervously about
+the window recess. To relieve his burthened feelings, I inquired if he
+ever indulged in billiards; a rather laconic "Never," was his reply.
+
+<p>"Quite a loss," I answered, making an absurd stroke across the table; "a
+capital game."
+
+<p>I had scarcely uttered this profound sentiment when I beheld the
+President moving hastily towards the door, muttering as he went, "I see I
+am intruding here." There was hardly time to say, "Not at all," when he
+vanished.
+
+<p>But my companion was too quick for him; going out into the hall, he
+brought him back once more into the room, called away my billiard
+opponent, and left me alone with the chosen of the people of the new
+nation.
+
+<p>Motioning M. Riel to be seated, I took a chair myself, and the
+conversation began.
+
+<p>Speaking with difficulty, and dwelling long upon his words, Riel
+regretted that I should have shown such distrust of him and his party as
+to prefer the Lower Fort and the English Settlement to the Upper Fort and
+the society of the French. I answered, that if such distrust existed it
+was justified by the rumours spread by his sympathizers on the American
+frontier, who represented him as making active preparations to resist the
+approaching Expedition.
+
+<p>"Nothing," he said, "was more false than these statements. I only wish to
+retain power until I can resign it to a proper Government. I have done
+every thing for the sake of peace, and to prevent bloodshed amongst the
+people of this land. But they will find," he added passionately, "they
+will find, if they try, these people here, to put me out-they will find
+they cannot do it. I will keep what is mine until the proper Government
+arrives;" as he spoke he got up from his chair and began to pace
+nervously about the room.
+
+<p>I mentioned having met Bishop Taché in St. Paul and the letter which I
+had received from him. He read it attentively and commenced to speak
+about the Expedition.
+
+<p>"Had I come from it?"
+
+<p>"No; I was going to it."
+
+<p>He seemed surprised.
+
+<p>"By the road to the Lake of the Woods?"
+
+<p>"No; by the Winnipeg River," I replied.
+
+<p>"Where was the Expedition?"
+
+<p>I could not answer this question; but I concluded it could not be very
+far from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+<p>"Was it a large force?"
+
+<p>I told him exactly, setting the limits as low as possible, not to deter
+him from fighting if such was his intention. The question uppermost in
+his mind was one of which he did not speak, and he deserves the credit of
+his silence. Amnesty or no amnesty was at that moment a matter of very
+grave import to the French half-breeds, and to none so much as to their
+leader. Yet he never asked if that pardon was an event on which he could
+calculate. He did not even allude to it at all.
+
+<p>At one time, when speaking of the efforts he had made for the advantage
+of his country, he grew very excited, walking hastily up and down the
+room with theatrical attitudes and declamation, which he evidently
+fancied had the effect of imposing on his listener; but, alas! for the
+vanity of man, it only made him appear ridiculous; the mocassins sadly
+marred the exhibition of presidential power.
+
+<p>An Indian speaking with the solemn gravity of his race looks right manful
+enough, as with moose-clad leg his mocassined feet rest on prairie grass
+or frozen snow-drift; but this picture of the black-coated Metis playing
+the part of Europe's great soldier in the garb of a priest and the shoes
+of a savage looked simply absurd. At length M. Riel appeared to think he
+had enough of the interview, for stopping in front of me he said,
+
+<p>"Had I been your enemy you would have known it be fore. I heard you would
+not visit me, and, although I felt humiliated, I came to see you to show
+you my pacific inclinations."
+
+<p>Then darting quickly from the room he left me. An hour later I left the
+dirty ill-kept fort. The place was then full of half-breeds armed and
+unarmed. They said nothing and did nothing, but simply stared as I drove
+by. I had seen the inside of Fort Garry and its president, not at my
+solicitation but at his own; and now before me lay the solitudes of the
+foaming Winnipeg and the pathless waters of great inland seas.
+
+<p>It was growing dusk when I reached the Lower Fort. My canoe men stood
+ready, for the hour at which I was to have joined them had passed, and
+they had begun to think some mishap had befallen me. After a hasty supper
+and a farewell to my kind host of the Lower Fort, I stepped into the
+frail canoe of painted bark which lay restive on the swift current. "All
+right; away!" The crew, with paddles held high for the first dip, gave a
+parting shout, and like an arrow from its bow we shot out into the
+current. Overhead the stars were beginning to brighten in the intense
+blue of the twilight heavens; far away to the north, where the river ran
+between wooded shores, the luminous arch of the twilight bow spanned the
+horizon, merging the northern constellation into its soft hazy glow.
+Towards that north we held our rapid way, while the shadows deepened on
+the shores and the reflected stars grew brighter on the river.
+
+<p>We halted that night at the mission, resuming our course at sunrise on
+the following morning. A few miles below the mission stood the huts and
+birch-bark lodges Of the Indians. My men declared that it would be
+impossible to pass without the ceremony of a visit. The chief had given
+them orders on the subject, and all the Indians were expecting it; so,
+paddling in to the shore, I landed and walked up the pathway leading to
+the chief's hut.
+
+<p>It was yet very early in the morning, and most of the braves were lying
+asleep inside their wigwams, dogs and papooses seeming to have matters
+pretty much their own way outside.
+
+<p>The hut in which dwelt the son of Pequis was small, low, and
+ill-ventilated. Opening the latched door I entered stooping; nor was
+there much room to extend oneself when the interior was attained.
+
+<p>The son of Pequis had not yet been aroused from his morning's slumber;
+the noise of my entrance, however, disturbed him, and he quickly came
+forth from a small interior den, rubbing his eyelids and gaping
+profusely. He looked sleepy all over, and was as much disconcerted as a
+man usually is who has a visit of ceremony paid to him as he is getting
+out of bed.
+
+<p>Prince, the son of Pequis, essayed a speech, but I am constrained to
+admit that taken altogether it was a miserable failure. Action loses
+dignity when it is accompanied by furtive attempts at buttoning nether
+garments, and not even the eloquence of the Indian is proof against the
+generally demoralized aspect of a man just out of bed. I felt that some
+apology was due to the chief for this early visit; but I told him that
+being on my way to meet the great Ogima whose braves were coming from the
+big sea water, I could not pass the Indian camp without stopping to say
+good-bye.
+
+<p>Before any thing else could be said I shook Prince by the hand and walked
+back towards the river.
+
+<p>By this time, however, the whole camp was thoroughly aroused. From each
+lodge came forth warriors decked in whatever garments could be most
+easily donned.
+
+<p>The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading-guns were held aloft and a
+hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the salutes
+were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge to see me
+off. Putting out into the middle of the river, I discharged my four teen
+shooter in the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war whoop answered my
+salute, and paddling their very best, for the eyes of the finest canoers
+in the world were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over
+the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were
+hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and amidst
+a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks the
+waters of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of the
+varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River is,
+like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.
+
+<p>The wind sighs over it, bending the tall reeds with mournful rustle, and
+the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes
+which form his summer home.
+
+<p>Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters of
+an immense lake, a lake which stretched away into unseen spaces, and over
+whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of mirage and
+inverted shore land.
+
+<p>This was Lake Winnipeg, a great lake even on a continent where lakes are
+inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a tithe of what it must
+have been in the earlier ages of the earth.
+
+<p>The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far
+away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present
+limits these great landmarks still look down on an ocean, but it is an
+ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and
+they are now mountain ridges rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom
+of this bygone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present
+Lakes Winnipegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie lands of the Lower
+Assineboine, 100,000 square miles of water. The water has long since been
+drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels leading to Hudson Bay,
+and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the richest prairie land in the
+world.
+
+<p>But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its
+rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once
+flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has
+twice the volume of the Rhine. 400,000 square miles of continent shed
+their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as the ocean, but,
+fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day. Not a wave, not a
+ripple on its surface; not a breath of breeze to aid the untiring
+paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had
+scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the
+steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving behind
+the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.
+
+<p>A long low point stretching from the south shore of the lake was faintly
+visible on the horizon. It was past mid day when we reached it; so,
+putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the shore, we lighted our
+fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grande Traverse
+was entered upon. Far away over the lake rose the point of the Big Stone,
+a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high over the water.
+The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a breath rippled
+the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide expanse, all was
+as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole speck of life on the
+waters of the world. The red sun sank into the lake, warning us that it
+was time to seek the shore and make our beds for the night. A deep sandy
+bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks, seemed to invite us to its
+solitudes. Steering in with great caution amid the rocks, we landed in
+this sheltered spot, and our boat upon the sandy beach. The shore yielded
+large store of drift-wood, the relics of many a northern gale. Behind us
+lay a trackless forest; in front the golden glory of the Western sky. As
+the night shades deepened around us and the red glare of our drift-wood
+fire cast its light upon the woods and the rocks, the scene became one of
+rare beauty.
+
+<p>As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all the
+charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little
+marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loth to
+quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as I
+thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature
+which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms.'
+They were Ojibbeways, who came to share our fire and our evening meal.
+The land was still their own. When I lay down to rest that night on the
+dry sandy shore, I long watched the stars above me. As children sleep
+after a day of toil and play, so slept the dusky men who lay around me.
+It was my first night with these poor wild sons of the lone spaces; it
+was strange and weird, and the lapping of the mimic wave against the
+rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes. Many a night
+afterwards I lay down to sleep beside these men and their brethren--many
+a night by lake-shore, by torrent's edge, and far out amidst the
+measureless meadows of the West--but "custom stales" even nature's
+infinite variety, and through many wild bivouacs my memory still wanders
+back to that first night out by the shore of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+<p>At break of day we launched the canoe again and pursued our course for
+the mouth of the Winnipeg River. The lake which yesterday was all
+sunshine, to-day looked black and overcast--thunder-clouds hung angrily
+around the horizon, and it seemed as though Winnipeg was anxious to give
+a sample of her rough ways before she had done with us. While the morning
+was yet young we made a portage--that is, we carried the canoe and its
+stores across a neck of land, saving thereby a long paddle round a
+projecting cape. The portage was through a marshy tract covered with long
+grass and rushes. While the men are busily engaged in carrying across the
+boat and stores, I will introduce them to the reader. They were four in
+number, and were named as follows:-Joseph Monkman, cook and interpreter;
+William Prince, full Indian; Thomas Smith, ditto; Thomas Hope, ci-devant
+schoolmaster, and now self-constituted steersman. The three first were
+good men. Prince, in particular, was a splendid canoe-man in dangerous
+water. But Hope possessed the greatest capacity for eating and talking of
+any man I ever met. He could devour quantities of pemmican any number of
+times during the day, and be hungry still. What he taught during the
+period when he was schoolmaster I have never been able to find out, but
+he was popularly supposed at the mission to be a very good Christian. He
+had a marked disinclination to hard or continued toil, although he would
+impress an on looker with a sense of unremitting exertion. This he
+achieved by divesting himself of his shirt and using his paddle, as Alp
+used his sword, "with right arm bare." A fifth Indian was added to the
+canoe soon after crossing the portage.
+
+<p>A couple of Indian lodges stood on the shore along which we were
+coasting. We put in towards these lodges to ask information, and found
+them to belong to Samuel Henderson, full Swampy Indian. Samuel, who spoke
+excellent English, at once volunteered to come with me as a guide to the
+Winnipeg River; but I declined to engage him until I had a report of his
+capability for the duty from the Hudson Bay officer in charge of Fort
+Alexander, a fort now only a few miles distant. Samuel at once launched
+his canoe, said "Good-bye" to his wife and nine children, and started
+after us for the fort, where, on the advice of the officer, I finally
+engaged him.
+
+<p><a name="ch10"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TEN.</h3>
+
+<p>The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a Rapid--A Camp--No
+Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat Portage--A far-fetched
+Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+<p>WE entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at midday and paddled up to
+Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance. Here
+I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg, getting a
+fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five o'clock in
+the evening started on my journey Up the river. Eight miles above the
+fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the twilight. In
+surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume of the Winnipeg
+was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its waters with the
+lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which stood well out into
+the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.
+
+<p>The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us, dark and
+solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept
+the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky
+blackness the rushing water, white with foam-above, the rifted
+thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the
+thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a
+rough shelter with cross-poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling themselves
+together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the storm.
+
+<p>I was ninety miles from Fort Garry, and as yet no tidings of the
+Expedition.
+
+<p>A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without
+meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place
+her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations.
+To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it
+descends 360 feet in a distance of 160 miles, that it is full of eddies
+and whirlpools, of every variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts,
+that it expands into lonely pine edged lakes and far-reaching
+island-studded bays, that its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished
+rocks, that its vast solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly
+active--to say all this is but to tell in bare items of fact the
+narrative of its beauty. For the Winnipeg by the multiplicity of its
+perils and the ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the
+description of civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized
+travel. It seems part of the savage-fitted alone for him and for his
+ways, useless to carry the burden of man's labour, but useful to shelter
+the wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its
+shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through
+the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways!
+To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one
+would of a high-mettled charger which will do any thing if he be rightly
+handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To
+shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of the Barriere, to carry his canoe
+down the whirling eddies of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush
+of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the
+whirlpool below the Chute-à-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a
+skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in
+the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness
+of skill, not to be found except after generations of practice. For
+hundreds of years the Indian has lived amidst these rapids; they have
+been the playthings of his boyhood, the realities of his life, the
+instinctive habit of his old age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the
+dog is to the Esquimaux, what the camel is to those who journey across
+Arabian deserts, so is the canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore
+yields him from first to last the materials-he requires for its
+construction: cedar for the slender ribs, birch-bark to cover them,
+juniper to stitch together the separate pieces, red pine to give resin
+for the seams and crevices. By the lake or river shore, close to his
+wigwam, the boat is built;
+
+<p>"And the forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the
+tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the
+larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in
+autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."
+
+<p>It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances over
+land from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load it
+down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters him
+by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land is
+unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in
+it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots
+his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing
+torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water.
+
+<p>For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees
+are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends
+its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the
+rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the
+winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the
+north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and
+with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and
+the wavy, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its
+long icy sleep.
+
+<p>Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes
+like an arrow.
+
+<p>The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+moments of keenest enjoyment, every thing was new and strange, and each
+hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian
+scenery.
+
+<p>The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays when
+the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on the
+water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns would
+be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while one
+remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its
+sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the
+centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away
+from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no
+difficult matter: start at five o'clock a.m., halt for breakfast at seven
+o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away at two
+o'clock, paddle until sunset at 7:30; that was the work of each day. But
+how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and circumstance
+between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost at every hour
+of the long summer day the great Winnipeg</p>
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-02"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-02.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>WORKING UP THE WINNIPEG.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p>revealed some new phase of
+beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I have
+already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the Woods to
+Lake Winnipeg, 160 miles, makes a descent of 360 feet. This descent is
+effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of terraces at
+various distances from each other; in other words, the river forms
+innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by rapids and
+perpendicular falls of varying altitude, thus when the voyageur has
+lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and launched it again
+above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted two-and-twenty feet
+of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages will give him a total
+rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles. (How cold does the bare
+narration of these facts appear beside their actual realization in a
+small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we can picture one of these
+many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of falling water, and we see, upon
+rounding some pine-clad island or ledge of rock, a tumbling mass of foam
+and spray studded with projecting rocks and flanked by dark wooded
+shores; above we can see nothing, but below the waters, maddened by their
+wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap in angry whirlpools. It is as
+wild a scene of crag and wood and water as the eye can gaze upon, but we
+look upon it not for its beauty, because there is no time for that, but
+because it is an enemy that must be conquered. Now mark how these Indians
+steal upon this enemy before he is aware of it. The immense volume of
+water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools at the foot of the fall,
+rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer water; this rush produces
+along the shores of the river a counter or back-current which flows up
+sometimes close to the foot of the fall, along this back-water the canoe
+is carefully steered, being often not six feet from the opposing rush in
+the central river, but the back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and
+the canoe, if it followed this back-current, would inevitably end in the
+same place; for a minute there is no paddling, the bow paddle and the
+steersman alone keeping the boat in her proper direction as she drifts
+rapidly up the current. Amongst the crew not a word is spoken, but every
+man knows what he has to do and will be ready when the moment comes; and
+now the moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of
+water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth
+green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a
+strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down
+into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has
+been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often
+only the choice of the whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very
+edge of the eddy there is one loud shout given by the bow paddle, and the
+canoe shoots full into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the
+united strength of the entire crew--the men work for their very lives,
+and the boat breasts across the river with her head turned full toward
+the falls; the waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over
+the gunwale, the Indians shout as they dip their paddles like lightning
+into the foam, and the stranger to such a scene holds his breath amidst
+this war of man against nature. Ha! the struggle is useless, they cannot
+force her against such a torrent, we are close to the rocks and the foam;
+but see, she is driven down by the current in spite of those wild fast
+strokes. The dead strength of such a rushing flood must prevail. Yes, it
+is true, the canoe has been driven back; but behold, almost in a second
+the whole thing is done-we float suddenly beneath a little rocky isle on
+the foot of the cataract. We have crossed the river in the face of the
+fall, and the portage landing is over this rock, while three yards out on
+either side the torrent foams its headlong course. Of the skill necessary
+to perform such things it is useless to speak. A single false stroke, and
+the whole thing would have failed; driven headlong down the torrent,
+another attempt would have to be made to gain this rock-protected spot,
+but now we lie secure here; spray all around us, for the rush of the
+river is on either side and you can touch it with an outstretched paddle.
+The Indians rest on their paddles and laugh; their long hair has escaped
+from its-fastening through their exertion, and they retie it while they
+rest. One is already standing upon the wet slippery rock holding the
+canoe in its place, then the others get out. The freight is carried up
+piece by piece and deposited on the flat surface some ten feet above;
+that done, the canoe is lifted out very gently, for a single blow against
+this hard granite boulder would shiver and splinter the frail birch-bark
+covering; they raise her very carefully up the steep face of the cliff
+and rest again on the top. What a view there is from this coigne of
+vantage! We are on the lip of the fall, on each side it makes its plunge,
+and below we mark at leisure the torrent we have just braved; above, it
+is smooth water, and away ahead we see the foam of another rapid. The
+rock on which we stand has been worn smooth by the washing of the water
+during countless ages, and from a cleft or fissure there springs a
+pine-tree or a rustling aspen. We have crossed the Petit Roches, and our
+course is onward still.
+
+<p>Through many scenes like this we held our way during the last days of
+July. The weather was beautiful; now and then a thunder-storm would roll
+along during the night, but the morning sun rising clear and bright would
+almost tempt one to believe that it had been a dream, if the pools of
+water in the hollows of the rocks and the dampness of blanket or
+oil-cloth had not proved the sun a humbug. Our general distance each day
+would be about thirty-two miles, with an average of six portages. At
+sunset we made our camp on some rocky isle or shelving shore, one or two
+cut wood, another got the cooking things ready, a fourth gummed the seams
+of the canoe, a fifth cut shavings from a dry stick for the fire--for
+myself, I generally took a plunge in the cool delicious water--and soon
+the supper hissed in the pans, the kettle steamed from its suspending
+stick, and the evening meal was eaten with appetites such as only the
+voyageur can understand.
+
+<p>Then when the shadows of the night had fallen around and all was silent,
+save the river's tide against the rocks, we would stretch our blankets on
+the springy moss of the crag and lie down to sleep with only the stars
+for a roof.
+
+<p>Happy, happy days were these--days the memory of which goes very far into
+the future, growing brighter as we journey farther away from them, for
+the scenes through which our course was laid were such as speak in
+whispers, only when we have left them--the whispers of the pine-tree, the
+music of running water, the stillness of great lonely lakes.
+
+<p>On the evening of the fifth day from leaving Fort Alexander we reached
+the foot of the Rat Portage, the twenty-seventh, and last, upon the
+Winnipeg River; above this portage stretched the Lake of the Woods, which
+here poured its waters through a deep rock-bound gorge with tremendous
+force. During the five days we had only encountered two solitary Indians;
+they knew nothing whatever about the Expedition, and, after a short
+parley and a present of tea and flour, we pushed on. About midday on the
+fourth day we halted at the Mission of the White Dog, a spot which some
+more than heathen missionary had named Islington in a moment of virtuous
+cockneyism. What could have tempted him to commit this act of desecration
+it is needless to ask.
+
+<p>Islington on the Winnipeg! O religious Gilpin, hadst thou fallen a prey
+to savage Cannibalism, not even Sidney Smith's farewell aspiration would
+have saved the savage who devoured you, you must have killed him.
+
+<p>The Mission of the White Dog had been the scene of Thomas Hope's most
+brilliant triumphs in the role of schoolmaster, and the youthful
+Ojibbeways of the place had formerly belonged to the band of hope. For
+some days past Thomas had been labouring under depression, his power of
+devouring pemmican had, it is true, remained unimpaired, but in one or
+two trying moments of toil, in rapids and portages, he had been found
+miserably wanting; he had, in fact, shown many indications of utter
+uselessness; he had also begun to entertain gloomy apprehensions of what
+the French would do to him when they caught him on the Lake of the Woods,
+and although he endeavoured frequently to prove that under certain
+circumstances the French would have no chance whatever against him, yet,
+as these circumstances were from the nature of things never likely to
+occur, necessitating, in the first instance, a presumption that Thomas
+would show fight, he failed to convince not only his hearers, but
+himself, that he was not in a very bad way. At the White Dog Mission he
+was, so to speak, on his own hearth, and was doubtless desirous of
+showing me that his claims to the rank of interpreter were well founded.
+No tidings whatever had reached the few huts of the Indians at the White
+Dog; the women and children, who now formed the sole inhabitants, went
+but little out of the neighbourhood, and the men had been away for many
+days in the forest, hunting and fishing. Thus, through the whole course
+of the Winnipeg, from lake to lake, I could glean no tale or tidings of
+the great Ogima or of his myriad warriors. It was quite dark when we
+reached, on the evening of the 30th July, the northern edge of the Lake
+of the Woods and paddled across its placid waters to the Hudson Bay
+Company's post at the Rat Portage. An arrival of a canoe with six
+strangers is no ordinary event at one of these remote posts which the
+great fur company have built at long intervals over their immense
+territory. Out came the denizens of a few Indian lodges, out came the
+people of the fort and the clerk in charge of it. My first question was
+about the Expedition, but here, as elsewhere, no tidings had been heard
+of it. Other tidings were however forthcoming which struck terror into
+the heart of Hope. Suspicious canoes had been seen for-some days past
+amongst the many islands of the lake; strange men had come to the fort at
+night, and strange fires had been seen on the islands-the French were out
+on the lake. The officer in charge of the post was absent at the time of
+my visit, but I had met him at Fort Alexander, and he had anticipated my
+wants in a letter which I myself carried to his son. I now determined to
+strain every effort to cross with rapidity the Lake of the Woods and
+ascend the Rainy River to the next post of the Company, Fort Francis,
+distant from Rat Portage about 1400 miles, for there I felt sure that I
+must learn tidings of the Expedition and bring my long solitary journey
+to a close. But the Lake of the Woods is an immense sheet of water lying
+1000 feet above the sea level, and subject to violent gales which lash
+its bosom into angry billows. To be detained upon some island,
+storm-bound amidst the lake, %would never have answered, so I ordered a
+large keeled boat to be got ready by midday it only required a few
+trifling repairs of sail and oars, but a great feast had to be gone
+through in which my pemmican and flour were destined to play a very
+prominent part. As the word pemmican is one which may figure frequently
+in these pages, a few words explanatory of it may be useful. Pemmican,
+the favourite food of the Indian and the half-breed voyageur, can be made
+from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of
+buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by
+fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky
+substance; in this state it is put into a large bag made from the hide of
+the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by
+melted fat being poured over it-the quantity of fat is nearly half the
+total weight, forty pounds of fat going to fifty pounds of "beat meat;"
+the best pemmican generally has added to it ten pounds of berries and
+sugar, the whole composition forming the most solid description of food
+that man can make. If any person should feel inclined to ask, "What does
+pemmicau taste like?" I can only reply, "Like pemmican," there is
+nothing else in the world that bears to it the slightest resemblance.
+-Can I say any thing that Will give the reader an idea of its sufficing
+quality? Yes, I think I can. A dog that will eat from four to six pounds
+of raw fish a day when sleighing, will only devour two pounds: of
+pemmican, if he be fed upon that food; yet I have seen Indians and
+half-breeds eat four pounds of it in a single day-but this is
+anticipating. Pemmican can be prepared in many ways, and it is not easy
+to decide which method is the least objectionable. There is rubeiboo and
+richot, and pemmican plain and pemmican raw, this last method being the
+one most in vogue amongst voyageurs; but the richot, to me, seemed the
+best; mixed with a little flour and fried in a pan, pemmican in this form
+can be eaten, provided the appetite be sharp and there is nothing else to
+be had--this last consideration is, however, of importance.
+
+<p><a name="ch11"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER ELEVEN.</h3>
+
+<p>The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A close
+Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The Officer
+commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+<p>The feast having been concluded (I believe it had gone on all night, and
+was protracted far into the morning), the sails and oars were suddenly
+reported ready, and about midday on the 31st July we stood away from the
+Portages du Rat into the Lake of the Woods. I had added another man to
+my crew, which now numbered seven hands, the last accession was a French
+half-breed, named Morrisseau. Thomas Hope had possessed himself of a
+flint gun, with which he was to do desperate things should we fall in
+with the French scouts upon the lake. The boat in which I now found
+myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of
+freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and
+also possessed of powerful sweeps, which were worked by the men in
+standing positions, the rise of the oar after each stroke making the
+oarsman sink back upon the thwarts only to resume again his upright
+attitude for the next dip of the heavy sweep.
+
+<p>This is the regular Hudson Bay Mackinaw boat, used for the carrying
+trade of the great Fur Company on every river from the Bay of Hudson to
+the Polar Ocean. It looks a big, heavy, lumbering affair, but it can sail
+well before a wind, and will do good work with the oars too.
+
+<p>That portion of the Lake of the Woods through which we now steered our
+way was a perfect maze and network of island and narrow channel; a light
+breeze from the north favoured us, and we passed gently along the rocky
+islet shores through unruffled water. In all directions there opened out
+innumerable channels, some narrow and winding, others straight and open,
+but all lying'-between shores clothed with a rich and luxuriant
+vegetation; shores that curved and twisted into mimic bays and tiny
+promontories, that rose in rocky masses abruptly from the water, that
+sloped down to meet the lake in gently swelling undulations, that seemed,
+in fine, to present in the compass of a single glance every varying
+feature of island scenery. Looking through these rich labyrinths of tree
+and moss-covered rock, it was difficult to imagine that winter could ever
+-stamp its frozen image upon such a soft summer scene. The air was balmy
+with the scented things which grow profusely upon the islands; the water
+was warm, almost tepid, and yet despite of this the winter frost would
+cover the lake with five feet of ice, and the thick brushwood of the
+islands would lie hidden during many months beneath great depths of snow.
+
+<p>As we glided along through this beautiful scene the men kept a sharp
+look-out for the suspicious craft whose presence had caused such alarm at
+the Portage-du-Rat. We saw no trace of man or canoe, and nothing broke
+the stillness of the evening except the splash of a sturgeon in the
+lonely bays. About sunset we put ashore upon a large rock for supper.
+While it was being prepared I tried to count the islands around. From a
+projecting point I could see island upon island to the number of over a
+hundred--the wild cherry, the plum, the wild rose, the raspberry,
+intermixed with ferns and mosses in vast variety, covered every spot
+around me, and from rock and crevice the pine and the poplar hung their
+branches over the water. As the breeze still blew fitfully from the north
+we again embarked and held our way through the winding channels--at times
+these channels would grow wider only again to close together; but there
+was no current, and the large high sail moved us slowly through the
+water. When it became dark a fire suddenly appeared on an island some
+distance ahead. Thomas Hope grasped his flint gun and seemed to think the
+supreme moment had at length arrived. During the evening I could tell by
+the gestures and looks of the men that the mysterious rovers formed the
+chief subject of conversation, and our latest accession painted so
+vividly their various suspicious movements, that Thomas was more than
+ever convinced his hour was at hand. Great then was the excitement when
+the fire was observed upon the island, and greater still when I told
+Samuel to steer full towards it. As we approached we could distinguish
+figures moving to and fro between us and the bright flame, but when we
+had got within a few hundred yards of the spot the light was suddenly
+extinguished, and the ledge of rock upon which it had been burning became
+wrapped in darkness. We hailed, but there was no reply. Whoever had been
+around the fire had vanished through the trees; launching their canoe
+upon the other side of the island, they had paddled away through the
+intricate labyrinth scared by our sudden appearance in front of their
+lonely bivouac. This apparent confirmation of his worst fears in no way
+served to reanimate the spirits of Hope, and though shortly after he lay
+down with the other men in the bottom of the boat, it was not without
+misgivings as to the events which lay before him in the darkness. One man
+only remained up to steer, for it was my intention to run as long as the
+breeze, faint though it was, lasted. I had been asleep about half an hour
+when I felt my arm quickly pulled, and, looking up, beheld Samuel bending
+over me, while with one hand he steered the boat. "Here they are," he
+whispered, "here they are." I looked over the gunwale and under the sail
+and beheld right on the course we were steering two bright fires burning
+close to the water's edge. We were running down a channel which seemed to
+narrow to a strait between two islands, and presently a third fire came
+into view on the other side of the strait, showing distinctly the narrow
+pass towards which we were steering, it did not appear to be more than
+twenty feet across it, and, from its exceeding narrowness and the
+position of the fires, it seemed as though the place had really been
+selected to dispute our outward passage. We were not more than two
+hundred yards from the strait and the breeze was holding well into it.
+What was to be done? Samuel was for putting the helm up; but that would
+Have been useless, because we were already in the channel, and to run on
+shore would only place us still more in the power of our enemies, if
+enemies they were, so I told him to hold his course and run right through
+the narrow pass. The other men had sprung quickly from their blankets,
+and Thomas was the picture of terror. When he saw that I was about to run
+the boat through the strait, he instantly made up his mind to shape for
+himself a different course. Abandoning his flint musket to any body who
+would take it, he clambered like a monkey on to the gunwale, with the
+evident intention of dropping noiselessly into the water, and seeking, by
+swimming on shore, a safety which he deemed denied to him on board. Never
+shall I forget his face as he was pulled back into the boat; nor is it
+easy to describe the sudden revulsion of feeling which possessed him
+when: a dozen different fires breaking into view showed at once that the
+forest was on fire, and that the imaginary bivouac of the French was only
+the flames of burning brushwood. Samuel laughed over his mistake, but
+Thomas looked on it in no laughing light, and, seizing his gun, stoutly
+maintained that had it really been the French they would have learnt a
+terrible lesson from the united volleys of the fourteen-shooter and his
+flint musket.
+
+<p>The Lake of the Woods covers a very large extent of country. In length it
+measures about seventy miles, and its greatest breadth is about the same
+distance; its shores are but little known, and it is only the Indian who
+can steer with accuracy through its labyrinthine channels. In its
+southern portion it spreads out into a vast expanse of open water, the
+surface of which is lashed by tempests into high-running seas.
+
+<p>In the early days of the French fur trade it yielded large stores of
+beaver and of martens, but it has long ceased to be rich in furs. Its
+shores and islands will be found to abound in minerals whenever
+civilization reaches them.
+
+<p>Among the Indians the lake holds high place as the favourite haunt of the
+Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone
+from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of
+ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly
+by lightning, the islands which abound in lizards although these reptiles
+are scarce elsewhere--all these make the Lake of the Woods a region
+abounding in Indian legend and superstition. There are isles upon which
+he will not dare to venture, because the evil spirit has chosen them;
+there are promontories upon which offerings must be made to the Manitou
+when the canoe drifts by their lonely shores; and there are spots watched
+over by the great Kennebic, or Serpent, who is jealous of the treasures
+which they contain. But all these things are too long to dwell upon now;
+I must haste along my way.
+
+<p>On the second morning after leaving Rat Portage we began to leave behind
+the thickly-studded islands and to get out into the open waters. A
+thunder-storm had swept the lake during the night, but the morning was
+calm, and the heavy sweeps were not able to make much way. Suddenly,
+while we were halted for breakfast, the wind veered round to the
+north-west and promised us a rapid passage across the Grande Traverse to
+the mouth of Rainy River. Embarking hastily, we set sail for a strait
+known as the Grassy Portage, which the high stage of water in the lake
+enabled us to run through without touching ground. Beyond this strait
+there stretched away a vast expanse of water over which the white-capped
+waves were running in high billows from the west. It soon became so rough
+that we had to take on board the small canoe which I had brought with me
+from Rat Portage in case of accident, and which was towing astern. On we
+swept over the high-rolling billows with a double reef in the lug-sail.
+Before us, far away, rose a rocky promontory, the extreme point of which
+we had to weather in order to make the mouth of Rainy River. Keeping the
+boat as close to the wind as she would go, we reeled on over the tumbling
+seas. Our lee-way was very great, and for some time it seemed doubtful if
+we would clear the point; as we neared it we saw that there was a
+tremendous sea running against the rock, the white sprays shooting far up
+into the air When the rollers struck against it. The wind had now
+freshened to a gale and the boat laboured much, constantly shipping
+sprays. At last we were abreast of the rocks, close hauled, and yet only
+a hundred yards from the breakers. Suddenly the wind veered a little, or
+the heavy swell which was running caught us, for we began to drift
+quickly down into the mass of breakers. The men were all huddled together
+in the bottom of the boat, and for a moment or two nothing could be done.
+"Out with the sweeps!" I roared. All was confusion; the long sweeps got
+foul of each other, and for a second every thing went wrong. At last
+three sweeps were got to work, but they could do nothing against such a
+sea. We were close to the rocks, so close that one began to make
+preparations for doing something--one didn't well know what--when we
+should strike. Two more oars were out, and for an instant we hung in
+suspense as to the result. How they did pull! it was the old paddle-work
+forcing the rapid again; and it told; in spite of wave and wind, we were
+round the point, but it was only by a shade. An hour later we were
+running through a vast expanse of marsh and reeds into the mouth of Rainy
+River; the Lake of the Woods was passed, and now before me Lay eighty
+miles of the Rivière-de-la-Pluie.
+
+<p>A friend of mine once, describing the scenery of the Falls of the Cauvery
+in India, wrote that "below the falls there was an island round which
+there was water on every side:" this mode of description, so very true
+and yet so very simple in its character, may fairly-be applied to Rainy
+River; one may safely say that it is a river, and that it has banks on
+Either side of it; if one adds that the banks are rich, fertile, and well
+wooded, the description will be complete--such was the river up which I
+now steered to meet the Expedition. The Expedition, where was it? An
+Indian whom we met on the lake knew nothing about it; perhaps on the
+river we should hear some tidings. About five miles from the mouth of
+Rainy River there was a small out-station of the Hudson Bay Company kept
+by a man named Morrisseau, a brother of my boatman. As we approached this
+little post it was announced to us by an Indian that Morrisseau had that
+morning lost a child. It was a place so wretched looking that its name
+of Hungery Hall seemed well adapted to it.
+
+<p>When the boat touched the shore the father of the dead child came out of
+the hut, and shook hands with every one in solemn silence; when he came
+to his brother he kissed him, and the brother in his turn went up the
+bank and kissed a number of Indian women who were standing round; there
+was not a word spoken by any one; after awhile they all went into the
+hut in which the little body lay, and remained some time inside. In its
+way, I don't ever recollect seeing a more solemn exhibition of grief
+than this complete silence in the presence of death; there was no
+question asked, no sign given, and the silence of the dead seemed to
+have descended upon the living. In a little time several Indians
+appeared, and I questioned them as to the Expedition; had they seen or
+heard of it?
+
+<p>"Yes, there was one young man who had seen with his own eyes the great
+army of the white braves."
+
+<p>"Where?" I asked.
+
+<p>"Where the road slants down into the lake, was the interpreted reply.
+
+<p>"What were they like?" I asked again, half incredulous after so many
+disappointments.
+
+<p>He thought for awhile: "They were like the locusts," he answered, "they
+came on one after the other." There could be no mistake about it, he had
+seen British soldiers.
+
+<p>The chief of the party now came forward, and asked what I had got to say
+to the Indians; that he would like to hear me make a speech; that they
+wanted to know why all these men were coming through their country. To
+make a speech! it was a curious request. I was leaning with my back
+against the mast, and the Indians were seated in a line on the bank;
+every thing looked so miserable around, that I thought I might for once
+play the part of Chadband, and improve the occasion, and, as a speech was
+expected of me, make it. So I said, "Tell this old chief that I am sorry
+he is poor and hungry; but let him look around, the land on which he sits
+is rich and fertile, why does he not cut down the trees that cover it,
+and plant in their places potatoes and corn? then he will have food in
+the winter when the moose is scarce and the sturgeon cannot be caught."
+He did not seem to relish my speech, but said nothing. I gave a few plugs
+of tobacco all round, and we shoved out again into the river. "Where the
+road comes down to the lake" the Indian had seen the troops; where was
+that spot? No easy matter to decide, for lakes are so numerous in this
+land of the North-west that the springs of the earth seem to have found
+vent there. Before sunset we fell in with another Indian; he was alone in
+a canoe, which he paddled close along shore out of the reach of the
+strong breeze which was sweeping us fast up the river. While he was yet a
+long way off, Samuel declared that he had recently left Fort Francis, and
+therefore would bring us news from that place. "How can you tell at this
+distance that he has come from the fort?" I asked. "Because his shirt
+looks bright," he answered. And so it was; he had left the fort on the
+previous day and run seventy miles; he was old Monkman's Indian returning
+after having left that hardy voyageur at Fort Francis.
+
+<p>Not a soldier of the Expedition had yet reached the fort, nor did any man
+know where they were.
+
+<p>On again; another sun set and another sun rose, and we were still running
+up the Rainy River before a strong north wind which fell away towards
+evening. At sundown of the 3rd August I calculated that some four and
+twenty miles must yet lie between me and that fort at which, I felt
+convinced, some distinct tidings must reach me of the progress of the
+invading column. I was already 180 miles beyond the spot where I had
+counted upon falling in with them. I was nearly 400 miles from Fort
+Garry.
+
+<p>Towards evening on the 3rd it fell a dead calm, and the heavy boat could
+make but little progress against the strong running current of the river,
+so I bethought me of the little birch-bark canoe which I had brought from
+Rat Portage; it was a very tiny one, but that was no hindrance to the
+work I now\ required of it. We had been sailing all day, so my men were
+fresh. At supper I proposed that Samuel, Monkman, and William Prince
+should come on with me during the night, that we would leave Thomas Hope
+in command of the big boat and push on for the fort in the light canoe,
+taking with us only sufficient food for one meal. The three men at once
+assented, and Thomas was delighted at the prospect of one last grand feed
+all to himself, besides the great honour of being promoted to the rank
+and dignity of Captain of the boat. So we got the little craft out, and
+having gummed her all over, started once more on our upward way just as
+the shadows of the night began to close around the river. We were four in
+number, quite as many as the canoe could carry; she was very low in the
+water and, owing to some damage received in the rough waves of the Lake
+of the Woods, soon began to leak badly. Once we put ashore to gum and
+pitch her seams again, but still the water oozed in and we were wet. What
+was to be done? with these delays we never could hope to reach the fort
+by daybreak, and something told me instinctively, that unless I did get
+there that night I would find the Expedition already arrived. Just at
+that moment we descried smoke rising amidst the trees on the right shore,
+and soon saw the poles of Indian lodges. The men said they were very bad
+Indians. firom the American side--the left shore of Rainy River is
+American territory--but the chance of a bad Indian was better than the
+certainty of a bad canoe, and we stopped at the camp. A lot of half-naked
+redskins came out of the trees, and the pow-wow commenced. I gave them
+all tobacco, and then asked if they would give me a good canoe in
+exchange for my bad one, telling them that I would give them a present
+next day at the fort if one or two amongst them would come up there.
+After a short parley they assented, and a beautiful canoe was brought out
+and placed on the water. They also gave us a supply of dried sturgeon,
+and, again shaking hands all round, we departed on our way.
+
+<p>This time there was no mistake, the canoe proved as dry as a bottle, and
+we paddled bravely on through the mists of night. About midnight we
+halted for supper, making a fire amidst the long wet grass, over which we
+fried the sturgeon and boiled our kettle; then we went on again through
+the small hours of the morning. At times I could see on the right the
+mouths of large rivers which flowed from the west: it is down these
+rivers that the American Indians come to fish for sturgeon in the Rainy
+River. For nearly 200 miles the country is still theirs, and the
+Pillager and Red Lake branches of the Ojibbeway nation yet hold their
+hunting-grounds in the vast swamps of North Minnesota.
+
+<p>These Indians have a bad reputation, as the name of Pillager implies, and
+my Red River men were anxious to avoid falling in with them. Once during
+the night, opposite the mouth of one of the rivers opening to the west,
+we saw the lodges of a large party on our left; with paddles that were
+never lifted out of the water, we glided noiselessly by, as silently as a
+wild duck would cleave the current. Once again during the long night a
+large sturgeon, struck suddenly by a paddle, alarmed us by bounding out
+of the water and landing full upon the gunwale of the Canoe, splashing
+back again into the water and wetting us all by his curious manoeuvre. At
+length in the darkness we heard the hollow roar of the great Falls of the
+Chaudiere sounding loud through the stillness. It grew louder and louder
+as with now tiring strokes my worn-out men worked mechanically at their
+paddles. The day was beginning to break. We were close beneath the
+Chaudiere and alongside of Fort Francis. The scene was wondrously
+beautiful. In the indistinct light of the early dawn the cataract seemed
+twice its natural height, the tops of pine trees rose against the pale
+green of the coming day, close above the falls the bright morning star
+hung, diamond-like, over the rim of the descending torrent; around the
+air was tremulous with the rush of water, and to the north the
+rose-coloured streaks of the aurora were woven into the dawn. My long
+solitary journey had nearly reached its close.
+
+<p>Very cold and cramped by the constrained position in which I had remained
+all night, I reached the fort, and, unbarring the gate, with my rifle
+knocked at the door of one of the wooden houses. After a little, a man
+opened the door in the costume, scant and unpicturesque, in which he had
+risen from his bed.
+
+<p>"Is that Colonel Wolseley?" he asked.
+
+<p>"No," I answered; "but that sounds well; he can't be far off."
+
+<p>"He will be in to breakfast," was the reply.
+
+<p>After all, I was not much too soon. When one has journeyed very far along
+such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily
+expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant
+point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being
+found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though
+one had quietly taken one's ease at an inn. Still there were others to be
+consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours
+of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine.
+
+<p>After an hour's delay I went to the house where the men were lying down,
+and said to them, "The Colonel is close at hand. It will be well for us
+to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive
+at the Fort;" so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above
+the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into
+Rainy River two miles above the fort.
+
+<p>It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river
+makes as it flows out of the Lake. Forcing up this rapid, we saw
+spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake.
+
+<p>The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it.
+can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object
+will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the
+eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the
+lake first caught my sight. There they are! Yes, there they were. Coming
+along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west
+canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant
+as they shot down towards the river's source.
+
+<p>Beyond, in the expanse of the lake, a boat or two showed far and faint.
+We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the
+head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the
+centre sat a figure in uniform with forage-cap on head, and I could see
+that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved
+a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and commenced to
+dip down its rushing waters. Quitting the rock, I got again into my
+canoe, and we shoved off into the current. Thus running down the rapid
+the two canoes drew together, until at its foot they were only a few
+paces apart.
+
+<p>Then the officer in the large canoe, recognizing a face he had last seen
+three months before in the hotel at Toronto, called out, "Where on earth
+have you dropped from?" and with a "Fort Garry, twelve days out, sir," I
+was in his boat.
+
+<p>The officer whose canoe thus led the advance into Rainy River was no
+other than the commander of the Expeditionary Force. During the period
+which had elapsed since that force had landed at Thunder Bay on the
+shore of Lake Superior, he had toiled with untiring energy to overcome
+the many obstacles which opposed the progress of the troops through the
+rock-bound fastnesses of the North. But there are men whose perseverance
+hardens, whose energy quickens beneath difficulties and delay, whose
+genius, like some spring bent back upon its base, only gathers strength
+from resistance. These men are the natural soldiers of the world; and
+fortunate is it for those who carry swords and rifles and are dressed in
+uniform when such men are allowed to lead them, for with such men as
+leaders the following, if it be British, will be all right--nay, if it be
+of any nationality on the earth, it will be all right too. Marches will
+be made beneath suns which by every rule of known experience ought to
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-03"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-03.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>WE PUT INTO THE ROCKY SHORE, AND, MOUNTING UPON A CRAG WHICH GUARDED THE<br>
+HEAD OF THE RAPID, I WAVED TO THE LEADING CANOE AS IT SWEPT ALONG.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p>prove fatal to nine-tenths of those who are exposed to them, rivers will
+be crossed, deserts will be traversed, and mountain passes will be
+pierced, and the men who cross and traverse and pierce them will only
+marvel that doubt or distrust should ever have entered into their minds
+as to the feasibility of the undertaking. The man who led the little army
+across the Northern wilderness towards Red River was well fitted in
+every respect for the work which was to be done. He was young in years
+but he was old in service; the highest professional training had
+developed to the utmost his ability, while it had left unimpaired the
+natural instinctive faculty of doing a thing from oneself, which the
+knowledge of a given rule for a given action so frequently destroys. Nor
+was it only by his energy, perseverance, and professional training that
+Wolseley was fitted to lead men upon the very exceptional service now
+required from them. Officers and soldiers will always follow when those
+three qualities are combined in the man who leads them; but they will
+follow with delight the man who, to these qualities, unites a happy
+aptitude for command, which is neither taught nor learned, but which is
+instinctively possessed.
+
+<p>Let us look back a little upon the track of this Expedition. Through a
+vast wilderness of wood and rock and water, extending for more than 600
+miles, 1200 men, carrying with them all the appliances of modern war, had
+to force their way.
+
+<p>The region through which they travelled was utterly destitute of food,
+except such as the wild game afforded to the few scattered Indians; and
+even that source was so limited that whole families of the Ojibbeways had
+perished of starvation, and cases of cannibalism had been frequent
+amongst them. Once cut adrift from Lake Superior, no chance remained for
+food until the distant settlement of Red River had been reached. Nor was
+it at all certain that even there supplies could be obtained, periods of
+great distress had occurred in the settlement itself; and the disturbed
+state into which its affairs had lately fallen in no way promised to give
+greater habits of agricultural industry to a people who were proverbially
+roving in their tastes. It became necessary, therefore, in piercing this
+wilderness to take with the Expedition three month's supply of food, and
+the magnitude of the undertaking will be somewhat under stood by the
+outside world when this fact is borne in mind.
+
+<p>Of course it would have been a simple matter if the-boats which carried
+the men and their supplies had been able to sail through an unbroken
+channel into the bosom of Lake Winnipeg; but through that long 600 miles
+of lake and river and winding creek, the rocky declivities of cataracts
+and the wild wooded shores of rapids had to be traversed, and full
+forty-seven times between lake and lake had boats, stores, and
+ammunition, had cannon, rifles, sails, and oars to be lifted from the
+water, borne across long ridges of rock and swamp and forest, and placed
+again upon the northward rolling river. But other difficulties had to be
+overcome which delayed at the outset the movements of the Expedition. A
+road, leading from Lake Superior to the height by land (42 miles), had
+been rendered utterly impassable by fires which swept the forest and
+rains which descended for days in continuous torrents. A considerable
+portion of this road had also to be opened out in order to carry the
+communication through to Lake Shebandowan close to the height of land.
+
+<p>For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been
+employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the
+Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven
+weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary
+difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of
+boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
+Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the 4th of August, just three
+weeks after that departure, the silent shores of the Rainy River beheld
+the advance of these pioneer boats who thus far had "marched on without
+impediment."
+
+<p>The evening of the day that witnessed my arrival at Fort Francis saw also
+my departure from it; and before the sun had set I was already far down
+the Rainy River. But I was no longer the solitary white man; and no
+longer the camp-fire had around it the swarthy faces of the Swampies. The
+woods were noisy with many tongues; the night was bright with the glare
+of many fires. The Indians, frightened by such a concourse of braves, had
+fled into the woods, and the roofless poles of their wigwams alone marked
+the camping-places where but the evening before I had seen the red man
+monarch of all he surveyed. The word had gone forth from the commander to
+push on with all speed for Red River, and I was now with the advanced
+portion of the 60th Rifles en route for the Lake of the Woods. Of my old
+friends the Swampies only one remained with me, the others had been kept
+at Fort Francis to be distributed amongst the various brigades of boats
+as guides to the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River; even Thomas Hope
+had got a promise of a brigade-in the mean time pork was abundant; and
+between pride and pork what more could even Hope desire?
+
+<p>In two days we entered the Lake of the Woods, and hoisting sail stood out
+across the waters. Never before had these lonely islands witnessed such a
+sight as they now beheld. Seventeen large boats close hauled to a
+splendid breeze swept in a great scattered mass through the high running
+seas, dashing the foam from their bows as they dipped and rose under
+their large lug-sails. Samuel Henderson led the way, proud of his new
+position, and looked upon by the soldiers of his boat as the very acme
+of an Indian. How the poor fellows enjoyed that day! no oar, no portage
+no galling weight over rocky ledges, nothing but a grand day's racing
+over the immense lake. They smoked-all day, balancing themselves on the
+weather-side to steadv the boats as they keeled over into the heavy seas.
+I think they would have-given even Mr. Riel that day a pipeful of
+tobacco; but Heaven help him if they: had caught him two days later on
+the portages of the Winnipeg! he would have had a hard time of it.
+
+<p>There has been some Hungarian poet, I think, who has found a theme for
+his genius in the glories of the _private soldier. He had been a soldier
+himself, and he knew the wealth of the mine hidden in the unknown and
+unthought of Rank and File. It is a pity that the knowledge of that
+wealth should not be more widely circulated.
+
+<p>Who are the Rank and File? They are the poor wild birds whose country
+has cast them off, and who repay her by offering their lives for her
+glory; the men who take the shilling, who drink, who drill, who march to
+music, who fill the graveyards of Asia; the men who stand sentry at the
+gates of world-famous fortresses, who are old when their elder brothers
+are still young, who are bronzed and burned by fierce suns, who sail
+over seas packed in great masses, who watch at night over lonely
+magazines, who shout, "Who comes there?" through the darkness, who dig
+in trenches, who are blown to pieces in mines, who are torn by shot and
+shell, who have carried the flag of England into every land, who have
+made her name famous through the nations, who are the nation's pride in
+her hour of peril and her plaything-in her hour of prosperity--these
+are the rank and file. We are a curious nation; until lately we bought
+our rank, as we buy our mutton, in a market; and we found officers and
+gentlemen where other nations would have found thieves and swindlers.
+Until lately we flogged our files with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and found
+heroes by treating men like dogs. But to return to the rank and file.
+
+<p>The regiment-which had been selected for the work of piercing these
+solitudes of the American continent had peculiar claims for that service.
+In bygone times it had been composed exclusively of Americans, and there
+was not an Expedition through all the wars which England waged against
+France in the New World in which the 60th, or "Royal Americans," had not
+taken a prominent part. When Munro yielded to Montcalm the fort of
+William Henry, when Wolfe reeled back from Montmorenci and stormed
+Abraham, when Pontiac swept the forts from Lake Superior to the Ohio, the
+60th, or Royal Americans, had ever been foremost in the struggle. Weeded
+now of their weak and sickly men, they formed a picked 'body, numbering
+350 soldiers, of whom any nation on earth might well be proud. They were
+fit to do anything and to go any where; and if a fear lurked in the minds
+of any of them, it was that Mr. Riel would not show fight. Well led, and
+officered by men who shared with them every thing, from the portage-strap
+to a roll of tobacco, there was complete confidence from the highest to
+the lowest. To be wet seemed to be the normal condition of man, and to
+carry a pork-barrel weighing 200 pounds over a rocky portage was but
+constitutional and exhilarating exercise--such were the men with whom, on
+the evening of the 8th of August, I once more reached the neighbourhood'
+of the Rat Portage. In a little bay between many islands the flotilla
+halted just before entering the reach which led to the portage. Paddling
+on in front with Samuel in my little canoe, we came suddenly upon four
+large Hudson Bay boats with full crews of Red River half-breeds and
+Indians-they were on their way to meet the Expedition, with the object of
+rendering what assistance they could to the troops in the descent of the
+Winnipeg river. They had begun, to despair of ever falling in with it,
+and great was the excitement at the sudden meeting; the flint-gun was at
+once discharged into the air, and the shrill shouts began to echo through
+the islands. But the excitement on the side of the Expedition was quite
+as keen. The sudden shots and the wild shouts made the men in the boats
+in rear imagine that the fun was really about to begin, and that a
+skirmish through the wooded isles would be the evening's work. The
+mistake was quickly discovered. They were glad of course to meet their
+Red River friends; but somehow, I fancy, the feeling, of joy would
+certainly not have been lessened had the boats held the dusky adherents
+of the Provisional Government.
+
+<p>On the following morning the seventeen boats commenced the descent of the
+Winnipeg river, while I remained at the Portage-du-Rat to await the
+arrival of the chief of the Expedition from Fort Francis. Each succeeding
+day brought a fresh brigade of boats under the guidance of one of my late
+canoe-men; and finally Thomas Hope came along,-seemingly enjoying life to
+the utmost--pork was plentiful, and as for the French there was no need
+to dream of them, and he could sleep in peace in the midst of fifty white
+soldiers. During six days I remained at the little Hudson Bay Company's
+post at the Rat Portage, making short excursions into the surrounding
+lakes and rivers, fishing below the rapids of the Great Chute; and in the
+evenings listening to the Indian stories of the lake as told by my worthy
+host, Mr. Macpherson, a great portion of whose life had been spent in the
+vicinity.
+
+<p>One day I went some distance away from the fort to fish at the foot of
+one of the great rapids formed by the Winnipeg River as it runs from the
+Lake of the Woods. We carried our canoe over two or three portages, and
+at length reached the chosen spot. In the centre of the river an Indian
+was floating quietly in his canoe, casting every now and then a large
+hook baited with a bit of fish into the water. My bait consisted of a
+bright spinning piece of metal, which I had got in one of the American
+cities on my way through Minnesota. Its effect upon the fish of this
+lonely region was marvellous; they had never before been exposed to such
+a fascinating affair, and they rushed at it with avidity. Civilization on
+the rocks had certainly a better time of it, as far as catching fish
+went, than barbarism in the canoe. With the shining thing we killed three
+for the Indian's one. My companion, who was working the spinning bait
+while I sat on the rock, casually observed, pointing to the Indian, "He's
+a Windigo."
+
+<p>"A what?" I asked.
+
+<p>"A Windigo."
+
+<p>"What is that?"
+
+<p>"A man that has eaten other men."
+
+<p>"Has this man eaten other men?"
+
+<p>"Yes; a long time ago he and his band were starving, and they killed and
+ate forty other Indians who were starving with them. They lived through
+the winter on them, and in the spring he had to fly from Lake Superior
+because the others wanted to kill him in revenge; and so he came here,
+and he now lives alone near this place."
+
+<p>The Windigo soon paddled over to us, and I had a good opportunity of
+studying his appearance. He was a stout, low-sized savage, with coarse
+and repulsive features, and eyes fixed sideways in his head like a
+Tartar's. We had left our canoe some distance away, and my companion
+asked him to put us across to an island. The Windigo at once consented:
+we got into his canoe, and he ferried us over. I don't know the name of
+the island upon which he landed us, and very likely it has got no name,
+but in my mind, at least, the rock and the Windigo will always be
+associated with that celebrated individual of our early days, the King
+of the Cannibal Islands. The Windigo looked with wonder at the spinning
+bait, seeming to regard it as a "great medicine;" perhaps if he had
+possessed such a thing he would never have been forced by hunger to
+become a Windigo.
+
+<p>Of the bravery of the Lake of the Woods Ojibbeway I did not form a very
+high estimate. Two instances related to me by Mr. Macpherson will suffice
+to show that opinion to have been well founded. Since the days when the
+Bird of Ages dwelt on the Coteau-des-Prairies the Ojibbeway and the Sioux
+have warred against each other; but as the Ojibbeway dwelt chiefly in the
+woods and the Sioux are denizens of the great plains, the actual war
+carried on between them has not beena unusually destructive. The
+Ojibbeways dislike to go far into the open plains; the Sioux hesitate to
+pierce the dark depths of the forest, and the war is generally confined
+to the border land, where the forest begins to merge into the plains.
+Every now and again, however, it becomes necessary to go through the
+form of a war-party, and the young men depart upon the war-path against
+their hereditary enemies. To kill a Sioux and take his scalp then becomes
+the great object of existence. Fortunate is the brave who can return to
+the camp bearing with him the coveted trophy. Far and near spreads the
+glorious news that a Sioux scalp has been taken, and for many a night the
+camps are noisy with the shouts and revels of the scalp dance from
+Winnipeg to Rainy Lake. It matters little whether it be the scalp of a
+man, a woman, or a child; provided it be a scalp it is all right. There
+is the record of the two last war-paths from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+<p>Thirty Ojibbeways set out one fine day for the plains to war against the
+Sioux, they followed the line of the Rosseaui river, and soon emerged
+from the forest. Before them lay a camp of Sioux. The thirty braves,
+hidden in the thickets, looked at the camp of their enemies; but the more
+they looked the less they liked it. They called a council of
+deliberation; it was unanimously resolved to retire to the Lake of the
+Woods: but surely they must bring back a scalp, the women would laugh at
+them! What was to be done? At length the difficulty was solved. Close by
+there was a newly-made grave, a squaw had died and been buried. Excellent
+idea; one scalp was as good as another. So the braves dug up the buried
+squaw-, took the scalp, and departed for Rat Portage. There was a great
+dance, and it was decided that each and every one of the thirty
+Ojibbeways deserved well of his nation.
+
+<p>But the second instance is still more revolting. A very brave Indian
+departed alone from the Lake of the Woods to war against the Sioux; he
+wandered about, hiding in the thickets by day and coming forth at night.
+One evening, being nearly starved, he saw the smoke of a wigwam; he went
+towards it, and found that it was inhabited only by women and
+children, of whom there were four altogether. He went up and asked for
+food; they invited him to enter the lodge; they set before him the best
+food they had got, and they laid a buffalo robe for his bed in the
+warmest corner of the wigwam. When night came, all slept; when midnight
+came the Ojibbeway quietly arose from his couch, killed the two women,
+killed the two children, and departed for the Lake of the Woods with
+four scalps. Oh, he was a very brave Indian, and his name went far
+through the forest! I know somebody who would have gone very far to see
+him hanged.
+
+<p>Late on the evening of the 14th August the commander of the Expedition
+arrived from Fort Francis at the Portage-du-Rat. He had attempted to
+cross the Lake of the Woods in a gig manned by soldiers, the weather
+being too tempestuous to allow the canoe to put out, and had lost his way
+in the vast maze of islands already spoken of. As we had received
+intelligence at the Portage-du-Rat of his having set out from the other
+side of the lake, and as hour after hour passed without bringing his boat
+in sight, I got the canoe ready and, with two Indians, started to light a
+beacon-fire on the top of the Devil's Rock, one of the haunted islands of
+the lake, which towered high over the surrounding isles. We had not
+proceeded far, however, before we fell in with the missing gig bearing
+down for the portage under the guidance of an Indian who had been picked
+up en route.
+
+<p>On the following day I received orders to start at once for Fort
+Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg River to engage guides for the
+brigades of boats which had still to come--two regiments of Canadian
+Militia. And here let us not-forget the men who, following in the
+footsteps of the regular troops, were now only a few marches behind their
+more fortunate comrades. To the lot of these two regiments of Canadian
+Volunteers fell the same hard toil of oar and portage which we have
+already described. The men composing these regiments were stout athletic
+fellows, eager for service, tired of citizen life, and only needing the
+toil of a campaign to weld them into as tough and resolute a body of men
+as ever leader could desire.
+
+<p><a name="ch12"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TWELVE.</h3>
+
+<p>To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal Mail--Grilling a
+Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary Bivouac--The
+President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular Troops.
+
+<p>I TOOK a very small canoe, manned by three Indians--father and two
+sons--and, with provisions for three days, commenced the descent of the
+river of rapids. How we shot down the hissing waters in that tiny craft!
+How fast we left the wooded shores behind us, and saw the-lonely isles
+flit by as the powerful current swept us like a leaf upon its bosom!
+
+<p>It was late of the afternoon of the 15th August when I left for the last
+time the Lake of the Woods. Next night our camp was made below the
+Eagle's Nest, seventy miles from the Portage-du-Rat. A wild storm burst
+upon us at night-fall, and our bivouac was a damp and dreary one. The
+Indians lay under the canoe; I sheltered as best I could beneath a huge
+pine-tree. My oil-cloth was only four feet in length-a shortcoming on the
+part of its feet which caused mine to suffer much discomfort. Besides, I
+had Her Majesty's royal mail to keep dry, and, with the limited liability
+of my oil-cloth in the matter of length, that became no easy task--two
+bags of letters and papers, home letters and papers, too, for the
+Expedition. They had been flung into my: canoe when leaving Rat Portage,
+and I had spent the first day in-sorting them as we swept along, and now
+they were getting wet in spite of every effort to the contrary. I made
+one bag into a pillow, but the rain came through the big pine-tree,
+splashing down through the branches, putting out my fire and drenching
+mail-bags and blankets.
+
+<p>Daylight came at last, but still the rain hissed down, making it no easy
+matter to boil our kettle and fry our bit of pork. Then we put out for
+the day's work on the river. How bleak and wretched it all was! After a
+while we found it was impossible to make head against the storm of wind
+and rain which swept the water, and we had to put back to the shelter of
+our miserable camp. About seven o'clock the wind fell, and we set out
+again. Soon the sun came forth drying and warming us all over. All day we
+paddled on, passing in succession the grand Chute-à-Jacquot, the Three
+Portages-des-Bois, the Slave Falls, and the dangerous rapids of the
+Barrière. The Slave Falls! who that has ever beheld that superb rush of
+water will forget it? Glorious, glorious Winnipeg! it may be that with
+these eyes of mine I shall never see thee again, for thou liest far out
+of the track of life, and man mars not thy beauty with ways of civilized
+travel; but I shall often see thee in imagination, and thy rocks and thy
+waters shall murmur in memory for life.
+
+<p>That night, the 17th of August, we made our camp on a little island close
+to the Otter Falls. It came a night of ceaseless rain, and again the
+mail-bags underwent a drenching. The old Indian cleared a space in the
+dripping vegetation, and made me a rude shelter with branches woven
+together; but the rain beat through, and drenched body, bag, and baggage.
+And yet how easy it all was, and how sound one slept! simply because one
+had to do it; that one consideration is the greatest expounder of the
+possible. I could not speak a word to my Indians, but we got on by signs,
+and seldom found the want of speech--"ugh, ugh" and "caween," yes and no,
+answered for any difficulty. To make a fire and a camp, to boil a kettle
+and fry a bit of meat are the home works of the Indian. His life is one
+long picnic, and it matters as little to him whether sun or rain, snow or
+biting frost, warm, drench, cover, or freeze him, as it does to the
+moose or the reindeer that share his forest life and yield him often his
+forest fare. Upon examining the letters in-the morning the interior of
+the bags presented such a pulpy and generally deplorable appearance that
+I was obliged to stop at one of the Seven Portages for the purpose of
+drying Her Majesty's mail. With this object we made a large fire, and
+placing cross-sticks above proceeded to toast and grill the dripping
+papers. The Indians sat around, turning the letters with little sticks as
+if they were baking cakes or frying sturgeon. Under their skilful
+treatment the pulpy mats soon attained the consistency, and in many
+instances the legibility, of a smoked herring, but as they had before
+presented a very fishy appearance that was not of much consequence.
+
+<p>This day was bright and fine. Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying
+the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we
+overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less
+than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is
+very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would
+stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and
+the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning
+but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected
+with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian war. Thus the great
+Slave Fall tells by its name the fate of two Sioux captives taken in some
+foray by the Ojibbeway; lashed together in a canoe, they were the only
+men who ever ran the Great Chute. The rocks around were black with the
+figures of the Ojibbeways, whose wild triumphant yells were hushed by the
+roar of the cataract; but the torture was a short one; the mighty rush,
+the wild leap, and the happy hunting-ground, where even Ojibbeways cease
+from troubling and Sioux warriors are at rest, had been reached. In
+Mackenzie's journal the fall called Galet-du-Bonnet is said to have been
+named by the Canadian voyageurs, from the fact that the Indians were in
+the habit of crowning the highest rock above the portage with wreaths of
+flowers and branches of trees. The Grand Portage, which is three quarters
+of a mile in length, is the great test of the strength of the Indian and
+half-breed; but, if Mackenzie speaks correctly, the voyageur has much
+degenerated since the early days of the fur trade, for he writes that
+seven pieces, weighing each ninety pounds, were carried over the Grand
+Portage by an Indian in one trip, 630 pounds borne three quarters of a mile
+by one man--the loads look big enough still, but 250 pounds is considered
+excessive now. These loads are carried in a manner which allows the whole
+strength of the body to be put into the work. A broad leather strap is
+placed round the forehead, the ends of the strap passing back over the
+shoulders support the pieces which, thus carried, lie along-the spine
+from the small of the back to the crown of the head. When fully loaded,
+the voyageur stands with his body bent forward, and with one hand
+steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
+rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
+nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
+send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.
+
+<p>In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
+breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
+operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
+which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
+shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
+an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
+but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
+of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
+knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
+rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
+the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
+embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
+drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
+sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
+see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
+spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
+about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
+knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
+canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
+its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
+disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
+head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
+without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
+him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
+here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
+and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
+smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
+chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
+rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
+like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
+slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a
+backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and
+again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off
+some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her
+steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a
+thousand horses: for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no
+mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and
+"wave-worn precipice" there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine
+itself pours forth. The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the
+most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they
+appear to the stranger. Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the
+midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape
+seems impossible. The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can
+save it--there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself
+provides it. Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that
+rock. There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides
+than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away
+with redoubled speed. No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool
+and twisting billow.
+
+<p>On the night of the 20th of August the whole of the regular troops of the
+Expedition and the general commanding it and his staff had reached Fort
+Alexander, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Some accidents had
+occurred, and many had been the "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no
+life had been lost; and from the 600 miles of wilderness there emerged
+400 soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous
+toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and
+whose appearance and physique--browned, tanned, and powerful told: of the
+glorious climate of these Northern solitudes, It was near sunset when the
+large canoe touched the wooden pier opposite the Fort Alexander and the
+commander of the Expedition stepped on shore to meet his men, assembled
+for the first time together since Lake Superior's distant sea had been
+left behind. It-was a meeting not devoid of those associations which make
+such things memorable, and the cheer which went up from the soldiers who
+lined the steep bank to bid him welcome had in it a note of that sympathy
+which binds men together by the inward consciousness of difficulties
+shared in common and dangers--successfully overcome together. Next day
+the united fleet put out into Lake Winnipeg; and steered for the lonely
+shores of the Island of Elks, the solitary island of the southern portion
+of the lake. In a broad, curving, sandy bay the boats found that night a
+shelter; a hundred fires threw their lights far into the lake, and
+bugle-calls startled echoes that assuredly had never been rouse before by
+notes so strange. Sailing in a wide scattered mass before a favouring
+breeze, the fleet reached about noon the following day the mouth of the
+Red River, the river whose name was the name of the Expedition, and whose
+shores had so long been looked forward to as a haven of rest from portage
+and oar labour. There it was at last, seeking through its many mouths the
+waters of the lake. And now our course lay up along the reed fringed
+river and sluggish current to where the tree-tops began to rise over the
+low marsh-land-up to where my old friends the Indians had pitched their
+camp and given me the parting salute on the morning of my departure just
+one month before. It was dusk when we reached the Indian Settlement and
+made a camp upon the opposite shore, and darkness had quite set in when I
+reached the mission-house, some three miles higher up. My old friend the
+Archdeacon was glad indeed to welcome me back. News from the settlement
+there was none--news from the outside world there was plenty. "A great
+battle had been fought near the Rhine," the old man said, "and the French
+had been disastrously defeated."
+
+<p>Another day of rowing, poling, tracking, and sailing, and evening closed
+over the Expedition, camped within six miles of Fort Garry; but all
+through the day the river banks were enlivened with people shouting
+welcome to the soldiers, and church bells rang out peals of gladness as
+the boats passed by. This was through the English and Scotch Settlement,
+the people of which had long grown weary of the tyranny of the Dictator
+Riel. Riel--why, we have almost forgotten him altogether during these
+weeks on the Winnipeg! Nevertheless, he-had still held his own within the
+walls of Fort Garry, and still played to a constantly decreasing audience
+the part of the Little Napoleon.
+
+<p>During this day, the 23rd August, vague rumours reached us of terrible
+things to be done by the warlike President. He would suddenly appear with
+his guns from the woods? he would blow up the fort when the troops had
+taken possession--he would die in the ruins. These and many other
+schemes of a similar description were to be enacted by the Dictator in
+the last extremity of his despair. I had spent the day in the saddle,
+scouring the woods on the right bank of the river in advance of the
+fleet, while on the left shore a company of the 60th, partly mounted,
+moved on also in advance of the leading boats. But neither Riel nor his
+followers appeared to dispute-the upward passage of the flotilla, and the
+woods through which I rode were silent and deserted. Early in the morning
+a horse had been lent to me by an individual rejoicing in the classical
+name of Tacitus Struthers. Tacitus had also assisted me to swim the steed
+across the Red River in order to gain the right shore, and, having done
+so, took leave of me with oft-repeated injunctions to preserve from harm
+the horse and his accoutrements, "For," said Tacitus, "that horse is a
+racer." Well, I suppose it must have been that fact that made the horse
+race all day through the thickets and oak woods of the right shore, but I
+rather fancy my spurs had something to say to it too.
+
+<p>When night again fell, the whole force had reached a spot six-miles from
+the rebel fort, and camp was formed for the last time on the west bank
+of the river. And what a night and storm then broke upon the Red River
+Expedition! till the tents flapped and fell and the drenched soldiers
+shiv'ered shelterless, waiting for the dawn. The occupants of tents which
+stood the pelting of the pitiless storm were no better off than those
+outside; the surface of the ground became ankle-deep in mud and water,
+and the men lay in pools during the last hours of the night. At length a
+dismal daylight dawned over the dreary scene, and the upward course was
+resumed. Still the rain came down in torrents, and, with water above,
+below, and around, the Expedition neared its destination. If the steed of
+Tacitus had had a hard day, the night had been less severe upon him than
+upon his rider. I had procured him an excellent stable at the other side
+of the river, and upon recrossing again in the morning I found him as
+ready to race as his owner could desire. Poor beast, he was a most
+miserable-looking animal, though belying his attenuated appearance by his
+performance. The only race which his generally forlorn aspect justified
+one in believing him capable of running was a race, and a hard one, for
+existence; but for all that he went well, and Tacitus himself might have
+envied the classical outline of his Roman nose.
+
+<p>About two miles north of Fort Garry the Red River makes a sharp bend to
+the east and, again turning round to the west, forms a projecting point
+or neck of land known as Point Douglas. This spot is famous in Red River
+history as the scene of the battle, before referred to in these pages,
+where the voyageurs and French half-breeds of the North west Fur Company
+attacked the retainers of the Hudson Bay, some time in 1813, and
+succeeded in putting to death by various methods of half-Indian warfare
+the governor of the rival company and about a score of his followers. At
+this point, where the usually abrupt bank of the Red River was less
+steep, the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance
+upon Fort Garry. The preliminary arrangements were soon completed, and
+the little army, with its two brass guns trundling along behind Red River
+carts, commenced its march across the mud-soaked prairie. How unspeakably
+dreary it all looked! the bridge, the wretched village, the crumbling
+fort, the vast level prairie, water soaked, draped in mist, and pressed
+down by low-lying clouds. To me the ground was not new--the bridge was
+the spot where only a month before I had passed the half reed sentry in
+my midnight march to the Lower Fort. Other things had changed since then
+besides the weather.
+
+<p>Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force
+drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the
+flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed
+through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible
+about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary
+one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the
+skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west
+face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps
+of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his
+horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals
+and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who
+seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson
+Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave
+men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long
+polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in
+advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with
+unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the
+members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the
+American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision
+the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and
+their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered
+hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of
+retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the
+bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On
+the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and
+from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns
+told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the
+grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the
+highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously
+expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be
+too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed
+to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted
+that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red
+River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our
+European ideas of that virtue.
+
+<p>That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by
+his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine
+on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth
+much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps
+an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to
+depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear
+to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W.
+B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the
+Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred.
+Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the
+more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance,
+he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and
+indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property
+and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at
+once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save
+America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for
+which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel
+council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much.
+He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his
+virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the
+rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members
+of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the
+approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound
+of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the
+troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by
+the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory
+language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel
+government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government
+House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt
+of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea.
+A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed
+the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village
+produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in
+the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors
+were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as
+though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had
+been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any
+kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but
+the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost
+to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water
+sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it
+was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system,
+that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched
+upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I
+regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the
+general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from
+the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to
+their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden
+revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power,
+would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or
+two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of
+the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to
+rights.
+
+<p>Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long
+return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had
+arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what
+work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly
+intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was
+a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at
+the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept
+quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of
+that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his
+chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken
+Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling
+in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely
+back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run
+a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques
+Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person
+of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude,
+peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At
+length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of
+September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the
+torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander
+also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River
+Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the
+United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was
+mistaken, for it was only about to begin.
+
+<p><a name="ch13"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER THIRTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An
+Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations--
+Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine
+River--Rossette.
+
+<p>One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long
+prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of
+which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my
+last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its
+close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before
+a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores
+of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives:
+the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves
+prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.
+
+<p>So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the
+quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of
+my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old
+associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every
+feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and
+trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be
+gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the
+moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one
+sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would
+be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my
+hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of
+ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind,
+running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea:
+I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times
+the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely
+excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and
+walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some
+guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the
+north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in
+the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky
+prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the
+star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a
+long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west
+it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the
+west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call
+chance, and dreamers destiny?
+
+<p>A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina,
+whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had
+induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of
+September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the
+Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the
+boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known
+member of the Canadian bench.
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.
+
+<p>"To Canada."
+
+<p>"Why?"
+
+<p>"Because there is nothing more to be done."
+
+<p>"Oh, you must come back."
+
+<p>"Why so?"
+
+<p>"Because we have a lot of despatches to send to Ottawa, and the mail is
+not safe. Come back now and you will be here again in ten days time."
+
+<p>Go back again on the steam-boat and come up next trip--would I?
+
+<p>There are many men who pride themselves upon their fixity of purpose, and
+a lot of similar fixidities and steadiness; but I don't. I know of
+nothing so fixed as the mole, so obstinate as the mule, or so steady as
+a stone wall, but I don't particularly care about making their general
+characteristics the rule of my life; and so I decided to go back to Fort
+Garry, just as I would have decided to start for the North Pole had the
+occasion offered.
+
+<p>Early in the second week of October I once more drew nigh the hallowed
+precincts of Fort Garry.
+
+<p>"I am so glad you have returned," said the governor, Mr. Archibald, when
+I met him on the evening of my arrival, "because I want to ask you if you
+will undertake a much longer journey than any thing you have yet done. I
+am going to ask you if you will accept a mission to the Saskatchewan
+Valley and through the Indian countries of the West. Take a couple of
+days to think over it, and let me know your decision."
+
+<p>"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have
+already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."
+
+<p>This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his
+breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.
+
+<p>And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my
+wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly,
+and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of
+mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast
+stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the
+central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title
+for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and
+ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend
+into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction,
+through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming
+greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and
+start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
+resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of
+miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
+now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends
+towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours
+its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river
+rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns
+once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh,
+sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a
+rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake
+Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its
+birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale,
+meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called
+by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the
+Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not
+the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red
+River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the
+rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller
+stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the
+waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line
+and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How
+shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great,
+boundless, solitary waste of verdure?
+
+<p>The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed
+from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson,
+played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The
+coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate;
+but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose
+shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the
+much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of
+Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the
+description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an
+ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of
+Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the
+shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of
+sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite
+variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
+dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
+and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
+ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
+solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
+the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
+makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
+silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
+has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
+no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
+these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
+this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
+oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
+my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
+oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
+shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
+beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
+brought forth the flowers.
+
+<p>October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
+their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
+through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
+settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
+the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
+summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.
+
+<p>On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
+and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
+the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
+and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
+friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
+firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
+saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
+space!
+
+<p>I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
+Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
+Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
+French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by
+name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
+Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
+or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
+drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
+found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
+half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
+myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
+capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
+at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
+kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
+By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
+the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
+second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
+of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
+Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
+parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
+the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
+Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
+general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
+and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
+jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
+name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
+uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
+Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
+terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
+journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
+aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
+depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
+not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
+lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
+diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
+has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
+upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
+Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
+brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the
+most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too
+legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where
+the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination.
+Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and
+the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should
+flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square
+plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more
+despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them.
+They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white
+man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold,
+and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men
+who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years
+these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this
+disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the
+same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had
+remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by
+hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before
+it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The
+camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a
+perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and
+far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and
+bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.
+
+<p>The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest
+attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the
+Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan,
+attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees.
+The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of
+death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles
+north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September
+the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west
+tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees,
+half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines
+had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of
+the disease.
+
+<p>"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what
+tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now
+prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you
+can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease.
+You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be
+deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment
+of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper
+treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief
+officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other
+intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran
+this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many
+curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of
+physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became
+the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of
+the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had
+consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At
+length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect
+them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight
+cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a
+remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to
+visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to
+him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited
+printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have
+already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of
+Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but
+much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the
+snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of
+the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is
+a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the
+mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November
+delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which
+made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature
+of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie,
+the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed
+the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and
+struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering
+one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine
+of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave
+of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away
+by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered
+for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly
+put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any
+person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox
+brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A
+French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the
+black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its
+lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the
+solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally
+through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the
+wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to
+resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me,
+nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach
+the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of
+civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a
+cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts
+of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the
+spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many
+nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little
+camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there
+stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a
+terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So,
+lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt
+as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved
+that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark
+immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of
+the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose
+lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term
+of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to
+fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories,
+for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better
+never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who
+have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a
+sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more
+substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the
+prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into
+strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the
+other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all
+the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra
+incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into
+the solitudes.
+
+<p>The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+unceasing travel; clear, bright days of mellow sunshine followed by
+nights of sharp frost which almost imperceptibly made stronger the icy
+covering of the pools and carried farther and farther out into the
+running streams the edging of ice which so soon was destined to cover
+completely the river and the rill. Our route lay along the left bank of
+the Assineboine, but at a considerable distance from the river, whose
+winding course could be marked at times by the dark oak woods that
+fringed it. Far away to the south rose the outline of the Blue Hills of
+the Souris, and to the north the Riding Mountains lay faintly upon the
+horizon. The country was no longer level, fine rolling hills stretched
+away before us over which the wind came with a keenness that made our
+prairie-fare seem delicious at the close of a hard day's toil. 36, 22,
+24, 20; such were the readings of my thermometer as each morning I looked
+at it by the fire-light as we arose from our blankets-before the dawn and
+shivered in the keen hoarfrost while the kettle was being boiled.
+Perceptibly getting colder, but still clear and fine, and with every
+Breeze laden with healthy and invigorating freshness, for four days we
+journeyed without seeing man or beast; but on the morning of the fifth
+day, while camped in a thicket on the right of the trail, we heard the
+noise of horses passing near us. A few hours afterwards we passed a small
+band of Salteaux encamped farther on; and later in the day overtook a
+half-breed trader on his way to the Missouri to trade with the Sioux.
+This was a celebrated French half breed named Chaumon Rossette. Chaumon
+had been undergoing a severe course of drink since he had left the
+settlement some ten days earlier, and his haggard eyes and swollen
+features revealed the incessant orgies of his travels. He had as
+companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
+token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
+Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
+drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
+seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
+with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
+two clear and beautiful lakes.
+
+<p>"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"
+
+<p>"Oui, Captain."
+
+<p>"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
+No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."
+
+<p>"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
+drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
+Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."
+
+<p>Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
+semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
+the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
+cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
+proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
+line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
+study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
+"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
+his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
+that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
+had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
+Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
+could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
+over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
+Missouri.
+
+<p>On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
+a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
+shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
+a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
+magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
+Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
+Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
+the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
+the fort. I had ridden that distance in five days and two hours.
+
+<p><a name="ch14"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER FOURTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort Ellice--Quick
+Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A Snow-storm--The
+South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of poor
+Blackie--Carlton.
+
+<p>IT may have occurred to some reader to ask, What is this company whose
+name so often appears upon these pages? Who are the men composing it, and
+what are the objects it has in view? You have glanced at its early
+history, its rivalries, and its discoveries, but now, now at this present
+time, while our giant rush of life roars and surges along, what is the
+work done by this Company of Adventurers trading into the Bay of Hudson?
+Let us see if we can answer. Of the two great monopolies which the
+impecuniosity of Charles II. gave birth to, the Hudson Bay Company alone
+survives, but to-day the monopoly is one of fact, and not of law. All men
+are now free to come and go, to trade and sell and gather furs in the
+great Northern territory, but distance and climate raise more formidable
+barriers against strangers than law or protection could devise. Bold
+would be the trader who would carry his goods to the far away Mackenzie
+River; intrepid would be the voyageur who sought a profit from the lonely
+shores of the great Bear Lake. Locked in their fastnesses of ice and
+distance, these remote and friendless solitudes of the North must long
+remain, as they are at present, the great fur preserve of the Hudson Bay
+Company. Dwellers within the limits of European states can ill comprehend
+the vastness of territory over which this Fur Company holds sway. I say
+holds sway, for the north of North America is still as much in the
+possession of the Company, despite all cession of title to Canada, as
+Crusoe was the monarch of his island, or the man must be the owner of the
+moon. From Pembina on Red River to Fort Anderson on the Mackenzie is as
+great a distance as from London to Mecca. From the King's Posts to the
+Pelly Banks is farther than from Paris to Samarcand, and yet today
+throughout that immense region the Company is king. And what a king! no
+monarch rules his subjects with half the power of this Fur Company. It
+clothes, feeds, and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From
+the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and
+through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot
+than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate
+shores of the great_ Slave Lake. _Twice in the year news comes from the
+outside world-news many, many months old--news borne by men and dogs
+through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down
+the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket
+that covers the wild Indian in his cold camp has been woven in a Whitney
+loom; that knife is from Sheffield; that string of beads from Birmingham.
+Let us follow the ships that sail annually from the Thames bound for the
+supply of this vast region. It is early in June when she gets clear of
+the Nore; it is mid-June when the Orkneys and Stornaway are left behind;
+it is August when the frozen Straits of Hudson are pierced; and the end
+of the month has been reached when the ship comes to anchor off the
+sand-barred mouth of the Nelson River. For one year-the stores that she has
+brought lie in the warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they
+reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the
+Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days
+of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs
+and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at
+four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames
+and the gun in the pine woods of the Mackenzie are two widely different
+articles. The old rough flint, whose bent barrel the Indians will often
+straighten between the cleft of a tree or the crevice of a rock, has been
+made precious by the labour of many men; by the trackless wastes through
+which it has been carried; by winter-famine of those who have to vend it;
+by the years which elapse between its departure from the work shop and
+the return of that skin of sable or silver-fox for which it has been
+bartered. They are short-sighted men who hold that because the flint-gun
+and the sable possess such different values in London, these articles
+should also possess their relative values in North America, and argue
+from this that the Hudson Bay Company treat the Indians unfairly; they
+are short-sighted men, I say, and know not of what they speak. That old
+rough flint has often cost more to put in the hands of that Dogrib hunter
+than the best finished central fire of Boss or Purdey. But that is not
+all that has to be said about the trade of this Company. Free trade may
+be an admirable institution for some nations-making them, amongst other
+things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means
+follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian.
+Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade
+has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the
+earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks,
+and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine,
+and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease,
+small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears
+and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an
+institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these
+things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no
+reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or,
+for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the
+principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of
+men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or
+for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a
+future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters
+and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who
+takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy
+all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself,
+second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get
+them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may
+take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have
+been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of
+the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there
+has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the
+wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.
+
+<p>I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in
+costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and
+hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of
+buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and
+immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for
+before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that
+were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain over
+which, for three hundred miles, there lay no fort or house of any kind.
+
+<p>Bidding adieu to my host, a young Scotch gentleman, at Fort Ellice, my
+little party turned once more towards the North-west and, fording the
+Qu'Appelle five miles above its confluence with the Assineboine, struck
+out into a lovely country. It was the last day of October and almost the
+last of the Indian summer. Clear and distinct lay the blue sky upon the
+quiet sun-lit prairie. The horses trotted briskly on under the charge of
+an English half-breed named Daniel. Pierre Diome had returned to Red
+River, and Daniel was to bear me company as far as Carlton on the North
+Saskatchewan. My five horses were now beginning to show the effect of
+their incessant work, but it was only in appearance, and the distance
+travelled each day was increased instead of diminished as we journeyed
+on. I would not have believed it possible that horses could travel the
+daily distance which mine did without breaking down altogether under it,
+still less would it have appeared possible upon the food which they had
+to eat. We had neither hay nor oats to give them; there was nothing--but
+the dry grass of the prairie, and no time to eat that but the cold frosty
+hours of the night. Still we seldom travelled less than fifty miles
+a-day, stopping only for one hour at midday, and going on again until
+night began to wrap her mantle around the shivering prairie. My horse was
+a wonderful animal; day after day would I fear that his game little limbs
+were growing weary, and that soon he must give out; but no, not a bit of
+it; his black coat roughened and his flanks grew a little leaner, but
+still he went on as gamely and as pluckily as ever.
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-04"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-04.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>ACROSS THE PLAINS IN NOVEMBER.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p>Often during the long day I would dismount and walk along leading him
+by the bridle, while the other two men and the six horses jogged on
+far in advance; when they had disappeared altogether behind some
+distant ridge of the prairie my little horse would commence to look
+anxiously around, whinnying and trying to get along after his
+comrades; and then how gamely he trotted on when I remounted,
+watching out for the first sign of his friends again, far-away
+little specks on the great wilds before us. When the camping place would
+be reached at nightfall the first care went to the horse. To remove
+saddle, bridle, and saddle-cloth, to untie the strip of soft buffalo
+leather from his neck and twist it well around his fore-legs, for the
+purpose of hobbling, was the work of only a few minutes, and then poor
+Blackie hobbled away to find over the darkening expanse his night's
+provender. Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea
+had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some
+frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in
+the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the
+heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter
+spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South
+Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about
+in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always
+ran loose while the other three worked in harness. These loose horses,
+one might imagine, would be prone to gallop away when they found
+themselves at liberty to do so: but nothing seems farther from their
+thoughts; they trot along by the side of their harnessed comrades
+apparently as though they knew all about it now and again they stop
+behind, to crop a bit of grass or tempting stalk of wild pea or vetches,
+but on they come again until the party has been reached, then, with ears
+thrown back, the jog-trot is resumed, and the whole band sweeps on over
+hill and plain. To halt and change horses is only the work of two minutes
+--out comes one horse, the other is standing close by and never stirs
+while the hot harness is being put upon him; in he goes into the rough
+shafts, and, with a crack of the half-breed's whip across his flanks,
+away we start again.
+
+<p>But my little Blackie seldom got a respite from the saddle; he seemed so
+well up to his work, so much stronger and better than any of the others,
+that day after day I rode him, thinking each day, "Well, to-morrow I will
+let him run loose;" but when to-morrow came he used to look so fresh and
+well, carrying his little head as high as ever, that again I put the
+saddle on his back, and another day's talk and companionship would still
+further cement our friendship, for I grew to like that horse as one only
+can like the poor dumb beast that serves us. I know not how it is, but
+horse and dog have worn themselves into my heart as few men have ever
+done in life and now, as day by day went by in one long scene of true
+companionship, I came to feel for little Blackie a friendship not the
+less sincere because all the service was upon his side, and I was
+powerless to make his supper a better one, or give him more cosy lodging
+for the night. He fed and lodged himself and he carried me--all he asks
+in return was a water-hole in the frozen lake, and that I cut for him.
+Sometimes the night came down upon us still in the midst of a great open
+treeless plain, without shelter, water, or grass, and then we would
+continue on in the inky darkness as though our march was to last
+eternally, and poor Blackie would step out as if his natural state was
+one of perpetual motion. On the 4th November we rode over sixty miles;
+and when at length the camp was made in the lea of a little clump of bare
+willows, the snow was lying cold upon the prairies, and Blackie and his
+comrades went out to shiver through their supper in the bleakest scene my
+eyes had ever looked upon.
+
+<p>About midway between Fort Ellice and Carlton a sudden and well-defined
+change occurs in the character of the country; the light soil disappears,
+and its place is succeeded by a rich dark loam covered deep in grass and
+vetches. Beautiful hills swell in slopes more or less abrupt on all
+sides, while lakes fringed with thickets and clumps of good-sized poplar
+balsam lie lapped in their fertile hollows.
+
+<p>This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. Around it, far into
+endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty vegetation,
+plains seared with the tracks of countless buffalo which, until a few
+years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assineboine and
+the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing these
+great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie
+thickly strewn over the surface. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons dot
+the short scant grass; and when fire has laid barer still the level
+surface, the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and
+near the dark burnt prairie. There is something unspeakably melancholy in
+the aspect of this portion of the North-west. From one of the westward
+jutting spurs of the Touchwood Hills the eye sees far away over an
+immense plain; the sun goes down, and as he sinks upon the earth the
+straight line of the horizon becomes visible for a moment across this
+blood red disc, but so distant, so far away, that it seems dream like in
+its immensity. There is not a sound in the air or on the earth; on every
+side lie spread the relics of the great fight waged by man against the
+brute creation: all is silent and deserted--the Indian and the buffalo
+gone, the settler not yet come. You turn quickly to the right or left;
+over a hill-top, close by, a solitary wolf steals away. Quickly the vast
+prairie begins to grow dim, and darkness forsakes the skies because they
+light their stars, coming down to seek in the utter solitude of the
+blackened plains a kindred spirit for the night.
+
+<p>On the night of the 4th November we made our camp long after dark in a
+little clump of willows far out in the plain which lies west of the
+Touchwood Hills. We had missed the only lake that was known to lie in
+this part of the plain, and after journeying far in the darkness halted
+at length, determined to go supperless, or next to supperless, to bed,
+for pemmican without that cup which nowhere tastes more delicious than in
+the wilds of the North-west would prove but sorry comfort, and the supper
+without tea would be only a delusion. The fire was made, the frying-pan
+taken out, the bag of dried buffalo meat and the block of pemmican got
+ready, but we said little in the presence of such a loss as the steaming
+kettle and the hot, delicious, fragrant tea. Why not have provided
+against this evil hour by bringing on from the last frozen lake some
+blocks of ice? Alas! why not? Moodily we sat down round the blazing
+willows. Meantime Daniel commenced to unroll the oil cloth cart cover-and
+lo, in the ruddy glare of the fire, out rolled three or four large pieces
+of thick, heavy ice, sufficient to fill our kettle three times over with
+delicious tea. Oh, what a joy it was! and how we relished that cup! for
+remember, cynical friend who may be inclined to hold such happiness
+cheap and light, that this wild life of ours is a curious leveller of
+civilized habits--a cup of water to a thirsty man can be more valuable
+than a cup of diamonds, and the value of one article over the other is
+only the question of a few hours privation. When the morning of the. 5th
+dawned we were covered deep in snow, a storm had burst in the night, and
+all around was hidden in a dense sheet of driving snow-flakes; not a
+vestige of our horses was to be seen, their tracks were obliterated by
+the fast-falling snow, and the surrounding objects close at hand showed
+dim and indistinct through the white cloud. After fruitless search,
+Daniel returned to camp with the tidings that the horses were nowhere to
+be found; so, when breakfast had been finished, all three set out in
+separate directions to look again for the missing steeds. Keeping the
+snow-storm on my left shoulder, I went along through little clumps of
+stunted bushes which frequently deceived me by their resemblance through
+the driving snow to horses grouped together. After awhile I bent round
+towards the wind and, making a long sweep in that direction, bent again
+so as to bring the drift upon my right shoulder. No horses, no tracks,
+any where--nothing but a waste of white drifting flake and feathery
+snow-spray. At last I turned away from the wind, and soon struck full on
+our little camp; neither of the others had returned. I cut down some
+willows and made a blaze. After a while I got on to the top of the cart,
+and looked out again into the waste. Presently I heard a distant shout;
+replying vigorously to it, several indistinct forms came into view; and
+Daniel soon emerged from the mist, driving before him the hobbled
+wanderers; they had been hidden under the lea of a thicket some distance
+off, all clustered together for shelter and warmth. Our only difficulty
+was now the absence of my friend the Hudson Bay officer. We waited some
+time, and at length, putting the saddle on Blackie, I started out in the
+direction he had taken. Soon I heard a faint far-away shout; riding
+quickly in the direction from whence it proceeded, I heard the calls
+getting louder and louder, and soon came up with a figure heading right
+away into the immense plain, going altogether in a direction opposite to
+where our camp lay. I shouted, and back came my friend no little pleased
+to find his road again, for a snowstorm is no easy thing to steer
+through, and at times it will even fall out that not the Indian with all
+his craft and instinct for direction will be able to find his way through
+its blinding maze. Woe betide the wretched man who at such a time finds
+himself alone upon the prairie, without fire or the means of making it;
+not even the ship-wrecked-sailor clinging to the floating mast is in a
+more pitiable strait. During the greater portion of this day it snowed
+hard, but our track was distinctly-marked across the plains, and we held
+on all day. I still rode Blackie; the little fellow had to keep his wits
+at work to avoid tumbling into the badger holes which the snow soon
+rendered invisible. These badger holes in this portion of the plains were
+very numerous; it is not always easy to avoid them when the ground is
+clear of snow, but riding becomes extremely difficult when once the
+winter has set in. The badger burrows straight down for two or three
+feet, and if a horse be travelling at any pace his fall is so sudden and
+violent that a broken leg is too often the result. Once or twice Blackie
+went in nearly to the shoulder, but he invariably scrambled up again all
+right-poor fellow, he was reserved for a worse fate, and his long journey
+was near its end! A clear cold day followed the day of snow, and for the
+first time the thermometer fell below zero.
+
+<p>Day dawned upon us on the 6th November camped in a little thicket of
+poplars some seventy miles from the South Saskatchewan; the thermometer
+stood 30 below zero, and as I drew the girths tight on poor Blackie's
+ribs that morning, I felt happy in the thought that I had slept for the
+first time under the stars with 35 degrees of frost lying on the blanket
+outside. Another long day's ride, and the last great treeless plain was
+crossed and evening found us camped near the Minitchinass, or Solitary
+Hill, some sixteen miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan. The grass
+again grew long and thick, the clumps of willow, poplar, and birch had
+reappeared, and the soil, when we scraped the snow away to make our
+sleeping place, turned up black and rich-looking under the blows of the
+axe. About midday on the 7th November, in a driving storm of snow, we
+suddenly emerged upon a high plateau. Before us, at a little distance, a
+great gap or valley seemed to open suddenly out, and farther off the
+white sides of hills and dark tree-tops rose into view. Riding to the
+edge of this steep valley I beheld a magnificent river flowing between
+great banks of ice and snow 300 feet below the level on which we stood.
+Upon each side masses of ice stretched out far into the river, but in
+the centre, between these banks of ice, ran a swift, black-looking
+current the sight of which for a moment filled us with dismay. We had
+counted upon the Saskatchewan being firmly locked in ice, and here was
+the river rolling along between its icy banks forbidding all passage.
+Descending to the low valley of the river, we halted for dinner,
+determined to try some method by which to cross this formidable barrier.
+An examination of the river and its banks soon revealed the difficulties
+before us. The ice, as it approached the open portion, was unsafe,
+rendering it impossible to get within reach of the running water.` An
+interval of some ten yards separated the sound ice from the current,
+while nearly 100 yards of solid ice lay between the true bank of the
+river and the dangerous portion; thus our first labour was to make a
+solid footing for ourselves from which to launch any raft or make-shift
+boat which we might construct. After a great deal of trouble and labour,
+we got the waggon-box roughly fashioned into a raft, covered over with
+one of our large oil-cloths, and Lashed together with buffalo leather.
+This most primitive looking craft we carried down over the ice to where
+the dangerous portion commenced; then Daniel,-wielding the axe with
+powerful dexterity, began to hew away at the ice until space enough was
+opened out to float our raft upon. Into this-we slipped the-waggon-box,
+and into the waggon-box we put the half-breed Daniel. It floated
+admirably, and on went the axe-man, hewing, as before, with might and
+main. It was cold, wet work, and, in spite of every thing, the water
+began to ooze through the oil-cloth into the waggon-box. We had to haul
+it up, empty it, and launch again; thus for some hours we kept on, cold,
+wet, and miserable, until night forced us to desist and make our camp on
+the tree-lined shore. So we hauled in the wagon and retired, baffled, but
+not beaten, to begin again next morning. There were many reasons to make
+this delay feel vexatious and disappointing; we had travelled a distance
+of 560 miles in twelve days; travelled only to find ourselves stopped by
+this partially frozen river at a point twenty miles distant from Carlton,
+the first great station on my journey. Our stock of provisions, too, was
+not such as would admit of much delay; pemmican and dried meat we had
+none, and flour, tea, and grease were all that remained to us. However,
+Daniel declared that he knew a most excellent method of making a
+combination of flour and fat which Would allay all disappointment-and I
+must conscientiously admit that a more hunger-satiating mixture than he
+produced out of the frying-pan it had never before been my lot to taste.
+A little of it went such a long way, that it would be impossible to find
+a parallel for it in portability; in fact, it went such a long way, that
+the person who dined off it found himself, by common reciprocity of
+feeling, bound to go a long way in return before he again partook of it;
+but Daniel was not of that opinion, for he ate the greater portion of our
+united shares, and slept peacefully when it was all gone. I would
+particularly recommend this mixture to the consideration of the guardians
+of the poor throughout the United Kingdom, as I know of nothing which
+would so readily conduce to the satisfaction of the hungry element in'
+our society. Had such a combination been known to Bumble. and his Board,
+the hunger of Twist would even have been satisfied by a single helping;
+but, perhaps, it might be injudicious to introduce into the sister island
+any condiment so antidotal in its nature to the removal of the Celt
+across the Atlantic--that "consummation so devoutly wished for" by the
+"leading journal."
+
+<p>Fortified by Daniel's delicacy, we set to work early next morning at
+raft-making and ice-cutting; but we made the attempt to cross at a
+portion of the river where the open water was narrower and the bordering
+ice sounded more firm to the testing blows of the axe. One part of the
+river had now closed in, but the ice over it was unsafe. We succeeded in'
+getting the craft into the running water and, having strung together all
+the available line and rope we possessed, prepared for the venture. It
+was found that the waggon-boat would only carry one passenger, and
+accordingly I took my place in it, and with a make-shift paddle put out
+into the quick-running stream. The current had great power over the
+ill-shaped craft, and it was no easy-matter to keep her head at all
+against stream.
+
+<p>I had not got five yards out when the whole thing commenced to fill
+rapidly with water, and I had just time to get back again to ice before
+she was quite full. We hauled her out once more, and found the oil-cloth
+had been cut by the jagged ice, so there was nothing for it but to remove
+it altogether and put on another. This was done, and soon our waggon-box
+was once again afloat. This time I reached in safety the farther side;
+but there a difficulty arose which we had not foreseen. Along this
+farther edge of ice the current ran with great force, and as the leather
+line which was attached to the back of the boat sank deeper and deeper
+into the water, the drag upon it caused the boat to drift quicker and
+quicker downstream; thus, when I touched the opposite ice, I found the
+drift was so rapid that my axe failed to catch a hold in the yielding
+edge, which broke away at every stroke. After several ineffectual
+attempts to stay the rush of the boat, and as I was being borne rapidly
+into a mass of rushing water and huge blocks of ice, I saw it was all up,
+and shouted to the others to rope in the line; but this was no easy
+matter, because the rope had got foul of the running ice, and was caught
+underneath. At last, by careful handling, it was freed, and I stood once
+more on the spot from whence I had started, having crossed the River
+Saskatchevan to no purpose. Daniel now essayed the task, and reached the
+opposite shore, taking the precaution to work up the nearer side before
+crossing; once over, his vigorous use of the axe told on the ice, and he
+succeeded in fixing the boat against the edge. Then lhe quickly clove his
+way into the frozen mass, and, by repeated blows, finally reached a spot
+from which he got on shore.
+
+<p>This success of our long labour and exertion was announced to the
+solitude by three ringing cheers, which we gave from our side; for, be
+it remembered, that it was now our intention to use the waggon-boat to
+convey across all our baggage, towing the boat from one side to the other
+by means of our line; after which, we would force the horses to swim the
+river, and then cross ourselves in the boat. But all our plans were
+defeated by an unlooked-for accident; the line lay deep in the water, as
+before, and to raise it required no small amount of force. We hauled and
+hauled, until snap went the long rope somewhere underneath the water, and
+all was over. With no little difficulty Daniel got the boat across again
+to our side, and we all went back to camp wet, tired, and dispirited by
+so much labour and so many misfortunes. It froze hard that night, and in
+the morning the great river had its waters altogether hidden opposite our
+camp by a covering of ice. Would it bear? that was the question. We went
+on it early, testing with axe and sharp-pointed poles. In places it was
+very thin, but in other parts it rang hard and solid to the blows. The
+dangerous spot was in the very centre of the river, where the water had
+shown through in round holes on the previous day, but we hoped to avoid
+these bad places by taking a slanting course across the channel. After
+walking backwards and forwards several times, we determined to try a
+light horse. He was led out with a long piece of rope attached to his
+neck. In the centre of the stream the ice seemed to bend slightly as he
+passed over, but no break occurred, and in safety we reached the opposite
+side. Now came Blackie's turn. Somehow or other I felt uncomfortable
+about it and remarked that the horse ought to have his shoes removed
+before the attempt was made. My companion, however, demurred, and his
+experience in these matters had extended over so many years, that I was
+foolishly induced to allow him to proceed as he thought fit, even against
+my better judgment. Blackie was taken out, led as before, tied by a long
+line. I followed close behind him, to drive him if necessary. He did not
+need much driving, but took the ice quite readily. We had got to the
+centre of the river, when the surface suddenly bent downwards, and, to my
+horror, the poor horse plunged deep into black, quick-running water! He
+was not three yards in front of me when the ice broke. I recoiled
+involuntarily from the black, seething chasm; the horse, though he
+plunged suddenly down, never let his head under water, but kept swimming
+manfully round and round the narrow hole, trying all he could to get
+upon the ice. All his efforts were useless; a cruel wall of sharp ice
+struck his knees as he tried to lift them on the surface, and the
+current, running with immense velocity, repeatedly carried him back
+underneath. As soon as the horse had broken through, the man who held
+the rope let it go, and the leather line flew back about poor Blackie's
+head. I got up almost to the edge of the hole, and stretching out took
+hold of the line again; but that could do no good nor give him any
+assistance in his struggles. I shall never forget the way the poor brute
+looked at me--even now, as I write these lines, the whole scene comes
+back in memory with all the vividness of a picture, and I feel again the
+horrible sensation of being utterly unable, though almost within touching
+distance, to give him help in his dire extremity and if ever dumb animal
+spoke with unutterable eloquence, that horse called to me in his agony he
+turned to me as to one from whom he had a right to expect assistance. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. "Is there no help for him?" I cried
+to the other men. "None whatever," was the reply; "the ice is dangerous
+-all around."
+
+<p>Then I rushed back to the shore and up to the camp where my rifle lay,
+then back again to the fatal spot where the poor beast still struggled
+against his fate. As I raised the rifle he looked at me so imploringly
+that my hand shook and trembled. Another instant, and the deadly bullet
+crashed through his head, and, with one look never to be forgotten, he
+went down under the cold, unpitying ice!
+
+<p>It may have been very foolish, perhaps, for poor Blackie was only a.
+horse, but for all that I went back to camp, and, sitting down in the
+snow, cried like a child. With my own hand I had taken my poor friend's
+life; but if there should exist somewhere in the regions of space that
+happy Indian paradise where horses are never hungry and never tired,
+Blackie, at least, will forgive the hand that sent him there, if he can
+but see the heart that long regretted him.
+
+<p>Leaving Daniel in charge of the remaining horses, we crossed on foot the
+fatal river, and with a single horse set out for Carlton. From the high
+north bank I took one last look back at the South Saskatchewan-it lay in
+its broad deep valley glittering in one great band of purest 'snow; but I
+loathed the sight of it, while the small round open hole, dwarfed to a
+speck by distance, marked the spot where my poor horse had found his
+grave, after having carried me so faithfully through the long lonely
+wilds. We had travelled about six miles when a figure appeared in sight,
+coming towards us upon the same track. The new-comer proved to be a Cree
+Indian travelling to Fort Pelly. He bore the name of the Starving Bull.
+Starving Bull and his boy at once turned back With us towards Carlton. In
+a little while a party of horsemen hove in sight: they had come out from
+the fort to visit the South Branch, and amongst them was the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge of the station. Our first question had reference to the
+plague. Like a fire, it had burned itself out. There was no case then in
+the fort, but out of the little garrison of some sixty souls no fewer
+than thirty-two had perished! Four only had recovered of the thirty-six
+who had taken the terrible infection.
+
+<p>We halted for dinner by the edge of the Duck Lake; midway between the
+North and South Branches of the Saskatchewan. It was a rich, beautiful
+country, although the snow lay some inches deep. Clumps of trees dotted
+the undulating surface, and lakelets glittering in the bright sunshine
+spread out in sheets of dazzling whiteness. The Starving Bull set himself
+busily to work preparing our dinner. What it would have been under
+ordinary circumstances, I cannot state; but, unfortunately for its
+success on the present occasion, its preparation was attended with
+unusual drawbacks. Starving Bull had succeeded in killing a skunk during
+his journey. This performance, while highly creditable to his energy as a
+hunter, was by no means conducive to his success, as a cook. Bitterly did
+that skunk revente himself upon us who had borne no part in his
+destruction. Pemmican is at no time a delicacy; but pemmican flavoured
+with skunk was more than I could attempt. However, Starving Bull proved
+himself worthy of his name, and the frying-pan was-soon scraped clean
+under his hungry manipulations.
+
+<p>Another hour's ride brought us to a high bank, at the base of which lay
+the North Saskatchewan. In the low ground adjoining the river stood
+Carlton House, a large square enclosure, the wooden walls of which were
+more than twenty feet in height. Within these palisades some dozen or
+more houses stood crowded together. Close by, to the right, many
+snow-covered mounds with a few rough wooden crosses above them marked the
+spot where, only four weeks before, the last Victim of the epidemic had
+been laid. On the very spot where I stood looking at this sceiqe, a
+Blackfoot Indian, three years earlier, had stolen out from a thicket,
+fired at, and grievously wounded the Hudson Bay officer belonging to the
+fort, and now close to the same spot a small cross marked that officer's
+last resting-place. Strange fate! he had escaped the Blackfoot's bullet
+only to be the first to succumb to the deadly epidemic. I cannot say that
+Carlton was at all a lively place of sojourn. Its natural gloom was
+considerably deepened by the events of the last few months, and the whole
+place seemed to have received the stamp of death upon it. To add to the
+general depression, provisions were by no means abundant, the few Indians
+that had come in from the plains brought the same tidings of unsuccessful
+chase--for the buffalo were "far out" on the great prairie, and that
+phrase "far out," applied to buffalo, means starvation in the North-west.
+
+<p><a name="ch15"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER FIFTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>The Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our Way--A long
+Ride-Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+<p>Two things strike the new-comer at Carlton. First, he sees evidences on
+every side of a rich and fertile country; and, secondly, he sees by many
+signs that war is the normal condition of the wild men who have pitched
+their tents in the land of the Saskatchewan that land from which we have
+taken the Indian prefix Kis, without much improvement of length or
+euphony. It is a name but little known to the ear of the outside world,
+but destined one day or other to fill its place in the long list of lands
+whose surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and
+hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well
+to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge
+mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh.
+From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to
+150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie
+spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the
+Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the winter home of the
+buffalo, the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, the future home of
+millions yet unborn. Few men have looked on this land-but the thoughts of
+many in the New World tend towards it, and crave for description and fact
+which in many instances can only be given to them at second-hand.
+
+<p>Like all things in this world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion;
+there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell.
+It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America--it is
+too cold, it is too dry--it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is
+it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the
+eye. Man lives long in it, and the children of his body are cast in manly
+mould. The cold of winter is intense, the strongest heat of summer is not
+excessive. The autumn days are bright and-beautiful; the snow is seldom
+deep, the frosts are early to come and late to go. All crops flourish,
+though primitive and rude are the means by which they are tilled; timber
+is in places plentiful, in other places scarce; grass grows high, thick,
+and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring.
+The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in
+mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such
+fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the
+Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer
+when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red
+man stalks; war, his unceasing toil--horse-raiding, the pastime of his
+life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the
+white man, and long before.
+
+<p>In 1776 the earliest English voyager in these regions speaks of war
+between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the
+Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the
+earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from
+what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson of
+warfare was in all cases the same to him. To say he fights is, after all,
+but to say he is a man; for whether it be in Polynesia or in Paris, in
+the Saskatchewan or in Sweden, in Bundelond or in Bulgaria, fighting is
+just the one universal "touch of nature which makes the whole world
+kin."
+
+<p>"My good brothers," said a missionary friend of mine, some little while
+ago, to an assemblage of Crees, "My good brothers--why do you carry on
+this unceasing war with the Blackfeet and Peaginoos, with Sircies and
+Bloods? It is not good, it is not right; the great Manitou does not like
+his children to kill each other, but he wishes them to live in peace and
+brotherhood."
+
+<p>To which the Cree chief made answer--"My friend, what you say is good;
+but look, you are white man and Christian, we are red men and worship
+the Manitou; but what is the news we hear from the traders and the
+black-robes? Is it not always the news of war? The Kitchi Mokamans (i.e.
+the Americans) are on the war-path against their brethren of the South,
+the English are fighting some tribes far away over the big lake; the
+French, and all the other tribes are fighting too! My brother, it is
+news of war, always news of war! and we--we go on the war-path in small
+numbers. We stop when we kill a few of our enemies and take a few scalps;
+but your nations go to war in countless thousands, and we hear of more of
+your braves killed in one battle than all our tribe numbers together. So,
+my brother, do not say to us that it is wrong to go on the war-path, for
+what is right for the white man cannot be wrong in his red brother. I
+have done!"
+
+<p>During the seven days which I remained at Carlton the winter was not
+idle. It snowed and froze, and looked dreary enough within the darkening
+walls of the fort. A French missionary had come down from the northern
+lake of Isle-à-la-Crosse, but, unlike his brethren, he appeared shy and
+uncommunicative. Two of the stories which he related, however, deserve
+record. One was a singular magnetic storm which took place at
+Isle-à-la-Crosse during the preceding winter. A party of Indians and
+half-breeds were crossing the lake on the ice when suddenly their hair
+stood up on end; the hair of the dogs also turned the wrong way, and the
+blankets belonging to the part even evinced signs of acting, in an
+upright manner. I will not pretend to account for this phenomenon, but
+merely tell it as the worthy père told it to me, and I shall rest
+perfectly satisfied if my readers hair does not follow the example of
+the Indians dogs and blankets and proceed generally after the manner of
+the "frightful porcupine." The other tale told by the père was of a more
+tragical nature. During a storm in the prairies near the South Branch of
+the Saskatchewan a rain of fire suddenly descended upon a camp of Cree
+Indians and burned everything around. Thirty-two Crees perished in the
+flames; the ground was burned deeply for a considerable distance, and
+only one or two of the party who happened to stand close to a lake were
+saved by throwing themselves into the water. "It was," said my informant,
+"not a flash of lightning, but a rain of fire which descended for some
+moments."
+
+<p>The increasing severity of the frost hardened into a solid mass the
+surface of the Saskatchewan, and on the morning of the 14th November we
+set out again upon our Western journey. The North Saskatchewan which I
+now crossed for the first time, is a river 400 yards in width, lying
+between banks descending steeply to a low alluvial valley. These outer
+banks are some 200 feet in height, and in some by-gone age were doubtless
+the boundaries of the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I
+had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of
+them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and
+laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now
+sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted
+two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the
+wild mares were put. At first they refused to move an inch--no, not an
+inch; then came loud and prolonged thwacking from a motley assemblage of
+Crees and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely
+used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly
+a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the
+ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off
+like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is
+easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for
+all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of
+persuasion: if the horse lies down, lick him until he gets up; if he
+stands up on his hind-legs, lick him until he reverts to his original
+position; if he bucks, jibs, or kicks, lick him, lick him, lick him;
+when you are tired of licking him, get another man to continue the
+process; if you can use violent language in three different tongues so
+much the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French,
+you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and,
+crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle
+Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the
+steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the
+horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the
+solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white
+on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far
+away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and
+-our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie.
+About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken
+snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at
+camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had
+escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose
+hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed'
+forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small
+winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point
+some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the
+Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large
+camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our
+steps.
+
+<p>On the morning of the second day out from Carlton, the guide showed
+symptoms of haziness as to direction: he began to bend greatly to the
+south, and at sunrise he ascended a high hill for the purpose of taking a
+general survey of the surrounding country. From this hill the eye ranged
+over a vast extent of landscape, and although the guide failed
+altogether to correct his course, the hill-top yielded such a glorious
+view of sun rising from a sea of snow into an ocean of pale green barred
+with pink and crimson streaks, that I felt well repaid for the trouble of
+the long ascent. When evening closed around us that day, I found myself
+alone amidst a wild, weird scene. Far as the eye could reach in front and
+to the right a boundless, treeless plain stretched into unseen distance;
+to the left a range of steep hills rose abruptly from the plain; over all
+the night was coming down. Long before sunset I had noticed a clump of
+trees many miles ahead, and thought that in this solitary thicket we
+would make our camp for the night. Hours passed away, and yet the
+solitary clump seemed as distant as ever--nay, more, it even appeared to
+grow smaller as I approached it. At last, just at dusk, I drew near the
+wished for camping-place; but lo! it was nothing but a single bush. My
+clump had vanished, my camping-place had gone, the mirage had been
+playing tricks with the little bush and magnifying it into a grove of
+aspens. When night fell there was no trace of camp or companions, but the
+snow marks showed that I was still upon the right track. On again for two
+hours in darkness often it was so dark that it was only by giving the
+horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in
+the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing
+stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added
+to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly
+towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the
+welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes
+struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly lost his way, and after thirteen
+hours hard riding we were lucky to find this cosy nook in the
+tree-sheltered valley. The Saskatchewan was close beside us, and the dark
+ridges beyond were the Eagle Hills of the Battle River.
+
+<p>Early next forenoon we reached the camp of Crees and the winter post of
+the Hudson Bay Company some distance above the confluence of the Battle
+Riverwith the Saskatchewan. A wild scene of confusion followed our entry
+into the camp; braves and squaws, dogs and papooses crowded round, and it
+was difficult work to get to the door of the little shanty where the
+Hudson Bay officer dwelt. Fortunately, there was no small-pox in this
+crowded camp, although many traces of its effects were to be seen in the
+seared and disfigured faces around, and in none more than my host, who
+had been one of the four that had recovered at Carlton. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed, but his handsome face was awfully marked by the
+terrible scourge. This assemblage of Crees was under the leadership of
+Mistawassis, a man of small and slight stature, but whose bravery had
+often been tested in fight against the Blackfeet. He was a man of quiet
+and dignified manner, a good listener, a fluent speaker, as much at his
+ease and as free from restraint as any lord in Christendom. He hears the
+news I have to tell him through the interpreter, bending his head in
+assent to every sentence; then he pauses a bit and speaks. "He wishes to
+know if aught can be done against the Blackfeet; they are troublesome,
+they are fond of war; he has seen war for many years, and he would wish
+for peace; it is only the young men, who want scalps and the soft words
+of the squaws, who desire war." I tell him that "the Great Mother wishes
+her red children to live at peace; but what is the use? do they not
+themselves break the peace when it is made, and is not the war as often
+commenced by the Crees as by the Blackfeet?" He says that "men have told
+them that the white man was coming to take their lands, that the white
+braves were coming to the country, and he wished to know if it was true."
+"If the white braves did come," I replied, "it would be to protect the
+red man, and to keep peace amongst all. So dear was the red man to the
+heart of the chief whom the Great Mother had sent, that the sale of all
+spirits had been stopped in the Indian country, and henceforth, when he
+saw any trader bringing whisky or fire-water into the camp, he could tell
+his young men to go and take the fire-water by force from the trader."
+
+<p>"That is good," he repeated twice, "that is good!" but whether this
+remark of approval had reference to the stoppage of the fire-water or to
+the prospective seizure of liquor by his braves, I cannot say. Soon after
+the departure of Mistawassis from the hut, a loud drumming outside was
+suddenly struck up, and going to the door I found the young men had
+assembled to dance the dance of welcome in my honour; they drummed and
+danced in different stages of semi-nudity for some time, and at the
+termination of the performance I gave an order for tobacco all round.
+When the dancing-party had departed, a very garrulous Indian presented
+himself, saying that he had been informed that the Ogima was possessed of
+some "great medicines," and that he wished to see them. I have almost
+forgotten to remark that my store of drugs and medicines had under gone
+considerable delapidation from frost and fast travelling. An examination
+held at Carlton into the contents of the two cases had revealed a sad
+state of affairs. Frost had smashed many bottles; powders badly folded up
+had fetched way in a deplorable manner; tinctures had proved their
+capability for the work they had to perform by tincturing every thing
+that came within their reach; hopeless confusion reigned in the
+department of pills. A few glass-stoppered bottles had indeed resisted
+the general demoralization; but, for the rest, it really seemed as though
+blisters, pills, powders, scales, and disinfecting fluids had been wildly
+bent upon blistering, pilling, powdering, weighing, and disinfecting one
+another ever since they had left Fort Garry. I deposited at Carlton a
+considerable quantity of a disinfecting fluid frozen solid, and as highly
+garnished with pills as the exterior of that condiment known as a
+chancellor's pudding is resplendent with raisins. Whether this
+conglomerate really did disinfect the walls of Carlton I cannot state,
+but from its appearance and general medicinal aspect I should say that no
+disease, however virulent, had the slightest chance against it. Having
+repacked the other things as safely as possible into one large box, I
+still found that I was the possessor of medicine amply sufficient to
+poison a very large extent of territory, and in particular I had a small
+leather medicine-chest in which the glass-stoppered bottles had kept
+intact. This chest I now produced for the benefit of my garrulous friend;
+one very strong essence of smelling-salts particularly delighted him; the
+more it burned his nostrils the more he laughed and hugged it, and after
+a time declared that there could be no doubt whatever as to that article,--for
+it was a very "great medicine" indeed.
+
+<p><a name="ch16"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER SIXTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A long Ride--Fort
+Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant Companion--An easy
+Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+<p>EVER, towards the setting sun drifts the flow of Indian migration; ever
+nearer and nearer to that glorious range of snow-clad peaks which the red
+man has so aptly named "the Mountains of the Setting Sun." It is a
+mournful task to trace back through the long list of extinct tribes the
+history of this migration. Turning over the leaves of books belonging to
+that "old colonial time" of which Longfellow speaks, we find strange
+names of Indian tribes now utterly unknown, meetings of council and
+treaty making with Mohawks and Oneidas and Tuscaroras.
+
+<p>They are gone, and scarcely a trace remains of them. Others have left in
+lake and mountain-top the record of their names. Erie and Ottawa, Seneca
+and Cayuga tell of forgotten or almost forgotten nations which a century
+ago were great and powerful. But never at any time since first the white
+man was welcomed on the newly-discovered shores of the Western Continent
+by his red brother, never has such disaster and destruction overtaken
+these poor wild, wandering sons of nature as at the moment in which we
+write. Of yore it was the pioneers of France, England, and Spain with
+whom they had to contend, but now the whole white world is leagued in
+bitter strife against the Indian. The American and Canadian are only
+names that hide beneath them the greed of united Europe. Terrible deeds
+have been wrought out in that western land; terrible heart-sickening
+deeds of cruelty and rapacious infamy--have been, I say? no, are to this
+day and hour, and never perhaps more sickening than now in the full blaze
+of nineteenth-century civilization. If on the long line of the American
+frontier, from the Gulf of Mexico to the British boundary, a Single life
+is taken by an Indian, if even a horse or ox be stolen from a settler,
+the fact is chronicled in scores of-journals throughout the United
+States, but the reverse of the story we never know. The countless deeds
+of perfidious robbery, of ruthless murder done by white savages out in
+these Western wilds never find the light of day. The poor red man has no
+telegraph, no newspaper, no type, to tell his sufferings and his woes. My
+God, what a terrible tale could I not tell of these dark deeds done by
+the white savage against the far nobler red man! From southernmost Texas
+to most northern Montana there is but one universal remedy for Indian
+difficulty--kill him. Let no man tell me that such is not the case. I
+answer, I have heard it hundreds of times: "Never trust a redskin unless
+he be dead." "Kill every buffalo you see," said a Yankee colonel to me
+one day in Nebraska; "every buffalo dead is an Indiaan gone;" such
+things are only trifles. Listen to this cute feat of a Montana trader. A
+store-keeper in Helena City had some sugar stolen from him. He poisoned
+the sugar next night and left his door open. In the morning six Indians
+were found dead outside the town. That was a cute notion, I guess; and
+yet there are other examples worse than that, but they are too revolting
+to tell. Never mind; I suppose they have found record somewhere else if
+not in this world, and in one shape or another they will speak in due
+time. The Crees are perhaps the only tribe of prairie Indians who have as
+yet suffered no injustice at the hands of the white man. The land is
+still theirs, the hunting-rounds remain almost undisturbed; but their
+days are numbered, and already the echo of the approaching wave of
+Western immigration is sounding through the solitudes of the Cree
+country.
+
+<p>It is the same story from the Atlantic to the Pacific. First the White
+man was the welcome guest, the honoured visitor; then the greedy hunter,
+the death-dealing vender of fire-water and poison; then the settler and
+exterminator--every where it has been the same story.
+
+<p>This wild man who first welcomed the new-comer is the only perfect
+socialist or communist in the world. He holds all things in common with
+his tribe--the land, the bison, the river, and the moose. He is starving,
+and the rest of the tribe want food. Well, he kills a moose, and to the
+last bit the coveted food is shared by all. That war-party has taken one
+hundred horses in the last raid into Blackfoot or Peagin territory; well,
+the whole tribe are free to help themselves to the best and fleetest
+steeds before the captors will touch one out of the band. There is but a
+scrap of beaver, a thin rabbit, or a bit of sturgeon in the lodge; a
+stranger comes, and he is hungry; give him his share and let him be first
+served and best attended to. If one child starves in an Indian camp you
+may know that in every lodge scarcity is universal and that every stomach
+is hungry. Poor, poor fellow! his virtues are all his own; crimes he may
+have, and plenty, but his noble traits spring from no book-learning, from
+no school-craft, from the preaching of no pulpit; they come from the
+instinct of good which the Great Spirit has taught him; they are the
+whisperings from that lost world whose glorious shores beyond the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun are the long dream of his life. The most
+curious anomaly among the race of man, the red man of America, is passing
+away beneath our eyes into the infinite solitude. The possession of the
+same noble qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes
+us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all
+right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't
+be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in
+hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the
+Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why
+do I call this wild child the great anomaly of the human race? I will
+tell you. Alone amongst savage tribes he has learnt the lesson which the
+great mother Nature teaches to her sons through the voices of the night,
+the forest, and the solitude. This river, this mountain, this measureless
+meadow speak to him in a language of their own. Dwelling with them, he
+learns their varied tongues, and his speech becomes the echo of the
+beauty that lies spread around him. Every name for lake or river, for
+mountain or meadow, has its peculiar significance, and to tell the Indian
+title of such things is generally to tell the nature of them also. Ossian
+never spoke with the voice of the mist-shrouded mountain or the wave-beat
+shores of the isles more thoroughly than does this chief of the Blackfeet
+or the Sioux speak the voices of the things of earth and air amidst which
+his wild life is cast.
+
+<p>I know that it is the fashion to hold in derision and mockery the idea
+that nobility, poetry, or eloquence exist in the wild Indian. I know that
+with that low brutality which has ever made the Anglo-Saxon race deny its
+enemy the possession of one atom of generous sensibility, that dull
+enmity which prompted us to paint the Maid of Orleans a harlot, and to
+call Napoleon the Corsican robber--I know that that same instinct glories
+in degrading the savage, whose chief crime is that he prefers death to
+slavery; glories in painting him devoid of every trait of manhood, worthy
+only to share the fate of the wild beast of the wilderness--to be shot
+down mercilessly when seen. But those bright spirits who have redeemed
+the America of to-day from the dreary waste of vulgar greed and ignorant
+conceit which we in Europe have flung so heavily upon her; those men
+whose writings have come back across the Atlantic, and have become as
+household words among us--Irving, Cooper, Longfellow--have they not found
+in the rich store of Indian poetry the source of their choicest thought?
+Nay, I will go farther, because it may be said that the a poet would be
+prone to drape with poetry every subject on which his fancy lighted, as
+the sun turns to gold and crimson the dullest and the dreariest clouds:
+but Search the books of travel amongst remote Indian tribes, from
+Columbus to Catlin, from Charlevoix to Carver, from Bonneville to
+Pallisser the story is ever the same. The traveller is welcomed and made
+much of; he is free to come and go; the best food is set before him; the
+lodge is made warm and bright; he is welcome to stay his lifetime if he
+pleases. "I swear to your majesties," writes Columbus--alas! the red
+man's greatest enemy--"I swear to your majesties that there is not in the
+world a better people than these, more affectionate, affable, or mild."
+
+<p>"At this moment," writes an American officer only ten years back, "it is
+certain a man can go about throughout the Blackfoot territory without
+molestation, except in the contingency of being mistaken at night for an
+Indian." No, they are-fast going, and soon they will be all gone, but in
+after-times men will judge more justly the poor wild creatures whom
+to-day we kill and vilify; men will go back again to those old books of
+travel, or to those pages of "Hiawatha" and "Mohican," to find that far
+away from the border-land of civilization the wild red man, if more of
+the savage, was infinitely less of the brute than was the white ruffian
+who destroyed him.
+
+<p>I quitted the camp at Battle River on the 17th November, with a large
+band of horses and a young Cree brave who had volunteered his services
+for some reason of his own which he did not think necessary to impart to
+us. The usual crowd of squaws, braves in buffalo robes, naked children,
+and howling dogs assembled to see us start. The Cree led the way mounted
+on a ragged-looking pony, then came the baggage-sleds, and I brought up
+the rear on a tall horse belonging to the Company. Thus we held our way
+in a north-west direction over high-rolling plains along the north bank
+of the Saskatchewan towards Fort Pitt.
+
+<p>On the morning of the 18th we got away from our camping thicket of
+poplars long before the break of day. There was no track to guide us, but
+the Cree went straight as an arrow over hill and dale and frozen lake.
+The hour that preceded the dawn was brilliant with the flash and glow of
+meteors across the North-western sky. I lagged so far behind to watch
+them that when day broke I found myself alone, miles from the party. The
+Cree kept the pace so well that it took me some hours before I again
+Caught sight of them. After a hard ride of six-and-thirty miles, we
+halted for dinner on the banks of English Creek. Close beside our
+camping-place a large clump of spruce-pine stood in dull contrast to the
+snowy surface. They looked like old friends to me--friends of the
+Winnipeg and the now distant Lake of the Woods; for from Red River to
+English Creek, a distance of 750 miles, I-had seen but a solitary
+pine-tree. After a short dinner We resumed our rapid way, forcing the
+pace with a view of making Fort Pitt by night-fall. A French half-breed
+declared he knew a short cut across the hills of the Red Deer, a wild
+rugged tract of country lying on the north of the Saskatchewan. Crossing
+these hills, he said, we would strike the river at their farther side,
+and then, passing over on the ice, cut the bend which the Saskatchewan
+makes to the north, and, emerging again opposite Fort Pitt, finally
+re-cross the river at that station. So much for the plan, and now for its
+fulfilment.
+
+<p>We entered the region of the Red Deer Hills at about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, and continued at a very rapid pace in a westerly direction for
+three hours. As we proceeded the country became more broken, the hills
+rising steeply from narrow V-shaped valleys, and the ground in many
+places covered with fallen and decaying trees--the wrecks of fire and
+tempest. Every where throughout this wild region lay the antlers and
+heads of moose and elk; but, with the exception of an occasional large
+jackass-rabbit, nothing living moved through the silent hills. The ground
+was free from badger-holes; the day, though dark, was fine; and, with a
+good horse under me, that two hours gallop over, the Red Deer Hills was
+glorious work. It wanted yet an hour of sunset when we came suddenly upon
+the Saskatchewan flowing in a deep narrow valley between steep and lofty
+hills, which were bare of trees and bushes and clear of snow. A very wild
+desolate scene it looked as I surveyed it from a projecting spur upon
+whose summit I rested my blown horse. I was now far in advance of the
+party who occupied a parallel ridge behind me. By signs they intimated
+that our course now lay to the north; in fact, Daniel had steered very
+much too ar south, and we had struck the Saskatchewan river a long,
+distance below the intended place of crossing. Away we went again to the
+north, soon losing sight of the party; but as I kept the river on my left
+far below in the valley I knew they could not cross without my being
+aware of it. Just before sun set they appeared again in sight, making
+signs that they were about to descend into the valley and to cross the
+river. The valley here was five hundred feet in depth, the slope being
+one of the steepest I had ever seen. At the bottom of this steep descent
+the Saskatchewan lay in its icy bed, a large majestic-looking river three
+hundred yards in width. We crossed on the ice without accident, and
+winding up the steep southern shore gained the level plateau above. The
+sun was going down, right on our forward track. In the deep valley below
+the Cree and an English half-breed were getting the horses and
+baggage-sleds over the river. We made signs to them to camp in the
+valley, and we ourselves turned our tired horses towards the west,
+determined at all hazards to reach the fort that night. The Frenchman led
+the way riding, the Hudson Bay officer followed in a horse-sled, I
+brought up the rear on horseback. Soon it got quite dark, and we held on
+over a rough and bushless plateau seamed with deep gullies into which we
+descended at hap hazard forcing our weary horses with difficulty up the
+opposite sides. The night got later and later, and still no sign of Fort
+Pitt; riding in rear I was able to mark the course taken by our guide,
+and it soon struck me that he was steering wrong; our correct course lay
+west, but he seemed to be heading gradually to the North, and finally,
+began to veer even towards the East. I called out to the Hudson Bay man
+that I had serious doubts as to Daniel's knowledge of the track, but I
+was assured that all was correct. Still we went on, and still no sign of
+fort or river. At length the Frenchman suddenly pulled Up and asked us to
+halt while he rode on and surveyed the country, because he had lost the
+track, and didn't know where he had got to. Here was a pleasant prospect!
+without food, fire, or covering, out on the bleak plains, with the
+thermometer at 20 degrees of frost! After some time the Frenchman
+returned and declared that he had altogether lost his way, and that there
+was nothing for it but to camp where we were, and wait for daylight to
+proceed. I looked around in the darkness. The ridge on which we stood was
+bare and bleak, with the snow drifted off into the valleys. A few
+miserable stunted willows were the only signs of vegetation, and the wind
+whistling through their ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as
+man could look at. I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men
+who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in
+the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been
+pursuing. My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent
+resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled
+with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire,
+or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might
+reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying
+himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.
+
+<p>Watching this for some seconds in silence, I determined to shape for
+myself a different course. I dismounted, and taking from the sled a shirt
+made of deer-skin, mounted again my poor weary horse and turned off alone
+into the darkness. "Where are you going to?" I heard my companions
+calling out after me. I was half inclined not to answer, but turned in
+the saddle and holloaed back, "To Fort Pitt, that's all." I heard behind
+me a violent bustle, as though they were busily engaged in yoking up the
+horses again, and then I rode off as hard as my weary horse could go. My
+friends took a very short time to harness up again, and they were soon
+powdering along through the wilderness. I kept on for about half an hour,
+steering by the stars due west; suddenly I came out upon the edge of a
+deep valley, and by the broad white band beneath recognized the frozen
+Saskatchewan again. I have at least found the river, and Fort Pitt, we
+knew, lay somewhere upon the bank. Turning away from the river, I held on
+in a south-westerly direction for a considerable distance, passing up
+along a bare snow-covered valley and crossing a high ridge at its end. I
+could hear my friends behind in the dark. But they had got, I think, a
+notion that I had taken leave of my senses, and they were afraid to call
+out to me. After a bit I bent my course again to the west, and steering
+by my old guides, the stars, those truest and most unchanging friends of
+the wanderer, I once more struck the Saskatchewan, this time descending
+to its level and crossing it on the ice.
+
+<p>As I walked along, leading my horse, I must admit to experiencing a
+sensation not at all pleasant. The memory of the crossing of the South
+Branch was still too strong to admit of over-confidence in the strength
+of the ice, and as every now and again my tired horse broke through the
+upper crust of snow and the ice beneath cracked, as it always will when
+weight is placed on it for the first time, no matter how strong it may
+be, I felt by no means as comfortable as I would have wished. At last the
+long river was passed, and there on the opposite shore lay the cart track
+to Fort Pitt. We were close to Pipe-stone Creek, and only three miles
+from the Fort.
+
+<p>It was ten o'clock when we reached the closely-barred gate of this Hudson
+Bay post, the inhabitants of which had gone to bed. Ten o'clock at night,
+and we had started at six o'clock in the morning. I had been fifteen
+hours in the saddle, and no less than ninety miles had passed under my
+horse's hoofs, but so accustomed had I grown to travel that I felt just
+as ready to set out again as though only twenty miles had been traversed.
+The excitement of the last few hours steering by the stars in an unknown
+country, and its most successful denouement, had put fatigue and
+weariness in the background; and as we sat down to a well-cooked supper
+of buffalo steaks and potatoes, with the brightest eyed little lassie,
+half Cree, half Scotch, in the North-west to wait upon us, while a great
+fire of pine wood blazed and crackled on the open hearth, I couldn't help
+saying to my companions, "Well, this is better than your hill-top and the
+fireless bivouac in the rustling willows."
+
+<p>Fort Pitt was free from small-pox, but it had gone through a fearful
+ordeal: more than one hundred Crees had perished close around its
+stockades. The unburied dead lay for days by the road-side, till the
+wolves, growing bold with the impunity which death among the hunters ever
+gives to the hunted, approached and fought over the decay ing bodies.
+From a spot many marches to the south the Indians had come to the fort in
+midsummer, leaving behind them a long track of dead and dying men over
+the waste of distance. "Give us help," they cried, "give us help, our
+medicine-men can do nothing against this plague; from the white man We
+got it, and it is only the white man who can take it away from us."
+
+<p>But there was no help to be given, and day by day the wretched band grew
+less. Then came another idea into the red man's brain: "If we can only
+give this disease to the white man and the trader in the fort," thought
+they, "we will cease to suffer from it ourselves;" so they came into the
+houses dying and disfigured as they were, horrible beyond description to
+look at, and sat down in the entrances of the wooden houses, and
+stretched themselves on the floors and spat upon the door-handles. It was
+no use, the fell disease held them in a grasp from which there was no
+escape, and just six weeks before my arrival the living remnant fled away
+in despair.
+
+<p>Fort Pitt stands on the left or north shore of the Saskatchewan River,
+which is here more than four hundred yards in width. On the opposite
+shore immense bare, bleak hills raise their wind-swept heads seven
+hundred feet above the river level. A few pine-trees show their tops some
+distance away to the north, but no other trace of wood is to be seen in
+that vast amphitheatre of dry grassy hill in which the fort is built. It
+is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its
+own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so
+pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over those great grassy uplands.
+
+<p>On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses
+for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as
+nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had
+now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once
+more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore
+of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria,
+a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which
+the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake
+Winnipeg. The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a
+loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony,
+jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who
+will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was
+the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr.
+Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River. This youngster
+employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was
+driving--thus "Rouge!" would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and
+Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip;
+"Noir!" he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be
+within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation
+of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon
+their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention
+of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked. One
+horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially
+selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing
+obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French
+semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet,
+and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather
+think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the
+grudges that he owed to the man. Be that as it may, Jean l'Hereux got
+many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges
+which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.
+
+<p>On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake,
+and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the
+following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite
+camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest
+fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper
+Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations
+farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you
+meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle
+Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you
+letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they
+lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have
+found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after
+a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling
+individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of
+"What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a
+personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question,
+might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could
+obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never
+been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might
+perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his
+peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person
+had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and
+his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no
+existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury,
+it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we
+halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who
+approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this
+day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition
+to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of
+Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This
+individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch
+as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of
+the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia.
+But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was
+destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.
+
+<p>"You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see," said the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge.
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied.
+
+<p>"Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?"
+
+<p>"Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it."
+
+<p>"Did he say he had had it himself?"
+
+<p>"No."
+
+<p>"Well, he had," continued ny host, "only a month ago, and the coat and
+trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he
+lay all the time he had it," was the pleasant reply.
+
+<p>After this little revelation concerning Battenotte and his habiliments, I
+must admit that I was not quite as ready to look with pleasure upon his
+performance of the duties of cook, chambermaid, and general valet as I
+had been in the earlier stage of our acquaintance; but a little
+reflection made the hole thing right again, convincing one of the fact
+that travelling, like misery, "makes one acquainted with strange
+bedfellows," and that luck has more to do with our lives than we are wont
+to admit. After leaving Saddle Lake we entered a very rich and beautiful
+country, completely clear of snow and covered deep in grass and vetches.
+We travelled hard, and reached at nightfall a thick wood of pines and
+spruce-trees, in which we made a cosy camp. I had brought with me a
+bottle of old brandy from Red River in case of illness, and on this
+evening, not feeling all right, I drew the cork while the Cree was away
+with the horses, and drank a little with my companion. Before we had
+quite finished, the Cree returned to camp, and at once declared that he
+smelt grog. He became very lively at this discovery. We had taken the
+precaution to rinse out the cup that had held the spirit, but he
+nevertheless commenced a series of brewing which appeared to give him
+infinite satisfaction. Two or three times did he fill the empty cup with
+water and drain it to the bottom, laughing and rolling his head each time
+with delight, and in order to be sure that he had got the right one he
+proceeded in the same manner with every cup we possessed; then he
+confided to Battenotte that he had not tasted grog for a long time
+before, the last occasion being one on which he had divested himself of
+his shirt and buffalo robe, in other words, gone naked, in order to
+obtain the coveted fire-water.
+
+<p>The weather had now become beautifully mild, and on the 23rd of November
+the thermometer did not show even one degree of frost. As we approached
+the neighbourhood of the White Earth River the aspect of the country
+became very striking: groves of spruce and pine crowned the ridges; rich,
+well-watered valleys lay between, deep in the long white grass of the
+autumn. The track wound in and out through groves and wooded declivities,
+and all nature looked bright and beautiful. Some of the ascents from the
+river bottoms were so steep that the united efforts of Battenotte and the
+Cree were powerless to induce Rouge or Noir, or even Jean l'Hcreux, to
+draw the cart to the summit. But the Cree was equal to the occasion. With
+a piece of shanganappi he fastened L'Hereux's tail to the shafts of the
+cart-shafts which had already between them the redoubted Noir. This new
+method of harnessing had a marked effect upon L'Hereux; he strained and
+hauled with a persistency and vigour which I feared must prove fatal to
+the permanency of his tail in that portion of his body in which nature
+had located it, but happily such was not the case, and by the united
+efforts of all parties the summit was reached.
+
+<p>I only remained one day at Victoria, and the 25th of November found me
+again en route for Edmonton. Our Cree had, however, disappeared. One
+night when he was eating his supper with his scalping-knife--a knife, by
+the way, with which he had taken, he informed us, three Black feet scalps
+--I asked him why he had come away with us from Battle River. Because he
+wanted to get rid of his wife, of whom he was tired, he replied. He had
+come off without saying any thing to her. "And what will happen to the
+wife?" I asked. "Oh, she will marry another brave when she finds me
+gone," he answered, laughing at the idea. I did not enter into the
+previous domestic events which had led to this separation, but I presume
+they were of a nature similar to those which are not altogether unknown
+in more civilized society, and I make no hesitation in offering to our
+legislators the example of my friend the Cree as tending to simplify the
+solution, or rather the dissolution, of that knotty point, the separation
+of couples who, for reasons best known to themselves, have ceased to
+love. Whether it was that the Cree found in Victoria a lady suitad to his
+fancy, or whether he had heard of a war-party against the Sircies, I
+cannot say, but he vanished during the night of our stay in the fort, and
+we saw him no more.
+
+<p>As we journeyed on towards Edmonton the country maintained its rich and
+beautiful appearance, and the weather continued fine and mild. Every
+where nature had written in unmistakable characters the story of the
+fertility of the soil over which we rode--every where the eye looked upon
+panoramas filled with the beauty of lake and winding river, and grassy
+slope and undulating woodland. The whole face of the country was indeed
+one vast park. For two days we passed through this beautiful land,-and on
+the evening of the 28th November drew near to Edmonton. My party had been
+increased by the presence of two gentlemen from Victoria, a Wesleyan
+minister and the Hudson Bay official in charge of the Company's post at
+that place. Both of these gentlemen had resided long in the Upper
+Saskatchewan, and were intimately acquainted with the tribes who inhabit
+The vast territory from the Rocky Mountains to Carlton House. It was late
+in the evening, just one month after I had started from the banks of the
+Red River, that I approached the high palisades of Edmonton. As one who
+looks back at evening from the summit of some lofty ridge over the long
+track which he has followed since the morning, so now did my mind travel
+back over the immense distance through which I had ridden in twenty-two
+days of actual travel and in thirty-three of the entire journey-that
+distance could not have been less than 1000 miles; and as each camp scene
+rose again before me, with its surrounding of snow and storm-swept
+prairie and lonely clump of aspens, it seemed as though something like
+infinite space stretched between me and that far-away land which one word
+alone can picture, that one word in which so many others centre--Home.
+
+<p><a name="ch17"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French Missionaries--Westward still--A
+beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A "Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot
+Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the Rocky Mountains--The Mountain
+House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian Trade--M. la
+Combe--Fire-water--A Night Assault.
+
+<p>EDMONTON, the head-quarters of the Hudson Bay Company's Saskatchewan
+trade, and the residence of a chief factor of the corporation, is a large
+five-sided fort with the usual flanking bastions and high stockades. It
+has within these stockades many commodious and well-built wooden houses,
+and differs in the cleanliness and order of its arrangements from the
+general run of trading forts in the Indian country. It stands on a high
+level bank 100 feet above the Saskatchewan River, which rolls below in a
+broad majestic stream, 300 yards in width. Farming operations,
+boat-building, and flour-milling are carried on extensively at the fort,
+and a blacksmith's forge is also kept going. My business with the officer
+in charge of Edmonton was soon concluded. It principally consisted in
+conferring upon him, by commission, the same high judicial functions
+which I have already observed had been entrusted to me before setting out
+for the Indian territories. There was one very serious drawback, however,
+to the possession of magisterial or other authority in the Saskatchewan,
+in as much as there existed no means whatever of putting that authority
+into force.
+
+<p>The Lord High Chancellor of England, together with the Master of the
+Rolls and the twenty-four judges of different degrees, would be perfectly
+useless if placed in the Saskatchewan to put in execution the authority
+of the law. The Crees, Blackfeet, Peagins, and Sircies would doubtless
+have come to the conclusion that these high judicial functionaries were
+"very great medicines;" but beyond that conclusion, which they would have
+drawn more from the remarkable costume and head-gear worn by those
+exponents of the law than from the possession of any legal acumen, much
+would not have been attained. These considerations somewhat mollified the
+feelings of disappointment with which I now found myself face to face
+with the most desperate set of criminals, while I was utterly unable to
+enforce against them the majesty of my commission.
+
+<p>First, there was the notorious Tahakooch-murderer, robber, and general
+scoundrel of deepest dye; then there was the sister of the above, a
+maiden of some twenty summers, who had also perpetrated the murder of two
+Black foot children close to Edmonton; then there was a youthful French
+half-breed who had killed his uncle at the settlement of Grand Lac, nine
+miles to the north-west; and, finally, there was my dinner companion at
+Saddle Lake, whose crime I only became aware of after I had left that
+locality. But this Tahakooch was a ruffian too desperate. Here was one of
+his murderous acts. A short time previous to my arrival two Sircies came
+to Edmonton. Tahakooch and two of his brothers were camped near the fort.
+Tahakooch professed friendship for the Sircies, and they went to his
+lodge. After a few days had passed the Sircies thought it was time to
+return to their tribe. Rumour said that the charms of the sister of
+Tahakooch had captivated either one or both of them, and that she had not
+been insensible to their admiration. Be this as it may, it was time to
+go; and so they prepared for the journey. An Indian will travel by night
+as readily as by day, and it was night when these men left the tent of
+Tahakooch.
+
+<p>"We will go to the fort," said the host, "in order to get provisions for
+your journey."
+
+<p>The party, three in number, went to the fort, and knocked at the gate for
+admittance. The man on watch at the gate, before unharring, looked from
+the bastion over the stockades, to see who might be the three men who
+sought an entrance. It was bright moonlight, and he noticed the shimmer
+of a gun-barrel under the blanket of Tahakooch. The Sircies were provided
+with some dried meat, and the party went away. The Sircies marched first
+in single file, then followed Tahakooch close behind them; the three
+formed one line. Suddenly, Tahakooch drew from beneath his blanket a
+short double-barrelled gun, and discharged both barrels into the back of
+the nearest Sircie. The bullets passed through one man into the body of
+the other, killing the nearest one instantly. The leading Sircie, though
+desperately wounded, ran fleetly along the moonlit path until, faint and
+bleeding, he fell. Tahakooch was close behind; but the villain's hand
+shook, and four times his shots missed the wounded wretch upon the
+ground. Summoning up all his strength, the Sircie sprung upon his
+assailant; a hand-to-hand struggle ensued; but the desperate wound was
+too much for him, he grew faint in his efforts, and the villain Tahakooch
+passed his knife into his victim's body. All this took place in the same
+year during which I reached Edmonton, and within sight of the walls of
+the fort. Tahakooch lived only a short distance away, and was a daily
+visitor at the fort.
+
+<p>But to recount the deeds of blood enacted around the wooden walls of
+Edmonton Would be to fill a volume. Edmonton and Fort Pitt both stand
+within the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, and are consequently
+the scenes of many conflicts between these fierce and implacable enemies.
+Hitherto my route has led through the Cree country, hitherto we have seen
+only the prairies and woods through which the Crees hunt and camp; but my
+wanderings are yet far from their end. To the south-west, for many and
+many a mile, lie the wide regions of the Blackfeet and the mountain
+Assineboines; and into these regions I am about to push my way. It is a
+wild, lone land guarded by the giant peaks of mountains whose snow-capped
+summits lift themselves 17,000 feet above the sea level. It is the
+birth-place of waters which seek in four mighty streams the four distant
+oceans--the Polar Sea, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific.
+
+<p>A few miles north-west of Edmonton a settlement composed exclusively of
+French half-breeds is situated on the shores of a rather extensive lake
+which bears the name of the Grand Lac, or St. Albert. This settlement is
+presided over by a mission of French Roman Catholic clergymen of the
+order of Oblates, headed by a bishop of the same order and nationality.
+It is a curious contrast to find in this distant and strange land men of
+culture and high mental excellence devoting their lives to the task of
+civilizing the wild Indians of the forest and the prairie--going far in
+advance of the settler, whose advent they have but too much cause to
+dread. I care not what may be the form of belief which the on-looker may
+hold--whether it be in unison or in antagonism with that faith preached
+by these men; but he is only a poor semblance of a man who can behold
+such a sight through the narrow glass of sectarian feeling, holding'
+opinions foreign to his own. He who has travelled through the vast
+colonial empire of Britain--that empire which covers one third of the
+entire habitable surface of the globe and probably half of the lone lands
+of the world must often have met with men dwelling in the midst of wild,
+savage peoples whom they tended with a strange and mother-like devotion.
+If you asked who was this stranger who dwelt thus among wild men in these
+Lone places, you were told he was the French missionary; and if you
+sought him in his lonely hut, you found ever the same surroundings, the
+same simple evidences of a faith which seemed more than human. I do not
+speak from hearsay or book-knowledge. I have myself witnessed the scenes
+I now try to recall. And it has ever been the same, East and West, far in
+advance of trader or merchant, of sailor or soldier, has gone this
+dark-haired, fragile man, whose earliest memories are thick with sunny
+scenes by bank of Loire or vine-clad slope of Rhone or Garonne, and whose
+vision in this life, at least, is never destined to rest again upon these
+oft-remembered places. Glancing through a pamphlet one day at Edmonton, a
+pamphlet which recorded the progress of a Canadian Wesleyan Missionary
+Society, I read the following extract from the letter of a Western
+missionary:--"These representatives of the Man of Sin, these priests, are
+hard-workers; summer and winter they follow the camps, suffering great
+privations. They are indefatigable in their efforts to make converts, but
+their converts," he adds, "have never heard of the Holy Ghost." "The man
+of sin "--which of us is without it? To these French missionaries at
+Grand Lac I was the bearer of terrible tidings. I carried to them the
+story of Sedan, the overwhelming rush of armed Germany into the heart of
+France, the closing of the high-schooled hordes of Teuton savagery around
+Paris; all that was hard home news to: hear. Fate had leant heavily upon
+their little congregation; out of 900 souls more than 300 had perished of
+small-pox up to the date of my arrival, and others were still sick in the
+huts along the lake. Well might the bishop and his priests bow their
+heads in the midst of such manifold tribulations of death and disaster.
+
+<p>By the last day of November my preparations for further travel into the
+regions lying west of Edmonton were completed, and at midday on the 1st
+December I set out for the Rocky Mountain House. This station, the most
+Western and southern held by the Hudson Bay Company in the Saskatchewan,
+is distant from Edmonton about 180 miles by horse trail, and 211 miles by
+river. I was provided with five fresh horses, two good guides, and I
+carried letters to merchants in the United States, should fortune permit
+me to push through the great stretch of Blackfoot country lying on the
+northern borders of the American territory; for it was my intention to
+leave the Mountain House as soon as possible, and to endeavour to cross
+by rapid marches the 400 miles of plains to some of the mining cities of
+Montana or Idaho; the principal difficulty lay, however, in the
+reluctance of men to come with me into the country of the Blackfeet. At
+Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high
+wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke
+the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his
+relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought
+when asked to be my guide.
+
+<p>"It is a work of peril," he said, "to pass the Blackfoot country all'
+pitching along the foot of the mountains; they will see our trail in the
+snow, follow it, and steal our horses, or perhaps worse still. At another
+time I would attempt it, but death has been too heavy upon my friends,
+and I don't feel that I can go."
+
+<p>It was still possible, however, that at the Mountain House I might find
+a guide ready to attempt the journey, and my kind host at Edmonton
+provided me with letters to facilitate my procuring all supplies from his
+subordinate officer at that station. Thus fully accoutred and prepared to
+meet the now rapidly increasing severity of the winter, I started on the
+1st December for the mountains. It-was a bright, beautiful day. I was
+alone with my two retainers; before me lay an uncertain future, but so
+many curious scenes had been passed in safety during the last six months
+of my life, that I recked little of what was before me, drawing a kind of
+blind confidence from the thought that so much could not have been in
+vain. Crossing the now fast-frozen Saskatchewan, we ascended the southern
+bank and entered upon a rich country watered with many streams and
+wooded with park-like clumps of aspen and pine. My two retainers were
+first-rate fellows. One spoke English very fairly: he was a brother of
+the bright-eyed little beauty at Fort Pitt. The other, Paul Foyale, was a
+thick, stout-set man, a good voyageur, and excellent-in camp. Both were
+noted travellers, and both had suffered severely in the epidemic of the
+small-pox. Paul had lost his wife and child, and Rowland's children had
+all had the disease, but had recovered. As for any idea about taking
+infection from men coming out of places where that infection existed,
+that would have been the merest foolishness; at least, Paul and Rowland
+thought so, and as they were destined to be my close companions for some
+days, cooking for me, tying up my blankets, and sleeping beside me, it
+was just as well to put a good face upon the matter and trust once more
+to the glorious doctrine of chance. Besides, they were really such good
+fellows, princes among voyayeurs, that, small-pox or no small-pox, they
+were first-rate company for any ordinary mortal. For two days we jogged
+merrily along. The Musquashis or Bears Hill rose before us and faded away
+into blue distance behind us. After sundown on the 2nd we camped in a
+thicket of large aspens by the high bank of the Battle River, the same
+stream at whose mouth nearly 400 miles away I had found the Crees a
+fortnight before. On the 3rd December we crossed this river, and,
+quitting the Blackfeet trail, struck in a south-westerly direction
+through a succession of grassy hills with partially wooded valleys and
+small frozen lakes. A glorious country to ride over--a country in which
+the eye ranged across miles and miles of fair-lying hill and
+long-stretching valley; a silent, beautiful land upon which summer had
+stamped so many traces, that December had so far been powerless to efface
+their beauty. Close by to the south lay the country of the great
+Blackfeet nation--that wild, restless tribe whose name has been a terror
+to other tribes and to trader and trapper for many and many a year. Who
+and what are these wild dusky men who have held their own against all
+comers, sweeping like a whirlwind over the sand deserts of the central
+continent? They speak a tongue distinct from all other Indian tribes;
+they have ceremonies and feasts wholly different, too, from the feasts
+and ceremonies of other nations; they are at war with every nation that
+touches the wide circle of their boundaries; the Crows, the Flatheads,
+the Kootenies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, the Crees, the Plain
+Assineboines, the Minnitarrees, all are and have been the inveterate
+enemies of the five confederate nations which form together the great
+Blackfeet tribe. Long years ago, when their great forefather crossed the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun and settled along the sources of the
+Missouri and the South Saskatchewan, so runs the legend of their old
+chiefs, it came to pass that a chief had three sons, Kenna, or The Blood,
+Peaginou, or The Wealth, and a third who was nameless. The two first were
+great hunters, they brought to their father's lodge rich store of moose
+and elk meat, and the buffalo fell before their unerring arrows; but the
+third, or nameless one, ever returned empty-handed from the chase, until
+his brothers mocked him for his want of skill. One day the old chief said
+to this unsuccessful hunter, "My son, you cannot kill the moose, your
+arrows shun the buffalo, the elk is too fleet for your footsteps, and
+your brothers mock you because you bring no meat into the lodge; but see,
+I will make you a great hunter." And the old chief took from the
+lodge-fire a piece of burnt stick, and, wetting it, he rubbed the feet of
+his son with the blackened charcoal, and he named him Sat-Sia-qua, or The
+Blackfeet, and evermore Sat-Sia-qua was a mighty hunter, and his arrows
+flew straight to the buffalo, and his feet moved swift in the chase. From
+these three sons are descended the three tribes of Blood, Peaginou, and
+Blackfeet, but in addition, for many generations, two other tribes or
+portions of tribes have been admitted into the confederacy; These are the
+Sircies, on the north, a branch, or offshoot from the Chipwayans of the
+Athabasca; and the Gros Ventres, or Atsinas, on the southeast, a branch
+from the Arrapahoe nation who dwelt along the sources of the Platte. How
+these branches became detached from the parent stocks has never been
+determined, but to this day they speak the languages of their original
+tribe in addition to that of the adopted one. The parent tongue of the
+Sircies is harsh and guttural, that of the Blackfeet is rich and musical;
+and while the Sircies always speak Blackfeet in addition to their own
+tongue, the Blackfeet rarely master the language of the Sircies.
+
+<p>War, as we have already said, is the sole toil and thought of the red
+man's life. He has three great causes of fight: to steal a horse, take a
+scalp, or get a wife. I regret to have to write that the possession of a
+horse is valued before that of a wife-and this has been the case for many
+years. "A horse," writes McKenzie, "is valued at ten guns, a woman is
+only worth one gun;" but at that time horses were scarcer than at
+present. Horses have been a late importation, comparatively speaking,
+into the Indian country. They travelled rapidly north from Mexico, and
+the prairies soon became covered with the Spanish mustang, for whose
+possession the red man killed his brother with singular pertinacity. The
+Indian to-day believes that the horse has ever dwelt with him on the
+Western deserts, but that such is not the case his own language
+undoubtedly tells. It is curious to compare the different names which the
+wild men gave the new-comer who was destined to work such evil among
+them. In Cree, a dog is called "Atim," and a horse, "Mistatim," or the
+"Big Dog." In the Assineboine tongue the horse is called "Sho-a-th-in-ga,"
+"Thongatch shonga," a great dog. In Blackfeet, "Po-no-ka-mi-taa" signifies
+the horse; and "Po-no-ko" means red deer, and "Emita," a dog--the "Red-deer
+Dog." But the Sircies made the best name of all for the new-comer; they
+called him the "Chistli" "Chis," seven, "Li," dogs "Seven Dogs." Thus
+we have him called the big dog, the great dog, the red-deer dog, the
+seven dogs, and the red dog, or "It-shou-ma-shungu," by the Gros Ventres.
+The dog was their universal beast of burthen, and so they multiplied the
+name in many ways to enable it to define the Superior powers of the
+new beast.
+
+<p>But a far more formidable enemy than Crow or Cree has lately come in
+contact with the Blackfeet--an enemy before whom all his stratagem, all
+his skill with lance or arrow, all his dexterity of horsemanship is of no
+avail. The "Moka-manus" (the Big-knives), the white men, have pushed up
+the great Missouri River into the heart of the Blackfeet country, the
+fire-canoes have forced their way along the muddy waters, and behind them
+a long chain of armed posts have arisen to hold in check the wild roving
+races of Dakota and the Montana. It is a useless struggle that which
+these Indians wage against their latest and most deadly enemy, but
+nevertheless it is one in which the sympathy of any brave heart must lie
+on the side of the savage. Here, at the head-waters of the great River
+Missouri which finds its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico-here, pent up
+against the barriers of the "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the Blackfeet
+offer a last despairing struggle to the ever-increasing tide that hems
+them in. It is not yet two years since a certain citizen soldier of the
+United States made a famous raid against a portion of this tribe at the
+head-waters of the Missouri. It so happened that I had the opportunity of
+hearing this raid described from the rival points of view of the Indian
+and the white man, and, if possible, the brutality of the latter--brutality
+which was gloried in--exceeded the relation of the former. Here is
+the story of the raid as told me by a miner whose "pal" was present in
+the scene. "It was a little afore day when the boys came upon two
+redskins in a gulch near-away to the Sun River" (the Sun River flows into
+the Missouri, and the forks lie below Benton). "They caught the darned
+red devils and strapped them on a horse, and swore that if they didn't
+just lead the way to their camp that they'd blow their b---- brains out;
+and Jim Baker wasn't the coon to go under if he said he'd do it--no, you
+bet he wasn't. So the red devils showed the trail, and soon the boys came
+out on a wide gulch, and saw down below the lodges of the Pagans. Baker
+just says, 'Now, boys, says he, 'thar's the devils, and just you go in
+and clear them out. No darned prisoners, you know; Uncle Sam ain't agoin'
+to keep prisoners, I guess. No darned squaws or young uns, but just
+kill'em all, squaws and all; it's them squaws what breeds'em, and them
+young uns will only be horse-thieves or hair-lifters when they grows up;
+so just make a clean shave of the hull brood. Wall, mister, ye see, the
+boys jist rode in among the lodges afore daylight, and they killed every
+thing that was able to come out of the tents, for, you see, the redskins
+had the small-pox bad, they had, and a heap of them couldn't come out
+nohow; so the boys jist turned over the lodges and fixed them as they lay
+on the ground. Thar was up to 170 of them Pagans wiped out that mornin',
+and thar was only one of the boys sent under by a redskin firing out at
+him from inside a lodge. I say, mister, that Baker's a bell-ox among
+sodgers, you bet."
+
+<p>One month after this slaughter on the Sun River a band of Peagins were
+met on the Bow River by a French missionary priest, the only missionary
+whose daring spirit has carried him into the country of these redoubled
+tribes. They told him of the cruel loss their tribe had suffered at the
+hands of the "Long-knives;" but they spoke of it as the fortune of war,
+as a thing to be deplored, but to be also revenged: it was after the
+manner of their own war, and it did not strike them as brutal or
+cowardly; for, alas! they knew no better. But what shall be said of these
+heroes--the outscourings of Europe--who, under the congenial guidance of
+that "bell-ox" soldier Jim Baker, "wiped out them Pagan redskins"? This
+meeting of the missionary with the Indians was in: its way singular. The
+priest, thinking that the loss of so many lives would teach the tribe how
+useless must be a war carried on against-the Americans, and how its end
+must inevitably be the complete destruction of the Indians, asked the
+chief to assemble his band to listen to his counsel and advice. They met
+together in the council-tent, and then the priest began. He told them
+that "their recent loss was only the beginning of their destruction, that
+the Long knives had countless braves, guns and rifles beyond number,
+fleet steeds, and huge war-canoes, and that it was useless for the poor
+wild man to attempt to stop their progress through the great Western
+solitudes." He asked them "why were their faces black and their hearts
+heavy? was it not for their relatives and friends so lately killed, and
+would it not be better to make peace while yet they could do it, and thus
+save the lives of their remaining friends?"
+
+<p>While thus he spoke there reigned a deep silence through the council-tent,
+each one looked fixedly at the ground before him; but when the
+address was over the chief rose quietly, and, casting around a look full
+of dignity, he asked, "My brother, have you done, or is there aught you
+would like yet to say to us?"
+
+<p>To this the priest made answer that he had no more to say.
+
+<p>"It is well," answered the Indian; "and listen now to what I say to you;
+but first," he said, turning to his men, "you, my brethren, you, my sons,
+who sit around me, if there should be aught in my words from which you
+differ, if I say one word that you would not say yourselves, stop me, and
+say to this black-robe I speak with a forked tongue." Then, turning again
+to the priest, he continued, "You have spoken true, your words come
+straight; the Long-knives are too many and too strong for us; their guns
+shoot farther than ours, their big guns shoot twice" (alluding to shells
+which exploded after they fell); "their numbers are as the buffalo were
+in the days of our fathers. But what of all that? do you want us to
+starve on the land which is ours? to lie down as slaves to the white man,
+to die away one by one in misery and hunger? It is true that the
+long-knives must kill us, but I say still, to my children and to my
+tribe, fight on, fight on, fight on! go on fighting to the very last man;
+and let that last man go on fighting too, for it is better to die thus,
+as a brave man should die, than to live a little time and then die like a
+coward. So now, my brethren, I tell you, as I have told you before, keep
+fighting still. When you see these men coming along the river, digging
+holes in the ground and looking for the little bright sand" (gold), "kill
+them, for they mean to kill you; fight, and if it must be, die, for you
+can only die once, and it is better to die than to starve."
+
+<p>He ceased, and a universal hum of approval running through the dusky
+warriors told how truly the chief had spoken the thoughts of his
+followers; Again he said, "What does the white man want in our land? You
+tell us he is rich and strong, and has plenty of food to eat; for what
+then does he come to our land? We have only the buffalo, and he takes
+that from us. See the buffalo, how they dwell with us; they care not for
+the closeness of our lodges, the smoke of our camp-fires does not fright
+them, the shouts of our young men will not drive them away; but behold
+how they flee from the sight, the sound, and the smell of the white man!
+Why does he take the land from us? who sent him here? He puts up sticks,
+and he calls the land his land, the river his river, the trees his trees.
+Who gave him the ground, and the water, and the trees? was it the Great
+Spirit? No; for the Great Spirit gave to us the beasts and the fish, and
+the white man comes to take the waters and the ground where these fishes
+and these beasts live--why does he not take the sky as well as the
+ground? We who have dwelt on these prairies ever since the stars fell"
+(an epoch from which the Blackfeet are fond of dating, their antiquity)
+"do not put sticks over the land and say, Between these sticks this land
+is mine; you shall not come here or go there."
+
+<p>Fortunate is it for these Blackfeet tribes that their hunting grounds lie
+partly on British territory--from where our midday camp was made on the
+2nd December to the boundary-line at the 49th parallel, fully 180 miles
+of plain knows only the domination of the Blackfeet tribes. Here, around
+this midday camp, lies spread a fair and fertile land; but close by,
+scarce half a day's journey to the south, the sandy plains begin to
+supplant the rich grass-covered hills, and that immense central desert
+commences to spread out those ocean-like expanses which find their
+southern limits far down by the waters of the Canadian River,1200 miles
+due south of the Saskatchewan. This immense central sandy plateau is the
+true home of the bison. Here were raised for countless ages these huge
+herds whose hollow tramp shook the solid roof of America during the
+countless cycles which it remained unknown to man. Here, too, was the
+true home of the Indian: the Commanche, the Apache, the Kio-wa, the
+Arapahoe, the Shienne, the Crow, the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Omahaw, the
+Mandan, the Manatarree, the Blackfeet, the Cree, and the Assineboine
+divided between them the immense region, warring and wandering through
+the vast expanses until the white race from the East pushed their way
+into the land, and carved out states and territories from the Mississippi
+to the Rocky Mountains. How it came to pass in the building of the world
+that to the north of that great region of sand and waste should spread
+out suddenly the fair country of the Saskatchewan, I must leave to the
+guess-work of other and more scientific writers; but the fact remains,
+that alone, from Texas to the sub-Arctic forest, the Saskatchewan Valley
+lays its fair length for 800 miles in mixed fertility.
+
+<p>But we must resume our Western way. The evening of the 3rd December found
+us crossing a succession of wooded hills which divide the water system of
+the North from that of the South Saskatchewan. These systems come so
+close together at this region, that while my midday kettle was filled
+with water which finds its way through Battle River into the North
+Saskatchewan, that of my evening meal was taken from the ice of the
+Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's; River, whose waters seek through Red Deer
+River the South Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>It was near sunset when we rode by the lonely shores of the Gull Lake,
+whose frozen surface stretched beyond the horizon to the north. Before
+us, at a distance of some ten miles, lay the abrupt line of the Three
+Medicine Hills, from whose gorges the first view of the great range of
+the Rocky Mountains was destined to burst upon my sight; But not on this
+day was I to behold that long-looked-for vision. Night came quickly down
+upon the silent wilderness; and it was long after dark when we made our
+camps by the bank of the Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's River, and turned
+adrift the weary horses to graze in a well-grassed meadow lying in one of
+the curves of the river. We had ridden more than sixty miles that day.
+
+<p>About midnight a heavy storm of snow burst upon us, and daybreak revealed
+the whole camp buried deep in snow. As I threw back the blankets from my
+head (one always lies covered up completely), the wet, cold mass struck
+chillily upon my face. The snow was wet and sticky, and therefore things
+were much more wretched than if the temperature had been lower; but the
+hot tea made matters seem brighter, and about breakfast-time the snow
+ceased to fall and the clouds began to clear away. Packing our wet
+blankets together, we set out for the three Medicine Hills, through whose
+defiles our course lay; the snow was deep in the narrow valleys, making
+travelling slower and more laborious than before. It was midday when,
+having rounded the highest of the three hills, we entered a narrow gorge
+fringed with a fire-ravaged forest. This gorge wound through the hills,
+preventing a far-reaching view ahead; but at length its western
+termination was reached, and there lay before me a sight to be long
+remembered. The great chain of the Rocky Mountains rose their snow-clad
+sierras in endless succession. Climbing one of the eminences, I gained a
+vantage-point on the summit from which some by-gone fire had swept the
+trees. Then, looking west, I beheld the great range in unclouded glory.
+The snow had cleared the atmosphere, the sky was coldly bright. An
+immense plain stretched from my feet to the mountain--a plain so vast
+that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one
+continuous level, and at the back of this level, beyond the pines and the
+lakes and the river-courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable,
+silent--a mighty barrier rising-midst an immense land, standing sentinel
+over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes
+of this Great Lone Land. Here, at last, lay the Rocky Mountains.
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-05"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-05.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AT THE SOURCES OF THE SASKATCHEWAN.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p>Leaving behind the Medicine Hills, we descended into the plain and held
+our way until sunset towards the west. It was a calm and beautiful
+evening; far away objects stood out sharp and distinct in the pure
+atmosphere of these elevated regions. For some hours we had lost sight of
+the mountains, but shortly before sunset the summit of a long ridge was
+gained, and they burst suddenly into view in greater magnificence than at
+midday. Telling my men to go on and make the camp at the Medicine River,
+I rode through some fire-wasted forest to a lofty grass-covered height
+which the declining sun was bathing in floods of glory. I cannot hope to
+put into the compass of words the scene which lay rolled beneath from
+this sunset-lighted eminence; for, as I looked over the immense plain and
+watched the slow descent of the evening sun upon the frosted crest of
+these lone mountains, it seemed as if the varied scenes of my long
+journey had woven themselves into the landscape, filling with the music
+of memory the earth, the sky, and the mighty panorama of mountains. Here
+at length lay the barrier to my onward wanderings, here lay the boundary
+to that 4000 miles of unceasing travel which had carried me by so many
+varied scenes so far into the lone-land; and other thoughts were not
+wanting. The peaks on which I gazed were no pigmies; they stood the
+culminating monarchs of the mighty range of the Rocky Mountains. From the
+estuary of the Mackenzie to the Lake of Mexico no point of the American
+continent reaches higher to the skies. That eternal crust of snow seeks
+in summer widely-severed oceans. The Mackenzie, the Columbia, and the
+Saskatchewan spring from the peaks whose teeth-like summits lie grouped
+from this spot into the compass of a single glance. The clouds that cast
+their moisture upon this long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean
+which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic,
+Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness
+began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the
+pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in
+many-coloured silver, and then the lonely peaks grew dark and dim.
+
+<p>As thus I watched from the silent hill-top this great mountain-chain,
+whose summits slept in the glory of the sunset, it seemed no stretch of
+fancy which made the red man place his paradise beyond their golden
+peaks. The "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the "Bridge of the World,"
+Thus he has named them, and beyond them the soul first catches a glimpse
+of that mystical land where the tents are pitched midst everlasting
+verdure and countless herds and the music of ceaseless streams.
+
+<p>That night there came a frost, the first of real severity that had fallen
+upon us. At daybreak next morning, the 5th December, my thermometer
+showed 22 degrees below zero, and, in spite of buffalo boots and moose
+"mittaines," the saddle proved a freezing affair; many a time I got down
+and trotted on in front of my horse until feet and hands, cased as they
+were, began to be felt again. But the morning, though piercingly cold,
+was bright with sunshine, and the snowy range was lighted up in many a
+fair hue, and the contrasts of pine wood and snow and towering wind-swept
+cliff showed in rich beauty. As the day wore on we entered the pine
+forest which stretches to the base of the mountains, and emerged suddenly
+upon the high banks of the Saskatchewan. The river here ran in a deep,
+wooded valley, over the western extremity of which rose the Rocky
+Mountains; the windings of the river showed distinctly from the height on
+which we stood; and in mid-distance the light blue smoke of the Mountain
+House curled in fair contrast from amidst a mass of dark green pines.
+
+<p>Leaving my little party to get my baggage across the Clear Water River, I
+rode on ahead to the fort. While yet a long way off we had been descried
+by the watchful eyes of some Rocky Mountain Assineboines, and our arrival
+had been duly telegraphed to the officer in charge. As usual, the
+excitement was intense to know what the strange party could mean. The
+denizens of the place looked upon themselves as closed up for the
+winter, and the arrival of a party with a baggage-cart at such a time
+betokened something unusual. Nor was this excitement at all lessened when
+in answer to a summons from the opposite bank of the Saskatchewan I
+announced my name and place of departure. The river was still open, its
+rushing waters had resisted so far the efforts of the winter to cover
+them up, but the ice projected a considerable distance from either shore;
+the open water in the centre was, however, shallow, and when the rotten
+ice had been cut away on each side I was able to force my horse into it.
+In he went with a great splash, but he kept his feet nevertheless; then
+at the other side the people of the fort had cut away the ice too, and
+again the horse scrambled safely up. The long ride to the West was over;
+exactly forty-one days earlier I had left Red River, and in twenty-seven
+days of actual travel I had ridden 1180 miles.
+
+<p>The Rocky Mountain House of the Hudson Bay Company stands in a level
+meadow which is clear of trees, although dense forest lies around it at
+some little distance. It is indifferently situated with regard to the
+Indian trade, being too far from the Plain Indians, who seek in the
+American posts along the Missouri a nearer and more profitable exchange
+for their goods; while the wooded district in which it lies produces furs
+of a second-class quality, and has for years been deficient in game. The
+neighbouring forest, however, supplies a rich store of the white spruce
+for boat-building, and several full-sized Hudson Bay boats are built
+annually at the fort. Coal of very fair quality is also plentiful along
+the river banks, and the forge glows with the ruddy light of a real coal
+fire--a friendly sight when one has not seen it during many months. The
+Mountain House stands within the limits of the Rocky Mountain
+Assineboines, a branch of-the once famous Assineboines of the Plains
+whose wars in times not very remote made them the terror of the prairies
+which lie between the middle Missouri and the Saskatchewan. The
+Assineboines derive their name, which signifies "stone-heaters," from a
+custom in vogue among them before the advent of the traders into their
+country. Their manner of boiling meat was as follows: a round hole was
+scooped in the earth, and into the hole was sunk a piece of raw hide;
+this was filled with water, and the buffalo meat placed in it, then a
+fire was lighted close by and a number of round stones made red hot; in
+this state they were dropped into, or held in, the water, which was thus
+raised to boiling temperature and the meat cooked. When the white man
+came he sold his kettle to the stone-heaters, and henceforth the practice
+disappeared, while the name it had given rise to remained--a name which
+long after the final extinction of the tribe will still exist in the
+River Assineboine and its surroundings. Nothing testifies more
+conclusively to the varied changes and vicissitude's Indian tribes than
+the presence of this branch of the Assineboine nation in the pine forests
+of the Rocky Mountains. It is not yet a hundred years since the
+"Ossinepoilles" were found by one of the earliest traders inhabiting the
+country between the head of the Pasquayah or Saskatchewan and the
+country of the Sioux, a stretch of territory fully 900 miles in length.
+
+<p>Twenty years later they still were numerous along the whole line of the
+North Saskatchewan, and their lodges were at intervals seen along a
+river line of 800 miles in length, but even then a great change had come
+upon them. In 1780 the first epidemic of small-pox swept over the Western
+plains, and almost annihilated the powerful Assineboines. The whole
+central portion of the tribe was destroyed, but the outskirting portions
+drew together and again made themselves a terror to trapper and trader.
+In 1821 they were noted for their desperate forays, and for many years
+later a fierce conflict raged between them and the Blackfeet; under the
+leadership of a chief still famous in Indian story--Tehatka, or the
+"Left-handed;" they for a long time more than held their own against
+these redoubtable warriors. Tehatka was a medicine-man of the first
+order, and by the exercise of his superior cunning and dream power he was
+implicitly relied on by his followers; at length fortune deserted him,
+and he fell in a bloody battle with the Gros Ventres near the Knife
+River, a branch of the Missouri, in 1837. About the same date small-pox
+again swept the tribe, and they almost disappeared from the prairies. The
+Crees too pressed down from the North and East, and occupied a
+great-portion of their territory; the Blackfeet smote them hard on the
+south-west frontier; and thus, between foes and disease, the Assineboines
+of to-day have dwindled down into far-scattered remnants of tribes.
+Warned by the tradition of the frightful losses of earlier times from the
+ravages of small-pox, the Assineboines this year kept far out in the
+great central prairie along the coteau, and escaped the infection
+altogether, but their cousins, the Rocky Mountain Stonies, were not so
+fortunate, they lost some of their bravest men during the pre ceding
+summer and autumn. Even under the changed circumstances of their present
+lives, dwelling amidst the forests and rocks instead of in the plains and
+open country, these Assineboines of the Mountains retain many of the
+better characteristics of their race; they are brave and skilful men,
+good hunters of red deer, moose, and big horn, and are still held in
+dread by the Blackfeet, who rarely venture into their country. They are
+well acquainted with the valleys and passes through the mountains, and
+will probably take a horse over as rough ground as any men in the
+creation.
+
+<p>At the ford on the Clear Water River, half a mile from the Mountain
+House, a small clump of old pine-trees stands on the north side of the
+stream. A few years ago a large band of Blood Indians camped round this
+clump of pines during a trading expedition to the Mountain House. They
+were under the leadership of two young chiefs, brothers. One evening a
+dispute about some trifling matter arose, words ran high, there was a
+flash of a scalping-knife, a plunge, and one brother reeled back with a
+fearful gash in his side, the other stalked slowly to his tent, and sat
+down silent and impassive. The wounded man loaded his gun, and keeping
+the fatal wound closed together with one hand walked steadily to his
+brothers tent; pulling back the door-casing, he placed the muzzle of his
+gun to the heart of the man who sat immovable all the time, and shot him
+dead, then, removing his hand from his own mortal wound, he fell lifeless
+beside his brother's body. They buried the two brothers in the same grave
+by the shadow of the dark pine-trees. The band to which the chiefs
+belonged broke up and moved away into the great plains--the reckoning of
+blood had been paid, and the account was closed. Many tales of Indian war
+and revenge could I tell--tales gleaned from trader and missionary and
+voyageur, and told by camp-fire or distant trading post, but there is no
+time to recount them now, a long period of travel lies before me and I
+must away to enter upon it; the scattered thread must be gathered up and
+tied together too quickly, perhaps, for the success of this wandering
+story, but not an hour too soon for the success of another expedition
+into a still farther and more friendless region. Eight days passed
+pleasantly at the Mountain House; rambles by day into the neighbouring
+hills, stories of Indian life and prairie scenes at the evening fire
+filled up the time, and it was near mid-December before I thought of
+moving my quarters.
+
+<p>The Mountain House is perhaps the most singular specimen of an Indian
+trading post to be found in the wide territory of the Hudson Bay Company.
+Every precaution known to the traders has been put in force to prevent
+the possibility of surprise during "a trade." Bars and bolts and places
+to fire down at the Indians who are trading abound in every direction; so
+dreaded is the name borne by the Black feet, that it is thus their
+trading post has been constructed. Some fifty years ago the Company had
+a post far south on the Bow River in the very heart of the Blackfeet
+country. Despite of all precautions it was frequently plundered And at
+last burnt down by the Blackfeet, and since that date no attempt has ever
+been made to erect another fort in their country.
+
+<p>Still, I believe the Blackfeet and their confederates are not nearly so
+bad as they have been painted, those among the Hudson Bay Company who are
+best acquainted with them are of the same opinion, and, to use the words
+of Pe to-pee, or the Perched Eagle, to Dr. Hector in 1857, "We see but
+little of the white man," he said, "and our young men do not know how to
+behave; but if you come among us, the chiefs will restrain the young men,
+for we have power over them. But look at the Crees, they have long lived
+in the company of white men, and nevertheless they are just like dogs,
+they try to bite when your head is turned--they have no manners; but the
+Blackfeet have large hearts and they love to show hospitality." Without
+going the length of Pe-to-pee in this estimate of the virtues of his
+tribe, I am still of opinion that under proper management these wild
+wandering men might be made trusty friends. We have been too much
+inclined to believe all the bad things said of them by other tribes, and,
+as they are at war with every nation around them, the wickedness of the
+Blackfeet'has grown into a proverb among men. But to go back to the
+trading house. When the Blackfeet arrive on a trading visit to the
+Mountain House they usually come in large numbers, prepared for a brush
+with either Crees or Stonies. The camp is formed at some distance from
+the fort, and the braves, having piled their robes, leather, and
+provisions on the backs of their wives or their horses, approach in long
+cavalcade. The officer goes out to meet them, and the gates are closed.
+Many speeches are made, and the chief, to show his "big heart," usually
+piles on top of a horse a heterogeneous mass of buffalo robes, pemmican,
+and dried meat, and hands horse and all he carries over to the trader.
+After such a present no man can possibly enter tain for a moment a doubt
+upon the subject of the big-heartedness of the donor, but if, in the
+trade which ensues: after this present has been made, it should happen
+that fifty horses are bought by the Company, not one of all the band will
+cost so dear as that which demonstrates the large heartedness of the
+brave.
+
+<p>Money-values are entirely unknown in these trades. The values of articles
+are computed by "skins;" for instance, a horse will be reckoned at 60
+skins; and these 60 skins will be given thus: a gun, 15 skins; a capote,
+10 skins; a blanket, 10 skins; ball and powder, 10 skins; tobacco, 15
+skins total, 60 skins. The Bull Ermine, or the Four Bears, or the Red
+Daybreak, or whatever may be the brave's name, hands over the horse, and
+gets in return a blanket, a gun, a capote, ball and powder, and tobacco.
+The term "skin" is a very old one in the fur trade; the original
+standard, the beaver skin or, as it was called, "the made beaver" was
+the medium of exchange, and every other skin and article of trade was
+graduated upon the scale of the beaver; thus a beaver, or a skin, was
+reckoned equivalent to 1 mink skin, one marten was equal to 2 skins, one
+black fox 20 skins, and so on; in the same manner, a blanket, a capote, a
+gun, or a kettle had their different values in skins. This being
+explained, we will now proceed with the trade.
+
+<p>Sapoomaxica, or the Big Crow's Foot, having demonstrated the bigness of
+his heart, and received in return a tangible proof of the corresponding
+size of the trader's, addresses his braves, cautioning them against
+violence or rough behaviour. The braves, standing ready with their
+peltries, are in a high state of excitement to begin the trade. Within
+the fort all the preparations have been completed, communication cut off
+between the Indian room and the rest of the buildings, guns placed up in
+the loft overhead, and men all get ready for any thing that might turn
+up; then the outer gate is thrown open, and a large throng enters the
+Indian room. Three or four of the first-comers are now admitted through
+a narrow passage into the trading-shop, from the shelves of which most
+of the blankets, red cloth, and beads have been removed, for the red man
+brought into the presence of so much finery would unfortunately behave
+very much after the manner of a hungry boy put in immediate
+juxtaposition to bath-buns, cream-cakes, and jam-fritters, to the
+complete collapse of profit upon the trade to the Hudson Bay Company.
+The first Indians admitted hand in their peltries through a wooden
+grating, and receive in exchange so many blankets, beads, or strouds.
+Out they go to the large hall where their comrades are anxiously
+awaiting their turn, and in rush another batch, and the doors are locked
+again. The reappearance of the fortunate braves with the much-coveted
+articles of finery adds immensely to the excitement. What did they see
+inside? "Oh, not much, only a few dozen blankets and a few guns, and a
+little tea and sugar;" this is terrible news for the outsiders, and the
+crush to get\in increases tenfold, under the belief that the good things
+will all be gone. So the trade progresses, until at last all the
+peltries and provisions have changed hands, and there is nothing more to
+be traded; but some times things do not run quite so smoothly.
+Sometimes, when the stock of pemmican or robes is small, the braves
+object to see their "pile" go for a little parcel of tea or sugar. The
+steelyard and weighing-balance are their especial objects of dislike.
+"What for you put on one side tea or sugar, and on the other a little
+bit of iron?" they say; "we don't know what that medicine is-but, look
+here, put on one side of that thing that swings a bag of pemmican, and
+put on the other side blankets and tea and sugar, and then, when the two
+sides stop swinging, you take the bag of pemmican and we will take the
+blankets and the tea: that would be fair, for one side will be as big as
+the other." This is a very bright idea on the part of the Four Bears,
+and elicits universal satisfaction all round. Four Bears and his
+brethren are, however, a little bit put out of conceit when the trader
+observes, "Well, let be as you say. We will make the balance swing
+level between the bag of pemmican and the blankets, but we will carry
+out the idea still further. You will put your marten skins and your
+otter and fisher skins on one side, I will put against them on the other
+my blankets, and my gun and ball and powder; then, when both sides are
+level, you will take the ball and powder and the blankets, and I will
+take the marten and the rest of the fine furs." This proposition throws
+a new light upon the question of weighing-machines and steelyards, and,
+after some little deliberation, it is resolved to abide by the old plan
+of letting the white trader decide the weight himself in his own way,
+for it is clear that the steelyard is a great medicine which no brave
+can understand, and which can only be manipulated by a white
+medicine-man.
+
+<p>This white medicine-man was in olden times a terrible demon in the eyes'
+of the Indian. His power reached far into the plains; he possessed three
+medicines of the very highest order: his heart could sing, demons sprung
+from the light of his candle, and he had a little box stronger than the
+strongest Indian. When a large band of the Blackfeet would assemble at
+Edmonton, years ago, the Chief Factor would-win-dup his musical box, get
+his magic lantern ready, and take out his galvanic battery. Imparting
+with the last-named article a terrific shock to the frame of the Indian
+chief, he would warn him that far out in the plains he could at will
+inflict the same medicine upon him if he ever behaved badly. "Look," he
+would say, "now my heart beats for you," then the spring of the little
+musical box concealed under his coat would be touched, and lo! the heart
+of the white trader would sing with the strength of his love for the
+Blackfeet. "To-morrow I start to cross the mountains against the Nez
+Perces," a chief would say, "what says my white brother, don't he dream
+that my arm will be strong in battle, and that the scalps and horses of
+the Nez Perces will be ours?" "I have dreamt that you are to draw one of
+these two little sticks which I hold in my hand. If you draw the right
+one, your arm will be strong, your eye keen, the horses of the Nez Perces
+will be yours; but, listen, the fleetest horse must come to me; you will
+have to give me the best steed in the band of the Nez Perces. Woe betide
+you if you should draw the wrong stick!" Trembling with fear, the
+Blackfoot would approach and draw the bit of wood. "My brother, you are a
+great chief, you have drawn the right stick--your fortune is assured,
+go." Three weeks later a magnificent horse, the pride of some Nez Perce
+chief on the lower Columbia, would be led into the fort on the
+Saskatchewan, and when next the Blackfoot chief came to visit the white
+medicine-man a couple of freshly taken scalps would dangle from his spear
+shaft.
+
+<p>In former times, when rum was used in the trade, the most frightful
+scenes were in the habit of occurring in the Indian room. The fire-water,
+although freely diluted with water soon reduced the assemblage to a state
+of wild hilarity, quickly followed by stupidity and sleep. The fire-water
+for the Crees was composed of three parts of water to one of spirit,
+that of the Blackfeet, seven of water to one of spirit, but so potent is
+the power which alcohol in any shape his well-diluted liquor, was wont to
+become helplessly intoxicated. The trade usually began with a present
+of-fire water all round--then the business went on apace. 'Horses, robes,
+tents, provisions, all would be proffered for one more drink at the
+beloved poison. Nothing could exceed the excitement inside the tent,
+except it was the excitement outside. There the anxious crowd could only
+learn by hearsay what was going on within. Now and then a brave, with an
+amount of self-abnegation worthy of a better cause, would issue from the
+tent with his cheeks distended and his mouth full of the fire-water, and
+going along the ranks of his friends he would squirt a little of the
+liquor into the open mouths of his less fortunate brethren.
+
+<p>But things did not always go so smoothly. Knives were wont to flash,
+shots to be fired--even-now the walls of the Indian rooms at Fort Pitt
+and Edmonton show many traces of bullet marks and knife hacking done in
+the wild fury of the intoxicated savage. Some ten years ago this most
+baneful distribution was stopped by the Hudson Bay Company in the
+Saskatchewan district, but the free traders still continued to employ
+alcohol as a means of acquiring the furs belonging to the Indians. I was
+the bearer of an Order in Council from the Lieutenant-Governor
+prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the sale, distribution, or possession
+of alcohol, and this law, if hereafter enforced, will do much to remove
+at least one leading source of Indian demoralization.
+
+<p>The universal passion for dress is strangely illustrated in the Western
+Indian. His ideal of perfection is the English costume of some forty
+years ago. The tall chimney-pot hat with round narrow brim, the coat with
+high collar going up over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow.
+All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this
+ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all
+beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large
+feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago
+in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of
+considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at
+all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most
+ridiculous-looking costume a Blackfeet chief will readily exchange his
+beautifully-dressed deerskin Indian shirt embroidered with porcupine
+quills and ornamented with the raven locks of his enemies--his head-dress
+of ermine skins, his flowing buffalo robe: a dress in which he looks
+every inch a savage king for one in which he looks every inch a foolish
+savage. But the new dress does not long survive--bit by bit it is found
+unsuited to the wild work which its: owner has to perform; and although
+it never loses the high estimate originally set upon it, it,
+nevertheless, is discarded by virtue of the many inconveniences arising
+out of running buffalo in'a tall beaver,-or fighting in a tail coat
+against Crees.
+
+<p>During the days spent in the Mountain House I enjoyed the society of the
+most enterprising and best informed missionary in the Indian countries-M.
+la Combe. This gentleman, a native of Lower Canada, has devoted himself
+for more than twenty years to the Blackfeet and Crees of the far-West,
+sharing their sufferings, their hunts, their summer journeys, and their
+winter camps--sharing even, unwillingly, their war forays and night
+assaults. The devotion which he has evinced towards these poor wild
+warriors has not been thrown away upon them, and Pèere la Combe is the
+only man who can pass and repass from Blackfoot camp to Cree camp with
+perfect impunity when these long-lasting enemies are at war. On one
+occasion he was camped with a small party of Blackfeet south of the. Red
+Deer River. It was night, and the lodges were silent and dark, all save
+one, the lodge of the chief, who had invited the black-robe to his tent
+for the night and was conversing with him as they lay on the buffalo
+robes, while the fire in the centre of the lodge burned clear and bright.
+Every thing was quiet, and no thought of war-party or lurking enemy was
+entertained. Suddenly a small dog put his head into the lodge. A dog is
+such an ordinary and inevitable nuisance in the camp of the Indians, that
+the missionary never even noticed the partial intrusion. Not so the
+Indian; he hissed out, "It is a Cree dog. We are surprised! run!" then,
+catching his gun in one hand and dragging his wife by the other, he
+darted from his tent into the darkness. Not one second too soon, for
+instantly there crashed through the leather lodge some score of bullets,
+and the wild war-whoop of the Crees broke forth through the sharp and
+rapid detonation of many muskets. The Crees were upon them in force.
+Darkness, and the want of a dashing leader on the part of the Crees,
+Saved the Blackfeet from total destruction, for nothing could have helped
+them had their enemies charged home; but as soon as the priest had
+reached the open which he did when he saw how matters stood-he called
+loudly to the Blackfeet not to run, but to stand and return the fire of
+their attackers. This timely advice checked the onslaught of the Crees,
+who were in numbers nmore than sufficient to make an end of the Blackfeet
+party in a few minutes. Mean time, the Blackfeet Women delved busily in
+the earth with knife and finger, while the men fired at random into the
+darkness. The lighted, semi-transparent tent of the chief had given a
+mark for the guns of the Crees; but that was quickly overturned, riddled'
+with balls and although the Crees continued to fire without intermission,
+their shots generally went high. Sometimes the Crees would charge boldly
+up to within a few feet of their enemies, then fire and rush back again,
+yelling all the time, and taunting their enemies. The père spent the
+night in attending to the wounded Blackfeet. When day dawned the Crees
+drew off to count their losses; but it was afterwards ascertained that
+eighteen of their braves had been killed or wounded, and of the small
+party of Blackfeet twenty had fallen--but who cared? Both sides kept
+their scalps, and that was every thing.
+
+<p>This battle served not a little to increase the reputation in which the
+missionary was held as a "great medicine-man." The Blackfeet ascribed to
+his "medicine" what was really due to his pluck; and the Crees, when they
+learnt that he had been with their enemies during the fight, at once
+found in that fact a satisfactory explanation for the want of courage
+they had displayed.
+
+<p>But it is time to quit the Mountain House, for winter has run on into
+mid-December, and 1500 miles have yet to be travelled, but not travelled
+towards the South. The most trusty guide, Piscan Munro, was away on the
+plains; and as day after day passed by, making the snow a little deeper
+and the cold a little colder, it was evident that the passage of the 400
+miles intervening between the Mountain House and the nearest American
+Fort had become almost an impossibility.
+
+<p><a name="ch18"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+<p>On the 12th of December I said "Good-bye" to my friends at the Mountain
+House, and, crossing the now ice-bound torrent of the Saskatchewan,
+turned my steps, for the first time during many months towards the East.
+With the same two men, and eight horses, I passed quickly through
+the snow-covered country. One day later I looked my last look at the
+far-stretching range of the Rocky Mountains from the lonely ridges of
+the Medicine Hills. Henceforth there would be no mountains. That immense
+region through which I had traveled--from Quebec to these Three Medicine
+Hills--has not a single mountain ridge in its long 3000 miles; woods,
+streams, and mighty rivers, ocean-lakes, rocks, hills, and prairies,
+but no mountains, no rough cloud-seeking summit on which to rest the
+eye that loves the bold outlined of peak and precipice.
+
+<p>"Ah! doctor, dear," Said an old Highland woman, dying in the Red River
+Settlement long years after she had left her Highland home--"Ah! doctor,
+dear, if I could but see a wee bit of hill I thinking I might get well
+again."
+
+<p>Camped that night near a beaver lodge on the Pas-co-pe, the conversation
+turned upon the mountains we had just left.
+
+<p>"Are they the greatest mountains in the world?" asked Paul Foyale.
+
+<p>"No, there are others nearly as big again."
+
+<p>"Is the Company there, too?" again inquired the faithful Paul.
+
+<p>I was obliged to admit that the Company did not exist in the country of
+these very big mountains, and I rather fear that the admission somewhat
+detracted from the altitude of the Himalayas in the estimation of my
+hearers.
+
+<p>About an hour before daybreak on the 16th of December a Very remarkable
+light was visible for some time in the zenith, A central orb, or heart of
+red and crimson light, became suddenly visible a little to the north of
+the zenith; around this most luminous centre was a great ring, or circle
+of bright light, and from this outer band there flashed innumerable rays
+far-into the surrounding darkness. As I looked at it, my thoughts
+traveled far away to the proud city by the Seine. Was she holding herself
+bravely against the German hordes? In olden times these weird lights of
+the sky were supposed only to flash forth when "kings or heroes" fell.
+Did the sky mirror the earth, even as the ocean mirrors the sky? While I
+looked at the gorgeous spectacle blazing above me, the great heart of
+France was red with the blood of her sons, and from the circles of the
+German league there flashed the glare of cannon round the doomed but
+defiant city.
+
+<p><a name="ch19"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER NINETEEN.</h3>
+
+<p>I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The Cabri Sack--A Cold
+Day--Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Reach Fort Pitt--The blind Cree--A Feast or
+a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+<p>I was now making my way back to Edmonton, with the intention of there
+exchanging my horses for dogs, and then endeavouring to make the return
+journey to Red River upon the ice of the River Saskatchewan. Dog
+travelling was a novelty. The cold had more than reached the limit at
+which the saddle is a safe mode of travel, and the horses suffered so
+much in pawing away the snow to get within reach of the grass lying
+underneath, that I longed to exchange them for the train of dogs, the
+painted cariole, and little baggage-sled. It took me four days to
+complete the arrangements necessary for my new journey; and, on the
+afternoon of the 20th December, I set out upon a long journey, with dogs,
+down the valley of the Saskatchewan. I little thought then of the
+distance before me; of the intense cold through which I was destined to
+travel during two entire months of most rigorous winter; how day by day
+the frost was to harden, the snow to deepen, all nature to sink more
+completely under the breath of the ice-king. And it was well that all
+this was hidden from me at the time, or perhaps I should have been
+tempted to remain during the winter at Edmonton, until the spring had set
+free once more the rushing waters of the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>Behold me then on the 20th of December starting from Edmonton with three
+trains of dogs--one to carry myself, the other two to drag provisions,
+baggage, and blankets and all the usual paraphernalia of winter travel.
+The cold which, with the exception of a few nights severe frost, had
+been so long-delayed now seemed determined to atone for lost time by
+becoming suddenly intense. On the night of the 21st December we reached,
+just at dusk, a magnificent clump of large pine-trees on the right bank
+of the river. During the afternoon the temperature had fallen below zero;
+a keen wind blew along-the frozen river, and the dogs and men were glad
+to clamber up the steep clayey bank into the thick shelter of the pine
+bluff', amidst whose dark-green recesses a huge fire was quickly alight.
+While here we sit in the ruddy blaze: of immense dry pine logs it will be
+well to say a few words on dogs and dog driving.
+
+<p>Dogs in the territories of the North-west have but one function--to haul.
+Pointer, setter, lurcher, foxhound, greyhound, Indian mongrel, miserable
+cur or beautiful Esquimaux, all alike are destined to pull a sled of some
+kind or other during, the months of snow and ice: all are destined to
+howl under the driver's lash; to tug wildly at the moose-skin collar; to
+drag until they can drag no more, and then to die. At what age a dog is
+put to haul I could never satisfactorily ascertain, but I have seen dogs
+doing some kind of hauling long be fore the peculiar expression of the
+puppy had left their countenances. Speaking now with the experience of
+nearly fifty days of dog travelling, and the knowledge of some twenty
+different trains of dogs of all sizes, ages, and degrees, watching them
+closely on the track and in the camp during 1300 miles of travel, I may
+claim, I think, some right to assert that I possess no inconsiderable
+insight into the habits, customs, and thoughts (for a dog thinks far
+better than many of his masters) of the hauling dog. When I look back
+again upon the long list of "Whiskies," "Brandies," "Chocolats,"
+"Corbeaus," "Tigres," "Tete Noirs," "Cerf Volants," "Pilots,"
+"Capitaines," "Cariboos," "muskymotes," "Coffees," and "Nichinassis" who
+individually and collectively did their best to haul me and my baggage
+over that immense waste of snow and ice, what a host of sadly resigned
+faces rises up in the dusky light of the fire! faces seared by whip-mark
+and blow of stick, faces mutely conscious that that master for whom the
+dog gives up every thing in this life was treating him in a most brutal
+manner. I do not for an instant mean to assert that these dogs were not,
+many of them, great rascals and rank imposters; but Just as slavery
+produces certain vices in the slave which it would be unfair to hold him
+accountable for, so does this perversion of the dog from his true use to
+that of a beast of burthen produce in endless variety traits of cunning
+and deception in the hauling-dog. To be a thorough expert in dog-training
+a man must be able to imprecate freely and with considerable variety in
+at least three different languages. But whatever number of tongues the
+driver may speak, one is indispensable to perfection in the art, and that
+is French: curses seem useful adjuncts in any language, but curses
+delivered in French will get a train of dogs through or over any thing.
+There is a good story told which illustrates this peculiar feature in
+dog-training. It is said that a high dignitary of the Church was once
+making a winter tour through his missions in the North-west. The driver,
+out of deference for his freight's profession, abstained from the use of
+forcible language to his dogs, and the hauling was very indifferently
+performed. Soon the train came to the foot of a hill, and notwithstanding
+all the efforts of the driver with whip and stick the dogs were unable to
+draw the cariole to the summit.
+
+<p>"Oh," said the Church dignitary, "this is not at all as good a train of
+dogs as the one you drove last year; why, they are unable to pull me up
+this hill!"
+
+<p>"No, monseigneur," replied the owner of the dogs, "but I am driving them
+differently; if you will only permit me to drive them in the old way you
+will see how easily they will pull the cariole to the top of this hill;
+they do not understand my new method."
+
+<p>"By all means," said the bishop; "drive them then in the usual manner."
+
+<p>Instantly there rang out a long string of "sacré chien," "sacré diable,"
+and still more unmentionable phrases. The effect-upon the dogs was
+magical; the cariole flew to the summit; the progress of the episcopal
+tour was undeniably expedited, and a-practical exposition was given of
+the poet's thought, "From seeming evil still aducing good."
+
+<p>Dogs in the Hudson Bay territories haul in various ways. The Esquimaux in
+the far North run their dogs abreast. The natives of Labrador and along
+the shores of Hudson Bay harness their dogs by many separate lines in a
+kind of band or pack, while in the Saskatchewan, and Mackenzie River
+territories the dogs are put one after the other, in tandem fashion. The
+usual number allowed to a complete train is four, but three, and
+sometimes even two are used. The train of four dogs is harnessed to the
+'cariole, or sled, by means of two long traces; between these traces the
+dogs stand one after the other, the head of one dog being about a foot
+behind the tail of the dog in front of him. They are attached to the
+traces by a round collar which slips on over the head and ears and then
+lies close on the swell of the neck; this collar buckles on each side to
+the traces, which are kept from touching the ground by a back-band of
+leather buttoned under the dog's ribs or stomach. This back band is
+generally covered with little brass bells; the collar is also hung with
+larger bells, and tufts of gay-coloured ribbons or fox-tails are put upon
+it. Great pride is taken in turning out a train of dogs in good style.
+Beads, bells, and embroidery are freely used to bedizen the poor brutes,
+and a most comical effect is produced by the appearance of so much finery
+upon the woefully frightened dog, who, when he is first put into his
+harness, usually looks the picture of fear. The fact is patent that in
+hauling the dog is put to a work from which his whole nature revolts,
+that is to say the ordinary dog; with the beautiful dog of the Esquimaux
+breed the case is very different. To haul is as natural to him as to
+point is natural to the pointer. He alone looks jolly over the work and
+takes to it kindly, and consequently he alone of all dogs is the best and
+most lasting hauler; longer than any other dog will his clean firm feet
+hold tough over the trying ice, and although other dogs will surpass him
+in the speed which they will maintain for a few days, he alone can travel
+his many hundreds of miles and finish fresh and hearty after all. It is a
+pleasure to sit behind such a train of dogs; it is a pain to watch the
+other poor brutes toiling at their traces. But, after all it is the same
+with dog-driving as with every other thing; there are dogs and there
+-are dogs, and the distance from one to the other is as, great as that
+between a Thames barge and a Cowes schooner.
+
+<p>The hauling-dogs day is a long tissue of trial. While yet the night is
+in its small hours, and the aurora is beginning to think of hiding its
+trembling lustre in the earliest dawn, the hauling-dog has his slumber
+rudely broken by the summons of his driver. Poor beast! All night long he
+has lain curled up in the roundest of round balls hard by the camp;
+there, in the lea of tree-stumps or snow-drift, he has dreamt the dreams
+of peace and comfort. If the night has been one of storm, the
+fast-falling flakes have added to his sense of warmth by covering him
+completely beneath them. Perhaps, too, he will remain unseen by the
+driver when the fatal moment comes for harnessing-up. Not a bit of it. He
+lies ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his
+hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and
+moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or
+aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along
+through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it
+is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If
+there is no track in the snow a man goes in front on snow-shoes, and the
+leading dog, or "foregoer," as he is called, trots close behind him. If
+there should be a track, however faint, the dog-will follow it himself;
+and when sight fails to show it, or storm has hidden it beneath drifts,
+his sense of smell will enable him to keep straight. Thus through the
+long waste we journey on, by frozen lakelet, by willow copse, through
+pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter's day draws to
+its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place
+for the night. Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his
+day's work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful,
+he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists
+himself a bed and goes fast asleep. But the real moment of pleasure is
+still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe,
+on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-06"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-06.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>LEAVING A COSY CAMP AT DAWN.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p>from the provision-sled, tells him that his is about to begin. He springs
+lightly up and watches eagerly these preparations for his supper. On
+the plains he receives a daily ration of 2 lbs. of pemmican. In the
+forest and lake country, where fish is the staple food, he gets two large
+white-fish raw. He prefers fish to meat, and will work better on it too.
+His supper is soon over; there is a short after-piece of growling and
+snapping at hungry comrade, and then he lies down out in the snow to
+dream that whips have been abolished and hauling is discarded for ever,
+sleeping peacefully until morning, unless indeed some band of wolves
+should prowl around and, scenting campfire, howl their long chorus to the
+midnight skies.
+
+<p>And now, with this introductory digression on dogs, let us return to our
+camp in the thick pine-bluff on the river bank.
+
+<p>The night fell very cold. Between supper and bed there is not much time
+when present cold and perspective early-rising are the chief features of
+the night and morning. I laid down my buffalo robe with more care than
+usual, and got into my sack of deer-skins with a notion that the night
+was going to be one of unusual severity. My sack of deer-skins--so far it
+has been scarcely mentioned in this journal, and yet it played no
+insignificant part in the nightly programme. Its origin and construction
+were simply these. Before leaving Red River I had received from a
+gentleman, well known in the Hudson Bay Company, some most useful
+suggestions as to winter travel. His residence of many years in the
+coldest parts of Labrador, and his long journey into the interior of that
+most wild and sterile land, had made him acquainted with all the
+vicissitudes of northern travel. Under his direction I had procured a
+number of the skins of the common cabri, or small deer, had them made
+into a large sack of some seven feet in length and three in diameter. The
+skin of this deer is very light, but possesses, for some reason with
+which I am unacquainted, a power of giving great warmth to the person it
+covers. The sack was made with the hair turned inside, and was covered on
+the outside with canvass. To make my bed, therefore, became a very simple
+operation: lay down a buffalo robe, unroll the sack, and the thing was
+done. To get into bed was simply to get into the sack, pull the hood over
+one's head, and go to sleep. Remember, there was no tent, no outer
+covering of any kind, nothing but the trees--sometimes not many of
+them--the clouds, or the stars.
+
+<p>During the journey with horses I had generally found the bag too warm,
+and had for the most part slept on it, not in it; but now its time was
+about to begin, and this night in the pine-bluff was to record a signal
+triumph for the sack principle applied to shake-downs.
+
+<p>About three o'clock in the morning the men got up, unable to sleep on
+account of the cold, and set the fire going. The noise soon awoke me, but
+I lay quiet inside the bag, knowing what was going on outside. Now,
+amongst its other advantages, the sack possessed one of no small value.
+It enabled me to tell at once on awaking what the cold was doing outside;
+if it was cold in the sack, or if the hood was fastened down by frozen
+breath to the opening, then it must be a howler outside; then it was time
+to get ready the greasiest breakfast and put on the thickest duffel-socks
+and mittens. On the morning of the 22nd all these symptoms were
+manifest; the bag was not warm, the hood was frozen fast against the
+opening, and one or two smooth-haired dogs were shivering close beside my
+feet and on top of the bag. Tearing under the frozen mouth of the sack, I
+got out into the open. Beyond a doubt it was cold; I don't mean cold in
+the ordinary manner, cold such as you can localize to your feet, or your
+fingers, or your nose, but cold all over, crushing cold. Putting on coat
+and moccassins as close to the fire as possible, I ran to the tree on
+which I had hung the thermometer on the previous evening; it stood at 37
+below zero at 3:30 in the morning. I had slept well; the cabri sack was a
+very Ajax among roosts; it defied the elements. Having eaten a tolerably
+fat breakfast and swallowed a good many cups of hot tea, we packed the
+sleds, harnessed the dogs, and got away from the pine bluff two hours
+before daybreak. Oh, how biting cold it was! On in the grey snow light
+with a terrible wind sweeping up the long reaches of the river; nothing
+spoken, for such cold makes men silent, morose, and savage. After four
+hours travelling, we stopped to dine. It was only 9:30, but we had
+breakfasted six hours before. We were some time before we could make
+fire, but at length it was set going, and we piled the dry driftwood fast
+upon the flames. Then I set up my thermometer again; it registered 39
+below zero, 71 degrees of frost. What it must have been at day break I
+cannot say; but it was sensibly colder than at ten o'clock, and I do not
+doubt must have been 45 below zero. I had never been exposed to any thing
+like this cold before. Set full in the sun at eleven o'clock, the
+thermometer rose only to 26 below zero, the sun seemed to have lost all
+power of warmth; it was very low in the heavens, the day being the
+shortest in the year; in fact, in the centre of the river the sun did not
+show above the steep south bank, while the wind had full sweep from the
+north-east. This portion of the Saskatchewan is the farthest north
+reached by the river in its entire course. It here runs for some distance
+a little north of the 51th parallel of north latitude, and its elevation
+above the sea is about 1801 feet. During the whole day we journeyed on,
+the wind still kept dead against us, and at times it was impossible to
+face its terrible keenness. The dogs began to tire out; the ice cut
+their feet, and the white surface was often speckled with the crimson
+icicles that fell from their wounded toes. Out of the twelve dogs
+composing my cavalcade, it would have been impossible to select four good
+ones. Coffee, Tête Noir, Michinass, and another whose name I forget,
+underwent repeated whalings at the hands of my driver, a half-breed from
+Edmonnton named Frazer. Early in the afternoon the head of Tête Noir was
+reduced to shapeless pulp from tremendous thrashings. Michinass, or the
+"Spotted One," had one eye wherewith to watch the dreaded driver, and
+coffee had devoted so much strength to wild lurches and sudden springs in
+order to dodge the descending whip, that he had none whatever to bestow
+upon his legitimate toil of hauling me. At length, so useless did he
+become, that he had to be taken out altogether from the harness and left
+to his fate on the river. "And this," I said to myself, "is dog-driving;
+this inhuman thrashing and varied cursing, this frantic howling of dogs,
+this bitter, terrible cold is the long-talked of mode of winter travel!"
+To say that I was disgusted and stunned by the prospect of such work for
+hundreds of Miles would be-only to speak a portion of what I felt. Was
+the cold always to be so crushing? were the dogs always to be the same
+wretched creatures? Fortunately, no; but it was only when I reached
+Victoria that night, long after dark, that I learned that the day had
+been very exceptionally severe, and that my dogs were unusually miserable
+ones.
+
+<p>As at Edmonton so in the fort at Victoria the small-pox had again broken
+out; in spite of cold and frost the infection still lurked in many
+places, and in none more fatally than in this little settlement where,
+during the autumn, it had wrought so much havoc among the scanty
+community. In this distant settlement I spent the few days of Christmas;
+the weather had become suddenly milder, although the thermometer still
+stood below zero.
+
+<p>Small-pox had not been the only evil from which Victoria had suffered
+during the year which was about to close; the Sircies had made many raids
+upon it during the summer, stealing-down the sheltering banks of a small
+creek which entered the Saskatchewan at the opposite side, and then
+swimming the broad river during the night and lying hidden at day in the
+high corn-fields of the mission. Incredible though it may appear, they
+continued this practice at a time when they were being; swept away by the
+small-pox; their bodies were found in one instance dead upon the bank of
+the river they had crossed by swimming when the fever of the disease had
+been at its height. Those who live their lives quietly at home, who sleep
+in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of
+what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test. With us,
+to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with
+the casual illnesses of our civilization: when he lies down it is to
+sleep for a few hours, or-for ever. Thus these Sircies had literally kept
+the war-trail till they died. When the corn-fields were being cut around
+the mission, the reapers found unmistakable traces of how these wild men
+had kept the field undaunted by disease. Long black hair was found where
+it had fallen from the head of some brave in the lairs from which he had
+watched the horses of his enemies; the ruling passion had been strong in
+death. In the end, the much-coveted horses were carried off by the few
+survivors, and the mission had to bewail the loss of some of its best
+steeds. One, a mare belonging to the missionary himself, had returned to
+her home after an absence of a few days, but she carried in her flank a
+couple of Sircie arrows. She had broken away from the band, and the
+braves had sent their arrows after her in an attempt to kill what they
+could not keep. To add to the-misfortunes of the settlement, the buffalo
+were far out in the great plains; so between disease, war, and famine,
+Victoria had had a hard time of it.
+
+<p>In the farmyard of the mission-house there lay-a curious block of metal
+of immense weight'; it was ringed,-deeply indented, and polished on the
+outer edges of the indentations by the wear and friction of many years.
+Its history was a curious one. Longer than any man could say, it had lain
+on the summit of a hill far out in the southern prairies. It had been a
+medicine-stone of surpassing virtue among the Indians over a vast
+territory. No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity
+without paying a visit to this great-medicine: it was said to be
+increasing yearly in weight. Old men remembered having heard old men say
+that they had once lifted it easily from the ground. Now no single man
+could carry it. And it was no wonder that this metallic stone should be a
+Manito-stone and an object of intense veneration to the Indian; it had
+come down from heaven; it did not belong to the earth, but had descended
+out of the sky; it was, in fact an aerolite. Not very long before my,
+visit this curious stone had been removed from the hill upon which it had
+so long rested and brought to the Mission of Victoria by some person from
+that place: When the Indians found that it had been taken away, they
+were loud in the expression of their regret. The old medicine men
+declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes and that war,
+disease, and dearth of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the
+Saskatchewan. This was not a prophecy made after the occurrence of the
+plague of small-pox, for in a magazine published by the Wesleyan Society
+in Canada there appears a letter from the missionary, setting forth the
+predictions of the medicine-men a year prior to my visit. The letter
+concludes with an expression of thanks that their evil prognostications
+had not been attended with success. But a few months later brought all
+the three evils upon the Indians; and never, probably, since the first
+trader had reached the country had so many afflictions of war, famine,
+and plague fallen upon the _Crees and the Blackfeet as during the year
+which succeeded the useless removal of their Manito-stone from the lone
+hill-top upon which the skies had cast it.
+
+<p>I spent the evening of Christmas Day in the house of the missionary. Two
+of his daughters sang very sweetly to the music of a small melodian. Both
+song and strain were sad--sadder, perhaps, than the words or music could
+make them; for the recollection of the two absent ones, whose
+newly-made graves, covered with their first snow, lay close outside,
+mingled with the hymn and deepened the melancholy of the music.
+
+<p>On the day after Christmas Day I left Victoria, with three trains of
+dogs, bound for Fort Pitt. This time the drivers were all English
+half-breeds, and that tongue was chiefly used to accelerate the dogs. The
+temperature had risen considerably, and the snow was soft and clammy,
+making the "hauling" heavy upon the dogs. For my own use I had a very
+excellent train, but the other two were of the useless class.` As
+before, the beatings were incessant, and I witnessed the first example
+of a very common occurrence in dog-driving--I beheld the operation known
+as "sending a dog to Rome." This consists simply of striking him over the
+head with a large stick until he falls perfectly senseless to the
+ground; after a little he revives, and, with memory of the awful blows
+that took his consciousness away full upon him, he pulls franticly at his
+load. Oftentimes a dog is "sent to Rome" because he will not allow the
+driver to arrange some hitch in the harness; then, while he is
+insensible, the necessary alteration is carried out, and when the dog
+recovers he receives a terrible lash of the whip to set him going again.
+The half-breeds are a race easily offended, prone to sulk if reproved;
+but at the risk of causing delay and inconvenience I had to interfere'
+with a peremptory order that "sending to Rome" should be at once
+discontinued in my trains. The wretched "Whisky," after his voyage to the
+Eternal City, appeared quite overcome with what he had there seen, and
+continued to stagger along the trail, making feeble efforts to keep
+straight. This tendency to wobble caused the half-breeds to indulge in
+funny remarks, one of them calling the track a "drunken trail."
+Eventually, "Whisky" was abandoned to his fate. I had never been a
+believer in the pluck and courage of the men who are the descendants of
+mixed European and Indian parents. Admirable as guides, unequalled as
+voyageurs, trappers, and hunters, they nevertheless are wanting in those
+qualities which give courage or true manhood. "Tell me your friends and I
+will tell you what you are ": is a sound proverb, and in no sense more
+true than when the bounds of man's friendships are stretched Wide.
+enough to admit those dumb companions, the horse and the dog. I never
+knew a man yet, or for that matter a woman, worth much who did not like
+dogs and horses, and I would always feel inclined to suspect a man who
+was shunned by a dog. The cruelty so systematically practised upon dogs
+by their half-breed drivers is utterly unwarrantable. In winter the poor
+brutes become more than ever the benefactors of man, uniting in
+themselves all the services of horse and dog--by day they work, by night
+they watch, and the man must be a very cur in nature who would inflict,
+at such a time, needless cruelty upon the animal that renders him so much
+assistance. On this day, the 29th December, we made a night march in the
+hope of reaching Fort Pitt. For four hours we walked on through the dark
+until the trail led us suddenly into the midst of an immense band of
+animals, which commenced to dash around us in a high state of alarm. At
+first we fancied in the indistinct moonlight that they were buffalo, but
+another instant sufficed to prove them horses. We had, in fact, struck
+into the middle of the Fort Pitt band of horses, numbering some ninety or
+a hundred head. We were, however, still a long way from the fort, and as
+the trail was utterly lost in the confused medley of tracks all round us,
+we were compelled to halt for the night near midnight. In a small clump
+of willows we made a hasty camp and lay down to sleep. Daylight next
+morning showed that conspicuous landmark called the Frenchman's Knoll
+rising north-east; and lying in the snow close beside us was poor
+"Whisky." He had followed on during the night from the place where he had
+been abandoned on the previous day, and had come up again with his
+persecutors while they lay asleep; for, after all, there was one fate
+worse than being "sent to Rome," and that was being left to starve. After
+a few hours run we reached Fort Pitt, having travelled about 150 miles
+in three days and a half.
+
+<p>Fort Pitt was destitute of fresh dogs or drivers, and consequently a
+delay of some days became necessary before my onward journey could be
+resumed. In the absence of dogs and drivers Fort Pitt, however, offered
+small-pox to its visitors. A case had broken out a few days previous to
+my arrival impossible to trace in any way, but probably the result of
+some infection conveyed into the fort during the terrible visitation of
+the autumn. I have already spoken of the power which the Indian possesses
+of continuing the ordinary avocations of his life in the presence of
+disease. This power he also possesses under that most terrible
+affliction-the loss of sight. Blindness is by no means an uncommon
+occurrence among the tribes of the Saskatchewan. The blinding glare of
+the snow-covered plains, the sand in summer, and, above all, the dense
+smoke of the tents, where the fire of wood, lighted in the centre, fills
+the whole lodge with a smoke which is peculiarly trying to the sight-all
+these causes render ophthalmic affections among the Indians a common
+misfortune. Here is the story of a blind Cree who arrived at Fort Pitt
+one day weak with starvation: From a distant camp he had started five
+days before, in company with his wife. They had some skins to trade, so
+they loaded their dog and set out on the march--the woman led the way,
+the blind man followed next, and the dog brought up the rear. Soon they
+approached a plain upon which buffalo were feeding. The dog, seeing the
+buffalo, left the trail, and, carrying the furs with him, gave chase.
+Away out of sight he went, until there was nothing for it but to set out
+in pursuit of him. Telling her husband to wait in this spot until she
+returned, the woman now started after the dog. Time passed,--it was
+growing late, and the wind swept coldly over the snow. The blind man began
+to grow uneasy; "She has lost her way," he said to himself; "I will go
+on, and we may meet." He walked on--he called aloud, but there was no
+answer; go back he could not; he knew by the coldness of the air that
+night had fallen on the plain, but day and night were alike to him. He
+was alone--he was lost. Suddenly he felt against his feet the rustle of
+long sedgy grass--he stooped down and found that he had reached the
+margin of a frozen lake. He was tired, and it was time to rest; so with
+his knife he cut a quantity of long dry grass, and, making a bed for
+himself on the margin of the lake, lay down and slept. Let us go back to
+the woman. The dog had led her a long chase, and it was very late when
+she got back to the spot where she had left her husband-he was gone, but
+his tracks in the snow were visible, and she hurried after him. Suddenly
+the wind arose, the light powdery snow began to drift in clouds over the
+surface of the plain, the track was speedily obliterated and night was
+coming on. Still she followed the general direction of the footprints,
+and at last came to the border of the same lake by which her husband was
+lying asleep, but it was at some distance from the spot. She too was
+tired, and, making a fire in a thicket, she lay down to sleep. About the
+middle of the night the man awoke and set out again on his solitary way.
+It snowed all night: the morning came, the day passed, the night closed
+again--again the morning dawned, and still he wandered on. For three days
+he travelled thus over an immense plain, without food, and having only
+the snow wherewith to quench his thirst. On the third day he walked into
+a thicket; he felt around, and found that the timber was dry; with his
+axe he cut down some wood, then struck a light and made a fire. When the
+fire was alight he laid his gun down beside it, and went to gather more
+wood; but fate was heavy against him, he was unable to find the fire
+which he had lighted, and by which he had left his gun. He made another
+fire, and again the same result. A third time he set to work; and now, to
+make certain of his getting back, again, he tied a line to a tree close
+beside his fire, and then set on to gather wood. Again the fates smote
+him-his line broke, and he had to grope his way in weary search. But
+chance, tired of ill-treating him so long, now stood his friend--he found
+the first fire, and with it his gun and blanket. Again he travelled on,
+but now his strength began to fail, and for the first time his heart sank
+within him--blind, starving, and utterly lost, there seemed no hope on
+earth for him. "Then," he said, "I thought of the Great Spirit of whom
+the white men speak, and I called aloud to him, 'O Great Spirit! have
+pity on me, and show me the path! and as I said it I heard close by the
+calling of a crow, and I knew that the road was not far off. I followed
+the call; soon I felt the crusted snow of a path under my feet, and the
+next day reached the fort." He had been five days without food.
+
+<p>No man can starve better than the Indian--no man can feast better either.
+For long days and nights, he will go without sustenance of any kind; but
+see him when the buffalo are near, when the cows are fat; see him then if
+you want to know what quantity of food it is possible for a man to
+consume at a sitting. Here is one bill of fare:--Seven men in thirteen
+days consumed two buffalo bulls, seven cabri, 40 lbs. of pemmican, and a
+great many ducks and geese, and on the last day there was nothing to eat.
+I am perfectly aware that this enormous quantity could not have
+weighed less than 1600 lbs. at the very lowest estimate, which would
+give a daily ration to each man of 18 lbs.; but, incredible as this may
+appear, it is by no means impossible. During the entire time I remained
+at Fort Pitt the daily ration issued to each man was 10 lbs. of beef.
+Beef is so much richer and coarser food than buffalo meat, that 10 lbs.
+of the former would be equivalent-to 15lbs. or 16 lbs. of the latter, and
+yet every scrap of that 10 lbs. was eaten by the man who received it. The
+women got 5 lbs., and the children, no matter how small, 3 lbs. each.
+Fancy a child in arms getting 3 lbs. of beef for its daily sustenance!
+The old Orkney men of the Hudson Bay Company servants must have seen in
+such a ration the realization of the poet's lines, "O Caledonia, stern
+and wild! Meet nurse for a poetic child," etc. All these people at Fort
+Pitt were idle, and therefore were not capable of eating as much as if
+they had been on the plains. The wild hills that surround Fort Pitt are
+frequently the scenes of Indian ambush and attack, and on more than one
+occasion the fort itself has been captured by the Blackfeet. The region
+in which Fort Pitt stands is a favourite camping-ground of the Crees,
+and the Blackfeet cannot be persuaded that the people of the fort are not
+the active friends and allies of their enemies in fact, Fort Pitt and
+Carlton are looked upon by them as places belonging to another company
+altogether from the one which rules at the Mountain House and at
+Edmonton. "If it was the same company," they-say, "how could they give
+our enemies, the Crees, guns and powder; for do they not give us guns
+and powder too?" This mode of argument, which refuses to recognize that
+species of neutrality so dear to the English heart, is eminently
+calculated to lay Fort Pitt open to Blackfeet raid. It is only a few
+years since the place was plundered by a large band, but the general
+forbearance displayed by the Indians on that occasion is nevertheless
+remarkable. Here is the story:
+
+<p>One morning the people in the fort beheld a small party of Blackfeet on a
+high hill at the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. The usual flag
+carried by the chief was waved to denote a wish to trade, and accordingly
+the officer in charge pushed off in his boat to meet and hold converse
+with the party. When he reached the other side he found the chief and a
+few men drawn up to receive him.
+
+<p>"Are there Crees around the fort?" asked the chief.
+
+<p>"No," replied the trader; "there are none with us."
+
+<p>"You speak with a forked tongue," answered the Blackfoot--dividing his
+fingers as he spoke to indicate that the-other was speaking falsely.
+
+<p>Just at that moment something caught the traders eye in the bushes along
+the river bank; he looked again and saw, close alongside, the willows
+swarming with naked Blackfeet. He made one spring back into his boat, and
+called to his men to shove off; but it was too late. In an instant two
+hundred braves rose out of the grass and willows and rushed into the
+water; they caught the boat and brought her back to the shore; then,
+filling her as full as she would hold with men, they pushed off for the
+other side. To put as good a face upon matters as possible, the trader
+commenced a trade, and at first the batch that had crossed, about forty
+in number, kept quiet enough, but some-of their number took the boat back
+again to the south shore and brought over the entire band; then the wild
+work commenced, bolts and bars were broken open, the trading-shop was
+quickly cleared out, and in the highest spirits, laughing loudly at the
+glorious fun they were having, the braves commenced to enter the houses,
+ripping up the feather beds to look for guns and tearing down calico
+curtains for finery. The men of the fort were nearly all away in the
+plains, and the women and children were in a high state of alarm.
+Sometimes the Indians would point their guns at the women, then drag them
+off the beds on which they were sitting and rip open bedding and
+mattress, looking for concealed weapons; but no further violence was
+attempted, and the whole thing was accompanied by such peals of laughter
+that it was evident the braves had not enjoyed such a "high old time" for
+a very long period. At last the chief, thinking, perhaps, that things had
+gone quite far enough, called out, in a loud voice, "Crees! Crees!" and,
+dashing out of the fort, was quickly followed by the whole band.
+
+<p>Still in high good humour, the braves recrossed the river, and, turning
+round on the farther shore, fired a volley to Wards the fort; but as the
+distance was at least 500 yards, this parting salute was simply as a
+bravado. This band was evidently bent on mischief. As they retreated
+south to their own country they met the carts belonging to the fort on
+their way from the plains; the men in charge ran off with the fleetest
+horses, but the carts were all captured and ransacked, and an old
+Scotchman, a servant of the Company, who stood his ground, was reduced to
+a state bordering upon nudity by the frequent demands of his captors.
+
+<p>The Blackfeet chiefs exercise great authority over their braves; some of
+them are men of considerable natural abilities, and all-must be brave and
+celebrated in battle. To disobey the mandate of a chief is at times to
+court instant death at his hands. At the present time the two most
+formidable chiefs of the Blackfeet nations are Sapoo-max-sikes, or "The
+Great Crow's Claw;" and Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, or "The Great Swan."
+These men are widely different in their characters; the Crow's Claw being
+a man whose word once given can be relied on to the death, but the
+other is represented as a man of colossal size and savage disposition,
+crafty and treacherous.
+
+<p>During the year just past death had struck heavily among the Blackfeet
+chiefs. The death of one of their greatest men, Pe-na-koam, or "The
+Far-off Dawn," was worthy of a great brave. When he felt that his last
+night had come, he ordered his best horse to be brought to the door of
+the tent, and mounting him he rode slowly around the camp; at each
+corner he halted and called out, in a loud voice to his people, "The last
+hour of Pe-na-koam has come; but to his people he says, Be brave;
+separate into small parties, so that this disease will have less power
+to kill you; be strong to fight our enemies the Crees, and be able to
+destroy them. It is no matter now that this disease has come upon us, for
+our enemies have got it too, and they will also die of it. Pe-na-koam
+tells his people before he dies to live so that they may fight their
+enemies, and be strong." It is said that, having spoken thus, he died
+quietly. Upon the top of a lonely hill they laid the body of their chief
+beneath a tent hung round with scarlet cloth; beside him they put six
+revolvers and two American repeating rifles, an at the door of his tent
+twelve horses were slain, so that their spirits would carry him in the
+green prairies of the happy hunting-grounds; four hundred blankets were
+piled around as offerings to his memory, and then the tribe moved away
+from the spot, leaving the tomb of their dead king to the winds and to
+the wolves.
+
+<p><a name="ch20"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TWENTY.</h3>
+
+<p>The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of Hunting--A Fight
+--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great Cold-Carlton--Family
+Responsibilities.
+
+<p>WHEN the early Spanish adventurers penetrated from the sea-board of
+America into the great central prairie region, they beheld for the first
+time a strange animal whose countless numbers covered the face of the
+country. When De Soto had been buried in the dark waters of the
+Mississippi, the remnant of his band, pursuing their western way, entered
+the "Country of the Wild Cows." When in the same year explorers pushed
+their way northward from Mexico into the region of the Rio-del-Norte,
+they looked over immense plains black with moving beasts. Nearly 100
+years later settlers on the coasts of New England heard from
+westward-hailing Indians of huge beasts on the shores of a great lake not
+many days journey to the north-west. Naturalists in Europe, hearing of
+the new animal, named it the bison; but the colonists united in calling
+it the buffalo, and, as is usual in such cases, although science clearly
+demonstrated that it was a bison, and was not a buffalo, scientific
+knowledge had not a chance against practical ignorance, and "buffalo"
+carried the day. The true home of this animal lay in the great prairie
+region between the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the Texan forest,
+and the Saskatchewan River and although undoubted evidence exists to show
+that at some period the buffalo reached in his vast migrations the shores
+of the Pacific and the Atlantic; yet since the party of De Soto only
+entered the Country of the Wild Cows after they had crossed the
+Mississippi, it may fairly be inferred that the Ohio River and the lower
+Mississippi formed the eastern boundaries to the wanderings of the herds
+since the New World has been known to the white man. Still even within
+this immense region, a region not less than 1,000,000 of square miles in
+area, the havoc worked by the European has been terrible. Faster even
+than the decay of the Indian has gone on the destruction-of the bison and
+only a few years must elapse before this noble beast, hunted down in the
+last recesses of his breeding-grounds, will have taken his place in the
+long list of those extinct giants which once dwelt in our world. Many
+favourite spots had this huge animal throughout the great domain over
+which he roamed-many beautiful scenes where, along river meadows, the
+grass in winter was still succulent and the wooded "bays" gave food and
+shelter, but-no more favourite ground than this valley of the
+Saskatchewan; thither he wended his way from the bleak plains of the
+Missouri in herds that passed and passed for days and nights in seemingly
+never-ending numbers. Along the countless creeks and rivers that add
+their tribute to the great stream, along the banks of the Battle River
+and the Vermilion River, along the many White Earth Rivers and Sturgeon
+Creeks of the upper and middle Saskatchewan, down through the willow
+copses and aspen thickets of the Touchwood Hills and the Assineboine, the
+great beasts dwelt in all the happiness of calf-rearing and connubial
+felicity. The Indians who then occupied these regions killed only what
+was required for the supply of the camps-a mere speck in the dense herds
+that roamed up to the very doors of the wigwams; but when the trader
+pushed his adventurous way into the fur regions of the North, the herds
+of the Saskatchewan plains began to experience a change in their
+surroundings. The meat, pounded down` and mixed with fat into "pemmican,"
+was found to supply a most excellent food for transport service, and
+accordingly vast numbers of buffalo were destroyed to supply the demand
+of the fur traders. In the border-land between the wooded country and the
+plains, the Crees, not satisfied with the ordinary methods of destroying
+the buffalo, devised a plan by which great multitudes could be easily
+annihilated. This method of hunting, consists in the erection of strong
+wooden enclosures called pounds, into which the buffalo are guided by the
+supposed magic power of a medicine-man. Sometimes for two days the
+medicine-man will live with the herd, which he half guides and half
+drives into the enclosures; sometimes he is on the right, sometimes on
+the left, and sometimes, again, in rear of the herd, but never to
+windward of them. At last they approach the pound, which is usually
+concealed in a thicket of wood. For many miles from the entrance to this
+pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead
+out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the
+medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd,
+finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed,
+until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across
+the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. Then
+commences the slaughter. From the wooded fence around arrows and bullets
+are poured into the dense plunging mass of buffalo careering wildly round
+the ring. Always going in one direction, with the sun, the poor beasts
+race on until not a living thing is left; then, when there is nothing
+more to kill, the cutting-up commences, and pemmican-making goes on.
+
+<p>Widely different from this indiscriminate slaughter is the fair hunt on
+horseback in the great open plains. The approach, the cautious survey
+over some hill-top, the wild charge on the herd, the headlong flight, the
+turn to bay, the flight and fall--all this contains a large share of that
+excitement which we call by the much abused term sport. It is possible,
+however, that many of those who delight in killing placid pheasants and
+stoical partridges might enjoy the huge battue of an Indian "pound" in
+preference to the wild charge over the sky bound prairie, but, for my
+part, not being of the privileged few who breed pheasants at the expense
+of peasants (what a difference the "h" makes in Malthusian theories!), I
+have been compelled to seek my sport in hot climates instead of in hot
+corners, and in the sandy bluffs of Nebraska and the Missouri have drawn
+many an hour of keen enjoyment from the long chase of the buffalo. One
+evening, shortly before sunset, I was steering my way through the sandy
+hills of the Platte Valley, in the State of Nebraska, slowly towards Fort
+Kearney; both horse and rider were tired after a long day over sand-bluff
+and meadow-land, for buffalo were plenty, and five tongues dangling to
+the saddle told that horse, man, and rifle had not been idle. Crossing a
+grassy ridge, I suddenly came in sight of three buffalo just emerging
+from the broken bluff. Tired as was my horse, the sight of one of these
+three animals urged me to one last chase. He was a very large bull,
+whose black shaggy mane and dewlaps nearly brushed the short prairie grass
+beneath him. I dismounted behind the hill, tightened the saddle-girths,
+looked to rifle and cartridge touch, and then remounting rode slowly
+over the intervening ridge. As I came in view of the three beasts
+thus majestically stalking their way towards the Platte for the luxury of
+an evening drink, the three shaggy heads were thrown up--one steady look
+given, then round went the animals and away for the bluffs again. With a
+whoop and a cheer I gave chase, and the mustang, answering gamely to my
+call, launched himself well over the prairie. Singling out the large
+bull, I urged the horse with spur and voice, then, rising in the stirrups
+I took a snap-shot at my quarry. The bullet struck him in the flanks, and
+quick as lightning he wheeled down upon me. It was now my turn to run. I
+had urged the horse with voice and spur to close with the buffalo, but
+still more vigorously did I endeavour, under the altered position of
+affairs, to make him increase the distance lying between us. Down the
+sandy incline thundered the huge beast, gaining on us at every stride.
+Looking back over my shoulder, I saw him close to my horse's tail, with
+head lowered and eyes flashing furiously-under their shaggy covering. The
+horse was tired; the buffalo was fresh, and it seemed as though another
+instant must bring pursuer and pursued into wild collision. Throwing back
+my rifle over the crupper; I laid it at arm's length, with muzzle full
+upon the buffalo's head. The shot struck the centre of his forehead, but
+he only shook his head when he received it; still it seemed to check his
+pace a little, and as we had now reached level ground the horse began to
+gain something upon his pursuer. Quite as suddenly as he had charged the
+bull now changed his tactics. Wheeling off he followed his companions,
+who by this time had vanished into the bluffs. It never would have done
+to lose him after such a fight, so Ii brought the mustang round again,
+and gave chase. This time a shot fired low behind the shoulder brought my
+fierce friend to bay. Proudly he turned upon me, but now his rage was
+calm and stately, he pawed the ground, and blew with short angry snorts
+the sand in clouds from the plain; moving thus slowly towards me, he
+looked the incarnation of strength and angry pride. But his doom was
+sealed. I remember so vividly all the wild surroundings of the scene--the
+great silent waste, the two buffalo watching from a hill-top the fight of
+their leader, the noble beast himself stricken but defiant, and beyond,
+the thousand glories of the prairie sunset. It was only to last an
+instant, for the giant bull, still with low-bent head and angry snorts,
+advancing slowly towards his puny enemy, sank quietly to the plain and
+stretched his limbs in death. Late that night I reached the American
+fort with six tongues hanging to my saddle, but never since that hour,
+though often but a two days ride from buffalo, have I sought to take the
+life of one of these noble animals. Too soon will the last of them have
+vanished from the great central prairie land; never again will those
+countless herds roam from the Platte to the Missouri, from the Missouri
+to the Saskatchewan; chased for his robe, for his beef, for sport, for
+the very pastime of his death, he is rapidly vanishing from the land. Far
+in the northern forests of the Athabasca a few buffaloes may for a time
+bid defiance to man, but they, too, must disappear and nothing be left of
+this giant beast save the bones that for many an age will whiten the
+prairies over which the great herds roamed at will in times before the
+white man came.
+
+<p>It was the 5th of January before the return of the dogs from an Indian
+trade enabled me to get away from Fort Pitt. During the days I had
+remained in the fort the snow covering had deepened on the plains and
+winter had got a still firmer grasp upon the river and meadow. In two
+days travel we ran the length of the river between Fort Pitt and Battle
+River, travelling rapidly over the ice down the centre of the stream. The
+dogs were good ones, the drivers well versed in their work, and although
+the thermometer stood at 20 degrees below zero on the evening of the 6th,
+the whole run tended in no small degree to improve the general opinion
+which I had previously formed upon the delights of dog-travel. Arrived at
+Battle River, I found that the Crees had disappeared since my former
+visit; the place was now tenanted only by a few Indians and half-breeds.
+It seemed to be my fate to encounter cases of sickness at every post on
+my return journey. Here a woman was lying in a state of complete
+unconsciousness with intervals of convulsion and spitting of blood. It
+was in vain that I represented my total inability to deal with such a
+case. The friends of the lady all declared that it was necessary that I
+should see her, and accordingly I was introduced into the miserable hut
+in which she lay. She was stretched upon a low bed in one corner of a
+room about seven feet square; the roof approached so near the ground that
+I was unable to stand straight in any part of the place; the rough floor
+was crowded with women squatted thickly upon it, and a huge fire blazed
+in a corner, making the heat something terrible. Having gone through the
+ordinary medical programme of pulse feeling, I put some general
+questions to the surrounding bevy of women which, being duly interpreted
+into Cree, elicited the fact that the sick woman had been engaged in
+carrying a very heavy load of wood on her back for the use of her lord
+and master, and that while she had been thus employed she was seized with
+convulsions and became senseless. "What is it?" said the Hudson Bay man,
+looking at me in a manner which seemed to indicate complete confidence in
+my professional sagacity. "Do you think it's small-pox?" Some
+acquaintance with this disease enabled me to state my deliberate
+conviction that it was not small-pox, but as to what particular form of
+the many "ills that flesh is heir to" it really was, I could not for the
+life of me determine. I had not even that clue which the Yankee
+practitioner is said to have established for his guidance in the case of
+his infant patient, whose puzzling ailment he endeavoured to
+diagnosticate by administering what he termed "a convulsion powder,"
+being a whale at the treatment of convulsions. In the case now before me
+convulsions were unfortunately of frequent occurrence, and I could not
+lay claim to the high powers of pathology which the Yankee had asserted
+himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circumstances I judged it
+expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a
+compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of
+infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next
+morning that--whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to
+state the patient had shown decided symptoms of rallying, and took my
+departure from Battle River with the reputation of being a "medicine-man"
+of the very first order.
+
+<p>I now began to experience the full toil and labour of a winter journey.
+Our course lay across a bare, open region on which for distances of
+thirty to forty miles not one tree or bush was visible; the cold was very
+great, and the snow, lying loosely as it had fallen, was so soft that the
+dogs sank through the drifts as they pulled slowly at their loads. On the
+evening of the 10th January we reached a little clump of poplars on the
+edge of a large plain on which no tree was visible. It was piercingly
+cold, a bitter wind swept across the snow, making us glad to find even
+this poor shelter against the coming night. Two hours after dark the
+thermometer stood at minus 38 degrees, or 70 degrees of frost. The wood
+was small and poor; the wind howled through the scanty thicket, driving
+the smoke into our eyes as we cowered over the fire. Oh, what misery it
+was! and how blank seemed the prospect before me! 900 miles still to
+travel, and to-day I had only made about twenty miles, toiling from dawn
+to dark through blinding drift and intense cold. On again next morning
+over the trackless plain, thermometer at minus 20 in morning, and minus
+12 at midday, with high wind, snow, and heavy drift. One of my men, a
+half-breed in name, an Indian in reality, became utterly done up from
+cold and exposure-the others would have left him behind to make his own
+way through the snow, or most likely to lie down and die, but I stopped
+the doggs until he came up, and then let him lie on one of the sleds for
+the remainder of the day. He was a miserable-looking wretch, but he ate
+enormous quantities of pemmican at every meal. After four days of very
+arduous travel we reached Carlton at sunset on the 12th January. The
+thermometer had kept varying between 20 and 38 degrees below zero every
+night, but on the night of the 12th surpassed any thing I had yet
+experienced. I spent that night in a room at Carlton, a room in which a
+fire had been burning until midnight, nevertheless at daybreak on the 13th
+the thermometer showed -20 degrees on the table close to my bed. At
+half-past ten o'clock, when placed outside, facing north, it fell to -44
+degrees, and I afterwards ascertained that an instrument kept at the
+mission of Prince Albert, 60 miles east from Carlton, showed the enormous
+amount of 51 degrees below zero at daybreak that morning, 83 degrees of
+frost. This was the coldest night during the winter, but it was clear,
+calm, and fine. I now determined to leave the usual winter route from
+Carlton to Red River, and to strike out a new line of travel, which,
+though very much longer than the trail via Fort Pelly, had several
+advantages to recommend it to my choice. In the first place, it promised a
+new line of country down the great valley of the Saskatchewan River to its
+expansion into the sheet of water called Cedar Lake, and from thence
+across the dividing ridge into the Lake Winnipegosis, down the length of
+that water and its southern neighbour, the Lake Manitoba, until the
+boundary of the new province would be again reached, fully 700 miles from
+Carlton. It was a long, cold travel, but it promised the novelty of
+tracing to its delta in the vast marshes of Cumberland and the Pasquia,
+the great river whose foaming torrent I had forded at the Rocky Mountains,
+and whose middle course I had followed for more than a month of wintry
+travel.
+
+<p>Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had
+nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those
+instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude
+had commenced--that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all
+rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself
+round and round before he lies down to sleep--the instinct bred in him in
+that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the
+long grasses of the primeval prairies--so man, in the midst of his
+civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of
+the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt. My
+lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely
+coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds
+himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination
+and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it
+is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee
+at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago
+time "When wild in woods the noble savage ran." But be this as it may,
+-this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under
+the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown
+monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long
+before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one
+to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings
+like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from
+that long  total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of
+the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would
+relish with keen appetite the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious
+tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the
+fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and
+pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of
+enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow
+without one feeling of despondency. These icy nights, too, were often
+filled with the strange meteors of the north. Hour by hour have I watched
+the many-hued shafts of the aurora trembling from their northern home
+across the starlight of the zenith, till their lustre lighted up the
+silent landscape of the frozen river with that weird light which the
+Indians name "the dance of the dead spirits." At times, too, the "sun
+dogs" hung about the sun so close, that it was not always easy to tell
+which was the real sun and which the mock one; but wild weather usually
+followed the track of the sun dogs; and whenever I saw them in the
+heavens I looked for deeper snow and colder bivouacs.
+
+<p>Carlton stands on the edge of the great forest region whose shores, if we
+may use the expression, are washed by the waves of the prairie ocean
+lying south of it; but the waves are of fire, not of water. Year by year
+the great torrent of flame moves on deeper and deeper into the dark ranks
+of the solemn-standing pines; year by year a wider region is laid open to
+the influences of sun and shower, and soon the traces of the conflict are
+hidden beneath the waving grass, and clinging vetches, and the clumps of
+tufted prairie roses. But another species of vegetation also springs up
+in the track of the fire; groves of aspens and poplars grow out of the
+burnt soil, giving to the country that park-like appearance already
+spoken of. Nestling along the borders of the innumerable lakes that stud
+the face of the Saskatchewan region, these poplar thickets sometimes
+attain large growth, but the fire too frequently checks their progress,
+and many of them stand bare and dry to delight the eye of the traveller
+with the assurance of an ample store of bright and warm firewood for his
+winter camp when the sunset bids him begin to make all cosy against the
+night.
+
+<p>After my usual delay of one day, I set out from Carlton, bound for the
+pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan. My first stage was to be a short
+one. Sixty miles east from Carlton lies the small Presbyterian mission
+called Prince Albert. Carlton being destitute of dogs, I was obliged to
+take horses again into use; but the distance was only a two days march,
+and the track lay all the way upon the river. The wife of one of the
+Hudson Bay officers, desirous of visiting the mission, took advantage of
+my escort to travel to Prince Albert; and thus a lady, a nurse, and an
+infant aged eight months, became suddenly added to my responsibilities,
+with the thermometer varying between 70 and 80 degrees of frost I must
+candidly admit to having entertained very grave feelings at the
+contemplation of these family liabilities. A baby at any period of a
+man's life is a very serious affair, but a baby below zero is something
+appalling.
+
+<p>The first night passed over without accident.` I resigned my deerskin bag
+to the lady and her infant, and Mrs. Winslow herself could not have
+desired a more peaceful state of slumber than that enjoyed by the
+youthful traveller. But the second night was a terror long to be
+remembered; the cold was intense. Out of the inmost recesses of my
+abandoned bag came those dire screams which result from infantile
+disquietude. Shivering, under my blanket, I listened to the terrible
+commotion going on in the interior of that cold-defying construction that
+so long had stood my warmest friend.
+
+<p>At daybreak, chilled to the marrow, I rose, and gathered the fire together
+in speechless agony: no wonder, the thermometer stood at 40 degrees
+below zero; and yet, can it be believed? the baby seemed to be perfectly
+oblivious to the benefits of the bag, and continued to howl unmercifully.
+Such is the perversity of human nature even at that early age! Our
+arrival at the mission put an end to my family responsibilities, and
+restored me once more to the beloved bag; but the warm atmosphere of a
+house soon revealed the cause of much of the commotion of the night.
+"Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" displayed two round red marks upon its
+chubby countenance! "Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" had, in fact, been
+frost-bitten about the region of the nose and cheeks, and hence the
+hubbub. After a delay of two days at the mission, during which the
+thermometer always showed more than 60 degrees of frost in the early
+morning, I continued my journey towards the east, crossing over from the
+North to the South Branch of the Saskatchewan at a point some twenty
+miles from the junction of the two rivers--a rich and fertile land, well
+wooded and watered, a region destined in the near future to hear its
+echoes wake to other sounds than those of moose-call or wolf-howl. It was
+dusk in the evening of the 19th of January when we reached the high
+ground which looks down upon the "forks" of the Saskatchewan River. On
+some low ground at the farther side of the North Branch a camp-fire
+glimmered in the twilight. On the ridges beyond stood the dark pines of
+the Great Sub-Arctic Forest, and below lay the two broad converging
+rivers whose immense currents; hushed beneath the weight of ice, here
+merged into the single channel of the Lower Saskatchewan--a wild, weird
+scene it looked as the shadows closed around it. We descended with
+difficulty the steep bank and crossed the river to the camp-fire on the
+north shore. Three red-deer hunters were around it; they had some freshly
+killed elk meat, and potatoes from Fort-à-la-Corne, eighteen miles below
+the forks; and with so many delicacies our supper à-la-fourchette,
+despite a snow-storm, was a decided success.
+
+<center>
+<p><a name="loneland-07"></a><img alt="" src="images/loneland-07.jpg"></p>
+<p><b>THE FORKS OF THE SASKATCHEWAN.</b></p>
+</center>
+
+<p><a name="ch21"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.</h3>
+
+<p>The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois
+--Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The
+solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+<p>At the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the
+Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where
+the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling
+north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From
+Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region
+of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an
+ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch
+far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires
+sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the
+forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of
+autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place
+to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the
+extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of
+the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded
+tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the
+great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a
+circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp
+and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded
+tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great
+preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the
+marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest
+mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here
+are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to
+precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur
+trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan,
+the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the
+systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and
+thee Arctic Ocean.
+
+<p>This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or
+other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men
+shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the shores
+of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two
+great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the
+trader! Less than 100 miles of canal through low alluvial soil have only
+to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the
+head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible
+supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the
+height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have
+rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the
+harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have
+risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral
+wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will
+ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the
+mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of
+the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the
+arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible
+that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave
+unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east
+have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the
+countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the
+Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become
+the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on
+the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters
+the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another
+picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and
+man's labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of
+plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and
+the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the
+buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter
+before us.
+
+<p>As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan
+and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their
+most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans,
+at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error,
+and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of
+the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of
+Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on
+the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of
+Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des
+Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more
+conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to
+have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact
+that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took
+possession of it.
+
+<p>During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay
+Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to
+the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The
+descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different
+portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in
+all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable
+warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have
+they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of
+Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech
+addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary
+station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
+
+<p>"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told
+us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white
+tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in
+different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other
+towards the setting sun?"
+
+<p>"Well, it is true."
+
+<p>"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for
+evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in
+the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point
+out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the
+man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a
+savage!
+
+<p>Fort-à-la-Corne lies some twenty miles below the point of junction of the
+rivers. Towards Fort-à-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety,
+for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from
+Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie
+River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and
+travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and Cumberland, was due
+at Fort-à-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on
+to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose
+echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes
+of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could
+accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river,
+'close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the
+packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his
+head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a
+musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had
+not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected,
+and I determined to await its arrival.
+
+<p>Two days passed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally
+through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the
+board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things,
+although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand
+heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening
+of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the
+raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his
+hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many
+miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to
+move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow
+was very deep to Cumberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200
+miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such
+was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
+Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held
+out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris,
+and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain
+on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So
+the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon
+before I ceased to read.
+
+<p>Early on the following morning, the express was hauled from its cache and
+brought to the fort; but it failed to throw much later light upon the
+meagre news of the previous evening. Old Adam was tried for verbal
+intelligence, but he too proved a failure. He had carried the packet from
+Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Carlton for more than a score of
+winters, and, from the fact of his being the bearer of so much news in
+his lifetime, was looked upon by his compeers as a kind of condensed
+electric telegraph; but when the question of war was fairly put to him,
+he gravely replied that at the forts he had heard there was war, and
+"England," he added, "was gaining the day." This latter fact was too much
+for me, for I was but too well aware that had war been declared in
+November, an army organization based upon the Parliamentary system was
+not likely to have "gained the day" in the short space of three weeks.
+
+<p>To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry
+Became now the chief object of my life. I lightened my baggage as much as
+possible, dispensing with many comforts of clothing and equipment, and on
+the morn ing of the 23rd January started for Cumberland. I will not dwell
+on the seven days that now ensued, or how from long before dawn to verge
+of evening we toiled down the great silent river. It was the close of
+January, the very depth of winter. With heads bent down to meet the
+crushing blast, we plodded on, oft times as silent as the river and the
+forest, from whose bosom no sound ever came, no ripple ever broke, no
+bird, no beast, no human face, but ever the same great forest-fringed
+river whose majestic turns bent always to the north-east. To tell, day
+after day, the extreme of cold that now seldom varied would be to inflict
+on the reader a tiresome record; and, in truth, there would be no use in
+attempting it; 40 below zero means so many things impossible to picture
+or to describe, that it would be a hopeless task to enter upon its
+delineation. After one has gone through the list of all those things that
+freeze; after one has spoken of the knife which burns the hand that would
+touch its blade, the tea that freezes while it is being dlrunk, there
+still remains a sense of having said nothing; a sense which may perhaps
+be better understood by saying that 40 degrees below zero means just one
+thing more than all these items--it means death, in a period whose duration
+would expire in the hours of a winter's daylight, if there was no fire or
+means of making it on the track.
+
+<p>Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one
+Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be
+able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The
+fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would
+I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus,
+doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at Cumberland, I
+Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his
+fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I
+hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by
+the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new
+constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles
+on the long road upon which I was travelling.
+
+<p>On the 29th January we reached the shore of Pine Island Lake, and saw in
+our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we
+stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within
+sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man
+was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds,
+marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the
+fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped
+and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the
+conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man
+still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the
+Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"
+a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to
+the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in
+Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had
+died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and
+the men from Cumberland had taken away the body a few hours before.
+Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat
+moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man
+said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to
+die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces
+from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff
+well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly
+rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of
+language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the
+dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange antithesis
+appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the
+fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor
+Joe Miller conferred on me--the dog-sled that had carried his body had
+made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it
+to the Fort of Cumberland.
+
+<p><a name="ch22"></a></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.</h3>
+
+<p>Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of Dogs--The great
+Marsh--Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a Medicine-man--
+Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his Boots--We reach the
+Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+<p>CUMBERLAND HOUSE, the oldest post of the Company in the interior, stands
+on the south shore of Pine Island Lake; the waters of which seek the
+Saskatchewan by two channels--Tearing River and Big-stone River. These
+two rivers form, together with the Saskatchewan and the lake, a large
+island, upon which stands Cumberland. Time moves slowly at such places
+as Cumberland, and change is almost unknown. To-day it is the same as it
+was 100 years ago. An old list of goods sent to Cumberland, from England
+in 1783 had precisely the same items as one of 1870. Strouds, cotton,
+beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still
+traded for marten and musquash. In its day Cumberland has had
+distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a
+sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great
+explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the
+fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked
+earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to
+grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the
+light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The
+graveyard and the funeral had few of those accessories of the modern
+mortuary which are supposed to be the characteristics of civilized
+sorrow. There was no mute, no crape, no parade--nothing of that imposing
+array of hat-bands and horses by which man, even` in the face of the
+mighty mystery, seeks still to glorify the miserable conceits of life;
+but the silent snow-laden pine-trees, the few words of prayer read in the
+flickering light of the lantern, the hush of nature and of night, made
+accessions full as fitting, as all the muffled music and craped sorrow of
+church and city.
+
+<p>At Cumberland I beheld for the first time a genuine train of dogs. There
+was no mistake about them in shape or form, from fore-goer to hindermost
+hauler. Two of them were the pure Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed,
+fox-headed, long-furred, clean-legged animals whose ears, sharp-pointed
+and erect, sprung from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair;
+Pomeranians multiplied by four; the other two were a curious compound of
+Esquimaux and Athabascan, with hair so long that eyes were scarcely
+'visible. I had suffered so long from the wretched condition and
+description of the dogs of the Hudson Bay Company, that I determined to
+become the possessor of those animals, and, although I had to pay
+considerably more than had ever been previously demanded as the price of
+a train of dogs in the North, I was still glad, to get them at any
+figure. Five hundred miles yet lay between me and Red River-five hundred
+miles of marsh and frozen lakes, the delta of the Saskatchewan and the
+great Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba.
+
+<p>It was the last day of January when I got away from Cumberland with this
+fine train of dogs and another 2 serviceable set which belonged to a
+Swampy Indian named Bear, who had agreed to accompany me to Red River.
+Bear was the son of the old man whose evolutions with the three pegs had
+caused so much commotion among the Indians at Red River on the occasion
+of my visit to Fort Garry eight months earlier. He was now to be my close
+companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place
+here to anticipate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a
+voyageur, snow-shoer and camp-maker a place second to none in the long
+list of my employees. Soon after quitting Cumberland we struck the
+Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great
+region of marsh and swamp. During five days our course lay through vast
+expanses of stiff frozen reeds, whose corn-like stalks rattled harshly
+against the parchment sides of the cariole as the dog-trains wound along
+through their snow-covered roots. Bleak and dreary beyond expression
+stretched this region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. The cold
+remained all the time at about the same degree--20 below zero. The camps
+were generally poor and miserable ones. Stunted willow is the chief
+timber of the region, and fortunate did we deem ourselves when at
+nightfall a low line of willows would rise above the sea of reeds to bid
+us seek its shelter for the night. The snow became deeper as we
+proceeded. At the Pasquia three feet lay level over the country, and the
+dogs sank deep as they toiled along. Through this great marsh the
+Saskatchewan winds in tortuous course, its flooded level in summer scarce
+lower than the alluvial shores that line it. The bends made by the river
+would have been too long to follow, so we held a straight track through
+the marsh, cutting the points as we travelled. It was difficult to
+imagine that this many-channelled, marsh-lined river could be the same
+noble stream whose mountain birth I had beheld far away in the Rocky
+Mountains, and whose central course had lain for so many miles through
+the bold precipitous bank of the Western prairies.
+
+<p>On the 7th February we emerged from this desolate region of lake and
+swamp, and saw before us in the twilight a ridge covered with dense
+woods. It was the west shore of the Cedar Lake, and on the wooded
+promontory towards which we steered some Indian sturgeon-fishers had
+pitched their lodges. But I had not got thus far without much trouble and
+vexatious resistance. Of the three men from Cumberland, one had utterly
+knocked up, and the other two had turned mutinous. What cared they for my
+anxiety to push on for Red River? What did it matter if the whole world
+was at war? Nay, must I not be the rankest of impostors; for if there was
+war away beyond the big sea, was that not the very reason why any man
+possessing a particle of sense should take his time over the journey, and
+be in no hurry to get back again to his house?
+
+<p>One night I reached the post of Moose Lake a few hours before daybreak,
+having been induced to make the flank march by representations of the
+wonderful train of dogs at that station, and being anxious to obtain
+them in addition to my own: It is almost needless to remark that these
+dogs had no existence except in the imagination of Bear and his
+companion. Arrived at Moose Lake (one of the most desolate spots-I had'
+ever looked upon), I found out that the dog-trick was not the only one
+my men intended playing upon me, for a message was sent in by Bear to
+the effect that his dogs were unable to stand the hard travel of the
+past week, and that he could no longer accompany me. Here was a pleasant
+prospect--stranded on the wild shores of the Moose Lake with one train of
+dogs, deserted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and
+fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway
+House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then
+tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.
+I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though
+it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red
+River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole
+North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there;
+for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to
+put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious institution
+is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the
+eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly assured that
+the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at
+my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the
+wooded shores of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great
+marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the
+Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on
+all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the
+question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was
+attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A
+loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine,
+and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the
+Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of
+Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"
+I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to
+drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point
+had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the
+morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that
+could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the
+efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that
+seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad
+time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the
+"Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and
+relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery,
+but its eight-by-ten of superficial space held some eighteen persons, the
+greater number of whom were greasy with the oil of the sturgeon. Meantime
+a supper of sturgeon had been prepared for me, and great was the
+excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have
+reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not
+at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and
+many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but
+even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers
+towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon
+in the eyes of such a whale as Chicag.
+
+<p>Glad to escape from the suffocating hole, I emptied my fire-bag of
+tobacco among the group and got out into the cold night-air. What a
+change! Over the silent snow-sheeted lake, over the dark isles and the
+cedar shores, the moon was shining amidst a deep blue sky. Around were
+grouped a few birch-bark wigwams. My four dogs, now well known and trusty
+friends, were holding high carnival over the heads and tails of Chicag's
+feast. In one of the wigwams, detached from the rest, sat a very old man
+wrapped in a tattered blanket. He was splitting wood into little pieces,
+and feeding a small fire in the centre of the lodge, while he chattered
+to himself all the time. The place was clean, and as I watched the little
+old fellow at his work I decided to make my bed in his lodge. He was no
+other than Parisiboy, the medicine-man of the camp, the quaintest little
+old savage I had ever encountered. Two small white mongrels alone shared
+his wigwam. "See," he said, "I have no one with me but these two dogs."
+The curs thus alluded to felt themselves bound to prove that they were
+cognizant of the fact by shoving forward their noses one on each side of
+old Parisiboy, an impertinence on their part which led to their sudden
+expulsion by being pitched headlong out of the door. Parisiboy now
+commenced a lengthened exposition of his woes. "His blanket was old and
+full of holes, through which the cold found easy entrance. He was a very
+great medicine-man, but he was very poor, and tea was a luxury which he
+seldom tasted." I put a handful of tea into his little kettle, and his
+bright eyes twinkled with delight under their shaggy brows. "I never go
+to sleep," he continued; "it is too cold to go to sleep; I sit up all
+night splitting wood and smoking and keeping the fire alight; if I had
+tea I would never lie down at all." As I made my bed he continued to sing
+to himself, chatter and laugh with a peculiar low chuckle, watching me
+all the time. His first brew of tea was quickly made; hot and strong, he
+poured it into a cup, and drank it with evident delight; then in went
+more water on the leaves and down on the fire again went the little
+kettle.` But I was not permitted to lie down without interruption. Chicag
+headed a deputation of his brethren, and grew loud over the recital of
+his grievances. Between the sturgeon and the Company he appeared to think
+himself victim, but I was unable to gather whether the balance of
+ill-treatment lay on the side of the fish or of the corporation. Finally
+I got rid of the lot, and crept into my bag. Parisiboy sat at the other
+side of the fire, grinning and chuckling and sipping his tea. All night
+long I heard through my fitful sleep his harsh chuckle and his song.
+Whenever I opened my eyes, there was the little old man in the same
+attitude, crouching over the fire, which he sedulously kept alight. How
+many brews of tea he made, I can't say; but when daylight came he was
+still at the work, and as I replenished the kettle the old leaves seemed
+well-nigh bleached by continued boilings.
+
+<p>That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of
+Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar
+Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three
+Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since
+that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores.
+The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake
+from those of Lake Winnipegoosis. From one lake to the other is a
+distance of about four miles. Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is
+quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis,
+when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of
+the latter lake. These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same
+level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their
+respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than
+its neighbour the Winnipegoosis. The question is one of considerable
+interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line
+of communication between the waters of Red River and those of
+Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of
+Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until
+the sky alone bounded the prospect. But there were many islands scattered
+over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the
+pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the
+dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay. On one of these islands we
+camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a
+huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms. This Lake Winnipegoosis, or
+the "Small Sea,'" is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120
+miles in length and some 30 in width. Its shores and islands are densely
+wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the
+black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern shores he
+beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.
+This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line
+between civilization and savagery. Within the limit of the oak lies the
+country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which
+my steps have wandered so far. Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal
+Lake, I passed across the belt of forest which. Lies between the two
+lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day's
+journey to the Waterhen River. This river carries the surplus water of
+Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba. For another
+hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the
+pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the shores.
+Along the whole line of the western shores of these lakes the bold ridges
+of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the
+forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water. These four
+mountain ranges never exceed an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea.
+They are wooded to the summits, and long ages ago their rugged cliffs
+formed, doubtless, a fitting shore-line to that great lake whose
+fresh-water billows were nursed in a space twice larger than even
+Superior itself can boast of; but, as has been stated in an earlier
+chapter, that inland ocean has long since shrunken into the narrower
+limits of Winnipeg, Winnipegoosis, and Manitoba-the Great Sea, the Little
+Sea, and the Straits of the God.
+
+<p>I have not dwelt upon the days of travel during which we passed down the
+length of these lakes. From the camp of Chicag I had driven my own train
+of dogs; with Bear the sole companion of the journey. Nor were these days
+on the great lakes by any means the dullest of the journey, Cerf Volant,
+Tigre, Cariboo, and Muskeymote gave ample occupation to their driver.
+Long before Manitoba was reached they had learnt a new lesson-that men
+were not all cruel to dogs in camp or on the road. It is true that in the
+learning of that lesson some little difficulty was occasioned by the
+sudden loosening and disruption of ideas implanted by generations of
+cruelty in the dog-mind of my train. It is true that Muskeymote, in
+particular, long held aloof from offers of friendship, and then suddenly
+passed from the excess of caution to the extreme of imprudence,
+imagining, doubtless, that the millennium had at length arrived, and
+that dogs were henceforth no more to haul. But Muskeymote was soon set
+right upon that point, and showed no inclination to repeat his mistake.
+Then there was Cerf Volant, that most perfect Esquimaux. Cerf Volant
+entered readily into friendship, upon an under-standing of an additional
+half-fish at supper every evening. No alderman ever loved his turtle
+better than did Cerf Volant love his white fish; but I rather think that
+the white fish was better earned than the turtle--however we will let
+that be matter of opinion. Having satisfied his hunger, which, by the
+way, is a luxury only allowed to the hauling-dog once a day, Cerf Volant
+would generally establish himself in close proximity to my feet,
+frequently on the top of the bag, from which coigne of vantage he would
+exchange fierce growls with any dog who had the temerity to approach us.
+None of our dogs were harness-eaters, a circumstance that saved us the
+nightly trouble of placing harness and cariole in the branches of a tree.
+On one or two occasions Muskeymote, however, ate his boots. "Boots!" the
+reader will exclaim; "how came Muskeymote to possess boots? We have heard
+of a puss in boots, but a dog, that is something new." Nevertheless
+Muskeymote had his boots, and ate them, too. This is how a dog is put in
+boots. When the day is very cold--I don't mean in your reading of that
+word, reader, but in its North-west sense--when the morning, then, comes
+very cold, the dogs travel fast, the drivers run to try and restore the
+circulation, and noses and cheeks which grow white beneath the bitter
+blast are rubbed with snow caught-quickly from the ground without pausing
+in the rapid stride; on such mornings, and they are by no means uncommon,
+the particles of snow which adhere to the feet of the dog form sharp
+icicles between his toes, which grow larger and larger as he travels. A
+nowing old hauler will stop every now and then, and tear out these
+icicles with his teeth, but a young dog plods wearily along leaving his
+footprints in crimson stains upon the snow behind him. When he comes into
+camp, he lies down and licks his poor wounded feet, but the rest is only
+for a short time, and the next start makes them worse than before. Now
+comes the time for boots. The dog-boot is simply a fingerless glove drawn
+on over the toes and foot, and tied by a running string of leather round
+the wrist or ankle of the animal; the boot itself is either made of
+leather or strong white cloth. Thus protected, the dog will travel for
+days and days with wounded feet, and get no worse, in fact he will
+frequently recover while still on the journey. Now Muskeymote, being a
+young dog, had not attained to that degree of wisdom which induces older
+dogs to drag the icicles from their toes, and consequently Muskeymote had
+to be duly booted every morning--a cold operation it was too, and many a
+run had I to make to the fire while it was being performed, holding my
+hands into the blaze for a moment and then back again to the dog. Upon
+arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet,
+and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with moccassins of the men, to dry.
+It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote
+performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.
+
+<p>The night-camps along the lakes were all good ones; it took some time to
+clear away the deep snow and to reach the ground, but wood for fire and
+young spruce tops for bedding were plenty, and fifteen minutes axe work
+sufficed to fell as many trees as our fire needed for night and morning.
+From wooded point to wooded point we journeyed on over the frozen lakes;
+the snow lying packed into the crevices and uneven places of the ice
+formed a compact level surface, upon which the dogs scarce marked the
+impress of their feet, and the sleds and cariole bounded briskly after
+the train, jumping the little wavelets of hardened snow to the merry
+jingling of innumerable bells. On snow such as this dogs will make a run
+of forty miles in a day, and keep that pace for many days in succession,
+but in the soft snow of the woods or the river thirty miles will form a
+fair day's work for continuous travel.
+
+<p>On the night of the 19th of February we made our last camp on the ridge
+to the south of Lake Manitoba, fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without
+a feeling of regret was the old work gone through for the last time--the
+old work of tree-cutting, and fire-making, and supper-frying, and
+dog-feeding. Once more I had reached those confines of civilization on
+whose limits four months earlier I had made my first camp on the
+shivering Prairie of the Lonely Grave; then the long journey lay before
+me, now the unnumbered scenes of nigh 3000 miles of travel were spread
+out in that picture which memory sees in the embers of slow-burning
+fires, when the night-wind speaks in dreamy tones to the willow branches
+and waving grasses. And if there be those among my readers who can il
+comprehend such feelings, seeing only in this return the escape from
+savagery to civilization--from the wild Indian to the Anglo-American,
+from the life of toil and hardship to that of rest and comfort-then words
+would be useless to throw light upon the matter, or to better enable
+such men to understand that it was possible to look back with keen regret
+to the wild days of the forest and the prairie. Natures, no matter how we
+may mould them beneath the uniform pressure of the great machine called
+civilization, are not all alike, and many men's minds echo in some shape
+or other the voice of the Kirghis woman, which says, "Man must keep
+moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are
+in movement: it is but the dead and the earth that remain in one place."
+
+<p>There are many who have seen a prisoned lark sitting on its perch,
+looking listlessly through the bars, from some brick wall against which
+its cage was hung; but at times, when the spring comes round, and a bit
+of grassy earth is put into the narrow cage, and, in spite of smoke and
+mist, the blue sky looks a moment on the foul face of the city, the little
+prisoner dreams himself free, and, with eyes fixed on the blue sky
+and feet clasping the tiny turf of green sod, he pours forth into the dirty
+street those notes which nature taught him in the never-to-be-forgotten
+days of boundless freedom. So I have seen an Indian, far down
+in Canada, listlessly watching the vista of a broad river whose waters
+and whose shores once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him
+of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the
+wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting
+sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his
+listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo
+from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the
+shores of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners of
+our civilization. He who has once tasted the unworded freedom of the
+Western wilds must ever feel a sense of constraint within the boundaries
+of civilized life. The Russian is not the only man who has the Tartar
+close underneath his skin. That Indian idea of the earth being free to
+all men catches quick and lasting hold of the imagination--the mind
+widens out to grasp the reality of the lone space and cannot shrink again
+to suit the requirements of fenced divisions. There is a strange
+fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my
+home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or
+power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly
+remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of
+churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again
+to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the
+portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land.
+
+<p>It is time to close. It was my lot to shift the scene of life with
+curious rapidity. In a shorter space of time than it had taken to
+traverse the length of the Saskatchewan, I stood by the banks of that
+river whose proud city had just paid the price of conquest in blood and
+ruin--yet I witnessed a still heavier ransom than that paid to German
+robbers. I saw the blank windows of the Tuileries red with the light of
+flames fed from five hundred years of history, and the flagged courtyard
+of La Roquette running deep in the blood of Frenchmen spilt by France,
+while the common enemy smoked and laughed, leaning on the ramparts of St.
+Denis.
+
+<p><a name="appendix"></a></p>
+<h3>APPENDIX.</h3>
+
+<p>GOVERNOR ARCHIBALD'S INSTRUCTIONS.
+
+<p>Fort Garry, 10th October, 1870.
+
+<p>W. F. Butler, Esq., 69th Regiment.
+
+<p>SIR,--Adverting to the interviews between his honour the
+Lieutenant-Governor and yourself on the subject of the proposed mission
+to the Saskatchewan, I have it now in command to acquaint you with the
+objects his honour has in view in asking you to undertake the mission,
+and also to define the duties he desires you to perform.
+
+<p>In the first place, I am to say that representations have been made from
+various quarters that within the last two years much disorder has
+prevailed in the settlements along the line of the Saskatchewan, and
+that the local authorities are utterly powerless for the protection of
+life and property within that region. It is asserted to be absolutely
+necessary for the protection, not only of the Hudson Bay Company's Forts,
+but for the safety of the settlements along the river, that a small body
+of troops should be sent to some of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company,
+to assist the local authorities in the maintenance of peace and order.
+
+<p>I am to enclose you a copy of a communication on this subject from Donald
+A. Smith, Esq., the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and also. an
+extract of a letter from W. J. Christie, Esq., a chief factor stationed
+at Fort Carlton, which will give you some of the facts which have been
+adduced to show the representations to be well grounded.
+
+<p>The statements made in these papers come from the officers of the Hudson
+Bay Company, whose views may be supposed to be in some measure affected
+by their pecuniary interests.
+
+<p>It is the desire of the Lieutenant-Governor that you should examine the
+matter entirely from an independent point of view, giving his honour for
+the benefit of the Government of Canada your views of the state of
+matters on the Saskatchewan in reference to the necessity of troops being
+sent there, basing your report upon what you shall find by actual
+examination.
+
+<p>You will be expected to report upon the whole question of the existing
+state of affairs in that territory, and to state your views on what may
+be necessary to be done in the interest of peace and order.
+
+<p>Secondly, you are to ascertain, as far as you can, in what places and
+among what tribes of Indians, and what settlements of whites, the
+small-pox is now prevailing, including the extent of its ravages and
+every particular you can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the
+spread of the disease. You are to take with you such small supply of
+medicines as shall be considered by the Board of Health here suitable and
+proper for the treatment of small-pox, and you will obtain written
+instructions for the proper treatment of the disease, and will leave a
+copy thereof with the chief officer of each fort you pass, and with any
+clergyman or other intelligent person belonging to settlements outside
+the forts.
+
+<p>You will also ascertain, as far as in your power, the number of Indians
+on the line between Red River and the Rocky Mountains; the different
+nations and tribes into which they are divided and the particular
+locality inhabited, and the language spoken, and also the names of the
+principal chiefs of each tribe.
+
+<p>In doing this you will be careful to obtain the information without in
+any manner leading the Indians to suppose you are acting under authority,
+or inducing them to form any expectations based on your inquiries.
+
+<p>You will also be expected to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature of
+the trade in furs conducted upon the Saskatchewan, the number and
+nationality of the persons employed in what has been called the Free
+Trade there, and what portion of the supplies, if any, come from the
+United States territory, and what portion of the furs are sent thither;
+and generally to make such inquiries as to the source of trade in that
+region as may enable the Lieutenant-Governor to form an accurate idea of
+the commerce of the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>You are to report from time to time as you proceed westward, and forward
+your communications by such opportunities as may occur. The
+Lieutenant-Governor will rely upon your executing this mission with all
+reasonable despatch.
+
+<p>(Signed) S. W. HILL, P. Secretary.
+
+<p>LIEUTENANT BUTLER'S REPORT.
+
+<p>INTRODUCTORY.
+
+<p>The Hon. Adams G. Archibald, Lieut.-Governor, Manitoba.
+
+<p>SIR,--Before entering into the questions contained in the written
+instructions under which I acted, and before attempting to state an
+opinion upon the existing situation of affairs in the Saskatchewvan, I
+will briefly allude to the time occupied in travel, to the route
+followed, and to the general circumstances attending my journey.
+
+<p>Starting from Fort Garry on the 25th October, I reached Fort Ellice at
+junction of Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers on the 30th of the same
+month. On the following day I continued my journey towards Carlton, which
+place was reached on the 9th November, a detention of two days having
+occurred upon the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, the waters of
+which were only partially frozen. After a delay of five days in Carlton,
+the North Branch of the Saskatchewan was reported fit for the passage of
+horses, and on the morning of the 14th November I proceeded on my western
+journey towards Edmonton. By this time snow had fallen to the depth of
+about six inches over the country, which rendered it necessary to
+abandon the use of wheels for the transport of baggage, substituting a
+light sled in place of the cart which had hitherto been used, although I
+still retained the same mode of conveyance, namely the saddle, for
+personal use. Passing the Hudson Bay Company Posts of Battle River, Fort
+Pitt and Victoria, I reached Edmonton on the night of the 26th November.
+For the last 200 miles the country had become clear of snow, and the
+frosts, notwithstanding the high altitude of the region, had decreased in
+severity. Starting again on the afternoon of the 1st December, I
+recrossed the Saskatchewan River below Edmonton and continued in a
+south-westerly direction towards the Rocky Mountain House, passing
+through a country which, even at that advanced period of the year, still
+retained many traces of its summer beauty. At midday on the 4th December,
+having passed the gorges of the Three Medicine Hills, I came in sight of
+the Rocky Mountains, which rose from the western extremity of an immense
+plain and stretched their great snow-clad peaks far away to the northern
+and southern horizons.
+
+<p>Finding it impossible to procure guides for the prosecution of my journey
+south to Montana, I left the Rocky Mountain House on the 12th December
+and commenced my return travels to Red River along the valley of the
+Saskatchewan. Snow had now fallen to the depth of about a foot, and the
+cold had of late begun to show symptoms of its winter intensity. Thus on
+the morning of the 5th December my thermometer indicated 22 degrees below
+zero, and again on the 13th 16 below zero, a degree of cold which in itself
+was not remarkable, but which had the effect of rendering the saddle by no
+means a comfortable mode of transport.
+
+<p>Arriving at Edmonton on the 16th December, I exchanged my horses for
+dogs, the saddle for a small cariole, and on the 20th December commenced
+in earnest the winter journey to Red River. The cold, long delayed, now\
+began in all its severity. On the 22nd December my thermometer at ten
+o'clock in the morning indicated 39 degrees below zero, later in the day a
+biting wind swept the long reaches of the Saskatchewan River and rendered
+travelling on the ice almost insupportable. To note here the long days of
+travel down the great valley of the Saskatchewan, at times on the frozen
+river and at times upon the neighbouring plains, would prove only a
+tiresome record. Little by little the snow seemed to deepen, day by day
+the frost to obtain a more lasting power and to bind in a still more
+solid embrace all visible Nature. No human voice, no sound of bird or
+beast, no ripple of stream to break the intense silence of these vast
+solitudes of the Lower Saskatchewan. At length, early in the month of
+February, I quitted the valley of Saskatchewan at Cedar Lake, crossed the
+ridge which separates that sheet of water from Lake Winnipegoosis, and,
+descending the latter lake to its outlet at Waterhen River, passed from
+thence to the northern extremity of the Lake Manitoba. Finally, on the
+18th February, I reached the settlement of Oak Point on south shore of
+Manitoba, and two days later arrived at Fort Garry.
+
+<p>In following the river and lake route from Carlton, I passed in
+succession the Mission of Prince Albert, Forts-à-la-Corne and Cumberland,
+the Posts of the Pas, Moose Lake, Shoal River and Manitoba House, and,
+with a few exceptions, travelled upon ice the entire way.
+
+<p>The journey from first to last occupied 119 days and embraced a distance
+of about 2700 miles.
+
+<p>I have now to offer the expression of my best acknowledgements to the
+officers of the various posts of the Hudson Bay Company passed en route.
+To Mr. W. J. Christie, of Edmonton, to Mr. Richard Hardistry, of
+Victoria, as well as to Messrs. Hackland, Sinclair, Ballenden, Trail,
+Turner, Belanger, Matheison, McBeath, Munro, and MacDonald, I am indebted
+for much kindness and hospitality, and I have to thank Mr. W. J. Christie
+for information of much value regarding statistics connected with his
+district. I have also to offer to the Rev. Messrs. Lacombe, McDougall,
+and Nisbet the expression of the obligations which I am under towards
+them for uniform kindness and hospitality.
+
+<p>GENERAL REPORT.
+
+<p>Having in the foregoing pages briefly alluded to the time occupied in
+travel, to the route followed, and to the general circumstances attending
+my journey, I now propose entering upon the subjects contained in the
+written instructions under which I acted, and in the first instance to
+lay before you the views which I have formed upon the important question
+of the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>The institutions of Law and Order, as understood in civilized
+communities, are wholly unknown in the regions of the Saskatchewan,
+insomuch as the country is without any executive organization, and
+destitute of any means to enforce the authority of the law.
+
+<p>I do not mean to assert that crime and outrage are of habitual occurrence
+among the people of this territory, or that a state of anarchy exists in
+any particular portion of it, but it is an undoubted fact that crimes of
+the most serious nature have been committed, in various places, by
+persons of mixed and native blood, without any vindication of the law
+being possible, and that the position of affairs rests at the present
+moment not on the just power of an executive authority to enforce
+obedience, but rather upon the passive acquiescence of the majority of a
+scant population who hitherto have lived in ignorance of those
+conflicting interests which, in more populous and civilized communities,
+tend to anarchy and disorder.
+
+<p>But the question may be asked, If the Hudson Bay Company represent the
+centres round which the half-breed settlers have gathered, how then does
+it occur that that body should be destitute of governing power, and
+unable to repress crime and outrage? To this question I would reply that
+the Hudson Bay Company, being a commercial corporation, dependent for its
+profits on the suffrages of the people, is of necessity cautious in the
+exercise of repressive powers; that, also, it is exposed in the
+Saskatchewan to the evil influence which free trade has ever developed
+among the native races; that, furthermore, it is brought in contact with
+tribes long remarkable for their lawlessness and ferocity; and that,
+lastly, the elements of disorder in the whole territory of Saskatchewan
+are for many causes, yearly on the increase. But before entering upon
+the subject into which this last-consideration would lead me, it will be
+advisable to glance at the various elements which comprise the population
+of this Western region. In point of numbers, and in the power which they
+possess of committing depredations, the aboriginal races claim the
+foremost place among the inhabitants of the Saskatchewan. These tribes,
+like the Indians of other portions of Rupert's Land and the North-west,
+carry on the pursuits of hunting, bringing the produce of their hunts to
+barter for the goods of the Hudson Bay Company; but, unlike the Indians
+of more northern regions, they subsist almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+and they carry on among themselves an unceasing warfare which has long
+become traditional. Accustomed to regard murder as honourable war,
+robbery and pillage as the traits most ennobling to man hood, free from
+all restraint, these warring tribes of Crees, Assineboines, and Blackfeet
+form some of the most savage among even the races of Western America.
+
+<p>Hitherto it maybe said that the Crees have looked upon the white man as
+their friend, but latterly indications have not been wanting to
+foreshadow a change in this respect--a change which I. have found many
+causes to account for, and which, if the Saskatchewan remains in its
+present condition, must, I fear, deepen into more positive enmity. The
+buffalo, the red man's sole means of subsistence, is rapidly
+disappearing; year by year the prairies, which once shook beneath the
+tread of countless herds of bisons, are becoming denuded of animal life,
+and year by year the affliction of starvation comes with an
+ever-increasing intensity upon the land. There are men still living who
+remember to have hunted buffalo on the shores of Lake Manitoba. It is
+scarcely twelve years since Fort Ellice, on the Assineboine River, formed
+one of the principal posts of supply for the Hudson Bay Company; and the
+vast prairies which flank the southern and western spurs of the Touchwood
+Hills, now utterly silent and deserted, are still white with the bones of
+the migratory herds which, until lately, roamed over their surface.
+
+<p>Nor is this absence of animal life confined to the plains of the
+Qu'Appelle and of the Upper Assineboine--all along the line of the North
+Saskatchewan, from Carlton to Edmonton House, the same scarcity prevails;
+and if further illustration of this decrease of buffalo be wanting, I
+would state that, during the present winter, I have traversed the plains
+from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains without seeing even one
+solitary animal upon 1200 miles of prairie. The Indian is not slow to
+attribute this lessening of his principal food to the presence of the
+white and half-breed settlers, whose active competition for pemmican
+(valuable as supplying the transport service of the Hudson Bay Company)
+has led to this all but total extinction of the bison.
+
+<p>Nor does he fail to trace other grievances--some real, some imaginary-to
+the same cause. Wherever the half-breed settler or hunter has established
+himself he has resorted to the use of poison as a means of destroying the
+wolves and foxes which were numerous on the prairies. This most
+pernicious practice has had the effect of greatly embittering the Indians
+against the settler, for not only have large numbers of animals been
+uselessly destroyed, inasmuch as fully one-half the animals thus killed
+are lost to the trapper, but also the poison is frequently communicated
+to the Indian dogs, and thus a very important mode of winter transport is
+lost to the red man. It is asserted, too, that horses are sometimes
+poisoned by eating grasses which have become tainted by the presence of
+strychnine; and although this latter assertion may not be true, yetits
+effects are the same, as the Indian fully believes it. In consequence of
+these losses a threat has been made, very generally, by the natives
+against the half-breeds, to the effect that if the use of poison was
+persisted in, the horses belonging to the settlers would be shot.
+
+<p>Another increasing source of Indian discontent is to be found in the
+policy pursued by the American Government in their settlement of the
+countries lying south of the Saskatchewan. Throughout the territories of
+Dakota and Montana a state of hostility has long existed between the
+Americans and the tribes of Sioux, Black feet, and Peagin Indians. This
+state of hostility has latterly degenerated on the part of the Americans,
+into a war of extermination; and the policy of "clearing out" the red man
+has now become a recognized portion of Indian warfare. Some of these acts
+of extermination find their way into the public records, many of them
+never find publicity. Among the former, the attack made during the
+spring of 1870 by a large party of troops upon a camp of Peagin Indians
+close to the British boundary-line will be fresh in the recollection of
+your Excellency. The tribe thus attacked was suffering severely from
+small-pox, was surprised at daybreak by the soldiers, who, rushing in
+upon the tents, destroyed 170 men, women, and children in a few moments.
+This tribe forms one of the four nations comprised in the Blackfeet
+league, and have their hunting-grounds partly on British and partly on
+American territory. I have mentioned the presence of small-pox in
+connexion with these Indians. It is very generally believed in the
+Saskatchewan that this disease was originally communicated to the
+Blackfeet tribes by Missouri traders with a view to the accumulation of
+robes; and this opinion, monstrous though it may appear, has been
+somewhat terrified by the Western press when treating of the epidemic
+last year. As I propose to enter at some length into the question of this
+disease at a later portion of this report, I now only make allusion to it
+as forming one of the grievances which the Indian affirms he suffers at
+the hands of the white man.
+
+<p>In estimating the causes of Indian discontent as bearing upon the future
+preservation of peace and order in the Saskatchewan, and as illustrating
+the growing difficulties which a commercial corporation like the Hudson
+Bay Company have to contend against when acting in an executive capacity,
+I must now allude to the subject of Free Trade. The policy of a free
+trader in furs is essentially a short-sighted one-he does not care about
+the future--the continuance and partial well-being of the Indian is of no
+consequence to him. His object is to obtain possession of all the furs
+the Indian may have at the moment to barter, and to gain that end he
+spares no effort. Alcohol, discontinued by the Hudson Bay Company in
+their Saskatchewan district for many years, has been freely used of late
+by free traders from Red River; and, as great competition always exists
+between the traders and the employees of the Company, the former have not
+hesitated to circulate among the natives the idea that they have suffered
+much injustice in their intercourse with the Company. The events which
+took place in the Settlement of Red River during the winter of '69 and '70
+have also tended to disturb the minds of the Indians--they have heard of
+changes of Government, of rebellion and pillage of property, of the
+occupation of forts belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and the stoppage
+of trade and ammunition. Many of these events have been magnified and
+distorted--evil-disposed persons have not been wanting to spread abroad
+among the natives the idea of the downfall of the Company, and the
+threatened immigration of settlers to occupy the hunting-grounds and
+drive the Indian from the land. All these rumours, some of them vague and
+wild in the extreme, have found ready credence by camp-fires and in
+council-lodge, and thus it is easy to perceive how the red man, with many
+of his old convictions and beliefs rudely shaken, should now be more
+disturbed and discontented than he has been at any former period.
+
+<p>In endeavouring to correctly estimate the present condition of Indian
+affairs in the Saskatchewan the efforts and influence of the various
+missionary bodies must not be overlooked. It has only been during the
+last twenty years that the Plain Tribes have been brought into contact
+with the individuals whom the contributions of European and Colonial
+communities have sent out on missions of religion and civilization. Many
+of these individuals have toiled with untiring energy and undaunted
+perseverance in the work to which they have devoted themselves, but it is
+unfortunately true that the jarring interests of different religious
+denominations have sometimes induced them to introduce into the field of
+Indian theology that polemical rancour which so unhappily distinguishes
+more civilized communities.
+
+<p>To fully understand the question of missionary enterprise, as bearing
+upon the Indian tribes of the Saskatchewan valley, I must glance for a
+moment at the peculiarities in the mental condition of the Indians which
+render extreme caution necessary in all inter course between him and the
+white man. It is most difficult to make the Indian comprehend the true
+nature of the foreigner with whom he is brought in contact, or rather, I
+should say, that having his own standard by which he measures truth and
+falsehood, misery and happiness, and all the accompaniments of life, it
+is almost impossible to induce him to look at the white man from any
+point of view but his own. From this point of view every thing is
+Indian. English, French, Canadians, and Americans are so many tribes
+inhabiting various parts of the world, whose land is bad, and who are not
+possessed of buffalo--for this last desideratum they (the strangers) send
+goods, missions, etc., to the Indians of the Plains. "Ah!" they say, "if
+it was not for our buffalo where would you be? You would starve, your
+bones would whiten the prairies." It is useless to tell them that such is
+not the case, they answer, "Where then does all the pemmican go to that
+you take away in your boats and in your carts?" With the Indian, seeing
+is believing, and his world is the visible one in which his wild life is
+cast. This being understood, the necessity for caution in communicating
+with the native will at once be apparent-yet such caution on the part of
+those who seek the Indians as missionaries is not always observed. Too
+frequently the language suitable for civilized society has been addressed
+to the red man. He is told of governments, and changes in the political
+world, successive religious systems are laid before him by their various
+advocates. To-day he is told to believe one religion, to-morrow to have
+faith in another. Is it any wonder that, applying his own simple tests to
+so much conflicting testimony, he becomes utterly confused, unsettled,
+and suspicious? To the white man, as a white man, the Indian has no
+dislike; on the contrary, he is pretty certain to receive him with
+kindness and friendship, provided always that the new-comer will adopt
+the native system, join the hunting-camp, and live on the plains; but to
+the white man as a settler, or hunter on his own account, the Crees and
+Blackfeet are in direct antagonism. Ownership in any particular portion
+of the soil by an individual is altogether foreign to men who, in the
+course of a single summer, roam over 500 miles of prairie. In another
+portion of this report I hope to refer again to the Indian question, when
+treating upon that clause in my instructions which relates exclusively to
+Indian matters. I have alluded here to missionary enterprise and to the
+Indian generally, as both subjects are very closely connected with the
+state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>Next in importance to the native race is the half-breed element in the
+population which now claims our attention.
+
+<p>The persons composing this class are chiefly of French descent originally
+of no fixed habitation, they have, within the last few years, been
+induced by their clergy to form scattered settlements along the line of
+the North Saskatchewan. Many of them have emigrated from Red River, and
+others are either the discharged servants of the Hudson Bay Company or
+the relatives of persons still in the employment of the Company. In
+contradistinction to this latter class they bear the name of "free men"
+and if freedom from all restraint, general inaptitude for settled
+employment, and love for the pursuits of hunting be the characteristics
+of free men, then they are eminently entitled to the name they bear. With
+very few exceptions, they have preferred adopting the exciting but
+precarious means of living, the chase, to following the more certain`
+methods of agriculture. Almost the entire summer is spent by them upon
+the plains, where they carry on the pursuit of the buffalo in large and
+well organized bands, bringing the produce of their hunt to trade with
+the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+<p>In winter they generally reside at their settlements, going to the nearer
+plains in small parties and dragging the frozen buffalo meat for the
+supply of the Company's posts. This preference for the wild life of the
+prairies, by bringing them more in contact with their savage brethren,
+and by removing them from the means of acquiring knowledge and
+civilization, has tended in no small degree to throw them back in the
+social scale, and to make the establishment of a prosperous colony almost
+an impossibility--even starvation, that most potent inducement to toil,
+seems powerless to promote habits of industry and agriculture. During
+the winter season they frequently undergo periods of great privation,
+but, like he Indian, they refuse to credit the gradual extinction of the
+buffalo, and persist in still depending on that animal for their food.
+Were I to sum up the general character of the Saskatchewan half-breed
+population, I would say: They are gay, idle, dissipated, unreliable, and
+ungrateful, in a measure brave, hasty to form conclusions and quick to
+act upon them, possessing extra ordinary power-of endurance, and capable
+of undergoing immense fatigue, yet scarcely-ever to be depended on in
+critical moments, superstitious and ignorant, having a very deep-rooted
+distaste to any fixed employment, opposed to the Indian, yet widely
+separated from the white man--altogether a race presenting, I fear, a
+hopeless prospect to those who would attempt to frame, from such
+materials, a future nationality. In the appendix will be found a
+statement showing the population and extent of the half-breed settlements
+in the West. I will here merely remark that the principal settlements are
+to be found in the Upper Saskatchewan, in the vicinity of Edmonton House,
+at which post their trade is chiefly carried on.
+
+<p>Among the French half-breed population there exists the same political
+feeling which is to be found among their brethren in Manitoba, and the
+same sentiments which produced the outbreak of 1869-70 are undoubtedly
+existing in the small communities of the Saskatchewan. It is no easy
+matter to understand how the feeling of distrust towards Canada, and a
+certain hesitation to accept the Dominion Government, first entered into
+the mind of the half-breed, but undoubtedly such distrust and hesitation
+have made themselves apparent in the Upper Saskatchewan, as in Red River,
+though in a much less formidable degree; in fact, I may fairly close this
+notice of the half-breed population by observing that an exact
+counterpart of French political feeling in Manitoba may be found in the
+territory of the Saskatchewan, but kept in abeyance both by the isolation
+of the various settlements, as well as by a certain dread of Indian
+attack which presses equally upon all classes.
+
+<p>The next element of which I would speak is that composed of the white
+settler, European and American,` not being servants of the Hudson Bay
+Company. At the present time this class is numerically insignificant,
+and were it not that causes might at any moment arise which would
+rapidly develop it into consequence, it would not now claim more than a
+passing notice. These causes are to be found in the existence of gold
+throughout a large extent of the territory lying at the eastern base of
+the Rocky Mountains, and in the effect which the discovery of gold-fields
+would have in inducing a rapid movement of miners from the already
+over-worked fields of the Pacific States and British Columbia. For some
+years back indication of gold, in more or less quantities, have been
+found in almost every river running east from the mountains. On the
+Peace, Athabasca, McLeod, and Pembina Rivers, all of which drain their
+waters into the Arctic Ocean, as well as on the North Saskatchewan, Red
+Beer, and Bow Rivers, which shed to Lake Winnipeg, gold has been
+discovered. The obstacles which the miner has to contend with are,
+however, very great, and preclude any thing but the most partial
+examination of the country. The Blackfeet are especially hostile towards
+miners, and never hesitate to attack them, nor is the miner slow to
+retaliate; indeed he has been too frequently the aggressor, and the
+records of gold discovery are full of horrible atrocities committed upon
+the red man. It has only been in the neighbourhood of the forts of the
+Hudson Bay Company that continued washing for gold could be carried on.
+In the neighbourhood of Edmonton from three to twelve dollars of gold
+have frequently been "washed" in a single day by one man; but the miner
+is not satisfied with what he calls "dirt washing," and craves for the
+more exciting work in the dry diggings where, if the "strike" is good,
+the yield is sometimes enormous. The difficulty of procuring provisions
+or supplies of any kind has also prevented "prospecting" parties from
+examining the head-waters of the numerous streams which form the sources
+of the North and South Saskatchewan. It is not the high price of
+provisions that deters the miner from penetrating these regions, but the
+absolute impossibility of procuring any. Notwithstanding the many
+difficulties which I have enumerated, a very determined effort will in
+all probability be made, during the coming summer, to examine the
+head-waters of the North Branch of the Saskatchewan. A party of miners,
+four in number, crossed the mountains late in the autumn of 1870, and are
+now wintering between Edmonton and the Mountain House, having laid in
+large supplies for the coming season. These men speak with confidence of
+the existence of rich diggings in some portion of the country lying
+within the outer range of the mountains. From conversations which I have
+held with these men, as well as with others who have partly investigated
+the country, I am of opinion that there exists a very strong probability
+of the discovery of gold-fields in the Upper Saskatchewan at no distant
+period. Should this opinion be well founded, the effect which it will
+have upon the whole Western territory will be of the utmost consequence.
+
+<p>Despite the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of such
+discoveries, or the plains or passes leading to them, a general influx of
+miners will take place into the Saskatchewan, and in their track will
+come the waggon or pack-horse of the merchant from the towns of Benton or
+Kootenais, or Helena. It is impossible to say what effect such an influx
+of strangers would have upon the plain Indians; but of one fact we may
+rest assured, namely, that should these tribes exhibit their usual spirit
+of robbery and murder they would quickly be exterminated by the miners.
+
+<p>Every where throughout the Pacific States and along the central
+territories of America, as well as in our own colony of British Columbia,
+a war of extermination has arisen, under such circum stances, between the
+miners and the savages, and there is good reason to suppose that similar
+results would follow contact with the proverbially hostile tribe of
+Blackfeet Indians.
+
+<p>Having in the foregoing remarks reviewed the various elements which
+compose the scanty but widely extended population of the Saskatchewan,
+outside the circle of the Hudson Bay Company, I have now to refer to that
+body, as far as it is connected with the present condition of affairs in
+the Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>As a governing body the Hudson Bay Company has ever had to contend
+against the evils which are inseparable from monopoly of trade combined
+with monopoly of judicial power, but so long as the aboriginal
+inhabitants were the only people with whom it came in contact its
+authority could be preserved; and as it centred within itself whatever
+knowledge and enlightenment existed in the country, its officials were
+regarded by the aboriginals as persons of a superior nature, nay, even in
+bygone times it was by no means unusual for the Indians to regard the
+possession of some of the most ordinary inventions of civilization on the
+part of the officials of the Company as clearly demonstrating a close
+affinity between these gentlemen and the Manitou, nor were these
+attributes of divinity altogether distasteful to the officers, who found
+them both remunerative as to trade and conducive to the exercise of
+authority. When, however, the Free Traders and the missionary reached the
+Saskatchewan this primitive state of affairs ceased-with the
+enlightenment of the savage came the inevitable discontent of the'
+Indian, until there arose the condition of things to which I have already
+alluded. I am aware that there are persons who, while admitting the
+present unsatisfactory state of the Saskatchewan, ascribe its evils more
+to mistakes committed by officers of the Company, in their management of
+the Indians, than to any material change in the character of the people;
+but I believe such opinion to be founded in error. It would be
+impossible to revert to the old management of affairs. The Indians and
+the half-breeds are aware of their strength, and openly speak of it; and
+although I am far from asserting that a more determined policy on the
+part of the officer in charge of the Saskatchewan District would not be
+attended by better results, still it is apparent that the great isolation
+of the posts, as well as the absence of any fighting element in the class
+of servants belonging to the Company, render the forts on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in a very great degree, helpless, and at the mercy of the
+people of that country. Nor are the engaged servants of the Company a
+class of persons with whom it is at all easy to deal. Recruited
+principally from the French half-breed population, and exposed, as I
+have already shown, to the wild and lawless life of the prairies, there
+exists in reality only a very slight distinction between them and their
+Indian brethren, hence it is not surprising that acts of insubordination
+Should be of frequent occurrence among these servants, and that personal
+violence towards superior officers should be by no means an unusual event
+in the forts of the Saskatchewan; indeed it has only been by the exercise
+of manual force on the part of the officials in charge that the semblance
+of authority has sometimes been preserved. This tendency towards
+insubordination is still more observable among the casual servants or
+"trip men" belonging to the Company. These persons are in the habit of
+engaging for a trip or journey, and-frequently select the most critical
+moments to demand an increased rate of pay, or to desert en masse.
+
+<p>At Edmonton House, the head-quarters of the Saskatchewan District, and at
+the posts of Victoria and Fort Pitt, this state of lawlessness is more
+apparent than on the lower portion of the river. Threats are frequently
+made use of by the Indians and half-breeds as a means of extorting
+favourable terms from the officers in charge, the cattle belonging to the
+posts are uselessly killed, and altogether the Hudson Bay Company may be
+said to retain their tenure of the Upper Saskatchewan upon a base which
+appears insecure and unsatisfactory.
+
+<p>In the foregoing remarks I have entered at some length into the question
+of the materials comprising the population of the Saskatchewan, with a,
+view to demonstrate that the condition of affairs in-that territory is
+the natural result of many causes, which have been gradually developing
+themselves, and which must of necessity undergo still further
+developments if left in their present state. I have endeavoured to point
+out how from the growing wants of the aboriginal inhabitants, from the
+conflicting nature of the interests of the half-breed and Indian
+population, as well as from the natural constitution of the Hudson Bay
+Company, a state of society has arisen in the Saskatchewan which
+threatens at no distant day to give rise to grave complications; and
+which now has the effect of rendering life and property insecure and
+preventing the settlement of those fertile regions which in other
+respects are so admirably suited to colonization.
+
+<p>As matters at present rest, the region of the Saskatchewan is without
+law, order, or security for life or property; robbery and murder for
+years have gone unpunished; Indian massacres are unchecked even in the
+close vicinity of the Hudson Bay Company's posts, and all civil and legal
+institutions are entirely unknown.
+
+<p>I now enter upon that portion of your Excellency's instructions which has
+reference to the epidemic of small-pox in the Saskatchewan. It is about
+fifty years since the first great epidemic of small pox swept over the
+regions of the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, committing great ravages
+among the tribes of Sioux, Gros-Ventres, and Flatheads upon American
+territory; and among the Crees and Assineboines of the British. The
+Blackfeet Indians escaped that epidemic, while, on the other hand, the
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Qu'Appelle Plains, were almost entirely
+destroyed. Since that-period the disease appears to have visited some of
+the tribes at intervals of greater or less duration; but until this and
+the previous year its ravages were confined to certain localities and did
+not extend universally throughout the country. During the summer and
+early winter of '69 and '70 reports reached the Saskatchewan of the
+prevalence of small-pox of a very malignant type among the South Peagin
+Indians, a branch of the great Blackfeet nation. It was hoped, however,
+that the disease would be confined to the Missouri River, and the Crees
+who, as usual, were at war with their traditional enemies, were warned
+by Missionaries and others that the prosecution of their predatory
+expeditions into the Blackfeet country would in all probability carry
+the infection into the North Saskatchewan. From the South Peagin tribes,
+on the head-waters of the Missouri, the disease spread rapidly through
+the kindred tribes of Blood, Blackfeet, and Lucee Indians, all which new
+tribes have their hunting-grounds north of the boundary-line.
+Unfortunately for the Crees, they failed to listen to the advice of those
+persons who had recommended a suspension of hostilities. With the opening
+of spring the war-parties commenced their raids; a band of seventeen
+Crees penetrated, in the month of April, into the Blackfeet country, and
+coming upon a deserted camp of their enemies in which a tent was still
+standing, they proceeded to ransack it, This tent contained the dead
+bodies of some Blackfeet, and although these bodies presented a very
+revolting spectacle, being in an advanced stage of decomposition, they
+were nevertheless-subjected to the usual process of mutilation, the
+scalps and clothing being also carried away.
+
+<p>For this act the Crees paid a terrible penalty; scarcely had they
+reached their own country before the disease appeared among them, in its
+most virulent and infectious form. Nor were the consequences of this raid
+less disastrous to the whole Cree nation. At the period of the-year to
+which I allude, the early summer, these Indians usually assemble together
+from different directions in large numbers, and it was towards one of
+those numerous assemblies that the returning war-party, still carrying
+the scalps and clothing of the Blackfeet, directed their steps. Almost
+immediately upon their arrival the disease broke out amongst them in its
+most malignant form. Out of the seventeen men who took part in the raid,
+it is asserted that not one escape the infection, and only two of the
+number appear to have survived. The disease, once-introduced into the
+camp, spread with the utmost rapidity; numbers of men, women, and
+children fell victims to it during the month of June; the cures of the
+medicine-men were found utterly-unavailing to arrest it, and, as a last
+resource, the camp broke up into small parties, some directing their
+march towards Edmonton, and others to Victoria, Saddle Lake, Fort Pitt,
+and along the whole line of the North Saskatchewan. Thus, at the same
+period, the beginning of July, small-pox of the very worst description
+was spread throughout some 500 miles of territory, appearing almost
+simultaneously at the Hudson Bay Company's posts from the Rocky Mountain
+House to Carlton.
+
+<p>It is difficult to imagine, a state of pestilence more terrible than
+that which kept pace with these moving parties of Crees during the summer
+months of 1870. By streams and lakes, in willow copses,'! and upon bare
+hill-sides, often shelterless from the fierce rays of the summer sun and
+exposed to the rains and dews of night, the poor plague-stricken wretches
+lay down to die--no assistance of any kind, for the ties of family were
+quickly loosened, and mothers abandoned their helpless children upon the
+wayside, fleeing onward to some fancied place of safety. The district
+lying between Fort Pitt and Victoria, a distance of about 140 miles, was
+perhaps the scene of the greatest suffering.
+
+<p>In the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Pitt two camps of Crees
+established themselves, at first in the hope of obtaining medical
+assistance, and failing in that--for the officer in charge soon exhausted
+his slender store--they appear to have endeavoured to convey the
+infection into the fort, in the belief that by doing so they would cease
+to suffer from it themselves. The dead bodies were left unburied close to
+the stockades, and frequently Indians in the worst stage of the disease
+might be seen trying to force an entrance into the houses, or rubbing
+portions of the infections matter from their persons against the
+door-handles and window-frames of the dwellings. It is singular that only
+three persons within the fort should have been infected with the disease,
+and I can only attribute the comparative immunity enjoyed by the
+residents at that post to the fact that Mr. John Sinclair had taken the
+precaution early in the summer to vaccinate all the persons residing
+there, having obtained the vaccine matter from a Salteaux Indian who had
+been vaccinated at the Mission of Prince Albert, presided over by Rev.
+Mr. Nesbit, sometime during the spring. In this matter of vaccination a
+very important difference appears to have existed between the Upper and
+Lower Saskatchewan. At the settlement of St. Albert, near Edmonton, the
+opinion prevails that vaccination was of little or no avail to check-the
+spread of the disease, while, on the contrary, residents on the lower
+portion of the Saskatchewan assert that they cannot trace a single case
+in which death had ensued after vaccination had been properly performed.
+I attribute this difference of opinion on the benefits resulting from
+vaccination to the fact that the vaccine matter used at St. Albert and
+Edimonton was of a spurious description, having been brought from Fort
+Benton, on the Missouri River, by traders during the early summer, and
+that also it was used when the disease had reached its height, while, on
+the other hand, the vaccination carried on from Mr. Nesbit's Mission
+appears to have been commenced early in the spring, and also to have been
+of a genuine description.
+
+<p>At the Mission of St. Albert, called also "Big Lake," the disease
+assumed a most malignant form; the infection appears to have been
+introduced into the settlement from two different sources almost at the
+same period. The summer hunting-party met the Blackfeet on the plains and
+visited the Indian camp (then infected with small-pox) for the purpose of
+making peace and trading. A few days later the disease appeared among
+them and swept off half their number in a very short space of time. To
+such a degree of helplessness were they reduced that when the prairie
+fires broke out in the neighbourhood of their camp they were unable to do
+any thing towards arresting its progress or saving their property. The
+fire swept through the camp, destroying a number of horses, carts, and
+tents, and the unfortunate people returned to their homes at Big Lake
+carrying the disease with them. About the same time some of the Crees
+also reached the settlement, and the infection thus communicated from
+both quarters spread with amazing rapidity. Out of a total population
+numbering about 900 souls, 600 caught the disease, and up to the date of
+my departure from Edmonton (22nd December) 311 deaths had occurred. Nor
+is this enormous percentage of deaths very much to be wondered at when we
+consider the circumstances attending this epidemic. The people, huddled
+together in small hordes, were destitute of medical assistance or of even
+the most ordinary requirements of the hospital. During the period of
+delirium incidental to small-pox, they frequently wandered forth at night
+into the open air, and remained exposed for hours to dew or rain; in the
+latter stages of the disease they took no precautions against cold, and
+frequently died from relapse produced by exposure; on the other hand,
+they appear to have suffered but little pain after the primary fever
+passed away. "I have frequently," says Père André, "asked a man in the
+last stages of small pox,-whose end was close at hand, if he was
+suffering much pain; and the almost invariable reply was, None
+whatever." They seem also to have died without suffering, although the
+fearfully swollen appearance of the face, upon which scarcely a feature
+was visible, would lead to the supposition that such a condition must of
+necessity be accompanied by great pain.
+
+<p>The circumstances attending the progress of the epidemic at Carlton House
+are worthy of notice, both on account of the extreme virulence which
+characterized the disease at that post, and also as no official record
+of this visitation of small-pox would be complete which failed to bring
+to the notice of your Excellency the undaunted: heroism displayed by a
+young officer of the Hudson Bay Company who was in temporary charge of
+the station. At the breaking out of the disease, early in the month of
+August, the population of Carlton: numbered about seventy souls. Of these
+thirty-two persons caught the infection, and twenty-eight persons died.
+Throughout the entire period of the epidemic the officer already alluded
+to, Mr. Wm. Traill, laboured with untiring perseverance in ministering to
+the necessities of the sick, at whose bedsides he was to be found both
+day and night, undeterred by the fear of infection, and undismayed by the
+unusually loathsome nature of the disease. To estimate with any thing
+like accuracy the losses caused among the Indian tribes is a matter of
+considerable difficulty. Some tribes and portions of tribes suffered much
+more severely than others. That most competent authority, Père Lacombe,
+is of opinion that neither the Blood nor Blackfeet Indians had, in
+proportion to their numbers, as many casualties as the Crees, whose
+losses may be safely stated at from 600 to 800 persons. The Lurcees, a
+small tribe in close alliance with the Blackfeet, suffered very severely,
+the number of their tents being reduced from fifty to twelve. On the.'
+other hand, the Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, warned by the
+memory of the former epidemic, by which they were almost annihilated,
+fled at the first approach of the disease, and, keeping far out in the
+south-eastern prairies, escaped the infection altogether. The very heavy
+loss suffered by the Lurcees to which I have just alluded was, I
+apprehend, due to the fact that the members of this tribe have long been
+noted as persons possessing enfeebled constitutions, as evidenced by the
+prevalence of goitre almost universally amongst them. As a singular
+illustration of the intractable nature of these Indians, I would mention
+that at the period when the small-pox was most destructive among them
+they still continued to carry on their horse-stealing raids against the
+Crees and half-breeds in the neighbourhood of Victoria Mission. It was
+not unusual to come upon traces of the disease in the corn-fields around
+the settlement, and even the dead bodies of some Lurcees were discovered
+in the vicinity of a river which they had been in the habit of swimming
+while in the prosecution of their predatory attacks. The Rocky Mountain
+Stonies are stated to have lost over fifty souls. The losses sustained by
+the Blood, Blackfeet, and Peagin tribes are merely conjectural; but, as
+their loss in leading men or chiefs has been heavy, it is only reasonable
+to presume that the casualties suffered generally by those tribes have
+been proportionately severe. Only three white persons appear to have
+fallen victims to the disease, one an officer of the Hudson Bay Company
+service at Carlton, and two members of the family of the Rev. Mr.
+McDougall, at Victoria. Altogether, I should be inclined to estimate the
+entire loss along the North Saskatchewan, not including Blood, Blackfeet,
+or Peagin Indians, at about 1200 persons. At the period of my departure
+from the Saskatchewan, the beginning of-the present year, the disease
+which committed such terrible havoc among the scanty population of that
+region still lingered in many localities. On my upward journey to the
+Rocky Mountains I had found the forts of the Hudson Bay Company free from
+infection: On my return journey I found cases of small-pox in the Forts,
+of Edmonton, Victoria, and Pitt--cases which, it is true, were of a
+milder description than those of the autumn and summer, but which,
+nevertheless, boded ill for the hoped for disappearance of the plague
+beneath the snows and cold of winter. With regard to the supply of
+medicine sent by direction of the Board of Health in Manitoba to the
+Saskatchewan, I have only to remark that I conveyed to Edmonton the
+portion of the supply destined for that station. It was found, however,
+that many of the bottles had been much injured by frost, and I cannot in
+any way favourably notice either the composition or general selection of
+these supplies.
+
+<p>Amongst the many sad traces of the epidemic existing in the Upper
+Saskatchewan I know of none so touching as that which is to be found in
+an assemblage of some twenty little orphan children gathered together
+beneath the roof of the sisters of charity at the settlement of St.
+Albert. These children are of all races, and even in some instances the
+sole survivors of what was lately a numerous family. They are fed,
+clothed, and taught at the expense of the Mission; and when we consider
+that the war which is at present raging in France has dried up the
+sources of charity from whence the Missions of the North-west derived
+their chief support, and that the present winter is one of unusual
+scarcity and distress along the North Saskatchewan, then it will be
+perceived what a fitting object for the assistance of other communities
+is now existing in this distant orphanage of the North.
+
+<p>I cannot close this notice of the epidemic without alluding to the danger
+which will arise in the spring of introducing the infection into
+Manitoba. As soon as the prairie route becomes practicable there will be
+much traffic to and from the Saskatchewan--furs and robes will be
+introduced into the settlement despite the law which prohibits their
+importation. The present quarantine establishment at Rat Creek is
+situated too near to the settlement to admit of a strict enforcement of
+the sanitary regulations. It was only in the month of October last year
+that a man coming direct from Carlton died at-this Rat Creek, while his
+companions, who were also from the same place, and from whom he caught
+the infection, passed on into the province. If I might suggest the course
+which appears to me to be the most efficacious, I would say that a
+constable stationed at Fort Ellice during the spring and summer months
+who would examine freighters and others, giving them bills of health to
+enable them to enter the province, would effectually meet the
+requirements of the situation. All persons coming from the West are
+obliged to pass close to the neighbourhood of Fort Ellice. This station
+is situated about 170 miles west of the provincial boundary, and about
+300 miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan, forming the only post of
+call upon the road between Carlton and Portage la-Prairie. I have only to
+add that, unless vaccination is made compulsory among the half-breed
+inhabitants, they will, I fear, be slow to avail themselves of it. It
+must not be forgotten that with the disappearance of the snow from the
+plains a quantity of infected matter--clothing, robes, and portions of
+skeletons--will again be come exposed to the atmosphere, and also that
+the skins of wolves, etc., collected during the present winter will be
+very liable to contain infection of the most virulent description.
+
+<p>The portion of-your Excellency's instructions which has reference to the
+Indian tribes of the Assineboine and Saskatchewan regions now claims my
+attention.
+
+<p>The aboriginal inhabitants of the country lying between Red River and
+the Rocky Monntains are divided into tribes of Salteaux, Swampies, Crees,
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, Blackfeet and Assineboines of the
+Mountains. A simpler classification, and one which will be found more
+useful when estimating the relative habits of these tribes, is to divide
+them into two great classes of Trairie Indians and Thickwood Indians--the
+first comprising the Blackfeet with their kindred tribes of Bloods,
+Lurcees, and Peagins, as also the Crees of the Saskatchewan and the
+Assineboines of the Qu'Appelle; and the last being composed of the Rocky
+Mountain Stonies, the Swampy Crees, and the Salteaux of the country lying
+between Manitoba and Fort Ellice. This classification marks in reality
+the distinctive characteristics of the Western Indians. On the one hand,
+we find the Prairie tribes subsisting almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+assembling together in large camps, acknowledging the leadership and
+authority of men conspicuous by their abilities in war or in the chase,
+and carrying on a perpetual state\of warfare with the other Indians of
+the plains. On the other hand, we find the Indians of the woods
+subsisting by fishing and by the pursuit of moose and deer, living
+together in small parties, admitting only a very nominal authority on
+the part of one man, professing to entertain hostile feelings towards
+certain races, but rarely developing such feelings into positive
+hostilities--altogether a much more peacefully disposed people, because
+less exposed to the dangerous influence of large assemblies.
+
+<p>Commencing with the Salteaux, I find that they extend westward from
+Portage-la-Prairie to Fort Ellice, and from thence north to Fort Pelly
+and the neighbourhood of Fort-à-la-Corne, where they border and mix with
+the kindred race of Swampy or Muskego Crees. At Portage-la-Prairie and in
+the vicinity of Fort Ellice a few Sioux have appeared since the outbreak
+in Minnesota and Dakota in 1862. It is probable that the number of this
+tribe on British territory will annually increase with the prosecution of
+railroad enterprise and settlement in the northern portion of the United
+States. At present, however, the Sioux are strangers at Fort Ellice, and
+have not yet assumed those rights of proprietorship which other tribes,
+longer resident, arrogate to themselves. The Salteaux, who inhabit the
+country lying west of Manitoba, partake partly of the character of
+Thickwood, and partly of Prairie Indians--the buffalo no longer exists in
+that portion of the country, the Indian camps are small, and the
+authority of the chief merely nominal. The language spoken by this tribe
+is the same dialect of the Algonquin tongue which is used in the
+Lac-la-Pluie District and throughout the greater portion of the
+settlement.
+
+<p>Passing north-west from Fort Ellice, we enter the country of the Cree
+Indians, having to the north and east the Thickwood Crees, and to the
+south and west the Plain Crees. The former, under the various names of
+Swampies or Muskego Indians, inhabit the country west of Lake Winnipeg,
+extending as far as Forts Pelly and à-la-Corne, and from, the latter
+place, in a north-westerly direction, to Carlton and Fort Pitt. Their
+language, which is similar to that spoken by their cousins, the Plain
+Crees, is also a dialect of the Algonquin tongue. They are seldom found
+in large numbers, usually forming camps of from four to ten families.
+They carry on the pursuit of the moose and red deer, and are, generally
+speaking, expert hunters and trappers.
+
+<p>Bordering the Thickwood Crees on the south and west lies the country of
+the Plain Crees--a land of vast treeless expanses, of high rolling
+prairies, of wooded tracts lying in valleys of many-sized streams, in a
+word, the land of the Saskatchewan. A line running direct from the
+Touchwood Hills to Edmonton House would measure 500 miles in length, yet
+would lie altogether within the country of the Plain Crees. They inhabit
+the prairies which extend from the Qu'Appelle to the South Saskatchewan,
+a portion of territory which was formerly the land of the Assineboine,
+but which became the country of the Crees through lapse of time and
+chance of war. From the elbow of the South Branch of the Saskatchewan the
+Cree nation extends in a west and north-west direction to the vicinity
+of the Peace Hills, some fifty miles south of Edmonton. Along the entire
+line there exists a state of perpetual warfare during the months of
+summer and autumn, for here commences the territory over which roams the
+great Blackfeet tribe, whose southern boundary lies be yond the Missouri
+River, and whose western limits are guarded by the giant peaks of the
+Rocky Mountains. Ever since these tribes became known to the fur-traders
+of the North-west and Hudson Bay Companies there has existed this state
+of hostility amongst them. The Crees, having been the first to obtain
+fire-arms from the white traders, quickly-extended their boundaries, and
+moving from the Hudson Bay and the region of the lakes overran the
+plains of the Upper Saskatchewan. Fragments of other tribes scattered at
+long intervals through the present country of the Crees attest this
+conquest, and it is-probable that the whole Indian territory lying
+between the Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line would have been
+dominated over by this tribe had they not found themselves opposed by the
+great Blackfeet nation, which dwelt along the sources of the Missouri.
+
+<p>Passing west from Edmonton, we enter the country of the Rocky Mountain
+Stonies, a small tribe of Thickwood Indians dwelling along the source of
+the North Saskatchewan and in the outer ranges of the Rocky Mountains,-a
+fragment, no doubt, from the once-powerful Assineboine nation which has
+found a refuge amidst the forests and mountains of the West. This tribe
+is noted as possessing hunters and mountain guides of great energy and
+skill. Although at war with the Blackfeet, collisions are not frequent
+between them, as the Assineboines never go upon war-parties; and the
+Blackfeet rarely venture into the wooded country.
+
+<p>Having spoken in detail of the Indian tribes inhabiting the line of
+fertile country lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains, it only
+remains for me to allude to the Blackfeet with the confederate tribes of
+Blood, Lurcees and Peagins. These tribes inhabit the great plains lying
+between the Red Deer River and the Missouri, a vast tract of country
+which, with few exceptions, is treeless, and sandy--a portion of the
+true American desert, which extends from the fertile belt of the
+Saskatchewan to the borders of Texas. With the exception of the Lurcees,
+the other confederate tribes speak the same language--the Lurcees, being
+a branch of the Chipwayans of the North, speak a language peculiar to
+themselves, while at the same time understanding and speaking the
+Blackfeet tongue. At war with their hereditary enemies, the Crees, upon
+their northern and eastern boundaries--at war with Kootanais and
+Flathead tribes on south and west--at war with Assineboines on the
+south-east and north-west--carrying on predatory excursions against the
+Americans on the Missouri, this Blackfeet nation forms a people of whom
+it may truly be said that they are against every man, and that every man
+is against them. Essentially a wild, lawless, erring race, whose natures
+have received the stamps of the region in which they dwell; whose
+knowledge is read from the great book which Day, Night, and the Desert
+unfold to them; and who yet possess a rude eloquence, a savage pride,
+and a wild love of freedom of their own. Nor are there other indications
+wanting to lead to the hope that this tribe may yet be found to be
+capable of yielding to influences to which they have heretofore been
+strangers, namely, Justice and Kindness.
+
+<p>Inhabiting, as the Blackfeet do, a large extent of country which, from
+the arid nature of its soil mist ever prove useless for purposes of
+settlement and colonization, I do not apprehend that much difficulty will
+arise between them and the whites, provided always that measures are
+taken to guard against certain possibilities of danger, and that the
+Crees are made to unnderstand that the forts and settlements along the
+Upper Saskatchewan must be considered as neutral ground upon which
+hostilities cannot be waged against the Black feet. As matters at present
+stand, whenever the Blackfeet venture in upon a trading expedition to the
+forts of the Hudson Bay Company they are generally assaulted by the
+Crees, and savagely murdered. Pèe Lacombe estimates the nunber of
+Blackfeet killed in and around Edmonton alone during his residence in the
+West, at over forty men, and he has assured me that to his knowledge the
+Blackfeet have never killed a Cree at that place, except in self-defence.
+Mr. W. J. Christie, chief factor at Edmonton house, confirms this
+statement. He says, "The Blackfeet respect the whites more than the Crees
+do, that is, a Blackfoot will never attempt the life of a Cree at our
+forts, and bands of them are more easily controlled in an excitement,
+than Crees. It would be easier for one of us to save the life of a Cree
+among a band of Blackfeet than it would be to save a Blackfoot in a band
+of Crees." In consequence of these repeated assaults in the vicinity of
+the forts, the Blackfeet can with difficulty be persuaded that the whites
+are not in active alliance with the Crees. Any person who studies the
+geographical position of the posts of the Hudson Bay Company cannot fail
+to notice the immense extent of country intervening between the North
+Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line in which there exists no fort
+or trading post of the Company. This blank space upon the maps is the
+country of the Blackfeet. Many years ago a post was established upon the
+Bow River, in the heart of the Blackfeet country, but at that time they
+were even more lawless than at present, and the position had to be
+abandoned on account of the expenses necessary to keep up a large
+garrison of servants. Since that time (nearly forty years ago) the
+Blackfeet have only had the Rocky Mountain House to depend on for
+supplies, and as it is situated far from the centre of their country it
+only receives a portion of their trade. Thus we find a very active
+business carried on by the Americans upon the Upper Missouri, and there
+can be little doubt that the greater portion of robes, buffalo leather,
+etc. traded by the Blackfeet finds its way down the waters of the
+Missouri. There is also another point connected with Americau trade
+amongst the Blackfeet to which I desire to draw special attention.
+Indians visiting the Rocky Mountain House during the fall of 1870 have
+spoken of the existence of a trading post of Americans from Fort Benton,
+upon the Belly River, sixty miles within the British bounndary-line. They
+have asserted that two American traders, well-known on the Missouri,
+named Culverston and Healy, have established themselves at this post for
+the purpose of trading alcohol, whiskey, and arms and ammunition of the
+most improved description, with the Blackfeet Indians; and that an active
+trade is being carried on in all these articles, which, it is said, are
+constantly smuggled across the boundary-line by people from Fort Benton.
+This story is apparently confirmed by the absence of the Blackfeet from
+the Rocky Mountain House this season, and also from the fact of the arms
+in question (repeating rifles) being found in possession of these
+Indians. The town of Benton on the Missouri River has long been noted for
+supplying the Indians with arms and ammunition; to such an extent has
+this trade been carried on, that miners in Montana, who have suffered
+from Indian attack, have threatened on some occasions to burn the stores
+belonging to the traders, if the practice was continued. I have already
+spoken of the great extent of the Blackfeet country; some idea of the
+roamings of these Indians may be gathered from a circumstance connected
+wit the trade of the Rocky Mountain House. During the spring and summer
+raids which the Blackfeet make upon the Crees of the Middle Saskatchewan,
+a number of horses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company and to settlers
+are yearly carried away. It is a general practice for persons whose
+horses have been stolen to send during the fall to the Rocky Mountain
+House for the missing animals, although that station is 300 to 600 miles
+distant from the places where the thefts have been committed. If the
+horse has not perished from the ill treatment to which he has been
+subjected by his captors, he is usually found at the above-named station,
+to which he has been brought for barter in a terribly worn out condition.
+In the Appendix marked B will be found information regarding the
+localities occupied by-the Indian tribes, the names of the principal
+chiefs, estimate of numbers in each tribe, and other information
+connected with the aboriginal inhabitants, which for sake of clearness I
+have arranged in a tabular form.
+
+<p>It now only remains for me to refer to the last clause in the
+instructions under which I acted, before entering into an expression of
+the views which I have formed upon the subject of what appears necessary
+to be done in the interests of peace and order in the Saskatchewan.
+The fur trade of the Saskatchewan District has long been in a declining
+state, great scarcity of the richer descriptions of furs, competition of
+free traders, and the very heavy expenses incurred in the maintenance of
+large establishments, have combined to render the district a source of
+loss to the Hudson Bay Company. This loss has, I believe, varied annually
+from 2000 to 6000 pounds, but heretofore it has been somewhat
+counter-balanced by the fact that the Inland Transport Line of the
+Company was dependent for its supply of provisions upon the buffalo meat,
+which of late years has only been procurable in the Saskatchewan. Now,
+however; that buffalo can no longer be procured in numbers, the Upper
+Saskatchewan becomes more than ever a burden to the Hudson Bay Company;
+still the abandonment of it by the Company might be attended by more
+serious loss to the trade than that which is incurred in its retention,
+Undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, if abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company,
+would be speedily occupied by traders from the Missouri, who would also
+tap the trade of the richer fur-producing districts of Lesser Slave Lake
+and the North. The products-of the Saskatchewan proper principally
+consists of provisions, including pemmican and dry meat, buffalo robes
+and leather, linx, cat, and wolf skins. The richer furs; such as otters,
+minks, beavers, martins, etc., are chiefly procured in the Lesser Slave
+Lake Division of the Saskatchewan District. With regard to the subject of
+Free Trade in the Saskatchewan, it is at present conducted upon
+principles quite different from those existing in Manitoba. The free men
+or "winterers" are, strictly speaking, free traders, but they dispose of
+the greater portion of their furs, robes, etc., to the Company. Some, it
+is true, carry the produce of their trade or hunt (for they are both
+hunters and traders) to Red River, disposing of it to the merchants in
+Winnipeg, but I do not imagine that more than one-third of their trade
+thus finds its way into the market. These free men are nearly all French
+half-breeds, and are mostly outfitted by the Company. It has frequently
+occurred that a very considerable trade has been carried on with alcohol,
+brought by free men from the Settlement of Red River; and distributed to
+Indians and others in the Upper Saskatchewan. This trade has been
+productive of the very worst consequences, but the law prohibiting the
+sale or possession of liquor is now widely known throughout the Western,
+territory, and its beneficial effects have already been experienced.
+
+<p>I feel convinced that if the proper means are taken the suppression of
+the liquor traffic of the West can be easily accomplished.
+
+<p>A very important subject is that which has reference to the communication
+between the Upper Saskatchewan and Missouri Rivers.
+
+<p>Fort Benton on the Missouri has of late become a place of very
+considerable importance as a post for the supply of the mining districts
+of Montana. Its geographical position is favourable. Standing at the head
+of the navigation of the Missouri, it commands: the trade of Idaho and
+Montana.-'A steamboat, without breaking bulk, can go from New Orleans to
+Benton, a distance of 4000 miles. Speaking from the recollection of
+information obtained at Omaha three years ago, it takes about thirty days
+to ascend the river from that town to Benton, the distance being about
+2000 miles. Only boats drawing two or three feet of water can perform the
+journey, as there are many shoals and shifting sands to obstruct heavier
+vessels. It has been estimated that between thirty or forty steamboats
+reached Benton during the course of last summer. The season, for
+purposes of navigation, may be reckoned as having a duration of about
+four months. Let us now travel north of the American boundary-line, and
+see what effect Benton is likely to produce upon the trade of the
+Saskatchewan. Edmonton lies N.N.W. from Benton about 370 miles. Carlton
+about the same distance north-east. From both Carlton and Edmonton to
+Fort Benton the country presents no obstacle whatever to the passage of
+loaded carts or waggons, but the road from Edmonton is free from
+Blackfeet during the summer months, and is better provided with wood and
+water. For the first time in the history of the Saskatchewan, carts
+passed safely from Edmonton to Benton during the course of last summer.
+These carts, ten in number, started from Edmonton in the month of May,
+bringing furs, robes, etc., to the Missouri. They returned in the month of
+June with a cargo consisting of flour and alcohol.
+
+<p>The furs and robes realized good prices, and altogether the journey was
+so successful as to hold out high inducements to other persons to attempt
+it during the coming summer. Already the merchants of Benton are bidding
+high for the possession of the trade of the Upper Saskatchewan, and
+estimates have been received by missionaries offering to deliver goods at
+Edmonton for 7 (American currency) per 100 lbs., all risks being insured.
+In fact it has only been on account of the absence of a frontier custom
+house that importations of bonded goods have not already been made via
+Benton.
+
+<p>These facts speak for themselves.
+
+<p>Without doubt, if the natural outlet to the trade of the Saskatchewan,
+namely the River Saskatchewan itself, remains in its present neglected
+state, the trade of the Western territory will seek a new source, and
+Benton will become to Edmonton what St. Paul in Minnesota is to Manitoba.
+
+<p>With a view to bringing the regions of the Saskatchewan into a state of
+order and security, and to establish the authority and jurisdiction of
+the Dominion Government, as well as to promote the colonization of the
+country known as the "Fertile Belt," and particularly to guard against
+the deplorable evils arising out of an Indian war, I would recommend the
+following course for the consideration of your Excellency. 1st--The
+appointment of a Civil Magistrate or Commissioner, after the model of
+similar appointments in Ireland and in India. This official would be
+required to make semi-annual tours through the Saskatchewan for the
+purpose of holding courts; he would be assisted in the discharge of his
+judicial functions by the civil magistrates of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have been already nominated, and by others yet to be appointed from
+amongst the most influential and respected persons of the French and
+English half-breed population. This officer should reside in the Upper
+Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>2nd. The organization of a well-equipped force of from 100 to 150 men,
+one-third to be mounted, specially recruited and engaged for service in
+the Saskatchewan; enlisting for two or three years service, and at
+expiration of that period to become military settlers, receiving grants
+of land, but still remaining as a reserve force should their services be
+required.
+
+<p>3rd. The establishment of two Government stations, one on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in the neighbourhood of Edmonton, the other at the
+junctions of the North and South Branches of the River Saskatchewan,
+below Carlton. The establishment of these stations to be followed by the
+extinguishment of the Indian title, within certain limits, to be
+determined by the geographical features of the locality; for instance,
+say from longitude of Carlton House eastward to junction of-two
+Saskatchewans, the northern and southern limits being the river banks.
+Again, at Edmonton, I would recommend the Government to take possession
+of both banks of the Saskatchewan River, from Edmonton House to Victoria,
+a distance of about 80 miles, with a depth of, say, from six to eight
+miles. The districts thus taken possession of would immediately become
+available for settlement, Government titles being given at rates which
+would induce immigration. These are the three general propositions, with
+a few additions to be mentioned hereafter, which I believe will, if
+acted upon, secure peace and order to the Saskatchewan, encourage
+settlement, and open up to the influences of civilized man one of the
+fairest regions of the earth. For the sake of clearness, I have em
+bodied these three suggestions in the shortest possible forms. I will now
+review the reasons which recommend their adoption and the benefits likely
+to accrue from them.
+
+<p>With reference to the first suggestion, namely, the appointment of a
+resident magistrate, or civil commissioner. I would merely observe that
+the general report which I have already made on the subject of the state
+of the Saskatchewan, as well as the particular statement to be found in
+the Appendix marked D, will be sufficient to prove the necessity of that
+appointment. With regard, however, to this appointment as connected with
+the other suggestion of military force and Government stations or
+districts, I have much to advance. The first pressing necessity is the
+establishment, as speedily as possible, of some civil authority which
+will give a distinct and tangible idea of Government to the native and
+half-breed population, now so totally devoid of the knowledge of what law
+and civil government may pertain to. The establishment of such an
+authority, distinct from, and independent of, the Hudson Bay Company, as
+well as from any missionary body situated in the country, would
+inaugurate a new series of events, a commencement, as it were, of
+civilization in these vast regions, free from all associations connected
+with the former history of the country, and separate from the rival
+systems of missionary enterprise, while at the same time lending
+countenance and support to all. Without some material force to render
+obligatory the ordinances of such an authority matters would, I believe,
+become even worse than they are at present, where the wrong-doer does not
+appear to violate any law, because there is no law to violate. On the
+other hand, I am strongly of opinion that any military force which would
+merely be sent to the forts of the Hudson Bay Company would prove only a
+source of useless expenditure to the Dominion Government, leaving matters
+in very much the same state as they exist at present, affording little
+protection outside the immediate circle of the forts in question, holding
+out no inducements to the establishment of new settlements, and liable to
+be mistaken by the ignorant people of the country for the-hired defenders
+of the Hudson Bay Company. Thus it seems to me that force without
+distinct civil government would be useless, and that civil government
+would be powerless without a material force. Again, as to the purchase of
+Indian rights upon certain localities and the formation of settlements,
+it must be borne in mind that no settlement is possible in the
+Saskatchewan until some such plan is adopted.
+
+<p>People will not build houses, rear stock, or cultivate land in places
+where their cattle are liable to be killed and their crops stolen. It
+must also be remembered that the Saskatchewan offers at present not only
+a magnificent soil and a fine climate, but also a market for all farming
+produce at rates which are exorbitantly high. For instance, flour sells
+from 2 pounds 10 shillings to 5 pounds per 100 lbs.; potatoes from 5
+shillings to 7 shillings a bushel; and other commodities in proportion.
+No apprehension need be entertained that such settlements would remain
+isolated establishments. There are at the present time many persons
+scattered through the Saskatchewan who wish to become farmers and
+settlers, but hesitate to do so in the absence of protection and
+security. These persons are old servants of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have made money, or hunters whose lives have been passed in the great
+West, and who now desire to settle down. Nor would another class of
+settler be absent. Several of the missionaries in the Saskatchewan have
+been in correspondence with persons in Canada who desire to seek a home
+in this western land, but who have been advised to remain in their
+present country until matters have become more settled along the
+Saskatchewan. The advantages of the localities which I have specified,
+the junction of the branches of the Saskatchewan River and the
+neighbourhood of Edmonton, may be stated as follows:--Junction of north
+and south branch--a place of great future military and commercial
+importance, commanding navigation of both rivers; enjoys a climate
+suitable to the production of all cereals and roots, and a soil of
+unsurpassed fertility; is situated about midway between Red River and the
+Rocky Mountains, and possesses abundant and excellent supplies of timber
+for building and fuel; is below the presumed interruption to steam
+navigation on Saskatchewan River known as "Coal Falls," and is situated
+on direct cart-road from Manitoba to Carlton.
+
+<p>Edmonton, the centre of the Upper Saskatchewan, also the centre of a
+large population (half-breed)-country lying between it and Victoria very
+fertile, is within easy reach of Blackfeet, Cree, and Assineboine
+country; summer frosts often injurious to wheat, but all other crops
+thrive well, and even wheat is frequently a large and productive crop;
+timber for fuel plenty, and for building can be obtained in large
+quantities ten miles distant; coal in large quantities on bank of river
+and gold at from three to ten dollars a day in sand bars.
+
+<p>Only one other subject remains for consideration (I presume that the
+establishment of regular mail communication and steam navigation would
+follow the adoption of the course I have recommended, and, therefore,
+have not thought fit to introduce them), and to that subject I will now
+allude before closing this Report, which has already reached proportions
+very much larger than I had anticipated. I refer to the Indian question,
+and the best mode of dealing with it. As the military protection of the
+linq of the Saskatchewan against Indian attack would be a practical
+impossibility without a very great expenditure of money, it becomes
+necessary that all precautions should be taken to prevent the outbreak of
+an Indian war, which, if once commenced, could not fail to be productive
+of evil consequences. I would urge the advisability of sending a
+Commissioner to meet the tribes of the Saskatchewan during their summer
+assemblies.
+
+<p>It must be borne in mind that the real Indian Question exists many
+hundred miles west of Manitoba, in a region where the red man wields a
+power and an influence of his own. Upon one point I would recommend
+particular caution, and that is, in the selection of the individual for
+this purpose. I have heard a good deal of persons who were said to
+possess great knowledge of the Indian character, and I have seen enough
+of the red man to estimate at its real worth the possession of this
+knowledge. Knowledge of Indian character has too long been synonymous
+with knowledge of how to cheat the Indian--a species of cleverness which,
+even in the science of chicanery, does not require the exercise of the
+highest abilities. I fear that the Indian has already had too many
+dealings with persons of this class, and has now got a very shrewd idea
+that those who possess this knowledge of his character have also managed
+to possess themselves of his property.
+
+<p>With regard to the objects to be attended to by a Commission of the kind
+I have referred to, the principal would be the establishment of peace
+between the warring tribes of Crees and Blackfeet. I believe that a peace
+duly entered into, and signed by the chiefs of both nations, in the
+presence and under the authority of a Government Commissioner, with that
+show of ceremony and display so dear to the mind of the Indian, would be
+lasting in its effects. Such a peace should be made on the basis of
+restitution to Government in case of robbery. For instance, during time
+of peace a Cree steals five horses from a Black-foot. In that case the
+particular branch of the Cree nation to which the thief belonged would
+have to give up ten horses to Government, which would be handed over to
+the Black-feet as restitution and atonement. The idea of peace on some
+such understanding occurred to me in the Saskatchewan, and I questioned
+one of the most influential of the Cree chiefs upon the subject. His
+answer to me-was that his band would agree to such a proposal and abide
+by it, but that he could not speak for the other bands. I would also
+recommend that medals, such as those given to the Indian chiefs of Canada
+and Lake Superior many years ago, be distributed among the leading men of
+the Plain Tribes. It is astonishing with what religious veneration these
+large silver medals have been preserved by their owners through all the
+vicissitudes of war and time, and with what pride the well-polished
+effigy is still pointed out, and the words "King George" shouted by the
+Indian, who has yet a firm belief in the present existence of that
+monarch. If it should be decided that a body of troops should be
+despatched to the West, I think it very advisable that the officer in
+command of such body should make himself thoroughly acquainted with the
+Plain Tribes, visiting them at least annually in their camps, and
+conferring with them on points connected with their interest. I am also
+of opinion that if the Government establishes itself in the Saskatchewan,
+a third post': should be formed, after the lapse of a year, at the
+junction of the Medicine and Red Deer Rivers in latitude 52.18 north, and
+longitude 114.15 west, about 90 miles south of Edmonton. This position is
+well within the Blackfeet country, possesses a good soil, excellent
+timber, and commands the road to Benton. This post need not be the centre
+of a settlement, but merely a military, customs, missionary, and trading
+establishment.
+
+<p>Such, Sir, are the views which I have formed upon the whole question of
+the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan. They result from the
+thought and experience of-many long days of travel through a large
+portion of the region to which they have reference. If I were asked
+from what point of view I have looked upon this question, I would answer
+From that point which sees a vast country lying, as it were, silently
+awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls
+unceasingly from Europe to America. Far off as lie the regions of the
+Saskatchewan from the Atlantic sea-board on which that wave is thrown,
+remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern slopes of the
+Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is destined to reach those
+beautiful solitudes, and to convert the wild luxuriance of their now
+Useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence. And
+If it-be matter for desire that across this immense continent, resting
+upon the two greatest oceans of the world, a powerful nation should.
+arise with the strength and the manhood which race and climate and
+tradition would assign to it--a nation which would look with no evil eye
+upon the old mother land from whence it sprung, a nation which, having no
+bitter memories to recall would have no idle prejudices to perpetuate
+then surely it is worthy of all toil of hand and brain, on the part of
+those who to-day rule, that this great link in the chain of such a future
+nationality should no longer remain undeveloped, a prey to the conflicts
+of savage races, at once the garden and the wilderness of the Central
+Continent.
+
+<p>W. F. BUTLER, Lieutenant, 69th Regiment. Manitoba, 10th March, 1871.
+
+<p>APPENDIX A
+
+<p>Settlements (Half-breed) in Saskatchewan.
+
+<p>PRINCE ALBERT.--English half-breed. A Presbyterian Mission presided over
+by Rev. Mr. Nesbit. Small post of Hudson Bay Company with large farm
+attached. On North Branch of Saskatchewan River, 35 miles above junction
+of both branches; a fine soil, plenty of timber, and good wintering
+ground for stock; 50 miles east of Carlton, and 60 west of
+Fort-à-la-Corne.
+
+<p>WHITEFISH LAKE.--English. Wesleyan Mission--only a few settlers--soil
+good--timber plenty. Situated north-east of Victoria 60 miles.
+
+<p>LAC LA BICHE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission. Large farm
+attached to mission with water grist mill, etc. Soil very good and timber
+abundant; excellent fishery. Situated at 70 miles north-west from Fort
+Pitt.
+
+<p>VICTORIA.--English half-breed. Wesleyan Mission. Large farm, soil good,
+altogether a rising little colony. Situated on North Branch of
+Saskatchewan River, 84 miles below Edmonton Mission, presided over by
+Rev. J. McDougall.
+
+<p>ST. ALBERT.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission and residence of
+Bishop (Grandin); fine church building, school and convent, etc. Previous
+to epidemic, 900 French, the largest settlement in Saskatchewan; very
+little farming done, all hunters. Situated 9 miles north of Edmonton;
+orphanage here.
+
+<p>ST. ANNE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic. Settlers mostly emigrated
+to St. Albert. Good fishery; a few farms existing and doing well. Timber
+plenty, and soil (as usual) very good; 50 miles north-west from Edmonton.
+
+
+<p>Information concerning Native Tribes of Saskatchewan River Living
+between Red River and Rocky Mountains. (Transcriber's Note: The original
+presents this in tabular form. Where a field is blank, I have shown this
+by . . . Fields are: Name of Tribe. Locality Occupied. No. by Pellitier
+Pressent Estimate. Language. Where Trading. Names of Chiefs.)
+
+<p>Salteaux-Assiniboine River--. . .--. . .-Salteaux--Forts Ellice and
+Pelly. Koota. . . . .
+
+<p>Crees--N. Saskatchewan--11,500-7000-Cree--Carlton, Pitt, Victoria,
+Edmonton, Battle River-Sgamnat, Sweet Grass--. . .
+
+<p>Blackfeet--S. Saskatchewan-6000-4000-Blackfeet--R. Mount. House--The Big
+Crow--Represented as being a good man.
+
+<p>Blood-S. Saskatchewan-2800-2000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Swan--A great
+villain.
+
+<p>Peagin--49 Parallel-4400-3000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Horn--. . . .
+
+<p>Lorcees--Red Deer River-1100-200-Ditto, Chipawayan--R. Mount. House,
+Edmonton.
+
+<p>Assineboine--S. of Qu'Appelle-1000-500-Assineboine--Qu'Appelle--. . . --. .
+
+<p>Wood Crees--North of Carlton-425--. . . Cree-Forts-à-la-Corne and
+Carlton-Misstawasis--A good man.
+
+<p>Rocky Mountain Assimneboine--Rocky Mountains-225--. . . Assineboine--R.
+Mount. House, Assineboine--The Bear's Paw--. . .
+
+<p>Estimated population of half-breed about 2000 souls, forming many
+scattered settlements not permanently located.
+
+<p>APPENDIX C.
+
+<p>Names of persons whose appointment to the Commission of the Peace would
+be recommended:
+
+<p>All officers of Hudson Bay Company in charge of posts. Mr. Chanletain, of
+St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. Brazeau. Mr. McKenzie, of Victoria. Mr.
+Wm. Borwick, St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. McGillis, residing near
+Fort Pitt.
+
+
+<p>APPENDIX D.
+
+<p>List of some of the crimes which have been committed in Saskatchewan
+without investigation or punishment:
+
+<p>Murder of a man named Whitford near Rocky Mountains.
+
+<p>Murder of George Daniels by George Robertson at White Mud River, Near
+Victoria.
+
+<p>Murder of French half-breed by his nephew at St. Albert.
+
+<p>Murder of two Lurcee Indians by half-breed close to Edmonton House.
+
+<p>Murderous attack upon a small party of Blackfeet Indians (men, women,
+and children), made by Crees, near Edmonton, in April, 1870, by which
+several of the former were killed and wounded. This attack occurred after
+the safety of these Indians had been purchased from the Crees by the
+officer of the Hudson Bay Company in charge at Edmonton, and a guard
+provided for their safe passage across the rivers. This guard, composed
+of French half-breeds from St. Albert opened out to right and left when
+the attack commenced, and did nothing towards saving the lives of the
+Blackfeet, who were nearly all killed or wounded. There is now living
+close to Edmonton a woman who beat out the brain of a little child aged
+two years on this occasion; also a half-bred man who is the foremost
+instigator to all these atrocities. Besides these murders and acts of
+violence robbery is of continual occurrence in the Saskatchewan. The
+outrages specified above have taken place during the last few years.
+
+
+<p>The End.
+
+<pre>
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15401-h.htm or 15401-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/0/15401/
+
+Produced by Col Choat
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-01.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6b38ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-01.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-02.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fffd67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-02.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-03.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9de918f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-03.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-04.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ad9c8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-04.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-05.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-05.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bea486c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-05.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-06.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-06.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..691159e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-06.jpg
diff --git a/15401-h/images/loneland-07.jpg b/15401-h/images/loneland-07.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a085acb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401-h/images/loneland-07.jpg
diff --git a/15401.txt b/15401.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b161785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11730 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Lone Land
+       A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
+
+Author: W. F. Butler
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15401]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Col Choat
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT LONE LAND: A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE IN THE
+NORT-WEST OF AMERICA.
+
+BY COLONEL W. F. BUTLER, C.B., F.R.G.S.
+AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE SIXTY-NINTH REGIMENT," ETC.
+
+
+"A full fed river winding slow,
+By herds-upon an endless plain."
+
+. . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+"And some one pacing there alone
+Who paced for ever in a glimmering land,
+Lit with a low, large moon."
+
+TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ROUTE MAP. [Not included in this ebook.]
+
+LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY Limited
+St. Dunstan's House FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET,
+
+First Published 1872 (All rights reserved)
+
+PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIFINGTON, LD.,
+ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKEMWELL ROAD, E.C.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+At York Factory on Hudson Bay there lived, not very long ago, a man who
+had stored away in his mind one fixed resolution it was to write a book.
+
+"When I put down," he used to say, "all that I have seen, and all that I
+havn't seen, I will be able to write a good book."
+
+It is probable that had this man carried his intention into effect the
+negative portion of his vision would have been more successfal than the
+positive. People are generally more ready to believe what a man hasn't
+seen'than what he has seen. So, at least, thought Karkakonias the
+Chippeway Chief at Pembina.
+
+Karkakonias was taken to Washington during the great Southern War, in
+order that his native mind might be astonished by the grandeur of the
+United States, and by the strength and power of the army of the Potomac.
+
+Upon his return to his tribe he remained silent and impassive; his days
+were spent in smoking, his evenings in quiet contemplation; he spoke not
+of his adventures in the land of the great white medicine-man. But at
+length the tribe grew discontented; they had expected to hear the recital
+of the wonders seen by their chief, and lo! he had come-back to them as
+silent as though his wanderings had ended on the Coteau of the Missouri,
+or by the borders of the Kitchi-Gami. Their discontent found vent in
+words.
+
+"Our father, Karkakonias, has come back to us," they said; "why does he
+not tell his children of the medicine of the white man? Is our father
+dumb that he does not speak to us of these things?"
+
+Then the old chief took his calumet from his lips, and replied, "'If
+Karkakonias told his children of the medicines of the white man--of his
+war-canoes moving by fire, and making thunder as they move, of his
+warriors more numerous than the buffalo in the days of our fathers, of
+all the wonderful things he has looked upon-his children would point and
+say, Behold! Karkakonias has become in his old age a maker of lies! No,
+my children, Karkakonias has seen many wonderful things, and his tongue
+is still able to speak; but, until your eyes have travelled as far as has
+his tongue, he will sit silent and smoke the calumet, thinking only of
+what he has looked upon."
+
+Perhaps I too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway
+chief, not because of any wonders I have looked upon; but rather because
+of that well-known prejudice against travellers tales, and of that
+terribly terse adjuration-".O that mine enemy might write a book!" Be
+that as it may, the book has been written; and it only remains to say a
+few words about its title and its theories.
+
+The "Great Lone Land" is no sensational name. The North-west fulfils, at
+the present time, every essential of that title. There is no other
+portion of the globe in which travel is possible where loneliness can be
+said to live so thoroughly. One may wander 500 miles in a direct line
+without seeing a human being, or an animal larger than a wolf. And if
+vastness of plain, and magnitude of lake, mountain, and river can mark a
+land as great, then no region possesses higher claims to that
+distinction.
+
+A word upon more personal matters. Some two months since I sent to the
+firm from whose hands this work has emanated a portion of the unfinished
+manuscript. I received in reply a communication to the effect that their
+Reader thought highly of my descriptions of real occurrences, but less
+of my theories. As it is possible that the general reader may fully
+endorse at least the latter portion of this opinion, I have only one
+observation to make.
+
+Almost every page of this book has been written amid the ever-present
+pressure of those feelings which spring from a sense of unrequited
+labour, of toil and service theoretically and officially recognized, but
+practically and professionally denied. However, a personal preface is not
+my object, nor should these things find allusion here, save to account in
+some manner, if account be necessary, for peculiarities of language or
+opinion which may hereafter make themselves apparent to the reader. Let
+it be.
+
+In the solitudes of the Great Lone Land, whither I am once more about to
+turn my steps, the trifles that spring from such disappointments will
+cease to trouble.
+
+April 14th 1872.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER ONE. Peace--Rumours of War--Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far
+West--A Distant Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A
+Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+CHAPTER TWO. The "Samaria"--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of
+the Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+CHAPTER THREE. Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in
+Quebec--A Summons--A Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An
+Expedition--Poor Canada--An Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival
+Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early
+Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"--M. Louis Riel--The Murder of
+Scott
+
+CHAPTER FOUR. Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great
+Fusion-Wisconsin--The Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I
+start for Lake Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The
+End of the Track
+
+CHAPTER FIVE. Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North
+Pacific Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A
+Plan to dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and
+its Neighbourhood.
+
+CHAPTER SIX. Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud-Sauk
+Rapids--"Steam Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the
+Red River.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN. North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival
+Savages-Abercrombie--News from the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red
+River-Prairies-Sunset-Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A
+Thunder-storm--A Prussian-Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer
+"International "--Pembina.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT. Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of
+Hudson--Rival Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west
+Company--How the Half-breeds came--The Highlanders
+defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+CHAPTER NINE. Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief
+ahead-Preparations--A Night March--The Steamer captured--The
+Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower Fort--The Red Indian at last--The Chief's
+Speech--A Big Feed--Making ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort
+Garry--Mr. President Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night
+out--My Crew.
+
+CHAPTER TEN. The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a
+Rapid--A Camp--No Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat
+Portage--A far-fetched Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A
+close Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The
+Officer commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE. To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal
+Mail--Grilling a Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary
+Bivouac--The President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular
+Troops.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my
+Steps--An Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland
+Ocean--Preparations-Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely
+Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine River--Rossette.
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort
+Ellice--Quick Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A
+Snow-storm--The South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of
+poor Blackie--Carlton.
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our
+Way--A long Ride--Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN. The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A
+long Ride--Fort Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant
+Companion--An easy Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French
+Missionaries--Westward still--A beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A
+"Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the
+Rocky Mountains--The Mountain House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian
+Trade--M. la Combe--Fire-water-A Night Assault.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN. I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The
+Cabri Sack--A cold Day-Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Battle Fort Pitt--The
+blind Cree--A Feast or a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY. The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of
+Hunting--A Fight--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great
+Cold-Carlton--Family Responsibilities.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the
+Saskatchewan--An Iroquois--Fort-a-la-Corne--News from the outside
+World--All haste for Home--The solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of
+Dogs--The great Marsh-Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a
+Medicine-man--Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his
+Boots--We reach the Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+APPENDIX
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Map of the Great Lone Land.
+Working up the Winnipeg.
+I waved to the leading Canoe.
+Across the Plains in November.
+The Rocky Mountains at the Sources of the Saskatchewan.
+Leaving a cosy Camp at dawn.
+The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT LONE LAND.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+Peace--Rumours of War-Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant
+Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West
+
+IT was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a
+shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was
+not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, a
+Burmese, or any other of the many "eses" or "eas" forming the great
+colonial empire of Britain who seemed capable of kicking up the semblance
+of a row. Newspapers had never been so dull; illustrated journals had to
+content themselves with pictorial representations of prize pigs,
+foundation stones, and provincial civic magnates. Some of the great
+powers were bent upon disarming; several influential persons of both
+sexes had decided, at a meeting held for the suppression of vice, to
+abolish standing armies. But, to be more precise as to the date of this
+epoch, it will be necessary to state that the time was the close of the
+year 1869, just twenty-two months ago. Looking back at this most-piping
+period of peace from the stand-point of today, it is not at all
+improbable that even at that tranquil moment a great power, now, very
+much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the
+dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at
+each other's throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more
+unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the
+part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known
+Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power
+that possessed a deeper insight into the future than did its neighbours.
+It is hardly to be gainsaid that there was, about that period, another
+great power popularly supposed to dwell amidst darkness-a power which is
+said also to possess the faculty of making Scriptural quotations to his
+own advantage. It is not at all unlikely that amidst this scene of
+universal quietude he too was watching certain little snow-wrapt hamlets,
+scenes of straw-yard and deep thatched byre in which cattle munched their
+winter provender-watching them with the perspective scent of death and
+destruction in his nostrils; gloating over them with the knowledge of
+what was to be their fate before another snow time had come round. It
+could not be supposed that amidst such an era of tranquillity the army of
+England should have been allowed to remain in a very formidable position.
+When other powers were talking of disarming, was it not necessary that
+Great Britain should actually disarm? of course there was a slight
+difference existing between the respective cases, inasmuch as Great
+Britain had never armed; but that distinction was not taken into account,
+or was not deemed of sufficient importance to be noticed, except by a few
+of the opposition journals; and is not every one aware that when a
+country is governed on the principle of parties, the party which iscalled
+the opposition must be in the wrong? So it was decreed about this time
+that the fighting force of the British nation should be reduced. It was
+useless to speak of the chances of war, said the British tax-payer,
+speak-ing through the mouths of innumerable members of the British
+Legislature. Had not the late Prince Consort and the late Mr. Cobden
+come to the same conclusion from the widely different points of great
+exhibitions and free trade, that war could never be? And if; in the face
+of great exhibitions and universal free trade-even if war did become
+possible, had we not ambassadors, and legations, and consulates all over
+the world; had we not military attaches at every great court of Europe;
+and would we not know all about it long before it commenced? No, no, said
+the tax-payer, speaking through the same medium as before, reduce the
+army, put the ships of war out of commission, take your largest and most
+powerful transport steamships, fill them full with your best and most
+experienced skilled military and naval artisans and labourers, send them
+across the Atlantic to forge guns, anchors, and material of war in the
+navy-yards of Norfolk and the arsenals of Springfield and Rock Island;
+and let us hear no more of war or its alarms. It is true, there were some
+persons who thought otherwise upon this subject, but many of them were
+men whose views had become warped and deranged in such out-of-the-way
+places as Southern Russia, Eastern China, Central Hindoostan, Southern
+Africa, and Northern America military men, who, in fact, could not be
+expected to understand questions of grave political economy, astute
+matters of place.-and party, upon which the very existence of the
+parliamentary system depended; and who, from the ignorance of these nice
+distinctions of liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal, had
+imagined that the strength and power of the empire was not of secondary
+importance to the strength and power of a party. But the year 1869 did
+not pass altogether into the bygone without giving a faint echo of
+disturbance in one far-away region of the earth. It is true, that not the
+smallest breathing of that strife which was to make: the succeeding year
+crimson through the centuries had yet sounded on the continent of Europe.
+No; all was as quiet there as befits the mighty hush which precedes
+colossal conflicts. But far away in the very farthest West, so far that
+not one man in fifty could tell its whereabouts, up somewhere between the
+Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Superior, along a river called the
+Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who or what
+they were, had risen in insurrection. Well-informed persons said these
+insurgents were only Indians; others, who had relations in America,
+averreed that they were Scotchmen, and one journal, well-known for its
+clearness upon all subjects connected with the American Continent,
+asserted that they were Frenchmen. Amongst so much conflicting testimony,
+it was only natural that the average Englishman should possess no very
+decided opinions upon the matter; in fact, it came to pass that the
+average Englishman, having heard that somebody was rebelling against him
+somewhere or other, looked to his atlas and his journal for information
+on the subject, and having failed in obtaining any from either source,
+naturally concluded that the whole thing was something which no fellow
+could be expected to understand. As, however, they who follow the writer
+of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
+to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it
+will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the
+last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon. Bookmark About the
+time when Napoleon was carrying half a million of men through the snows
+of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the
+idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the
+vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that
+entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in
+earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the
+imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century,
+had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico
+the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord
+Selkirk's experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded
+it. The earlier adventurers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic
+upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the
+very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day
+is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast
+wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles
+between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the
+cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Indeed,
+so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the
+Atlantic that all means of communication in that direction was utterly
+unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the
+ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world
+should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of
+lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its
+descent of 700 feet, lay between them and the ocean, and then only to
+reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice-bound
+outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
+latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
+for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
+summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
+raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
+before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in
+spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were
+married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the
+outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years
+after its formation, it rose in insurrection.
+
+And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the
+positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must
+undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain
+so until the end; if you be cruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me,
+it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the individual
+"I," and to retain it until we part.
+
+It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having
+experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a
+distinguished military functionary an intimation to the effect that a
+company in Her Majesty's service would be at my disposal, provided I
+could produce the sum of 1100 pounds. Some dozen years previous to the
+date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process
+of existence had reached-a position among the subalterns of the regiment
+technically known as first for purchase; but now, when the moment arrived
+to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 1100 pounds of
+regulation amount nor the 400 pounds of over-regulation items (terms
+very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obsolete) were
+forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in
+the race of life. What was to be done? What course lay open? Serve on;
+let the dull routine of barrack-life grow duller; go from Canada to the
+Cape, from the Cape to the Mauritius, from Mauritius to Madras, from
+Madras goodness knows where, and trust to delirium tremens, yellow fever,
+or: cholera morbus for promotion and advancement; or, on the other hand,
+cut the service, become in the lapse of time governor of a penitentiary,
+secretary to a London club, or adjutant of militia. And yet-here came the
+rub-when every fibre of one's existence beat in unison with the true
+spirit of military adventure, when the old feeling which in boyhood had
+made the study of history a delightful pastime, in late years had grown
+into a fixed unalterable longing for active service, when the whole
+current of thought ran in the direction of adventure-no matter in what
+climate, or under what circumstances-it was hard beyond the measure of
+words to sever in an instant the link that bound one to a life where such
+aspirations were still possible of fulfilment; to separate one's destiny
+for ever from that noble profession of arms; to become an outsider, to
+admit that the twelve best years of life had been a useless dream, and
+to bury oneself far away in some Western wilderness out of the reach or
+sight of red coat or sound of bugle-sights and sounds which old
+associations would have made unbearable. Surely it could not be done; and
+so, looking abroad into the future, it was difficult to trace a path
+Which could turn the flank of this formidable barrier flung thus suddenly
+into the highway of life.
+
+Thus it was that one, at least, in Great Britain watched with anxious
+gaze this small speck of revolt rising so far away in the vast wilderness
+of the North-West; and when, about the beginning of the month of April,
+1870, news came of the projected despatch of an armed force from Canada
+against the malcontents of Red River, there was one who beheld in the
+approaching expedition the chance of a solution to the difficulties which
+had beset him in his career. That one was myself.
+
+There was little time to be lost, for already; the cable said, the
+arrangements were in a forward state; the staff of the little force had
+been organized, the rough outline of the expedition had been sketched,
+and with the opening of navigation on the northern lakes the first move
+would be commenced. Going one morning to the nearest telegraph station, I
+sent the following message under the Atlantic to America:--"To: Winnipeg
+Expedition. Please remember me." When words cost at the rate of four
+shillings each, conversation and correspondence become of necessity
+limited. In the present instance I was only allowed the use of ten words
+to convey address, signature, and substance, and the five words of my
+message were framed both with a view to economy and politeness, as well
+as in a manner which by calling for no direct answer still left undecided
+the great question of success. Having despatched my message under the
+ocean, I determined to seek the Horse Guards in a final effort to procure
+unattached promotion in the army. It is almost unnecessary to remark that
+this attempt failed; and as I issued from the audience in which I had
+been informed of the utter hopelessness of my request, I had at least the
+satisfaction of having reduced my chances of fortune to the narrow limits
+of a single throw. Pausing at the gate of the Horse Guards I reviewed in
+a moment the whole situation; whatever was to be the result there was no
+time for delay and so, hailing a hansom, I told the cabby to drive to the
+office of the Cunard Steamship Company, Old Broad Street, City.
+
+"What steamer sails on Wednesday for America?"
+
+"The 'Samaria for Boston, the 'Marathon for New York."
+
+"The 'Samaria broke her shaft, didn't she, last voyage, and was a
+missing ship for a month?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the clerk.
+
+"Then book me a passage in her," I replied; "she's not likely to play
+that prank twice in two voyages."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+The "Samaria "--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of the
+Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
+Glimpse--Boston
+
+POLITICAL economists and newspaper editors for years have dwelt upon the
+unfortunate fact that Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, and does not
+export largely the products of her soil. But persons who have lived in
+the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern
+shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail
+daily from the United Kingdom, must have arrived at a conclusion totally
+at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under
+the sun which manufactures the material called man so readily as does
+that grass-covered island. Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, says
+the political economist. Indeed, my good sir, you are wholly mistaken.
+She is not only a manufacturing nation, but she manufactures nations. You
+do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines,
+but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her
+daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as
+for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me
+on board this ocean steamship "Samaria", and look at them. The good ship
+has run down the channel during the night and now lies at anchor in
+Queenstown harbour, waiting for mails and passengers. The latter came,
+quickly and thickly enough. No poor, ill-fed, miserably dressed crowd,
+but fresh, and fair, and strong, and well clad, the bone and muscle and
+rustic beauty of the land; the little steam-tender that plies from the
+shore to the ship is crowded at every trip, and you can scan them as they
+come on board in batches of seventy or eighty. Some eyes among the girls
+are red with crying, but tears dry quickly on young cheeks, and they will
+be laughing before an hour is over. "Let them go," says the economist;
+"we have too many mouths to feed in these little islands of ours; their
+going will give us more room, more cattle, more chance to keep our acres
+for the few'; let them go." My friend, that is just half the picture, and
+no more; we may get a peep at the other half before you and I part.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the
+"Samaria" steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and
+rounding out into Atlantic turned her head towards the western horizon.
+The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland's southmost
+shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked
+the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A
+hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off
+summit of some inland mountain; and as evening came down over the still
+tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through
+phosphorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in
+distance till there lay around only the unbroken circle of the sea.
+
+ON BOARD.-A trip across the Atlantic is now-a-days a very ordinary
+business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost
+count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue
+skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but
+don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of
+discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that
+north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such
+thing as pleasant sailing.
+
+But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not
+more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one
+meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life,
+and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who,
+nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in
+ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been
+eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good
+Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a
+subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth
+voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the
+voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to
+cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this
+intimacy has been on the decline for some days, and, as he has committed
+the unpardonable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a
+subject connected with the general direction and termination of the Gulf
+Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate.
+Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going
+to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port
+negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband
+received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two
+years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a
+grateful nation, for three youthful Fusbies, who now serve their country
+in various parts of the world. She does not suffer from sea-sickness, but
+occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the
+administration of the stimulant already referred to. It is a singular
+fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable
+events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a
+porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence of the early
+career of the major; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an
+iceberg, has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense
+suffering undergone by the major during the period of his wound, owing to
+the scarcity of the article ice in tropical countries. Then on deck
+we have the inevitable old sailor who is perpetually engaged in scraping
+the vestiges of paint from your favourite seat, and who, having arrived
+at the completion of his monotonous task after four days incessant
+labour, is found on the morning of the fifth engaged in smearing the
+paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to
+ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and
+jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the
+roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all
+about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a
+chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there
+is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever wielded
+such power, what czar or kaiser had ever such obedience yielded to their
+decrees? This man, who on shore is nothing, is here on his deck a very
+pope; he is infallible. Canute could not stay the tide, but our sea-king
+regulates the sun. Charles the Fifth could not make half a dozen clocks
+go in unison, but Captain Smith can make it twelve o'clock any time he
+pleases; nay, more, when the sun has made it twelve o'clock no tongue of
+bell or sound of clock can proclaim time's decree until it has been
+ratified by the fiat of the captain; and even in his misfortunes what
+gran deur, what absence of excuse or crimination of others in the hour of
+his disaster! Who has not heard of that captain who sailed away from
+Liverpool one day bound for America? He had been hard worked on shore,
+and it was said that when he sought the seclusion of his own cabin he was
+not unmindful of that comfort which we are told the first navigator of
+the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The
+Isle of Man was passed; but unfortunately, on the second day out, the
+good ship struck the shore of the north-east coast of Ireland and became
+a total wreck. As the weather was extremely fine, and there appeared to
+be no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for
+investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade.
+During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man had been passed at
+such an hour on such a day, and the circumstance duly reported to the
+captain, who, it was said, was below. It was also stated that having
+received the report of the passage of the Calf of Man the captain had
+ordered the ship to be kept in a north-west course until further orders.
+About six hours later the vessel went ashore on the coast of Ireland.
+Such was the evidence of the first officer. The captain was shortly after
+called and examined.
+
+"It appears, sir," said the president of the court, "that the passing of
+the Calf of Man was duly reported to you by the first officer. May I ask,
+sir, what course you ordered to be steered upon receipt of that
+information?"
+
+"North-west, sir," answered the captain; "I said, 'Keep her north-west."'
+
+"North-west," repeated the president; "a very excellent general course
+for making the coast of America, but not until you had cleared the
+channel and were well into the Atlantic. Why, sir, the whole of Ireland
+lay between you and America on that course."
+
+"Can't help that, sir; can't help that, sir," replied the sea-king in a
+tone of half-contemptuous pity, that the whole of Ireland should have
+been so very unreasonable as to intrude itself in such a position.
+
+And yet, with all the despotism of the deck, what kindly spirits are
+these old sea-captains with the freckled hard knuckled hands and the grim
+storm-seamed faces! What honest genuine hearts are lying buttoned beneath
+those rough pea-jackets! If all despots had been of that kind perhaps we
+shouldn't have known quite as much about Parliamentary Institutions as we
+do.
+
+And now, while we have been talking thus, the "Samaria" has been getting
+far out into mid Atlantic, and yet we know not one among our
+fellow-passengers, although they do not number much above a dozen: a
+merchant from Maryland, a sea-captain-from Maine, a young doctor from
+Pennsylvania, a Massachusetts man, a Rhode Islander, a German geologist
+going to inspect seams in Colorado, a priest's sister from Ireland going
+to look after some little property left her by her brother, a poor fellow
+who was always ill, who never appeared at table, and who alluded to the
+demon sea-sickness that preyed upon him as "it". "It comes on very bad at
+night. It prevents me touching food. It never leaves me," he would say;
+and in truth this terrible "it" never did leave him until the harbour of
+Boston was reached, and even then, I fancy, dwelt in his thoughts during
+many a day on shore.
+
+The sea-captain from Maine was a violent democrat, the Massachusetts man
+a rabid republican; and many a fierce battle waged between them on the
+vexed questions of state rights, negro suffrage, and free trade in
+liquor. To many Englishmen the terms republican and democrat may seem
+synonymous; but not between radical and conservative, between outmost
+Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these
+great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of
+sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so
+these units of American political controversy were microscopic
+representatives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what
+a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words.
+The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation; the democrat held
+opinions not very easy of description, something of a universalist and
+semi-unitarian tendency; these opinions became frequently intermixed with
+their political jargon, forming that curious combination of ideas which
+to unaccustomed ears sounds slightly blasphemous. I recollect a very
+earnest American once saying that he considered all religious, political,
+social, and historical teaching should be reduced to three subjects: the
+Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the
+Chicago Republican Platform of 1860.
+
+On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves
+were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat
+being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency
+towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain
+an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it
+was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted
+for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been
+ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little
+village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of
+Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us,
+with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that
+we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our
+destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship
+had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
+prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
+knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
+this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
+our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
+expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
+repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
+take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
+induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
+and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
+the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
+trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
+priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
+announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
+the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
+called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
+generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
+member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
+countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
+silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more
+forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which
+those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish
+"darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or
+amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm
+and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life
+itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of
+New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over
+the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island,
+who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away
+and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as
+these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the
+man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly
+uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of
+ocean: small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain
+crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness Of which
+prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound
+vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain
+summit-one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the
+Cape be St. Ann's or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip
+of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland
+lie scattered many landscapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and
+forest, all unseen, all unknown to the wanderer who for the first time
+seeks the American shore; yet instinctively their presence is felt in
+that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the
+ocean; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as
+it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these
+immense inland seas; these mighty rivers whose waters seek their mother
+ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast
+though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as
+strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western
+horizon of the Atlantic.
+
+The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the
+shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of
+steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port
+was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston
+harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island
+can make it. If ever that much talked-of conflict between the two great
+branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to quit the realms of fancy
+for those of fact, Boston, at least, will rest as safe from the
+destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the
+Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should
+have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within
+sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle
+of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution
+of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped
+gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in
+the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the
+landscape. "There, serais Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners
+during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of
+Bunker's Hill;" and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to
+some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
+
+Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her
+lamps, before the "Samaria," swinging round in the fast-running tide,
+lay, with quiet screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New
+England's oldest city.
+
+"Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker's Hill," said
+the sea-captain from Maine; "just like the ill-mannered republican cuss!"
+It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the
+information given me by his political opponent. "Never mind," he said,
+"to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned
+liquor law in every hotel in their city."
+
+Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all
+the cities in the United States. Its streets, running in curious curves,
+as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of
+prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair
+idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have
+combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the
+western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New
+England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a
+glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their
+colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man
+in "Hudibras,"
+
+"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"
+
+and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard
+of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that
+this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston
+should not have been found capable of association with the duties of
+domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better
+understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most
+eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are
+nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the
+inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home
+truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious
+Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female
+excellence, should not be forgotten.
+
+There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more
+likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or
+system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I
+cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in
+this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to
+insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes
+that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual
+characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not
+strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are
+simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die
+sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at
+once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning;
+but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of
+resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the
+part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American
+social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the
+earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in
+the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the
+day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup,
+and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door
+is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to
+do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition
+of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the
+event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this
+document-such as not getting up very early-you will not be sent to the
+penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would
+imply a necessity for trouble and exertion on the part of the
+richly-apparelled gentleman who does you the honour of receiving your
+petitions and grossly overcharging you at the office-no, you have simply
+to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a
+jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your
+bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were
+occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the
+rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expectorate
+profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is
+paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the
+bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is apparently the one saving
+clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to
+the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine-you, who have never
+yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction-that this tyranny is
+confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay money in the ordinary
+travelling transactions of life-your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor,
+your steamboat-clerk-takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a
+manner which tells you plainly enough that he is conferring a very great
+favour by so doing. He is in all probability realizing a profit of from
+three to four hundred-per cent. on whatever the transaction may be; but,
+all the same, although you are fully aware of this fact, you are
+nevertheless almost overwhelmed with the sense of the very deep
+obligation which you owe to the man who thus deigns to receive your
+money.
+
+It was about ten o'clock at night when the steamer anchored at the wharf
+at Boston. Not until midday. On the following day were we (the
+passengers) allowed to leave the vessel. The cause of this delay arose
+from the fact that the collector of customs of the port of Boston was an
+individual of great social importance; and as it would have been
+inconvenient for him to attend at an earlier hour for the purpose of
+being present at the examination of our baggage, we were detained
+prisoners until the day was far enough advanced to suit his convenience.
+From a conversation which subsequently I had with this gentleman at our
+hotel, I discovered that he was more obliging in his general capacity of
+politician and prominent citizen than he was in his particular duties of
+customs collector. Like many other instances of the kind in the United
+States, his was a case of evident unfitness for the post he held. A.
+socially smaller man would have made a much better customs official.
+Unfortunately for the comfort of the public, the remuneration attached to
+appointments in the postal and customs departments is frequently very
+large, and these situations are eagerly sought as prizes in the lottery
+of political life-prizes, too, which can only be held for the short term
+of four years. As. A consequence, the official who holds his situation by
+right of political service rendered to the chief of the predominant
+clique or party in his state does not consider that he owes to the public
+the service of his office. In theory he is a public servant; in reality
+he becomes the master of the public. This is, however, the fault of the
+system and not of the individual.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Bunker--New York--Niagara-Toronto-Spring--time in Quebec--A Summons--A
+Start--In good Company--Stripping a Peg--An Expedition--Poor Canada--An
+Old Glimpse at a New Land--Rival Routes--Change of Masters--The Red River
+Revolt--The Halfbreeds--Early Settlers-Bungling--"Eaters of Pemmican-"-M.
+Louis Riel--The Murder of Scott
+
+When a city or a nation has but one military memory, it clings to it with
+all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or
+parrot. Boston-supreme over any city in the Republic-can boast of
+possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has
+long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to
+remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character
+and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker-perhaps he couldn't
+write!-are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in
+Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in
+the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in
+full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped
+soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork
+on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before
+them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure
+that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as
+valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic "bauble" of
+our own constitution.
+
+Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told
+frequently enough-and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them.
+The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and
+houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the
+stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property
+in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into
+the great heart of the past.
+
+Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward stream of empire
+in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it
+into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther
+still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still
+reigns in savage supremacy.
+
+NIAGARA--They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to
+Dilke, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet,
+put all together, they have not said much about it; description depends
+so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If
+there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this
+one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are
+generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however,
+comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that
+analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the
+Battle of the Nile-a statement not likely to be challenged, as the
+survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one
+we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another
+writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this
+similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the
+one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly
+bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit
+the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a
+thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to
+Egypt--what Vesuvius is to Naples--what the field of Waterloo has been
+for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of
+North America.
+
+It was early in the month of September, three years prior to the time I
+now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season
+was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and
+dance; tourists were doing the falls, and touts were doing the tourists.
+Newly-married couples were conducting themselves in that demonstrative
+manner characteristic of such as responded freely to the invitation
+contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work;
+itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws; free and
+enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract, who should have
+been sent over it; spiritualists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had
+made the place their own. Shoddy and petroleum were having "a high old
+time of it," spending the dollar as though that "almighty article had
+become the thin end of nothing whittled fine:" altogether, Niagara was a
+place to be instinctively shunned.
+
+Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to a
+close. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange
+wonders with the scene. Folly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy
+and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly
+demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had vanished, the monster hotels were
+silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to
+Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of
+yore, "under de light of de moon." Well, Niagara was worth seeing
+then-and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. "Pat," said an
+American to a staring Irishman lately landed, "did you ever see such a
+fall as that in the old country?" "Begarra! I niver did; but look here
+now, why wouldn't it fall? what's to hinder it from falling?"
+
+When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, I
+found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered,
+previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters
+of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again
+with a "You should have been here last week; every soul wants to get on
+the Expedition, and you hav'n't a chance. The whole thing is complete; we
+start to-morrow." Thus I encountered those few friends who on such
+occasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your
+neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that
+the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.
+
+"My good fellow, there's not a vacant berth for you," he said; "I got
+your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the
+Expedition."
+
+"I think, sir, there is one berth still vacant," I answered.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the
+flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you," I said.
+
+"You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal
+by first train to-morrow; by to night's mail I will write to the general,
+recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may
+yet be all right."
+
+I thanked him, said "Good-bye," and in little more than twenty-four hours
+later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.
+
+"Let me see," said the general next morning, when I presented myself
+before him, "you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last
+month, didn't you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will
+require a man there, but the thing doesn't rest with me; it will have to
+be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your
+regiment, pending the receipt of an answer."
+
+So I went back to my regiment to wait.
+
+Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec-that portion of America
+known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the
+Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees
+begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it
+quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green;
+the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol
+of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its
+earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds,
+sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are
+drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and
+flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring.
+When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are scarcely budding at
+Kingston, they are leafless at Montreal, and Quebec is white with snow.
+Even between Montreal and Quebec, a short night's steaming, there exists
+a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But late as comes
+the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form,
+as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a
+landscape the cold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the
+whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp
+of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome
+his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to
+look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of
+gladness--"the birch-tree," as the old Saxon said, "becomes beautiful in
+its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro
+by the breath of heaven "--the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their
+mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the
+transparent waters--far into the depths of the great forest speeds the
+glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss,
+and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and
+wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many
+landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but
+which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again And again in
+after-time-these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not
+easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye
+sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found
+in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far stretching river,
+foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of
+many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its
+fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour
+from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field in what other spot on
+the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many
+of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves to feast on and to place
+in memory as joys-for ever?
+
+I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one
+morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal
+to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my
+further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and
+fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It
+was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch
+of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to
+the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the
+broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the
+citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed
+with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant
+thought at the prospect before me. I little knew then the limits of my
+wanderings-I little thought that for many and many a day my track would
+lie with almost undeviating precision towards the setting sun, that
+summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and
+that still the nightly bivouac would be made a little nearer to that west
+whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.
+
+But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in
+the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem
+laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening
+Cataraqui. "We must leave matters to yourself, I think," said the
+General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, "you will be best
+judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground. I will not ask
+you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if
+you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the
+place. You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave altogether to
+yourself. For the rest, you can draw on us for any money you require.
+Take care of those northern fellows. Good-bye, and success."
+
+This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by
+the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West. On that morning the Grand
+Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement. It was about
+to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for
+Toronto; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of
+the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capital was
+drawing to a close. The Lightning Express was not attended with the
+glowing success predicted for it by its originators. At some thirty or
+forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some
+misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the
+rough uneven track. A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning
+Express got into motion again, and jolted along with tolerable celerity
+to Kingston. When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of
+fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity
+which promised disaster. The car in which I travelled was one belonging
+to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumberland, and
+we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of education, a governor of a
+province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a
+distinguished rifle regiment. Being the last car of the train, the
+vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails
+was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little
+unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the
+track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said
+to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into
+the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an
+embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is
+usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as
+those I have already mentioned. Whether a speaker of a house of commons
+and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of
+fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being
+"telescoped through colliding," I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto
+without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished
+fellow-travellers.
+
+I remained long enough in the city of Toronto to provide myself with a
+wardrobe suitable to the countries I was about to seek. In one of the
+principal commercial streets of the flourishing capital of Ontario I
+found a small tailoring establishment, at the door of which stood an
+excellent representation of a colonial. The garments be longing to this
+figure appeared to have been originally designed from the world-famous
+pattern of the American flag, presenting above a combination of stars,
+and below having a tendency to stripes. The general groundwork of the
+whole rig appeared to be shoddy of an inferior-description, and a small
+card attached to the figure intimated that the entire fit-out was
+procurable at the very reasonable sum of ten dollars. It was impossible
+to resist the fascination of this attire. While the bargain was being
+transacted the tailor looked askance at the garments worn by his
+customer, which, having only a few months before emanated from the
+establishment of a well-known London cutter, presented a considerable
+contrast to the new investment; he even ventured upon some remarks which
+evidently had for their object the elucidation of the enigma, but a word
+that such clothes as those worn by me were utterly un suited to the bush
+repelled all further questioning-indeed, so pleased did the noor fellow
+appear in a pecuniary point of view, that he insisted upon presenting me
+gratis with a neck-tie of green and yellow, fully in keeping with the
+other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging
+these little preliminary matters so essential to the work I was about to
+engage in, let us examine for a moment the objects and scope of that
+work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my
+journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected
+that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started
+some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort William, on
+the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between
+Toronto and Thunder Bay is about 600 miles, 100 being by railroad
+conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded expanse of Lake Huron,
+known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of
+the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards
+of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of
+fresh water has rendered necessary the construction of a canal of
+considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory-a
+fact which gives our friendly cousins the exclusive possession of the
+great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the
+Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition.
+Poor Canada! when one looks at you along the immense length of your noble
+river boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your
+youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding
+colonial minister through the particular whig, or tory spectacles of his
+party, subject to violent and radical alterations of policy because of
+some party vote in a Legislative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest
+coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the
+limits of your possible future, parties every where in your provinces,
+and of every kind, except a national party; no breadth, no depth, no
+earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for
+himself and no-one for the country; men fighting for a sect, for a
+province, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this
+while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth,
+looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth with
+perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time,'
+digging his canals and grading, his railroads, with one eye on the
+Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing,
+annexing, outmanoeuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in
+solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy proclamations and
+despatches anent boundary-lines, of which they knew next to nothing.
+Macaulay laughs at poor Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out
+that Cape Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were other
+and later Newcastles whose geographical knowledge of matters American
+were not a whit superior. Poor Canada! they muddled you out of Maine,
+and the open harbour of Portland, out of Rouse's Point, and the command
+of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the Rocky
+Mountains. It little matters whether it was the treaty of 1783, or 1818,
+or '21, or '48, or '71, the worst of every bargain, at all times, fell to
+you.
+
+I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault St. Marie
+enabled the Americans to delay the progress of the Red River Expedition.
+The embargo put upon the Canadian vessels originated, however, in the
+State, and not the Federal, authorities; that is to say, the State of
+Michigan issued the prohibition against the passage of the steam boat,
+and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally, Washington overruled the
+decision of Michigan-a feat far more feasible now than it would have been
+prior to the Southern war-and the steamers were permitted to pass through
+into the waters of Lake Superior. From thence to Thunder Bay was only the
+steaming of four-and-twenty hours through a lake whose vast bosom is the
+favourite playmate of the wild storm-king of the North. But although
+full half the total distance from Toronto to the Red River had been
+traversed when the Expedition reached Thunder Bay, not a twentieth of the
+time nor one hundredth part of the labour and fatigue had been
+accomplished. For a distance of 600 miles there stretched away to the
+northwest a vast tract of rock-fringed lake, swamp, and forest; lying
+spread in primeval savagery, an untravelled wilderness; the home of the
+Ojibbeway, who here, entrenched amongst Nature's fastnesses, has long
+called this land his own. Long before Wolfe had scaled the heights of
+Abraham, before even Marlborough, and Eugene, and Villers, and V'endome,
+and Villeroy had commenced to fight their giants fights in divers
+portions of the low countries, some adventurous subjects of the Grand
+Monarque were forcing their way, for the first time, along the northern
+shores of Lake Superior, nor stopping there: away to the north-west there
+dwelt wild tribes to be sought out by two classes of men-by the black
+robe, who laboured for souls; by the trader, who sought for skins-and a
+hard race had these two widely different pioneers who sought at that
+early day these remote and friendless regions, so hard that it would
+almost seem as though the great powers of good and of evil had both
+despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain
+dominion over these distant savages. It was a curious contest: on the one
+hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the other,
+the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary--a
+contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with
+the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain
+ramble away into its depths; but it must not be, or else the journey I
+have to travel myself would never even begin.
+
+Vast as is the accumulation of fresh water in Lake Superior, the area of
+the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its
+northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or "divide" of
+the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence
+the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the
+voyageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the
+many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the
+north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic Ocean and
+Hudson Bay. Here, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the sea level, and
+of 900 above Lake Superior, he launches his canoe upon water flowing
+north and west; then he has before him hundreds of miles of quiet-lying
+lake, of wildly rushing river, of rock-broken rapid, of foaming cataract,
+but through it all runs ever towards the north the ocean-seeking current.
+As later on we shall see many and many a mile of this wilderness--living
+in it, eating in it, sleeping in it-although reaching it from a different
+direction altogether from the one spoken of now, I anticipate, by
+alluding to it here, only as illustrating the track of the Expedition
+between Lake Superior and Red River. For myself, my route was to be
+altogether a different one. I was to follow the lines of railroad which
+ran-out into the frontier territories of the United States, then, leaving
+the iron horse, I was to make my way to the settlements on the west shore
+of Lake Superior, and from thence to work Round to the American
+boundary-line at Pembina on the Red River; so far through American
+territory, and with distinct and definite instructions; after that,
+altogether to my own resources, but with this summary of the general's
+wishes: "I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but however you manage
+it, try and reach Wolseley-before he gets through from Lake Superior, and
+let him know what these Red River men are going to do." Thus the military
+Expedition under Colonel Wolseley was to work its way Across from Lake
+Superior to Red River, through British territory; I was to pass round by
+the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of Fenian
+intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, endeavour to reach
+Colonel Wolseley beyond Red River, with all tidings as to state of
+parties and chances of fight. But as the reader has heard only a very
+brief mention of the state of affairs in Red River, and as he may very
+naturally be inclined to ask, What is this Expedition going to do--why
+are these men sent through swamp and wilderness at all? A few explanatory
+words may not be out of place, serving to make matters now and at a later
+period much more intelligible. I have said in the opening chapter of this
+book, that the little community, or rather a portion of the little
+community, of Red River Settlement had risen in insurrection, protesting
+vehemently against certain arrangements made between the Governor of
+Canada and the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company relative to the cession of
+territorial rights and governing powers. After forcibly expelling the
+Governor of the country appointed by Canada, from the frontier station at
+Pembina, the French malcontents had proceeded to other and still more
+questionable proceedings. Assembling in large numbers, they had fortified
+portions of the road between Pembina and Fort Garry, and had taken armed
+possession of the latter place, in which large stores of provisions,
+clothing, and merchandise of all descriptions had been stored by the
+Hudson Bay Company. The occupation of this fort, which stands close to
+the confluence of the Red and Assineboine Rivers, nearly midway between
+the American boundary-line and the southern shore of Lake Winnipeg, gave
+the French party the virtual command of the entire settlement. The
+abundant stores of clothing and provisions were not so important as the
+arms and ammunition which also fell into their hands--a battery of
+nine-pound bronze guns, complete in every respect, besides several
+smaller pieces of ordnance, together with large store of Enfield rifles
+and old brown-bess smooth bores. The place was, in fact, abundantly
+supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing
+to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this
+point had characterized all the movements of the originator and
+mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to see a
+thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion,
+becomes respectable when it is carried out with courage, energy, and
+decision.
+
+And, in truth, up to this point in the little insurrection it is not easy
+to condemn the wild Metis of the North-west--wild as the bison which he
+hunted, unreclaimed as the prairies he loved so well, what knew he of
+State duty or of loyalty? He knew that this land was his, and that strong
+men were coming to square it into rectangular farms and to push him
+farther west by the mere pressure of civilization. He had heard of
+England and the English, but it was in a shadowy, vague, unsubstantial
+sort of way, unaccompanied by any fixed idea of government or law. The
+Company--not the Hudson Bay Company, but the Company-represented for him
+all law, all power, all government. Protection he did not need-his quick
+ear, his unerring eye, his untiring horse, his trading gun, gave him
+that; but a market for his taurreau, for his buffalo robe, for his lynx,
+fox, and wolf skins, for the produce of his summer hunt and winter trade,
+he did need, and in the forts of the Company he found it. His wants were
+few-a capote of blue cloth, with shining brass buttons; a cap, with beads
+and tassel; a blanket; a gun, and ball and powder; a box: of matches, and
+a knife, these were all he wanted, and at every fort, from the mountain
+to the banks of his well-loved River Rouge, he found them, too. What were
+these new people coming to do with him? Who could tell? If they meant him
+fair, why did they not say so? why did they not come up and tell him what
+they wanted, and what they were going to do for him, and ask him what he
+wished for? But, no; they either meant to outwit him, or they held him of
+so small account that it mattered little what he thought about it; and,
+with all the pride of his mother's race, that idea of his being slighted
+hurt him even more than the idea of his being wronged. Did not every
+thing point to his disappearance under the new order of things? He had
+only to look round him to verify the fact; for years before this
+annexation to Canada had been carried into effect stragglers from the
+east had occasionally reached Red River. It is true that these new-comers
+found much to foster the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon settler. They
+found a few thousand occupants, half-farmers, half-hunters, living under
+a vast commercial monopoly, which, though it practically rested upon a
+basis of the most paternal kindness towards its subjects, was
+theoretically hostile to all opposition. Had these men settled quietly to
+the usual avocations of farming, clearing the wooded ridges, fencing the
+rich expanses of prairie, covering the great swamps and plains with
+herds and flocks, it is probable that all would have gone well between
+the new-comers and the old proprietors. Over that great western thousand
+miles of prairie there was room for all. But, no; they came to trade and
+not to till, and trade on the Red River of the North was conducted upon
+the most peculiar principles. There was, in fact, but one trade, and that
+was the fur trade. Now, the fur trade is, for some reason or other, a
+very curious description of barter. Like some mysterious chemical agency,
+it pervades and permeates every thing it touches. If a man cuts off legs,
+cures diseases, draws teeth, sells whiskey, cotton, wool, or any other
+commodity of civilized or uncivilized life, he will be as sure to do it
+with a view to furs as any doctor, dentist, or general merchant will be
+sure to practise his particular calling with a view to the acquisition of
+gold and silver. Thus, then, in the first instance were the new-comers
+set in antagonism to the Company, and finally to the inhabitants
+themselves. Let us try and be just to all parties in this little oasis of
+the Western wilderness.
+
+The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much
+given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice; and
+it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to
+do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out
+so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their not being able
+to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the
+advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming
+race. Obstacles of any kind are their peculiar detestation-if it is a
+tree, cut it down; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a
+half-breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said
+they act up to their convictions.
+
+'Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled
+wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the
+North-west from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown
+to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but,
+unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in
+peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000
+persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed
+away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than
+that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain
+half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events
+had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would
+dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western
+region, the Company would dis appear, and all the institutions of New
+World progress would shed-prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to
+the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the
+new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community,
+resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got
+their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns,
+and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several
+anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling
+the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily
+informing Mr. Governor M'Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his
+presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its
+inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had
+worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and
+directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis
+Riel--a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of
+parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of
+political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has
+followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the
+assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds-it has
+occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the
+mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who
+surrendered for 300,000 pounds their territorial rights? was it the
+Imperial Government who accepted that surrender? or was it the Dominion
+Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial
+authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business
+belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. Any ordinary
+matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few
+hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen
+despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the
+whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and
+carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing
+would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to
+Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would
+have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country
+relative to` the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of
+their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might
+be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead
+ignorance upon any matter pertaining to the people it governs, or expects
+to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such
+matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea
+put forward by the Dominion Government of Canada, and yet the Dominion
+Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving
+at a-correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they had
+only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that
+warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling
+amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, "they are only eaters of
+pemmican," so cutting to the Metis, was then first originated by a
+distinguished Canadian politician.
+
+And now let us see what the "eaters of pemmican" proceeded to do after
+their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitted they
+behaved in a very indifferent manner, going steadily from bad to worse,
+and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft
+repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of
+December, 1869, Mr. M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at
+Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor
+of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the
+other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the
+high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest,
+-disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to
+assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were
+to be found." Now, of the first proclamation it will be only necessary to
+remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind,
+imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the
+reader that the title of "Conservator of the Peace" was singularly
+inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers
+as was the holder of this commission, who was to "assault, fire upon,
+and break into houses, and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse
+people," and generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila,
+Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of
+ancient or modern times. The officer holding this destructive commission
+thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French
+adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other
+rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty
+miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but
+unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, not finding within its walls the
+same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry
+senior.
+
+The Indians, ever ready to have a hand in any fighting which may be
+"knocking around," came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and
+pow-wow; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place.
+Some hundreds of English and Scotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off
+to companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing
+pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course.
+But, in truth, the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in
+this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney
+and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen,
+these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had
+been only fighting the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had
+hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of
+Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers
+began to melt away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had
+disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became
+apparent in the increasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his
+followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the
+Scotch and English half-breeds against him served only to add strength to
+his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much
+increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their manifest
+functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of
+religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened
+by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel
+determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This
+was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement
+already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the
+people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the
+certain advance of the English force upon Fort Garry, had taken up a
+position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from
+the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents previous to
+making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more
+than a match for his antagonists; marching quickly out of his stronghold,
+he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a
+gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to
+surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such
+occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were
+ordered, and marching out-with or without side-arms and military honours
+history does not relate-were forthwith conducted into close confinement
+within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession
+not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many
+valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr.
+Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine
+himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are
+sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man's
+property is only to confiscate it, and to take his life is merely to
+execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and
+requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable
+share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having
+particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent
+Jamaica rum. The proverb which has reference to a mendicant suddenly
+Placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the case
+of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily
+from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a
+very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial
+debauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1870, disregarding
+some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless
+cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott.
+This act, committed in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name:
+the red name of murder-a name which instantly and for ever drew between
+Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable
+gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and
+which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is
+needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising
+which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless
+and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoners death a foregone
+conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which
+characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting
+subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to
+illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves. On the
+night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had
+been dug within the walls of the fort. Two clergymen had asked permission
+to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had
+been denied. On the anniversary of the murder, namely, the 4th March,
+1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd
+gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the
+purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to
+an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was
+empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the
+final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one
+thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his
+immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed
+they had committed, for had they believed that the taking of this man's
+life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or
+political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes
+committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held
+its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless
+lie. The murderer and the law both take life--it is only the murderer who
+hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+Chicago--"Who is S. B. D.?"--Milwaukie--The Great Fusion-Wisconsin--The
+Sleeping-car--The Train Boy-Minnesota--St. Paul--I start for Lake
+Superior--The Future City--"Bust up" and "Gone on"--The End of the Track.
+
+ALAS! I have to go a long way back to the city of Toronto, where I had
+just completed the purchase of a full costume of a Western borderer. On
+the 10th of June I crossed the Detroit River from Western Canada to the
+State of Michigan, and travelling by the central railway of that state
+reached the great city of Chicago on the following day. All Americans,
+but particularly all Western Americans, are very proud of this big city,
+which is not yet as old as many of its inhabitants, and they are justly
+proud of it. It is by very much the largest and the richest of the new
+cities of the New World. Maps made fifty years ago will be searched in
+vain for Chicago. Chicago was then a swamp where the skunks, after whom
+it is called, held undisputed revels. To-day Chicago numbers about
+300,000 souls, and it is about "the livest city in our great Republic;
+sir."
+
+Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York. A traveller leaving
+the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday
+at eight o'clock in the evening in Chicago-one thousand miles in
+thirty-four hours. In the meantime he will have eaten three meals and
+slept soundly "on board" his palace-car, if he is so minded. For many
+hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have
+noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and
+settlements interspersed between; and then, when these tracts of swamp
+and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he
+comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full-grown, bustling city, with tall
+chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great: drays
+of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall-masted
+ships and whole fleets of steamers lying packed against the crowded
+quays. He has begun to dream himself in the West, and lo! there rises up
+a great city. "But is not this the West?" will ask the new-comer from the
+Atlantic states. "Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New
+York, by water 1500 miles to Quebec; surely this must be the West?" No;
+for in this New World the West is ever on the move. Twenty years ago
+Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City,
+and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.
+
+This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new
+scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An
+American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on many
+social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very
+shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of
+ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact
+that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub
+every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will
+find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your
+peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you the details of
+every item connected with his business--altogether a very jolly every-day
+companion when met on even basis. If you happen to be a military man, he
+will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition: of rank
+by virtue of his volunteer services in the 44th: Illinois, or 55th
+Missourian. At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a
+safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with "I
+say, General," and on no account ever to get below the rank of field
+officer when addressing anybody holding a socially smaller position than
+that of bar-keeper. Indeed major-generals were as plentiful in the United
+States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in
+the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign. It was at
+Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was established by a youngster on
+the score that he really could not spit out of his own window without
+hitting a brevet major outside; and it was in a Western city that the man
+threw his stick at a dog across the road, "missed that dawg, sir, but hit
+five major-generals on t'other side, and 'twasn't a good day for
+major-generals either, sir." Not less necessary than knowledge of social
+position is knowledge of the political institutions and characters of the
+West. Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is
+simply to argue yourself utterly unknown. My first experience of Chicago
+fully impressed me with this fact. I had made the acquaintance of an
+American gentleman "on board" the train, and as we approached the city
+along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the
+buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.
+
+"There, sir," he finally said, "there is our new monument to Stephen B.
+Douglas."
+
+I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in
+course of erection into a pedestal. I confess to having been entirely
+ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to
+this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my informant's
+voice was sufficient to warn me that everybody knew Stephen B. Douglas,
+and that ignorance of his career might prove hurtful to the feelings of
+my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or
+look the drawback under which I laboured. There was with me, however, a
+travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to
+mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours
+should be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint across the
+Atlantic. Looking partly at the monument, partly at our American
+informant, and partly at me, he hastily ejaculated, "Who the devil was
+Stephen B. Douglas?"
+
+Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggravating form. I hastily
+attempted a rescue. "Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?" I exclaimed,
+in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise. "Is it possible you don't know
+who Stephen B. Douglas was?"
+
+Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my
+fellow-traveller was not to be done. "All deuced fine," he went on, "I'll
+bet you a fiver you don't know who he was either!"
+
+I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he
+persisted in his reckless offers of "laying fivers," and our united
+ignorance stood fatally revealed.
+
+Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level
+prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as
+fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under
+a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles
+from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The
+Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its
+western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich
+burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on
+its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the
+Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, unwaters the
+south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse
+the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant
+fact--5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state!
+More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage
+of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion
+Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have
+striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day,
+thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of
+the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own
+produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely
+inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago
+since William Cobbett laboured long and earnestly to prove that English
+emigrants who pushed on into the "wilderness of the Illinois went
+straight to misery and ruin."
+
+Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north
+along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in
+the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of
+Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100
+miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being, also some 100
+miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by
+water to New York and the Atlantic, Milwaukie caries off no small share
+of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling
+prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing
+states of the American Union. Scandinavia, Germany, and Ireland have made
+this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one
+hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish
+Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is
+one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern
+Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie
+between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Mississippi. No one
+stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill
+the sheds at the depot, the sight is too common to cause interest now,
+and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the
+promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd
+of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food
+while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the
+most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can
+devise--such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like
+boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or
+Christian--clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray
+of mid-Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since
+New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and
+seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion; altogether a homely people,
+but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits
+under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast
+human machine Which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth
+into the same image and likeness of the inevitable Yankee--grinds him too
+into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it
+without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language
+or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the
+various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American
+people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so
+gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going
+on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of
+dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race
+the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the
+noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling
+of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human
+family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the
+human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve
+it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success.
+Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die
+out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his
+love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt,
+Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those
+traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be
+that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old
+distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from
+it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--
+
+"Sin itself be found,
+A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun."
+
+But at present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American
+society, there seems little reason to hope for required alteration. The
+dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that
+"honesty is the best policy" must once more come into fashion.
+
+Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of
+Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of
+Minnesota. About half that distance lies through the State of Wisconsin,
+and the remaining half is somewhat unequally divided between Iowa and
+Minnesota. Leaving Milwaukie at eleven o'clock a.m., one reaches the
+Mississippi at Prairie-du-Chien at ten o'clock same night; here a steamer
+ferries the broad swift-running stream, and at North Macgregor, on the
+Iowa shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy
+passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American
+institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable
+and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the
+other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under
+the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses
+would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc violently along over
+rough and uneven iron when he could select a stationary resting-place. On
+the other hand, it is a very great saving of time and expense to travel
+for some eighty or one hundred consecutive hours, and this can only be
+effected by means of the sleeping-car. Take this distance, from New York
+to St. Paul, as an instance. It is about 1450 miles, and it can be
+accomplished in sixty-four hours. Of course one cannot expect to find
+oneself as comfortably located as in an hotel; but, all things
+considered, the balance of advantage is very much on the side of the
+sleeping-car. After a night or two one becomes accustomed to the noise
+and oscillation; the little peculiarities incidental to turning-in in
+rather a promiscuous manner with ladies old and young, children in arms
+and out of arms, vanish before the force of habit; the necessity of
+making an early rush to the lavatory appliances in the morning, and there
+securing a plentiful supply of water and clean towels, becomes quickly
+apparent, and altogether the sleeping-car ceases to be a thing of
+nuisance and is accepted as an accomplished fact. The interior
+arrangements of the car are conducted as follows. A passage runs down the
+centre from one door to the other; on either side are placed the berths
+or "sections" for sleeping; during the day-time these form seats, and are
+occupied by such as care to take them in the ordinary manner of railroad
+cars. At night, however, the whole car undergoes a complete
+transformation. A negro attendant commences to make down the beds. This
+operation is performed by drawing out, after the manner of telescopes,
+portions of the car heretofore looked upon as immoveable; from various
+receptacles thus rendered visible he extracts large store of blankets,
+mattresses, bolsters, pillows, sheets, all which he arranges after the
+usual method of such articles. His work is done speedily and without
+noise or bustle, and in a very short time the interior of the car
+presents the spectacle of a long, dimly lighted passage, having on either
+side the striped damask curtains which partly shroud the berths behind
+them. Into these berths the passengers soon withdraw themselves, and all
+goes quietly till morning-unless, indeed, some stray turning bridge has
+been left turned over one of the numerous creeks that underlie the track,
+or the loud whistle of "brakes down" is the short prelude to one of the
+many disasters of American railroad travel. There are many varieties of
+the sleeping-car, but the principle and mode of procedure are identical
+in each. Some of those constructed by Messrs. Pullman and Wagner are as
+gorgeously decorated as gilding, plating, velvet, and damask can make
+them. The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the
+title of his cars. One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a
+Pullman) as one takes a Hansom. Pullman and sleeping-car have become
+synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time. Travelling from sunrise
+to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and
+at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an
+hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupation; still it has much to
+relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel
+would be almost insupportable. The fact of easy communication being
+maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to
+another during motion a most feasible undertaking. One can visit the
+various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to
+obtain information this is no small boon. Americans are always ready to
+enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met
+with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons
+from all parts of the Union--easters, Southerners, Western men, and
+Californians--the experiment of "knocking around the cars" is well worth
+the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take
+the weather, just as it comes.
+
+The individual known by the title of "train-boy" is also worth some
+study. He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most
+precocious boy; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago,
+New York, or Philadelphia, or some other large town, and his aim is to
+dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily
+nourishment. He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which
+he serves round in several courses. The first course consists of works of
+a high moral character standard English novels in American reprints, and
+works of travel or biography. These he lays beside each passenger,
+stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular
+excellence of morality or binding. Having distributed a portion through
+the car, he passes into the next car, and so through the train. After a
+few minutes delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle
+with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one. After the
+lapse of a very short time he reappears with the second course of
+literature. This usually consists of a much lower standard of excellence
+--Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap
+reprints of popular works. The third course, which soon follows, is,
+however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the
+part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a
+little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high
+moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of
+the "Last Sensation," "The Dime Illustrated," "New York under Gas
+light," "The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains," and other similar
+productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the
+train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from
+him no further effort; he relinquishes that portion of his labour and
+devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment,
+consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly
+and uninviting description; these he follows with sugar in various
+preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and
+crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance;
+one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his
+vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He
+gets, he will tell you, a percentage on his sales of ten cents in the
+dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a
+dollar's worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents.
+Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral literature than
+present him at once with this ten cents, stipulating that on no account
+is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy,
+condiment, or book during the remainder of the journey. If you do this
+you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.
+
+Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which lead
+to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi
+one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in
+the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is
+very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer,
+deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into
+stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into
+uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the
+sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the-most
+northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great
+wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far
+within the territories where yet the red man holds his own. Here, in the
+south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region.
+Far beyond the northern limit of the state it stretches away into
+latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes
+which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey
+into together.
+
+The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota,
+gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade
+centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the
+Mississippi River, about 2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great
+river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to
+the north, 700 miles along the stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a
+few miles above St. Paul, interrupt all navigation, and the course of the
+river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and
+obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River
+receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north west;
+the St. Peter's or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the
+Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which
+lies West of Lake Superior; but it is not alone to water communication
+that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless
+energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the
+future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching
+out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited
+prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the
+world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the
+life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken
+"straight," the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting
+accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a
+hurry, all tend to cut short the term of man's life in the New World.'
+Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. "Yes, sir, we live fast here,"
+said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast
+too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of
+course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid
+seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere
+from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity
+of the surrounding prairies, its hotels--and they are many--are crowded
+with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they
+seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die.
+
+Business connected with the supply of the troops during the coming winter
+in Red River, detained me for some weeks in Minnesota, and as the
+letters which I had despatched upon my arrival giving the necessary
+particulars regarding the proposed arrangements, required at least a week
+to obtain replies to, I determined to visit in the interim the shores of
+Lake Superior. Here I would glean what tidings I could of the progress of
+the Expedition, from whose base at Fort William, I would be only 100
+miles distant, as well as examine the% chances of Fenian intervention, so
+much talked of in the American newspapers, as likely to place in peril
+the flank of the expeditionary force as it followed the devious track of
+swamp and forest which has on one side Minnesota, and on the other the
+Canadian Dominion.
+
+Since my departure from Canada the weather had been intensely warm:
+pleasant in Detroit, warm in Chicago, hot in Milwaukie, and sweltering,
+blazing in St. Paul, would have aptly described the temperature, although
+the last named city is some hundred miles more to the north than the
+first. But latitude is no criterion of summer heat in America, and the
+short Arctic summer of the Mackenzie River knows often a fiercer heat
+than the swamp lands of the Carolinas. So, putting together a very light
+field-kit, I started early one morning from St. Paul for the new town of
+Duluth, on the extreme westerly end of Lake Superior.
+
+Duluth, I was told, was the very newest of new towns, in fact it only had
+an existence of eighteen months; as may be inferred, it had no past, but
+any want in that respect was compensated for in its marvellous future. It
+was to be the great grain emporium of the North-west; it was to kill St.
+Paul, Milwaukie, Chicago, and half-a-dozen other thriving towns; its
+murderous propensities seemed to have no bounds; lots were already
+selling at fabulous prices, and everybody seemed to have Duluth in some
+shape or other on the brain. To reach this paradise of the future I had
+to travel 100 miles by the Superior and Mississippi railroad, to a
+halting-place known as the End of the Track-a name which gave a very
+accurate idea of its whereabouts and general capabilities. The line was,
+in fact, in course of formation, and was being rapidly pushed forward
+from both ends with a view to its being opened through by the 1st day of
+August. About forty miles north-east of St. Paul we entered the region of
+pine forest. At intervals of ten or twelve miles the train stopped at
+places bearing high-sounding titles, such as Rush City, Pine City; but
+upon examination one looked in vain for any realization of these names,
+pines and rushes certainly were plentiful enough, but the city part of
+the arrangement was nowhere visible. Upon asking a fellow-passenger for
+some explanation of the phenomena, he answered, "Guess there was a city
+hereaway last year, but it busted up or gone on." Travellers unacquainted
+with the vernacular of America might have conjured up visions of a
+catastrophe not less terrible than that of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but
+an earlier acquaintance of Western cities had years before taught me to
+comprehend such phrases. In the autumn of 1867 I had visited the prairies
+of Nebraska, along the banks of the Platte River. Buffalo were numerous
+on the sandy plains which form the hunting-grounds of the Shienne and
+Arapahoe Indians, and amongst the vast herds the bright October days
+passed quickly enough. One day, in company with an American officer, we
+were following, as usual, a herd of buffalo, when we came upon a town
+standing silent and deserted in the middle the Trairie. "That," said the
+American, "is Kearney City; it did a good trade in the old wagon times,
+but it busted up when the railroad went on farther west; the people moved
+on to North Platte and Julesburg--guess there's only one man left in it
+now, and he's got snakes in his boots the hull season." Marvelling what
+manner of man this might be who dwelt alone in the silent city, we rode
+on. One house showed some traces of occupation, and in this house dwelt
+the man. We had passed through the deserted grass-grown street, and were
+again on the prairie, when a shot rang out behind us, the bullet cutting
+up the dust away to the left. "By G---- he's on the shoot," cried our
+friend; "ride, boys!" and so we rode. Much has been written and said of
+cities old and new, of Aztec and Peruvian monuments, but I venture to
+offer to the attention of the future historian of America this sample of
+the busted up city of Kearney and its solitary indweller, who had snakes
+in his boots and was on the shoot.
+
+After that explanation of a "busted-up" and "gone-on" city, I was of
+course sufficiently well "posted" not to require further explanation as
+to the fate of Pine and Rush Cities; but had I entertained any doubts
+upon the subject, the final stoppage of the train at Moose Lake, or City,
+would have effectually dispelled them. For there stood the portions of
+Rush and Pine Cities which had not "bust up," but had simply "gone
+on." Two shanties, with a few outlying sheds, stood on either side of the
+track, which here crossed a clear running forest stream. Passenger
+communication ended at this point; the rails were laid down for a
+distance of eight miles farther, but only the "construction train," with
+supplies, men, etc. proceeded to that point. Track-laying was going on at
+the rate of three miles a day, I was informed, and the line would soon be
+opened to the Dalles of the St. Louis River, near the hecad of Lake
+Superior. The heat all day had been very great, and it was refreshing to
+get out of the dusty car, even though the shanties, in which eating,
+drinking, and sleeping were supposed to be carried on, were of the very
+lowest description. I had made the acquaintance of the express agent, a
+gentleman connected with the baggage department of the train, and during
+the journey he had taken me somewhat into his confidence on the matter of
+the lodging and entertainment which were to be found in the shanties.
+"The food ain't bad," he said, "but that there shanty of Tom's licks
+creation for bugs." This terse and forcibly expressed opinion made me
+select the interior of a wagon, and some fresh hay, as a place of rest,
+where, in spite of vast numbers of mosquitoes, I slept the sleep of the
+weary.
+
+The construction train started from Moose City at six o'clock a.m., and
+as the stage, which was supposed to connect with the passenger train and
+carry forward its human freight to Superior City was filled to
+overflowing, I determined to take advantage of the construction train,
+and travel on it as far as it would take me. A very motley group of
+lumberers, navvies, and speculators assembled for breakfast at five
+o'clock a.m. at Tom's table, and although I cannot quite confirm the
+favourable opinion of my friend the express agent as to the quality of
+the viands which graced it, I can at least testify to the vigour with
+which the "guests" disposed of the pork and beans, the molasses and
+dried apples which Tom, with foul fingers, had set before them. Seated on
+the floor of a waggon in the construction train, in the midst of navvies
+of all countries and ages, I reached the end of the track while the
+morning sun was yet low in the east. I had struck up a kind of
+partnership for the journey with a pedlar Jew and an Ohio man, both going
+to Duluth, and as we had a march of eighteen miles to get through
+between the end of the track and the town of Fond-du-Lac, it became
+necessary to push on before the sun had reached his midday level; so,
+shouldering our baggage, we left the busy scene of track-laying and
+struck out along the graded line for the Dalles of the St. Louis. Up to
+this point the line had been fully levelled, and the walking was easy
+enough, but when the much-talked of Dalles were reached a complete
+change took place, and the toil became excessive. The St. Louis River,
+which in reality forms the headwater of the great St. Lawrence, has its
+source in the dividing ridge between Minnesota and the British territory.
+From these rugged Laurentian ridges it foams down in an impetuous torrent
+through wild pine-clad steeps of rock and towering precipice, apparently
+to force an outlet into the valley of the Mississippi, but at the Dalles
+it seems to have suddenly preferred to seek the cold waters of the
+Atlantic, and, bending its course abruptly to the east, it pours its
+foaming torrent into the great Lake Superior below the old French
+trading-post of Fond-du-Lac. The load which I carried was not of itself a
+heavy one, but its weight became intolerable under the rapidly increasing
+heat of the sun and from the toilsome nature of the road. The deep narrow
+gorges over which the railway was to be carried were yet unbridged, and
+we had to let ourselves down the steep yielding embankment to a depth of
+over 100 feet, and then clamber up the other side almost upon hands and
+knees-this under a sun that beat down between the hills with terrible
+intensity on the yellow sand of the railway cuttings! The Ohio man
+carried no baggage, but the Jew was heavily laden, and soon fell behind.
+For a time I kept pace with my light companion; but soon I too was
+obliged to lag, and about midday found myself alone in the solitudes of
+the Dalles. At last there came a gorge deeper and steeper than any thing
+that had preceded it, and I was forced to rest long before attempting its
+almost perpendicular ascent. When I did reach the top, it was to find
+myself thoroughly done up--the sun came down on the side of the
+embankment as though it would burn the sandy soil into ashes, not a
+breath of air moved through the silent hills, not a leaf stirred in the
+forest. My load was more than I could bear, and again I had to lie down
+to avoid falling down. Only once before had I experienced a similar
+sensation of choking, and that was in toiling through a Burmese swamp,
+snipe-shooting under a midday sun. How near that was to sun-stroke, I
+can't say; but I don't think it could be very far. After a little time, I
+saw, some distance down below, smoke rising from a shanty. I made my way
+with no small difficulty to the door, and found the place full of some
+twenty or more rough-bearded looking men sitting down to dinner.
+
+"About played out, I guess?" said one. "Wall, that sun is h--; any how,
+come in and have a bit. Have a drink of tea or some vinegar and water."
+
+They filled me out a literal dish of tea, black and boiling; and I
+drained the tin with a feeling of relief such as one seldom knows. The
+place was lined round with bunks like the forecastle of a ship. After a
+time I rose to depart and asked the man who acted as cook how much there
+was to pay.
+
+"Not a cent, stranger;" and so I left my rough hospitable friends, and,
+gaining the railroad, lay down to rest until the fiery sun had got lower
+in the west. The remainder of the road was thronged with gangs of men at
+work along it, bridging, blasting, building, and levelling--strong
+able-bodied fellows fit for any thing. Each gang was under the
+superintendence of a railroad "boss," and all seemed to be working well.
+But then two dollars a head per diem will make men work well even under
+such a sun.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+Lake Superior--The Dalles of the St. Louis--The North Pacific
+Railroad--Fond-du-Lac-Duluth--Superior City--The Great Lake--A Plan to
+dry up Niagara--Stage Driving--Tom's Shanty again--St. Paul and its
+Neighbourhood.
+
+ALMOST in the centre of the Dalles I passed the spot where the Northern
+Pacific Railroad had on that day turned its first sod, commencing its
+long course across the continent. This North Pacific Railroad is destined
+to play a great part in the future history of the United States; it is
+the second great link which is to bind together the Atlantic and Pacific
+States (before twenty years there will be many others). From Puget Sound
+on the Pacific to Duluth on Lake Superior is about 2200 miles, and across
+this distance the North Pacific Railroad is to run. The immense plains of
+Dakota, the grassy uplands of Montana and Washington, and the centre of
+the State of Minnesota will behold ere long this iron road of the North
+Pacific Company piercing their lonely wilds. "Red Cloud" and "Black
+Eagle" and "Standing Buffalo" may gather their braves beyond the Coteau
+to battle against this steam-horse which scares their bison from his
+favourite breeding grounds on the scant pastures of the great Missouri
+plateau; but all their efforts will be in vain, the dollar will beat them
+out. Poor Red Cloud! in spite of thy towering form and mighty strength,
+the dollar is mightier still, and the fiat has gone forth before which
+thou and thy braves must pass away from the land! Very tired and covered
+deep with the dust of railroad cuttings, I reached the collection of
+scattered houses which bears the name of Fond-du Lac. Upon inquiring at
+the first house which I came to as to the whereabouts of the hotel, I was
+informed by a sour-visaged old female, that if I wanted to drink and get
+drunk, I must go farther on; but that if I wished to behave in a quiet
+and respectable manner, and could live %without liquor, I could stay in
+her house, which was at once post office, Temperance Hotel, and very
+respectable. Being weary and footsore, I. did not feel disposed to seek
+farther, for the place looked clean, the river was close at hand, and the
+whole aspect of the scene was suggestive of rest. In the evening hours
+myriads of mosquitoes and flying things of minutest size came forth from
+the wooded hills and did their best towards making life a misery; so bad
+were they that I welcomed a passing navvy who dropped in as a real
+godsend.
+
+"You're come up to look after work on this North Pacific Railroad, I
+guess?" he commenced-he was a Southern Irish man, but "guessed" all the
+same--"well, now, look here, the North Pacific Railroad will never be
+like the U.P. (Union Pacific) I worked there, and I know what it was; it
+was bully, I can tell you. A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two
+dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and bit the boss on the head with
+his shovel if the boss gave him any d---- chat. No, sirree, the North
+Pacific will never be like that."
+
+I could not help thinking that it was perhaps quite as well for the North
+Pacific Railroad Company and the boss if they never were destined to
+rival the Union Pacific Company as pictured by my companion; but I did
+not attempt to say so, as it might have come under the heading of
+"d---- chat," worthy only of being replied to by that convincing argument,
+the shovel.
+
+A good night's sleep and a swim in the St. Louis river banished all trace
+of toil. I left Fond-du-Lac early in the afternoon, and, descending by a
+small steamer the many-winding St. Louis River, soon came in sight of the
+town of Duluth. The heat had become excessive; the Bay of St. Louis, shut
+in on all sides by lofty hills, lay under a mingled mass of thunder-cloud
+and sunshine; far out in Lake Superior vivid lightnings flashed over the
+gloomy water and long rolls of thunder shook the hills around. On board
+our little steamboat the atmosphere was stifling, and could not have been
+short of 100 degrees in the coolest place (it was 93 at six o'clock same
+evening in the hotel at Duluth); there was nothing for it but to lie
+quietly on a wooden bench and listen to the loud talking of some
+fellow-passengers. Three of the hardest of hard cases were engaged in the
+mental recreation of "'swapping lies;" their respective exchanges
+consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing; the experiences of one
+I recollect in particular. He had stolen an axe from a man on the North
+Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article. This
+Piece of knavery was received as the acme of cuteness; and I well
+recollect the language in which the brute wound up his self-laudations:
+"If any chap can steal faster than me, let him."
+
+As we emerged from the last bend of the river and stood across the Bay of
+St. Louis, Duluth, in all its barrenness, stood before us. The future
+capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town
+whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of
+Japan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorriest
+spectacle of city that eye of man could look upon-wooden houses scattered
+at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only
+partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out of
+a reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and lumber
+standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs
+and passable only by crazy looking planks of tilting proclivities--over
+all, a sun fit for a Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in
+whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever.
+Still, in spite of rock and swamp and icy winter, Yankee energy will
+triumph here as it has triumphed else where over kindred difficulties.
+
+"There's got to be a Boss City hereaway on this end of the lake," said
+the captain of the little boat; and though he spoke with much labour of
+imprecation, both needless then and now, taking what might be termed a
+cursory view of the situation, he summed up the prospects of Duluth
+conclusively and clearly enough.
+
+I cannot say I enjoyed a stay of two days in Duluth. Several new saloons
+(name for dram-shops, gaming-houses, and generally questionable places)
+were being opened for the first time to the public, and free drinks were
+consequently the rule. Now "free drinks" have generally a demoralizing
+tendency upon a community, but taken in connexion with a temperature of
+98 degrees in the shade, they quickly develop into free revolvers and
+freer bowie-knives. Besides, the spirit of speculation was rampant in the
+hotel, and so many men had corner lots, dock locations, pine forests, and
+pre-empted lands to sell me, that nothing but flight prevented my
+becoming a large holder of all manner of Duluth securities upon terms
+that, upon the clearest showing, would have been ridiculously favourable
+to me. The principal object of my visit to Duluth was to discover if any
+settlement existed at the Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles to the north and
+not far from the track of the Expedition, a place which had been named to
+the military authorities in Canada as likely to form a base of attack for
+any filibusters who would be adventurous enough to make a dash at the
+communication of the expeditionary force. A report of the discovery of
+gold and silver mines around the Vermilion Lakes had induced a rush of
+miners there during the previous year; but the mines had all "bust up,"
+and the miners had been blown away to other regions, leaving the plant
+and fixtures of quartz-crushing machinery standing drearily in the
+wilderness. These facts I ascertained from the engineer, who had
+constructed a forest track from Duluth to the mines, and into whose
+office I penetrated in quest of information. He, too, looked upon me as a
+speculator.
+
+"Don't mind them mines," he said, after I had questioned him on all
+points of distance and road; "don't touch them mines; they're clean gone
+up. The gold in them mines don't amount to a row of pines, and there's
+not a man there now."
+
+That evening there came a violent thunder-storm, which cleared and cooled
+the atmosphere; between ten o'clock in the morning and three in the
+afternoon the thermometer fell 30 degrees. Lake Superior had asserted its
+icy influence over the sun. Glad to get away from Duluth, I crossed the
+bay to Superior City, situated on the opposite, or Wisconsin shore of the
+lake. A curious formation of sand and shingle runs out from the shore of
+Duluth, forming a long narrow spit of land projecting far into Lake
+Superior. It bears the name of Minnesota Point, and has evidently been
+formed by the opposing influence of the east wind over the great expanse
+of the lake, and the current of the St. Louis River from the West. It has
+a length of seven miles, and is only a few yards in width. Close to the
+Wisconsin shore a break occurs in this long narrow spit, and inside this
+opening lies the harbour and city of Superior incomparably a better
+situation for a city and lake-port, level, sheltered, capacious; but,
+nevertheless, Superior City is doomed to delay, while eight miles off its
+young rival is rapidly rushing to wealth. This anomaly is easily
+explained. Duluth is pushed forward by the capital of the State of
+Minnesota, while the legislature of Wisconsin looks with jealous eye upon
+the formation of a second lake-port city which might draw off to itself
+the trade of Milwaukie.
+
+In course of time, however, Superior City must rise, in spite of all
+hostility, to the very prominent position to which its natural advantages
+entitle it. I had not been many minutes in the hotel at Superior City
+before the trying and unsought character of land speculator was again
+thrust upon me.
+
+"Now, stranger," said a long-legged Yankee, who, with his boots on the
+stove---the day had got raw and cold--and his knees considerably higher
+than his head, was gazing intently at me, "'I guess I've fixed you." I
+was taken aback by the sudden identification of my business, when he
+continued, "Yes, I've just fixed you. You air a Kanady speculator, ain't
+ye?" Not deeming it altogether wise to deny the correct ness of his
+fixing, I replied I had lived in Kanady for some time, but that I was not
+going to begin speculation until I had knocked round a little. An
+invitation to liquor soon followed. The disagreeable consequence
+resulting from this admission soon became apparent. I was much pestered
+towards evening by offers of investment in things varying from a
+sand-hill to a city-square, or what would infallibly in course of time
+develop into a city-square. A gentleman rejoicing in the name of Vose
+Palmer insisted upon inter viewing me until a protracted hour of the night,
+with a view towards my investing in straight drinks for him at the bar and
+in an extensive pine forest for myself some where on the north shore of
+Lake Superior. I have no doubt the pine forest is still in the market; and
+should any enterprising capitalist in this country feel disposed to enter
+into partnership on a basis of bearing all expenses himself, giving only
+the profits to his partner, he will find "Vose Palmer, Superior City,
+Wisconsin, United States," ever ready to attend to him.
+
+Before turning our steps westward from this inland ocean of Superior, it
+will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its bosom.
+It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal. Four
+Hundred English miles in length, 50 miles across it, 600 feet above
+Atlantic level, 900 feet in depth-one vast spring of purest crystal
+water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself,
+and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out
+as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the
+outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron,
+Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes
+Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, in the quiet
+loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar
+Rapids; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the
+foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, down where the lone
+Laurentian Hills come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest
+beginnings they cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close
+to the sounding billows of the Atlantic, 2000 miles from Superior, these
+hills--the only ones that ever last-guard the great gate by which the St.
+Lawrence seeks the sea.
+
+There are rivers whose current, running red with the silt and mud of
+their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the ocean the record of their
+muddy progress; but this glorious river system, through its many lakes
+and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from
+the fountain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but
+they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steamships
+cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not the
+beauty of the water-no more than the fleets of the world mark the waves
+of the ocean. Any person looking at the map's of the region bounding the
+great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers
+flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron from the south; in fact,
+the drainage of the states bordering these lakes on the south is
+altogether carried off by the valley of the Mississippi-it follows that
+this valley of Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface of
+the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some 73,000 square miles,
+are therefore an immense reservoir held high over the level of the great
+Mississippi valley, from which they are separated by a barrier of slight
+elevation and extent.
+
+It is not many years ago since an enterprising Yankee proposed to
+annihilate Canada, dry up Niagara, and "fix British creation" generally,
+by diverting the current of Lake Erie, through a deep canal, into the
+Ohio River; but should nature, in one of her freaks of earthquake, ever
+cause a disruption to this intervening barrier on the southern shores of
+the great northern lakes, the drying up of Niagara, the annihilation of
+Canada, and the divers disasters to British power, will in all
+probability be followed by the submersion of half of the Mississippi
+states under the waters of these inland seas.
+
+On the 26th June I quitted the shores of Lake Superior and made my way
+back to Moose Lake. Without any exception, the road thither was the very
+worst I had ever travelled over--four horses essayed to drag a stage-waggon
+over, or rather, I should say, through, a track of mud and ruts
+impossible to picture. The stage fare amounted to $6, or 4s. for 34
+miles. An extra dollar reserved the box-seat and gave me the double
+advantage of knowing what was coming in the rut line and taking another
+lesson in the idiom of the American stage-driver. This idiom consists of
+the smallest possible amount of dictionary words, a few Scriptural names
+rather irreverently used, a very large intermixture of "git-ups" and
+ejaculatory "his," and a general tendency to blasphemy all round. We
+reached Tom's shanty at dusk. As before, it was crowded to excess, and
+the memory of the express man's warning was still sufficiently strong to
+make me prefer the forest to "bunking in" with the motley assemblage; a
+couple of Eastern Americans shared with me the little camp. We made a
+fire, laid some boards on the ground, spread a blanket upon them, pulled
+the "mosquito bars" over our heads, and lay down to attempt to sleep. It
+was a vain effort; mosquitoes came out in myriads, little atoms of gnats
+penetrated through the netting of the "bars," and rendered rest or sleep
+impossible. At last, when the gnats seemed disposed to retire, two
+Germans came along, and, seeing our fire, commenced stumbling about our
+boards. To be roused at two o'clock a.m., when one is just sinking into
+obliviousness after four hours of useless struggle with unseen enemies,
+is provoking enough, but to be roused under such circumstances by Germans
+is simply unbearable.
+
+At last daylight came. A bathe in the creek, despite the clouds of
+mosquitoes, freshened one up a little and made Tom's terrible table see
+less repulsive. Then came a long hot day in the dusty cars, until at
+length St. Paul was reached.
+
+I remained at St. Paul some twelve days, detained there from day to day
+awaiting the arrival of letters from Canada relative to the future supply
+of the Expedition. This delay was at the time most irksome, as I too
+frequently pictured the troops pushing on towards Fort Garry while I was
+detained inactive in Minnesota; but one morning the American papers came
+out with news that the expeditionary forces had met with much delay in
+their first move from Thunder Bay; the road over which it was necessary
+for them to transport their boats, munitions, and supplies for a distance
+of forty-four miles from Superior to Lake Shebandowan was utterly
+impracticable, portions of it, indeed, had still to be made, bridges to
+be built, swamps to be corduroyed, and thus at the very outset of the
+Expedition a long delay became necessary. Of course, the American press
+held high jubilee over this check, which was represented as only the
+beginning of the end of a series of disasters. The British Expedition was
+never destined to reach Red River--swamps would entrap it, rapids would
+engulf it; and if, in spite of these obstacles, some few men did succeed
+in piercing the rugged wilderness, the trusty rifle of the Metis would
+soon annihilate the presumptive intruders. Such was the news and such
+were the comments I had to read day after day, as I anxiously scanned the
+columns of the newspapers for intelligence. Nor were these comments on
+the Expedition confined to prophecy of its failure from the swamps and
+rapids of the route: Fenian aid was largely spoken of by one portion of
+the press. Arms and ammunition, and hands to use them, were being pushed
+towards St. Cloud and the Red River to aid the free sons of the
+North-west to follow out their manifest destiny, which, of course, was
+annexation to the United States. But although these items made reading a
+matter of no pleasant description, there were other things to be done in
+the good city of St. Paul not without their special interest. The Falls
+of the Mississippi at St. Anthony, and the lovely little Fall of
+Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect
+little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy
+threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so
+light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming
+through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The
+Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly
+disfigured by the various sawmills that surround them.
+
+The hotel in which I lodged at St. Paul was a very favourable specimen
+of the American hostelry; its proprietor was, of course, a colonel, so it
+may be presumed that he kept his company in excellent order. I had but
+few acquaintances in St. Paul, and had little to do besides study
+American character as displayed in dining-room, lounging-hall, and
+verandah, during the hot fine days; but when the hour of sunset came it
+was my wont to ascend to the roof of the building to look at the glorious
+panorama spread out before me-for sunset in America is of itself a sight
+of rare beauty, and the valley of the Mississippi never appeared to
+better advantage than when the rich hues of the western sun were gilding
+the steep ridges that over hang it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+Our Cousins--Doing America--Two Lessons--St. Cloud--Sauk Rapids--"Steam
+Pudding or Pumpkin Pie?"--Trotting him out--Away for the Red River.
+
+ENGLISHMEN who visit America take away with them two widely different
+sets of opinions. In most instances they have rushed through the land,
+note-book in hand, recording impressions and eliciting information. The
+visit is too frequently a first and a last one; the thirty-seven states
+are run over in thirty-seven days; then out comes the book, and the great
+question of America, socially and politically considered, is sealed for
+evermore. Now, if these gentlemen would only recollect that impressions,
+which are thus hastily collected must of necessity share the
+imperfection of all things done in a hurry, they would not record these
+hurriedly gleaned facts with such an appearance of infallibility, or,
+rather, they might be induced to try a second rush across the Atlantic
+before attempting that first rush into print. Let them remember that even
+the genius of Dickens was not proof against such error, and that a
+subsequent visit to the States caused no small amount of alteration in
+his impressions of America. This second visit should be a rule with every
+man who wishes to read aright, for his own benefit, or for that of
+others, the great book which America holds open to the traveller. Above
+all, the English traveller who enters the United States with a portfolio
+filled with letters of introduction will generally prove the most
+untrustworthy guide to those who follow him for information. He will
+travel from city to city, finding everywhere lavish hospitality and
+boundless kindness; at every hotel he will be introduced to several of
+"our leading citizens;" newspapers will report his progress,
+general-superintendents of railroads will pester him with free passes
+over half the lines in the Union; and he will take his departure from New
+York after a dinner at Delmonico's, the cartes of which will cost a
+dollar each. The chances are extremely probable that his book will be
+about as fair a representation of American social and political
+institutions as his dinner at Delmonico's would justly represent the
+ordinary cuisine throughout the Western States.
+
+Having been feted and free-passed through the Union, he of course comes
+away delighted with everything. If he is what is called a Liberal in
+politics, his political bias still further strengthens his favourable
+impressions of democracy and Delmonico; if he is a rigid Conservative,
+democracy loses half its terrors when it is seen across the
+Atlantic--just as widow-burning or Juggernaut are institutions much better
+suited to Bengal than they would be to Berkshire. Of course Canada and
+things Canadian are utterly beneath the notice of our traveller. He may,
+however, introduce them casually with reference to Niagara, which has a
+Canadian shore, or Quebec, which possesses a fine view; for the rest,
+America, past, present, and to come, is to be studied in New York,
+Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and half a dozen other big places, and,
+with Niagara, Salt Lake City and San Francisco thrown in for scenic
+effect, the whole thing is complete. Salt Lake City is peculiarly
+valuable to the traveller, as it affords him much subject-matter for
+questionable writing. It might be well to recollect, however, that there
+really exists no necessity for crossing the Atlantic and travelling as
+far west as Utah in order to compose questionable books upon
+unquestionable subjects; similar materials in vast quantities exist much
+nearer home, and Pimlico and St. John's Wood will be found quite as
+prolific in "Spiritual Wives" and "Gothic" affinities as any creek or
+lake in the Western wilderness. Neither is it to be wondered at that so
+many travellers carry away with them a fixed idea that our cousins are
+cousins in heart as well as in relationship-the friendship is of the
+Delmonico type too. Those speeches made to the departing guest, those
+Pledges of brotherhood over the champagne glass, this "old lang syne"
+with hands held in Scotch fashion, all these are not worth much in the
+markets of brotherhood. You will be told that the hostility of the
+inhabitants of the United States towards England is confined to one
+class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically
+insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant: the hostility to
+England is universal; it is more deep rooted than any other feeling; it
+is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged
+strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you
+pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with
+your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the
+most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whose grip was
+around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that English-speaking
+cousin of yours over the Atlantic whose language is your language, whose
+literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your
+digests of law would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat
+over your agony, would keep the ring while you were, being knocked out of
+all semblance of nation and power, and would not be very far distant when
+the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast disjointed
+limbs. Make no mistake in this matter, and be not blinded by ties of
+kindred or belief. You imagine that because he is your cousin-sometimes
+even your very son-that he cannot hate you, and you nurse yourself in the
+belief that in a moment of peril the stars and stripes would fly
+alongside the old red cross. Listen one moment; we cannot go five miles
+through any State in the American Union without coming upon a square
+substantial building in which children are being taught one universal
+lesson-the history of how, through long years of blood and strife, their
+country came forth a nation from the bungling tyranny of Britain. Until
+five short years ago that was the one bit of history that went home to
+the heart of Young America, that Was the lesson your cousin learned, and
+still learns, in spite of later conflicts. Let us see what was the lesson
+your son had laid to heart. Well, your son learned his lesson, not from
+books, for too often he could not read, but he learned it in a manner
+which perhaps stamps it deeper into the mind than even letter-press or
+schoolmaster. He left you because you would not keep him, because you
+preferred grouse-moors and deer-forests in Scotland, or meadows and
+sheep-walks in Ireland to him or his. He did not leave you as one or two
+from a household--as one who would go away and establish a branch
+connexion across the ocean; he went away by families, by clans, by kith
+and kin, for ever and for aye and he went away with hate in his heart and
+dark thoughts towards you who should have been his mother. It matters
+little that he has bettered himself and grown rich in the new land; that
+is his affair; so far as you were concerned, it was about even betting
+whether he went to the bottom of the Atlantic or to the top of the
+social tree-so, I say, to close this subject, that son and cousin owe you
+and give you, scant and feeblest love. You will find themn the firm
+friend of the Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your
+enemy in Herat, in Cabool, in Kashgar, or in Constantinople; you will
+find him the ally of the Prussian whenever Kaiser William, after the
+fashion of his tribe, orders his legions to obliterate the line between
+Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you
+spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first
+Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore
+strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's
+friend, for the simple reason that he is your enemy.
+
+But a study of American habits and opinions, however interesting in
+itself, was not calculated to facilitate in any way the solving of the
+problem which now beset me, namely, the further progress of my journey to
+the Northwest. The accounts which I daily received were not encouraging.
+Sometimes there came news that M. Riel had grown tired of his
+pre-eminence and was anxious to lay down his authority; at other times I
+heard of preparation made and making to oppose the Expedition by force,
+and of strict watch being maintained along the Pembina frontier to arrest
+and turn back all persons except such as were friendly to the Provisional
+Government.
+
+Nor was my own position in St. Paul at all a pleasant one. The inquiries
+I had to make on subjects connected with the supply of the troops in Red
+River had made so many persons acquainted with my identity, that it soon
+became known that there was a British officer in the place--a knowledge
+which did not tend in any manner to make the days pleasant in themselves
+nor hopeful in the anticipation of a successful prosecution of my journey
+in the time to come. About the first week in July I left St. Paul for
+St. Cloud, seventy miles higher up on the Mississippi, having decided to
+wait no longer'` for instructions, but to trust to chance for further
+progress towards the North-west. "You will meet with no obstacle at this
+side of the line," said an American gentleman who was acquainted with the
+object of my journey, "but I won't answer for the other side;" and so,
+not knowing exactly how I was to get through to join the Expedition, but'
+determined to try it some way or other, I set out for Sauk Rapids and St.
+Cloud. Sauk Rapids, on the Mississippi River, is a city which has neither
+burst up nor gone on. It has thought fit to remain, without monument of
+any kind, where it originally located itself-on the left bank of the
+Mississippi, opposite the confluence of the Sauk River with the "Father
+of Waters." It takes its name partly from the Sauk River and partly from
+the rapids of the Mississippi which lie abreast of the town. Like many
+other cities, it had nourished feelings of the most deadly enmity.
+against its neighbours, and was to "kill creation" on every side; but
+these ideas of animosity have decreased considerably in lapse of time: Of
+course it possessed a newspaper--I believe it also possessed a church,
+but I did not see that edifice; the paper, however, I did see, and was
+much struck by the fact that the greater portion of the first page--the
+paper had only two-was taken up with a pictorial delineation of what
+Sauk Rapids would attain to in the future, when it had sufficiently
+developed its immense water-power; In the mean time previous to the
+development of said water-power-Sauk Rapids was not a bad sort of place:
+a bath at an hotel in St. Paul was a more expensive luxury than a dinner;
+but the Mississippi flowing by the door of the hotel at Sauk Rapids
+permitted free bathing in its waters. Any traveller in the United States
+will fully appreciate this condescension on the part of the great river.
+If a man wishes to be clean, he has to pay highly for the luxury. The
+baths which exist in the hotels are evidently meant for very rare and
+important occasions.
+
+"I would like," said an American gentleman to a friend of mine travelling
+by railway, "I would like to show % you round our city, and I will call
+for you at the hotel."
+
+"Thank you," replied my friend; "I have only to take a bath, and will be
+ready in half an hour."
+
+"Take a bath!" answered the American; "why, you ain't sick, air you?"
+
+There are not many commandments strictly adhered to in the United
+States; but had there ever existed a "Thou shalt not tub," the implicit
+obedience rendered to it would have been delightful, but perhaps, in that
+case, every American would have been a Diogenes.
+
+The Russell House at Sauk Rapids was presided over by Dr. Chase.
+According to his card, Dr. Chase conferred more benefactions upon the
+human race for the very smallest remuneration than any man living. His
+hotel was situated in the loveliest portion of Minnesota, commanding the
+magnificent rapids of the Mississippi; his board and lodging were of the
+choicest description; horses and buggies were free, gratis, and medical
+attendance was also uncharged for. Finally, the card intimated that, upon
+turning over, still more astonishing revelations would meet the eye of
+the reader. Prepared for some terrible instance of humane abnegation on
+the part of Dr. Chase, I proceeded to do, as directed, and, turning over
+the card, read, "Present of a $500 greenback"!!! The gift of the green
+back was attended with some little drawback, inasmuch as it was
+conditional upon paying to Dr. Chase the sum of $20,000 for the goodwill,
+etc., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for
+them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low
+one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of
+his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the
+frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually
+pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more
+observable than in this Doctor's establishment; whether it was from the
+fact that each guest suffered under a painful knowledge of the superhuman
+efforts which the Doctor was making for his or her benefit, I cannot say;
+but I never witnessed the proverbially frightened appearance of the
+American people at meals to such a degree as at the dinner-table of the
+Sauk Hotel. When the damsels before alluded to commenced their
+peregrinations round the table, giving in terribly terse language the
+choice of meats, the solemnity of the proceeding could not have been
+exceeded. "Pork or beef?" "Pork," would answer the trembling feeder;
+"Beef or pork?" "Beef," would again reply the guest, grasping eagerly at
+the first name which struck upon his ear. But when the second course came
+round the damsels presented us with a choice of a very mysterious nature
+indeed. I dimly heard two names being uttered into the ears of my
+fellow-eaters, and I just had time to notice the paralyzing effect which
+the communication appeared to have upon them, when presently over my own
+shoulder I heard the mystic sound-I regret to say that at first these
+sounds entirely failed to present to my mind any idea of food or
+sustenance of known description, I therefore begged for a repetition of
+the words; this time there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or
+pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in
+her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness,
+but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The
+female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after
+communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not
+thought of much account for the remainder of the meal.
+
+Upon the day of my arrival at Sauk Rapids I had let it be known pretty
+widely that I was ready to become the purchaser of a saddle-horse, if any
+person had such an animal to dispose of. In the three following days the
+amount of saddle-horses produced in the neighbourhood was perfectly
+astonishing; indeed the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any
+thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required animal; even
+a German--a "Dutchman'" came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh,
+sand-cracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of
+$100. Two livery stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated
+stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior
+description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of
+the animals brought up for inspection, I found there was little chance of
+being able to get over the 400 miles which lay between St. Cloud and Fort
+Garry. It was now the 12th of July; I had reached the farthest limit of
+railroad communication, and before me lay 200 miles of partly settled
+country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River. It is true that
+a four-horse stage ran from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie on Red River,
+but that would only have conveyed me to about 300 miles distant from Fort
+Garry, and over that last 300 miles I could see no prospect of
+travelling. I had therefore determined upon procuring a horse and riding
+the entire way, and it was with this object that I had entered into these
+inspections of horseflesh already mentioned. Matters were in this
+unsatisfactory state on the 12th of July, when I was informed that the
+solitary steamboat which plied upon the waters of the Red River was about
+to make a descent to Fort Garry, and that a week would elapse before she
+would start from her moorings below Georgetown, a. station of the Hudson
+Bay Company situated 250 miles from St. Cloud. This was indeed the best
+of good news to me; I saw in it the long-looked-for chance of bridging
+this great stretch of 400 miles and reaching at last the Red River
+Settlement. I saw in it still more the prospect of joining at no very
+distant time the expeditionary force itself, after I had run the gauntlet
+of M. Riel and his associates, and although many obstacles yet remained
+to be overcome, and distances vast and wild had to be covered before that
+hope could be realized, still the prospect of immediate movement overcame
+every perspective difficulty; and glad indeed I was when from the top of
+a well-horsed stage I saw the wooden houses of St. Cloud disappear
+beneath the prairie behind me, and I bade good-bye for many a day to the
+valley of the Mississippi,
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival Savages-Abercrombie--News from
+the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red River--Prairies--Sunset--
+Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A Thunder-storm--A Prussian--
+Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer "International"--Pembina.
+
+The stage-coach takes three days to run from St. Cloud to Fort
+Abercrombie, about 180 miles. The road was tolerably good, and many
+portions of the country were very beautiful to look at. On the second day
+one reaches the height of land between the Mississippi and Red Rivers, a
+region abounding in clear crystal lakes of every size and shape, the old
+home of the great Sioux nation, the true Minnesota of their dreams.
+Minnesota ("sky-coloured water"), how aptly did it describe that home
+which was no longer theirs! They have left it for ever; the Norwegian and
+the Swede now call it theirs, and nothing remains of the red man save
+these sounding names of lake and river which long years ago he gave them.
+Along the margins of these lakes many comfortable dwellings nestle
+amongst oak openings and glades, and hill and valley are golden in
+summer with fields of wheat and corn, and little towns are springing up
+where twenty years ago the Sioux lodge-poles were the only signs of
+habitation; but one cannot look on this transformation without feeling,
+with Longfellow, the terrible surge of the white man, "whose breath, like
+the blast of the east wind, drifts evermore to the west the scanty smoke
+of the wigwams." What savages, too, are they, the successors of the old
+race--savages! not less barbarous because they do not scalp, or
+war-dance, or go out to meet the Ojibbeway in the woods or the
+Assineboine in the plains.
+
+We had passed a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Osakis, and reached
+another lake not less lovely, the name of which I did not know.
+
+"What is the name of this place?" I asked the driver who had stopped to
+water his horses.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, lifting a bucket of water to his thirsty
+steeds; "some God-dam Italian name, I guess." This high rolling land
+which divides the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from those of
+Hudson Bay lies at an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea level. It is
+rich in every thing that can make a country prosperous; and that portion
+of the "down-trodden millions," who "starve in the garrets of Europe,"
+and have made their homes along that height of land, have no reason to
+regret their choice.
+
+On the evening of the second day we stopped for the night at the old
+stockaded post of Pomme-de-Terre, not far from the Ottertail River. The
+place was foul beyond the power of words to paint it, but a "shake down"
+amidst the hay in a cow-house was far preferable to the society of man
+close by.
+
+At eleven o'clock on the following morning we reached and crossed the
+Ottertail River, the main branch of the Red River, and I beheld with joy
+the stream upon whose banks, still many hundred miles distant, stood Fort
+Garry. Later in the day, having passed the great level expanse known as
+The Breckenridge Flats, the stage drew up at Fort Abercrombie, and I saw
+for the first time the yellow, muddy waters of the Red River of the
+North. Mr. Nolan, express agent, stage agent, and hotel keeper in the
+town of McAulyville, put me up for that night, and although the room
+which I occupied was shared by no less than five other individuals, he
+nevertheless most kindly provided me with a bed to myself. I can't say
+that I enjoyed the diggings very much. A person lately returned from Fort
+Garry detailed his experiences of that place and his interview with the
+President at some length. A large band of the Sioux Indians was ready to
+support the Dictator against all comers, and a vigilant watch was
+maintained upon the Pembina frontier for the purpose of excluding
+strangers who might attempt to enter from the United States; and
+altogether M. Riel was as securely established in Fort Garry as if there
+had not existed a red-coat in the universe. As for the Expedition, its
+failure was looked upon as a foregone conclusion; nothing had been heard
+of it excepting a single rumour, and that was one of disaster. An Indian
+coming from beyond Fort Francis, somewhere in the wilderness north of
+Lake Superior, had brought tidings to the Lake of the Woods, that forty
+Canadian soldiers had already been lost in one of the boiling rapids of
+the route. "Not a man will get through!" was the general verdict of
+society, as that body was represented at Mr. Nolan's hotel, and, truth'
+to say, society seemed elated at its verdict. All this, told to a roomful
+of Americans, had no very exhilarating effect upon me as I sat, unknown
+and unnoticed, on my portmanteau, a stranger to every one. When our luck
+seems at its lowest there is only one thing to be done, and that is to go
+on and try again. Things certainly looked badly, obstacles grew bigger as
+I got nearer to them--but that is a way they have, and they never grow
+smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my plans for rapid
+movement. There was no horse or conveyance of any kind to be had from
+Abercrombie; but I discovered in the course of questions that the captain
+of the "International" steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a
+week before, and was expected to return to Abercrombie by the next stage,
+two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at
+Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart
+for his steamboat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul.
+Now the boat "International" was lying at a part of the Red River known
+as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I
+had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of
+this horse and cart of the captain's, it became a question of the very
+greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that
+a Red River cart is a very limited conveyance, and a Red River horse, as
+we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of
+impossibilities. To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for
+conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it-by the stage
+back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two
+days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set
+out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the
+Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud.
+This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Abercrombie, which for
+many reasons was a matter for congratulation, and put me in a position to
+intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie. So-on the 13th of July I
+left Nolan's hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary house
+which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and
+Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler's
+log-hut which stood out upon the level sea of grass and was visible miles
+and miles before one reached it. Here had rested one of those unquiet
+birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude nest of such
+material as the oak-wooded "bays" of the Red River afforded, and
+multiplying--in spite of much opposition to the contrary. His eldest had
+been struck dead in his house only a few months before by the
+thunderbolt, which so frequently hurls destruction upon the valley of the
+Red River. The settler had seen many lands since his old home in Cavan
+had been left behind, and but for his name it would have been difficult
+to tell his Irish nationality. He had wandered up to Red River Settlement
+and wandered back again, had squatted in Iowa, and finally, like some
+bird which long wheels in circles ere it settles upon the earth, had
+pitched his tent on the Red River.
+
+The Red River--let us trace it while we wait the coming captain who is to
+navigate us down its tortuous channel. Close to the Lake Ithaska, in
+which the great river Mississippi takes its rise, there is a small sheet
+of water known as Elbow Lake. Here, at an elevation of 1689 feet above
+the sea level, nine feet higher than the source of the Mississippi, the
+Red River has its birth. It is curious that the primary direction of both
+rivers should be in courses diametrically opposite to their afterlines;
+the Mississippi first running to the north, and the Red River first
+bending towards the south; in fact, it is only when it gets down here,
+near the Breckenridge Prairies, that it finally determines to seek a
+northern outlet to the ocean. Meeting the current of the Bois-des-Sioux,
+which has its source in Lac Travers, in which the Minnesota River, a
+tributary of the Mississippi, also takes its rise, the Red River hurries
+on into the level prairie and soon commences its immense windings. This
+Lac Travers discharges in wet seasons north and south, and is the only
+sheet of water on the Continent which sheds its waters into the tropics
+of the Gulf of Mexico and into the polar ocean of the Hudson Bay. In
+former times the whole system of rivers bore the name of the great Dakota
+nation the Sioux River and the title of Red River was only borne by that
+portion of the stream which flows from Red Lake to the forks of the
+Assineboine. Now, however, the whole stream, from its source in Elbow
+Lake to its estuary in Lake Winnipeg fully 900 miles by water, is called
+the Red River: people say that the name is derived from a bloody Indian
+battle which once took place upon its banks, tinging the waters with
+crimson dye. It certainly cannot be called red from the hue of the water,
+which is of a dirty-white colour. Flowing towards the north with
+innumerable twists and sudden turnings, the Red River divides the State
+of Minnesota, which it has upon its right, from the great territory of
+Dakota, receiving from each side many tributary streams which take their
+source in the Leaf Hills of Minnesota and in the Coteau of the Missouri.
+Its tributaries from the east flow through dense forests, those from the
+west wind through the vast sandy wastes of the Dakota Prairie, where
+trees are almost unknown. The plain through which Red River flows is
+fertile beyond description. At a little distance it looks one vast level
+plain through which the windings of the river are marked by a dark line
+of woods fringing the whole length of the stream--each tributary has also
+its line of forest--a line visible many miles away over the great sea of
+grass. As one travels on, there first rise above the prairie the summits
+of the trees; these gradually'! grow larger, until finally, after many
+hours, the river is reached. Nothing else breaks the uniform level.
+Standing upon the ground the eye ranges over many miles of grass,
+standing on a waggon, one doubles the area of vision, and to look over
+the plains from an elevation of twelve feet above the earth is to survey
+at a glance a space so vast that distance alone seems to bound its
+limits. The effect of sunset over these oceans of verdure is very
+beautiful; a thousand hues spread themselves upon the grassy plains; a
+thousand tints of gold are cast along the heavens, and the two oceans of
+the sky and of the earth intermingle in one great blaze of glory at the
+very gates of the setting sun. But to speak of sunsets now is only to
+anticipate. Here at the Red River we are only at the threshold of the
+sunset, its true home yet lies many days journey to the west: there,
+where the long shadows of the vast herds of bison trail slowly over the
+immense plains, huge and dark against the golden west; there, where the
+red man still sees in the glory of the setting sun the realization of his
+dream of heaven.
+
+Shooting the prairie plover, which were numerous around the solitary
+shanty, gossipping with Mr. Connelly on Western life and Red River
+experiences--I passed the long July day until evening came to a close.
+Then came the time of the mosquito; he swarmed around the shanty, he came
+out from blade of grass and up from river sedge, from the wooded bay and
+the dusky prairie, in clouds and clouds, until the air hummed with his
+presence. My host "made a smoke," and the cattle came close around and
+stood into the very fire itself, scorching their hides in attempting to
+escape the stings of their ruthless tormentors. My friend's house was not
+a large one, but he managed to make me a shake-down on the loft overhead,
+and to it he led the way. To live in a country infested by mosquitoes
+ought to insure to a person the possession of health, wisdom, and riches,
+for assuredly I know of nothing so conducive to early turning in and
+early turning out as that most pitiless pest. On the present occasion I
+had not long turned in before I became aware of the presence of at least
+two other persons within the limits of the little loft, for only a few
+feet distant soft whispers became fintly audible. Listening attentively,
+I gathered the following dialogue:
+
+"Do you think he has got it about him?"
+
+"Maybe he has," replied the first speaker with the voice of a woman.
+
+"Are you shure he has it at all at all?"
+
+"Didn't I see it in his own hand?"
+
+Here was a fearful position! The dark loft, the lonely shanty miles away
+from any other habitation, the mysterious allusions to the possession of
+property, all naturally combined to raise the most dreadful suspicions in
+the mind of the solitary traveller. Strange to say, this conversation had
+not the terrible effect upon me which might be supposed. It was evident
+that my old friends, father and mother of Mrs. C----, occupied the loft in
+company with me, and the mention of that most suggestive word,
+"crathure," was sufficient to neutralize all suspicions connected with
+the lonely surroundings of the place. It was, in fact, a drop of that
+much-desired "crathure" that the old couple were so anxious to obtain.
+
+About three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday the 17th July I left the
+house of Mr. Connelly, and journeyed back to Abercrombie in the stage
+waggon from St. Cloud. I had as a fellow-passenger the captain of the
+"International" steamboat, whose acquaintance was quickly made. He had
+received my letter at Pomme-de-Terre, and most kindly offered his pony
+and cart for our joint conveyance to George town that evening; so, having
+waited only long enough at Abercrombie to satisfy hunger and get ready
+the Red River cart, we left Mr. Nolan's door some little time before
+sunset, and turning north along the river held our way towards
+Georgetown. The evening was beautifully fine and clear; the plug trotted
+steadily on, and darkness soon wrapped its mantle around the prairie. My
+new acquaintance had many questions to ask and much information to
+impart, and although a Red River cart is not the easiest mode of
+conveyance to one who sits amidships between the wheels, still when I
+looked to the northern skies and saw the old pointers marking our course
+almost due north, and thought that at last I was launched fair on a road
+whose termination was the goal for which I had longed so earnestly, I
+little recked the rough jolting of the wheels whose revolutions brought
+me closer to my journey's end. Shortly after leaving Abercrombie we
+passed a small creek in whose leaves and stagnant waters mosquitoes were
+numerous.
+
+"If the mosquitoes let us travel," said my companion, as we emerged upon
+the prairie again, "we should reach Georgetown to breakfast."
+
+"If the mosquitoes let us travel?" thought I. "Surely he must be
+joking!"
+
+I little knew then the significance of the captain's words. I thought
+that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps,
+to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught
+me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that
+night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the
+possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may
+appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about ten o'clock at night when
+there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud scarcely visible
+above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the
+north-east; so when my attention had been called to the speck of cloud by
+my companion I naturally concluded that it could in no way concern us,
+but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time the
+little cloud grew bigger, the wind died away altogether, and the stars
+began to look mistily from a sky no longer blue. Every now and again my
+companion looked towards this increasing cloud, and each time his opinion
+seemed to be less favourable. But another change also occurred of a
+character altogether different. There came upon us, brought apparently by
+the cloud, dense swarms of mosquitoes, humming and buzzing along with us
+as we journeyed on, and covering our faces and heads with their sharp
+stinging bites. They seemed to come with us, after us, and against us,
+from above and from below, in volumes that ever increased. It soon began
+to dawn upon me that this might mean something akin to the "mosquitoes
+allowing us to travel," of which my friend had spoken some three hours
+earlier. Meantime the cloud had increased to large proportions; it was no
+longer in the south-west; it occupied the whole west, and was moving on
+towards the north. Presently, from out of the dark heavens, streamed
+liquid fire, and long peals of thunder rolled far away over the gloomy
+prairies. So sudden appeared the change that one could scarce realize
+that only a little while before the stars had been shining so brightly
+upon the ocean of grass. At length the bright flashes came nearer and
+nearer, the thunder rolled louder and louder, and the mosquitoes seemed
+to have made up their minds that to achieve the maximum of torture in the
+minimum of time was the sole end and aim of their existence. The
+captain's pony showed many signs of agony; my dog howled with pain, and
+rolled himself amongst the baggage in useless writhings.
+
+"I thought it would come to this," said the captain. "We must unhitch
+and lie down."
+
+It was now midnight. To loose the horse from the shafts, to put the
+oil-cloth over the cart, and to creep underneath the wheels did-not take
+my friend long. I followed his movements, crept in and drew a blanket over
+my head. Then came the crash; the fire seemed to pour out of the clouds.
+It was impossible to keep the blanket on, so raising it every now and
+again I. looked out from between the spokes of the wheel. During three
+hours the lightning seemed to run like a river of flame out of the
+clouds. Sometimes a stream would descend, then, dividing into two
+branches, would pour down on the prairie two distinct channels of fire.
+The thunder rang sharply, as though the metallic clash of steel was about
+it, and the rain descended in torrents upon the level prairies. At about
+three o'clock in the morning the storm seemed to lull a little. My
+companion crept out from underneath the cart; I followed. The plug, who
+had managed to improve the occasion by stuffing himself with grass, was
+soon in the shafts again, and just as dawn began to streak the dense
+low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion. Still for
+a couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the
+lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten
+flat by the rain-torrent. What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us
+when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low
+upon the dank prairie.
+
+Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was
+I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty
+for Food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name
+of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the
+bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.'
+Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general
+should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted
+the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrangements of
+limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfelds in particular.
+While the Herr was thus engaged in illuminating our minds, the Frau was
+much more agreeably employed in preparing something for our bodily
+comfort. I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the
+future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the
+Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. Many youthful
+Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a
+continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion
+of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future.
+It is more than probable that Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just
+at that moment, when the sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds
+over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen
+were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special
+furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind-it is most probable, I
+say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no
+ways lessened.
+
+Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night storm on the
+prairie, and it was midday on the 18th when we reached the Hudson Bay
+Company Post which stood at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red
+Rivers. Food and fresh horses were all we required, and after these
+requisites had been obtained the journey was prosecuted with renewed
+vigour. Forty miles had yet to be traversed before the point at which
+the Steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran
+on the left or Dakota side of the Red River. As we journeyed along the
+Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it
+a Scene of magical beauty. The sun resting on the rim of the prairie
+cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light. On the east lay
+the darker green of the trees of the Red River. The whole western sky
+was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of
+sunlight shot upward in great trembling shafts of glory. Being on
+horseback and alone, for my companion had trotted on in his waggon, I
+had time to watch and note this brilliant spectacle; but as soon as the
+sun had dipped beneath the sea of verdure an ominous sound caused me
+to gallop on with increasing haste. The pony seemed to know the
+significance of that sound much better than its rider. He no longer
+lagged, nor needed the spur or whip to urge him to faster exertion, for
+darker and denser than on the previous night there rose around us vast
+numbers of mosquitoes--choking masses of biting insects, no mere cloud
+thicker and denser in one place than in another, but one huge wall of
+never-ending insects filling nostrils, ears, and eyes. Where they came
+from I cannot tell; the prairie seemed too small to hold them; the air
+too limited to yield them space. I had seen many vast accumulations of
+insect life in lands old and new, but never any thing that approached to
+this mountain of mosquitoes on the prairies of Dakota. To say that they
+covered the coat of the horse I rode would be to give but a faint idea
+of their numbers; they were literally six or eight deep upon his skin,
+and with a single sweep of the hand one could crush myriads from his
+neck. Their hum seemed to be in all things around. To ride for it was
+the sole resource. Darkness came quickly down, but the track knew no
+turn, and for seven miles I kept the pony at a gallop; my face, neck,
+and hands cut and bleeding.
+
+At last in the gloom I saw, down in what appeared to be the bottom of a
+valley, a long white wooden building, with lights showing out through
+the windows. Riding quickly down this valley we reached, followed by
+hosts of winged pursuers, the edge of some water lying amidst
+tree-covered banks-the water was the Red River, and the white wooden
+building the steamboat "International."
+
+Now one word about mosquitoes in the valley of the Red River. People will
+be inclined to say, "We know well what a mosquito is--very troublesome
+and annoying, no doubt, but you needn't make so much of what every one
+understands." People reading what I have written about this insect will
+probably say this. I would have said so myself before the occurrences of
+the last two nights, but I will never say so again, nor perhaps will my
+readers when they have read the following: It is no unusual event during
+a wet summer in that portion of Minnesota and Dakota to which I refer for
+oxen and horses to perish from the bites of mosquitoes. An exposure of a
+very few hours duration is sufficient to cause death to these animals.
+It is said, too, that not many years ago the Sioux were in the habit of
+sometimes killing their captives by exposing them at night to the attacks
+of the mosquitoes; and any person who has experienced the full intensity
+of a mosquito night along the American portion of the Red River will not
+have any difficulty in realizing how short a period would be necessary to
+cause death.
+
+Our arrival at the "International" was the cause of no small amount of
+discomfort to the persons already on board that vessel. It took us but
+little time to rush over the gangway and seek safety from our pursuers
+within the precincts of the steamboat: but they were not to be baffled
+easily; they came in after us in millions; like Bishop Haddo's rats, they
+came "in at the windows and in at the doors," until in a very short space
+of time the interior of the boat became perfectly black with insects.
+Attracted by the light they flocked into the saloon, covering walls and
+ceiling in one dark mass. We attempted supper, but had to give it up.
+They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter,
+until at length, feverish, bitten, bleeding, and hungry, I sought refuge
+beneath the gauze curtains in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer
+exhaustion.
+
+And in truth there was reason enough for sleep independently of
+mosquitoes bites. By dint of hard travel we had accomplished 104 miles
+in twenty-seven hours. The midnight storm had lost us three hours and
+added in no small degree to discomfort. Mosquitoes had certainly caused
+but little thought to be bestowed upon fatigue during the last two hours;
+but I much doubt if the spur-goaded horse, when he stretches himself at
+night to rest his weary limbs, feels the less tired because the miles
+flew behind him all unheeded under the influence of the spur-rowel. When
+morning broke we were in motion. The air was fresh and cool; not a
+mosquito was visible. The green banks of Red River looked pleasant to the
+eye as the "International" puffed along between them, rolling the
+tranquil water before her in a great muddy wave, which broke amidst the
+red and grey willows on the shore. Now and then the eye caught glimpses
+of the prairies through the skirting of oak woods on the left, but to the
+right there lay an unbroken line of forest fringing deeply the Minnesota
+shore. The "International" was a curious craft; she measured about 130
+feet in length, drew only two feet of water, and was propelled by an
+enormous wheel placed over her stern. Eight summers of varied success and
+as many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river
+worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the
+Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a
+perfect marvel of patchwork--pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank
+and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and
+spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not
+supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on
+fire seemed to be very great; each gust of wind sent showers of sparks
+from the furnaces flying along the lower deck, the charred beams of which
+attested the frequency of the occurrence. Alarmed at the prospect of
+seeing my conveyance wrapped in flames, I shouted vigorously for
+assistance, and will long remember the look of surprise and pity with
+which the native regarded me as he leisurely approached with the
+water-bucket and cast its contents along the smoking deck.
+
+I have already mentioned the tortuous course which the Red River has
+wound for itself through these level northern prairies. The windings of
+the river more than double the length of its general direction, and the
+turns are so sharp that after steaming a mile the traveller will often
+arrive at a spot not one hundred yards distant from where he started.
+
+Steaming thus for one day and one night down the Red River of the North,
+enjoying no variation of scene or change of prospect, but nevertheless
+enjoying beyond expression a profound sense of mingled rest and
+progression, I reached at eight o'clock on the morning of the-20th of
+July the frontier post of Pembina.
+
+And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red
+River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my
+readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into earlier
+times. For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the
+latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of
+Assineboine without any preliminary-acquaintance with its history or its
+inhabitants.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of Hudson--Rival
+Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west Company--How the
+Half-breeds came--The Highlanders defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
+
+WE who have seen in our times the solution of the long-hidden secret
+worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the
+excitement which for nigh 400 years vexed the minds of European kings and
+peoples--how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild
+realms of Cathay and Hindostan--how from every port, from the Adriatic to
+the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest of this ocean strait, to find
+in succession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the
+human race.
+
+Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly
+entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger
+than canal-boats. And how long and how tenaciously did they hold that
+some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached! Not a
+creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to
+the Pacific.
+
+Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought
+they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the
+path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which
+bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac. Two hundred years
+had passed away from the time of Columbus ere his dream of an open sea to
+the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers. This immense
+inlet of Hudson Bay must lead to the Western Ocean. So, at least, thought
+a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into
+the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island,
+which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never
+think or care about again. Nor were these anticipations of reaching the
+East held only by the sailors.
+
+La Salle, when he fitted out his expeditions from the Island of Montreal
+for the West, named his point of departure La Chine, so certain was he
+that his canoes would eventually reach Cathay. And La Chine still exists
+to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent,
+reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt
+another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast
+volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their
+unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water
+must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might
+the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of
+arduous toil through swamp and forest, he stood at last on the low shores
+of the Mississippi and beheld in thought the enormous space which lay
+between him and the spot where such a river had its birth.
+
+The East--it was always the East. Columbus had said the world was not so
+large as the common herd believed it, and yet when he had increased it by
+a continent he tried to make it smaller than it really was. So fixed were
+men's minds upon the East, that it was long before they would think of
+turning to account the discoveries of those early navigators. But in time
+there came to the markets of Europe the products of the New World. The
+gold and the silver of Mexico and the rich sables of the frozen North
+found their way into the marts of Western Europe. And while Drake
+plundered galleons from the Spanish Main, England and France commenced
+their career of rivalry for the possession of that trade in furs and
+peltries which had its sources round the icy shores of the Bay of Hudson.
+It was reserved however for the fiery Prince Rupert to carry into effect
+the idea of opening up the North-west. Through the ocean of Hudson Bay.
+
+Somewhere about 200 years ago a ship sailed away from England bearing in
+it a company of adventurers sent out to form a colony upon the southern
+shores of James's Bay. These men named the new land after the Prince who
+sent them forth, and were the pioneers of that "Hon. Company of
+Adventurers from England trading into Hudson Bay."
+
+More than forty years previous to the date of the charter by which
+Charles II. conferred the territory of Rupert's Land upon the London
+company, a similar grant had been made by the French monarch, Louis
+XIII, to "La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France." Thus there had arisen
+rival claims to the possession of this sterile region, and although
+treaties had at various times attempted to rectify boundaries or to
+rearrange watersheds, the question of the right of Canada or of the
+Company to hold a portion of the vast territory draining into Hudson Bay
+had never been legally solved.
+
+For some eighty years after this settlement on James's Bay, the
+Company held a precarious tenure of their forts and factories. Wild-looking
+men, more Indian than French, marched from Canada over the height of
+land and raided upon the posts of Moose and Albany, burning the stockades
+and carrying off the little brass howitzers mounted thereon. The same
+wild-looking men, pushing on into the interior from Lake Superior, made
+their way into Lake Winnipeg, up the great Saskatchewan River, and
+across to the valley of the Red River; building their forts for war
+and trade by distant lake-shore and confluence of river current, and
+drawing off the valued trade in furs to France; until all of a sudden
+there came the great blow struck by Wolfe under the walls of Quebec, and
+every little far-away post and distant fort throughout the vast interior
+continent felt the echoes of the guns of Abraham. It might have been
+imagined that now, when the power of France was crushed in the Canadas,
+the trade which she had carried on with the Indian tribes of the Far West
+would lapse to the English company trading Into Hudson Bay; but such was
+not the case.
+
+Immediately upon the capitulation of Montreal, fur traders from the
+English cities of Boston and Albany appeared in Montreal and Quebec, and
+pushed their way along the old French route to Lake Winnipeg and into the
+valley of the Saskatchewan. There they, in turn, erected their little
+posts and trading-stations, laid out their beads and blankets, their
+strouds and cottons, and exchanged their long-carried goods for the
+beaver and marten and fisher skins of the Nadow, Sioux, Kinistineau, and
+Osinipoilles. Old maps of the North-west still mark spots along the
+shores of Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan with names of Henry's House,
+Finlay's House, and Mackay's House. These "houses" were the
+Trading-posts of the first English free-traders, whose combination in
+1783 gave rise to the great North-west Fur Company, so long the fierce
+rival of the Hudson Bay. To picture here the jealous rivalry which during
+forty years raged throughout these immense territories would be to fill a
+volume with tales of adventure and discovery.
+
+The zeal with which the North-west Company pursued the trade in furs
+quickly led to the exploration of the entire country. A Mackenzie
+penetrated to the Arctic Ocean down the immense river which bears his
+name--a Frazer and a Thompson pierced the tremendous masses of the Rocky
+Mountains and beheld the Pacific rolling its waters against the rocks of
+New Caledonia. Based upon a system which rewarded the efforts of its
+employees by giving them a share in the profits of the trade, making them
+partners as well as servants, the North-west Company soon put to sore
+straits the older organization of the Hudson Bay. While the heads of both
+companies were of the same nation, the working men and voyageurs were of
+totally different races, the Hudson Bay employing Highlanders and Orkney
+men from Scotland, and the North-west Company drawing its recruits from
+the hardy French inhabitants of Lower Canada. This difference of
+nationality deepened the strife between them, and many a deed of cruelty
+and bloodshed lies buried amidst the oblivion of that time in those
+distant regions. The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and
+servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from
+Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life
+in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of
+inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of
+excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow
+limits of civilization. Besides, he had taken to himself an Indian wife,
+and although the ceremony by which that was effected was frequently
+wanting in those accessories of bell, book, and candle so essential to
+its proper well-being, nevertheless the voyageur and his squaw got on
+pretty well together, and little ones, who jabbered the smallest amount
+of English or French, and a great deal of Ojibbeway, or Cree, or
+Assineboine, began to multiply around them.
+
+Matters were in this state when, in 1812, as we have already seen in an
+earlier chapter, the Earl of Selkirk, a large proprietor of the Hudson
+Bay Company, conceived the idea of planting a colony of Highlanders on
+the banks of the Red River near the lake called Winnipeg.
+
+Some great magnate was intent on making a deer forest in Scotland about
+the period that this country was holding its own with difficulty against
+Napoleon. So, leaving their native parish of Kildonan in Sutherlandshire,
+these people established another Kildonan in the very heart of North
+America, in the midst of an immense and apparently boundless prairie.
+Poor people! they had a hard time of it-inundation and North-west Company
+hostility nearly sweeping them off their prairie lands. Before long
+matters reached a climax. The North-west Canadians and half-breeds
+sallied forth one day and attacked the settlers; the settlers had a small
+guard in whose prowess they placed much credence; the guard turned out
+after the usual manner of soldiers, the half-breeds and Indians lay in
+the long grass after the method of savages. For once the Indian tactics
+prevailed. The Governor of the Hudson Bay Company and the guard were shot
+down, the fort at Point Douglas on the Red River was taken, and the
+Scotch settlers driven out to the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+To keep the peace between the rival companies and the two nationalities
+was no easy matter, but at last Lord Selkirk came to the rescue; they
+were disbanding regiments after the great peace of 1815, and portions of
+two foreign corps, called De Muiron's and De Watteville's Regiments,
+were induced to attempt an expedition to the Red River.
+
+Starting in winter from the shores of Lake Superior, these hardy fellows
+traversed the forests and frozen lakes upon snow-shoes, and, entering
+from the Lake of the Woods, suddenly appeared in the Selkirk Settlement,
+and took possession of Fort Douglas.
+
+A few years later the great Fur Companies became amalgamated, or rather
+the North-west ceased to exist, and henceforth the Hudson Bay Company
+ruled supreme from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Russian
+America.
+
+From that date, 1822, the progress of the little colony had been gradual
+but sure. Its numbers were constantly increased by the retired servants
+of the Hudson Bay Company, who selected it as a place of settlement when
+their period of active service had expired. Thither came the voyageur and
+the trader to spend the winter of their lives in the little world of
+Assineboine. Thus the Selkirk Settlement grew and flourished, caring
+little for the outside earth-"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
+
+But the old feelings which had their rise in earlier years never wholly
+died out. National rivalry still existed, and it required no violent
+effort to fan the embers into flame again. The descendants of the two
+nationalities dwelt apart; there were the French parishes and the Scotch
+and English parishes, and, although each nationality spoke the same
+mother tongue, still the spread of schools and churches fostered the
+different languages of the fatherland, and perpetuated the distinction of
+race which otherwise would have disappeared by lapsing into savagery. In
+an earlier chapter I have traced the events immediately pre ceding the
+breaking out of the insurrectionary movement among the French
+half-breeds, and in the foregoing pages I have tried to sketch the early
+life and history of the country into which I am about to ask the reader
+to follow me. Into the immediate sectional disputes and religious
+animosities of the present movement it is not my intention to enter; as I
+journey on an occasional arrow may be shot to the right or to the left at
+men and things; but I will leave to others the details of a petty
+provincial quarrel, while-I have before me, stretching far and wide, the
+vast solitudes which await in silence the footfall of the future.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+Running the Gauntlet--Across the Line--Mischief ahead-Preparations--A
+Night March--The Steamer captured--The Pursuit-Daylight--The Lower
+Fort--The Red-Indian at last--The Chief's Speech--A Big Feed--Making
+ready for the Winnipeg--A Delay--I visit Fort Garry--Mr. President
+Riel--The Final Start-Lake Winnipeg--The First Night out--My Crew.
+
+THE steamer "International" made only a short delay at the frontier post
+of Pembina, but it was long enough to impress the on-looker with a sense
+of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the
+leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches'
+pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and
+defensive alliance with the arms, never again to permit the hands to
+emerge into daylight unless it should be in the vicinity of the ankles.
+
+Upon inquiring for the post-office, I was referred to the Postmaster
+himself, who, in his-capacity of leading citizen, was standing by. Asking
+if there were any letters lying at his office for me, I was answered in a
+very curt negative, the postmaster retiring immediately up the steep bank
+towards the collection of huts which calls itself Pembina. The boat soon
+cast off her moorings and steamed on into British territory. We were at
+length within the limits of the Red River Settlement, in the land of M.
+Louis Riel, President, Dictator, Ogre, Saviour of Society, and New
+Napoleon; as he was variously named by friends and foes in the little
+tea-cup of Red River whose tempest had cast him suddenly from dregs to
+surface. "I wasn't so sure that they wouldn't have searched the boat for
+you," said the captain from his wheel-house on the roof-deck, soon after
+we had passed the Hudson Bay Company's post, whereat M. Riel's frontier
+guard was supposed to hold its head-quarters. "Now, darn me, if them
+whelps had stopped the boat, but I'd have just rounded her back to
+Pembina and tied up under the American post yonder, and claimed
+protection as an American citizen." As the act of tying up under the
+American post would in no way have forwarded my movements, however
+consolatory it might have proved to the wounded feelings of the captain,
+I was glad that we had been permitted to proceed without molestation. But
+I had in my possession a document which I looked upon as an "open sesame"
+in case of obstruction from any of the underlings of the Provisional
+Government.
+
+This document had been handed to me by an eminent ecclesiastic whom I met
+on the evening preceding my departure at St. Paul, and who, upon hearing
+that it was my intention to proceed to the Red River, had handed me,
+unsolicited, a very useful notification. So far, then, I had got within
+the outer circle of this so jealously protected settlement. The guard,
+whose presence had so often been the theme of Manitoban journals, the
+picquet line which extended from Pembina Mountain to Lake of the Woods
+(150 miles), was nowhere visible, and I. began to think that the whole
+thing was only a myth, and that the Red River revolt was as unsubstantial
+as the Spectre of the Brocken. But just then, as I stood on the high roof
+of the "International," from whence a wide view was obtained, I saw
+across the level prairie outside the huts of Pembina the figures of two
+horsemen riding at a rapid pace towards the north. They were on the road
+to Fort Garry. The long July day passed slowly away, and evening began to
+darken over the level land, to find us still steaming down the widening
+reaches of the Red River.
+
+But the day had shown symptoms sufficient to convince me that there was
+some reality after all in the stories of detention and resistance, so
+frequently mentioned; more than once had the figures of the two horsemen
+been visible from the roof-deck of the steamer, still keeping the Fort
+Garry trail, and still forcing their horses at a gallop.
+
+The windings of the river enabled these men to keep ahead of the boat, a
+feat which, from their pace and manner, seemed the object they had in
+view. But there were other indications of difficulty lying ahead: an
+individual connected with the working of our boat had been informed by
+persons at Pembina that my expected arrival had been notified to Mr.
+President Riel and the members of his triumvirate, as I would learn to my
+cost upon arrival at Fort Garry.
+
+That there was mischief ahead appeared probable enough, and it was with
+no pleasant feelings that when darkness came I mentally surveyed the
+situation, and bethought me of some plan by which to baffle those who
+sought my detention.
+
+In an hour's time the boat would reach Fort Garry. I was a stranger in a
+strange land, knowing not a feature in the locality, and with only an
+imperfect map for my guidance. Going down to my cabin, I spread out the
+map before me. I saw the names: of places familiar in imagination--the
+winding river, the junction of the Assineboine and the Red River, and
+close to it Fort Garry and the village of Winnipeg; then, twenty miles
+farther to the north, the Lower Fort Garry and the Scotch and English
+Settlement. My object was to reach this lower fort; but in that lay all
+the difficulty. The map showed plainly enough the place in which safety
+lay; but it showed no means by which it could be reached, and left me, as
+before, to my own resources. These were not large.
+
+My baggage was small and compact, but weighty; for it had in it much shot
+and sporting gear for perspective swamp and prairie work at wild duck and
+sharp-tailed grouse. I carried arms available against man and beast a
+Colt's six-shooter and a fourteen-shot repeating carbine, both light,
+good, and trusty; excellent weapons when things came to a certain point,
+but useless before that point is reached.
+
+Now, amidst perplexing prospects and doubtful expedients, one course
+appeared plainly prominent; and that was that there should be no capture
+by Riel. The baggage and the sporting gear might go, but, for the rest,
+I was bound to carry myself and my arms, together with my papers and a
+dog, to the Lower Fort and English Settlement. Having decided on this
+course, I had not much time to lose in putting it into execution. I
+packed my things, loaded my arms, put some extra ammunition into pocket,
+handed over my personal effects into the safe custody of the captain, and
+awaited whatever might turn up.
+
+When these preparations were completed, I had still an hour to spare.
+There happened to be on board the same boat as passenger a gentleman
+whose English proclivities had marked him during the late disturbances at
+Red River as a dangerous opponent to M. Riel, and who consequently had
+forfeited no small portion of his liberty and his chattels. The last two
+days had made me acquainted-with his history and opinions, and, knowing
+that he could supply the want I was most in need of--a horse--I told him
+the plan I had formed for evading M. Ril, in case his minions should
+attempt my capture. This was to pass quickly from the steamboat on its
+reaching the landing-place and to hold my way across the country in the
+direction of the Lower Fort, which I hoped to reach before daylight. If
+stopped, there was but one course to pursue--to announce name and
+profession, and trust to the Colt and sixteen-shooter for the rest. My
+new acquaintance, however, advised a change of programme, suggested by
+his knowledge of the locality.
+
+At the point of junction of the Assineboine and Red Rivers the steamer,
+he said, would touch the north shore. The spot was only a couple of
+hundred yards distant from Fort Garry, but it was sufficient in the
+darkness to conceal any movement at that point; we would both leave the
+boat and, passing by the flank of the fort, gain the village of Winnipeg
+before the steamer would reach her landing place; he would seek his home
+and, if possible, send a horse to meet me at the first wooden bridge upon
+the road to the Lower Fort. All this was simple enough, and supplied me
+with that knowledge of the ground which I required.
+
+It was now eleven o'clock p.m., dark but fine. With my carbine concealed
+under a large coat, I took my station near the bows of the boat, watching
+my companion's movements. Suddenly the steam was shut off, and the boat
+began to round from the Red River into the narrow Assineboine. A short
+distance in front appeared lights and figures moving to and fro along the
+shore--the lights were those of Fort Garry, the figures those of Riel,
+O'Donoghue, and Lepine, with a strong body of guards.
+
+A second more, and the boat gently touched the soft mud of the north
+shore. My friend jumped off to the beach; dragging the pointer by chain
+and collar after me, I too, sprang to the shore just as the boat began to
+recede from it. As I did so, I saw my companion rushing up a very steep
+and lofty bank. Much impeded by the arms and dog, I followed him up the
+ascent and reached the top. Around stretched a dead black level plain, on
+the left the fort, and figures were dimly visible about 200 yards away.
+There was not much time to take in all this, for my companion, whispering
+me to follow him closely, commenced to move quickly along an irregular
+path which led from the river bank. In a short time we: had reached the
+vicinity of a few straggling houses whose white walls showed distinctly
+through the darkness; this, he told me, was Winnipeg. Here was his
+residence, and here we were to separate. Giving me a few hurried
+directions for further guidance, he pointed to the road before me as a
+starting-point, and then vanished into the gloom. For a moment I stood at
+the entrance of the little village half irresolute what to do. One or two
+houses showed lights in single windows, behind gleamed the lights of the
+steamer which had now reached the place of landing. I commenced to walk
+quickly through the silent houses.
+
+As I emerged from the farther side of the village I saw, standing on the
+centre of the road, a solitary figure. Approaching nearer to him, I found
+that he occupied a narrow wooden bridge which opened out upon the
+prairie. To pause or hesitate would only be to excite suspicion in the
+mind of this man, sentinel or guard, as he might be. So, at a sharp pace,
+I advanced towards him. He never moved; and without word or sign I passed
+him at arm's length. But here the dog, which I had unfastened when
+parting from my companion, strayed away, and, being loth to lose him, I
+stopped at the farther end of the bridge to call him back. This was
+evidently the bridge of which my companion had spoken, as the place where
+I was to await the horse he would send me.
+
+The trysting-place seemed to be but ill-chosen-close to the village, and
+already in possession of a sentinel, it would not do. "If the horse
+comes," thought I, "he will be too late; if he does not come, there can
+be no use in waiting," so, giving a last whistle for the dog (which I
+never saw again), I turned and held my way into the dark level plain
+lying mistily spread around me. For more than an hour I walked hard along
+a black-clay track bordered on both sides by prairie. I saw no one, and
+heard nothing save the barking of some stray dogs away to my right.
+
+During this time the moon, now at its last quarter, rose above trees to
+the east, and enabled me better to discern the general features of the
+country through which I was passing. Another hour passed, and still I
+held on my way. I had said to myself that for three hours I must keep up
+the same rapid stride without pause or halt. In the meantime I was
+calculating for emergencies. If followed on horseback, I must become
+aware of the fact while yet my enemies were some distance away. The black
+capote flung on the road would have arrested their attention, the
+enclosed fields on the right of the track would afford me concealment, a
+few shots from the fourteen shooter fired in the direction of the party,
+already partly dismounted deliberating over the mysterious capote, would
+have occasioned a violent demoralization, probably causing a rapid
+retreat upon Fort Garry, darkness would have multiplied numbers, and a
+fourteen-shooter by day or night is a weapon of very equalizing
+tendencies.
+
+When the three hours had elapsed I looked anxiously around for water, as
+I was thirsty in the extreme. A creek soon gave me the drink I thirsted
+for, and, once more refreshed, I kept on my lonely way beneath the waning
+moon. At the time when I was searching for water along the bottom of the
+Middle Creek my pursuers were close at hand--probably not five minutes
+distant--but in those things it is the minutes which make all the
+difference one way or the other.
+
+We must now go back and join the pursuit, just to see what the followers
+of M. Riel were about.
+
+Sometime during the afternoon preceding the arrival of the steamer at
+Fort Garry, news had come down by mounted express from Pembina, that a
+stranger was about to make his entrance into Red River.
+
+Who he might be was not clearly discernible; some said he was an officer
+in Her Majesty's Service, and others, that he was somebody connected
+with the disturbances of the preceding winter who was attempting to
+revisit the settlement.
+
+Whoever he was, it was unanimously decreed that he should be captured;
+and a call was made by M. Riel for "men not afraid to fight" who would
+proceed up the river to meet the steamer. Upon after-reflection, however,
+it was resolved to await the arrival of the boat, and, by capturing
+captain, crew, and passengers, secure the person of the mysterious
+stranger.
+
+Accordingly, when the "International" reached the landing-place beneath
+the walls of Fort Garry a strange scene was enacted.
+
+Messrs. Riel, Lepine, and O'Donoghue, surrounded by a body-guard of
+half-breeds and a few American adventurers, appeared upon the
+landing-place. A select detachment, I presume, of the "men not afraid to
+fight'" boarded the boat and commenced to ransack her from stem to stern.
+While the confusion was at its height, and doors, etc., were being broken
+open, it became known to some of the searchers that two persons had left
+the boat only a few minutes previously. The rage of the petty Napoleon
+became excessive, he sarceed and stamped and swore, he ordered pursuit on
+foot and on horseback; and altogether conducted himself after the manner
+of rum-drunkenness and despotism based upon ignorance and "straight
+drinks."
+
+All sorts of persons were made prisoners upon the spot. My poor companion
+was seized in his house twenty minutes after he had reached it, and,
+being hurried to the boat, was threatened with instant hanging. Where had
+the stranger gone to? and who was he? He had asserted himself to belong
+to Her Majesty's Service, and he had gone to the Lower Fort.
+
+"After him!" screamed the President; "bring him in dead or alive."
+
+So some half-dozen men, half-breeds and American filibusters, started out
+in pursuit. It was averred that the man who left the boat was of
+colossal proportions, that he carried arms of novel and terrible
+construction, and, more mysterious still, that he was closely followed by
+a gigantic dog.
+
+People shuddered as they listened to this part of the story-a dog of
+gigantic size! What a picture, this immense man and that immense
+dog--stalking through the gloom-wrapped prairie, goodness knows where!
+Was it to be wondered at, that the pursuit, vigorously though it
+commenced, should have waned faint as it reached the dusky prairie and
+left behind the neighbourhood and the habitations of men? The party,
+under the leadership of Lepine the "Adjutant-general," was seen at one
+period of its progress besides the moments of starting and return. Just
+previous to daybreak it halted at a house known by the suggestive title
+of "Whisky Tom's," eight miles from the village of Winnipeg; whether it
+ever got farther on its way remains a mystery, but I am inclined to
+think that the many attractions of Mr. Tom's residence, as evinced by
+the prefix to his name, must have proved a powerful obstacle to such
+thirsty souls.
+
+Daylight breaks early in the month of July, and I had been but little
+more than three hours on the march when the first sign of dawn began to
+glimmer above the tree tops of the Red River. When the light became
+strong enough to afford a clear view of the country, I found that I was
+walking along a road or track of very black soil with poplar groves at
+intervals on each side.
+
+Through openings in these poplar groves I beheld a row of houses built
+apparently along the bank of the river, and soon the steeple of a church
+and a comfortable-looking glebe became visible about a quarter of a mile
+to the right. Calculating by my watch, I concluded that I must be some
+sixteen miles distant from Fort Garry, and therefore not more than four
+miles from the Lower Fort. However, as it was now quite light, I thought'
+I could not do better than approach the comfortable-looking glebe with a
+double view towards refreshment and information. I reached the gate and,
+having run the gauntlet of an evilly-intentioned dog, pulled a bell at
+the door.
+
+Now it had never occurred to me that my outward appearance savoured not a
+little of the bandit--a poet has written about "the dark Suliote, in his
+shaggy capote" etc., conveying the idea of a very ferocious-looking fellow
+but I believe that my appearance fully realized the description, as far
+as outward semblance was concerned; so, evidently, thought the worthy
+clergyman when, cautiously approaching his hall-door, he beheld through
+the glass window the person whose reiterated ringing had summoned him
+hastily from his early slumbers. Half opening his door, he inquired my
+business.
+
+"How far," asked I, "to the Lower Fort?"
+
+"About four miles."
+
+"Any conveyance thither?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+He was about to close the door in my face, when I inquired his country,
+and he replied, "I am English."
+
+"And I am an English officer, arrived last night in the Red River, and
+now making my way to the Lower Fort."
+
+Had my appearance been ten times more disreputable than it was, had I
+carried a mitrailleuse instead of a fourteen-shooter, I would have been
+still received with open arms after that piece of information was given
+and received. The door opened very wide and the worthy clergyman's hand
+shut very close. Then suddenly there became apparent many facilities for
+reaching the Lower Fort not before visible, nor was the hour deemed too
+early to preclude all thoughts of refreshment.
+
+It was some time before my host could exactly realize the state of
+affairs, but when he did, his horse and buggy were soon in readiness, and
+driving along the narrow road which here led almost uninterruptedly
+through little clumps and thickets of poplars, we reached the Lower Fort
+Garry not very long after the sun had begun his morning work of making
+gold the forest summits. I had run the gauntlet of the lower settlement;
+I was between the Expedition and its destination, and it was time to lie
+down and rest.
+
+Up to this time no intimation had reached the Lower Fort of pursuit by
+the myrmidons of M. Riel. But soon there came intelligence. A farmer
+carrying corn to the mill in the fort had been stopped by a party of men
+some seven miles away, and questioned as to his having seen a stranger;
+others had also seen the mounted scouts. And so while I slept the sleep
+of the tired my worthy host was receiving all manner of information
+regarding the movements of the marauders who were in quest of his
+sleeping guest.
+
+I may have been asleep some two hours, when I became aware of a hand laid
+on my shoulder and a voice whispering something into my ear. Rousing
+myself from a very deep sleep, I beheld the Hudson Bay officer in charge
+of the fort standing by the bed repeating words which failed at first to
+carry any meaning along with them.
+
+"The French are after you," he reiterated.
+
+"The French"-where was I, in France?
+
+I had been so sound asleep, that it took some seconds to gather up-the
+different threads of thought where I had left them off a few hours
+before, and "the French" was at that time altogether a new name in my
+ears for the Red River natives. "The French are after you!" altogether it
+was not an agreeable prospect to open my eyes upon, tired, exhausted, and
+sleepy as I was. But, under the circumstances, breakfast seemed the best
+preparation for the siege, assault, and general battery which, according
+to all the rules of war, ought to have followed the announcement of the
+Gallic Nationality being in full pursuit of me.
+
+Seated at breakfast, and doing full justice to a very excellent mutton
+chop and cup of Hudson Bay Company Souchong (and where does there exist
+such tea; out of China?), I heard a digest of the pursuit from the lips
+of my host. The French had visited him in his fort once before with evil
+intentions, and they might come again, so he proposed that we should
+drive down to the Indian Settlement, where the ever-faithful Ojibbeways
+would, if necessary, roll back the tide of Gallic pursuit, giving the
+pursuers a reception in which Pahaouza-tau-ka, or "The Great
+Scalp-taker," would play a prominent part.
+
+Breakfast over, a drive of eight miles brought us to the mission of the
+Indian Settlement presided over by Archdeacon Cowley.
+
+Here, along the last few miles of the Red River ere it seeks, through
+many channels, the waters of Lake Winnipeg, dwell the remnants of the
+tribes whose fathers in times gone by claimed the broad lands of the Red
+River; now clothing themselves, after the fashion of the white man, in
+garments and in religion, and learning a few of his ways and dealings,
+but still with many wistful hankerings towards the older era of the paint
+and feathers, of the medicine bag and the dream omen.
+
+Poor red man of the great North-west, I am at last in your land! Long as
+I have been hearing of you and your wild doings, it is only here that I
+have reached you on the confines of the far-stretching Winnipeg. It is no
+easy task to find you now, for one has to travel far into the lone
+spaces of the Continent before the smoke of your wigwam or of your tepie
+blurs the evening air.
+
+But henceforth we will be companions for many months, and through many
+varied scenes, for my path lies amidst the lone spaces which are still
+your own; by the rushing rapids where you spear the great "namha" (
+sturgeon) will we light the evening fire and lie down to rest, lulled by
+the ceaseless thunder of the torrent; the lone lake shore will give us
+rest for the midday meal, and from your frail canoe, lying like a
+sea-gull on the wave, we will get the "mecuhaga" (the blueberry) and the
+"wa-wa," (the goose) giving you the great medicine of the white man, the
+the and suga in exchange. But I anticipate.
+
+On the morning following my arrival at the mission house a strange sound
+greeted my ears as I arose. Looking through the window, I beheld for the
+first time the red man in his glory.
+
+Filing along the outside road came some two hundred of the warriors and
+braves of the Ojibbeways, intent upon all manner of rejoicing. At their
+head marched Chief Henry Prince, Chief "Kechiwis" (or the Big Apron) "Sou
+Souse" (or Little Long Ears); there was also "We-we-tak-gum Na-gash" (or
+the Man who flies round the Feathers), and Pahaouza-tau-ka, if not
+present, was represented by at least a dozen individuals just as fully
+qualified to separate the membrane from the top of the head as was that
+most renowned scalp-taker.
+
+Wheeling into the grass-plot in front of the mission house, the whole
+body advanced towards the door shouting, "Ho, ho!" and firing off their
+flint trading-guns in token of welcome. The chiefs and old men advancing
+to the front, seated themselves on the ground in a semi-circle, while the
+young men and braves remained standing or lying on the ground farther
+back in two deep lines. In front of all stood Henry Prince the son of
+Pequis, Chief of the Swampy tribe, attended by his interpreter and
+pipe-bearer.
+
+My appearance upon the door-step was the signal for a burst of deep and
+long-rolling, "Ho, ho's," and then the ceremony commenced. There Was no
+dance or "pow wow;" it meant business at once. Striking his hand upon
+his breast the chief began; as he finished each sentence the interpreter
+took up the thread, explaining with difficulty the long rolling, words of
+the Indian.
+
+"You see here," he said, "the most faithful children of the Great Mother;
+they have heard that you have come from the great chief who is bringing
+thither his warriors from the Kitchi-gami" (Lake Superior), "and they
+have come to bid you welcome, and to place between you and the enemies
+of the Great Mother their guns and their lives. But these children are
+sorely puzzled; they know not what to do. They have gathered in from the
+East, and the North, and the West, because bad men have risen their hands
+against the Great Mother and robbed her goods and killed her sons and put
+a strange flag over her fort. And these bad men are now living in plenty
+on what they have robbed, and the faithful children of the Great Mother
+are starving and very poor, and they wish to know what they are to do. It
+is said that a great chief is coming across from the big sea-water with
+many mighty braves and warriors, and much goods and presents for the
+Indians. But though we have watched long for him, the lake is still
+clear of his canoes, and we begin to think he is not coming at all;
+therefore we were glad when we were told that you had come, for now you
+will tell us what we are to do and what message the great Ogima has sent
+to the red children of the Great Mother."
+
+The speech ended, a deep and prolonged "Ho!"--a sort of universal "thems
+our sentiments "--ran round the painted throng of warriors, and then they
+awaited my answer, each looking with stolid indifference straight before
+him.
+
+My reply was couched in as few words as possible. "It was true what they
+had heard. The big chief was coming across from the Kitchi-gami at the
+head of many warriors. The arm of the Great Mother was a long one, and
+stretched far over'seas and forests; let them keep quiet, and when the
+chief would arrive, he would give them store of presents and supplies; he
+would reward them for their good behaviour. Bad men had set themselves
+against the Great Mother; but the Great Mother would feel angry if any of
+her red children moved against these men. The big chief would soon be
+with them, and all would be made right. As for myself, I was now on my
+way to meet the big chief and his warriors, and I would say to him how
+true had been the red children, and he would be made glad thereat.
+Meantime, they should have a present of tea, tobacco, flour, and
+pemmican; and with full stomachs their harts would feel fuller still."
+
+A universal "Ho!" testified that the speech was good; and then the
+ceremony of hand-shaking began. I intimated, however, that time would
+only permit of my having that honour with a few of the large assembly--in
+fact, with the leaders and old men of the tribe.
+
+Thus, in turns, I grasped the bony hands of the "Red Deer'" and the "Big
+Apron," of the "Old Englishman" and the "Long Claws," and the "Big Bird;"
+and, with the same "Ho, ho!" and shot-firing, they filed away as they had
+come, carrying with them my order upon the Lower Fort for one big feed
+and one long pipe, and, I dare say, many blissful visions of that life
+the red man ever loves to live-the life that never does come to him the
+future of plenty and of ease.
+
+Meantime, my preparations for departure, aided by my friends at the
+mission, had gone on apace. I had got a canoe and five stout English
+half-breeds, blankets, pemmican, tea, flour, and biscuit. All were being
+made ready, and the Indian Settlement was alive with excitement on the
+subject of the coming man--now no longer a myth--in relation to a general
+millennium of unlimited pemmican and tobacco.
+
+But just when all preparations had been made complete an unexpected event
+occurred which postponed for a time the date of my departure; this was
+the arrival of a very urgent message from the Upper Fort, with an
+invitation to visit that place before quitting the settlement. There had
+been an error in the proceedings on the night of my arrival, I was told,
+and, acting under a mistake, pursuit had been organized. Great excitement
+existed amongst the French half breeds, who were in reality most loyally
+disposed; it was quite a mistake to imagine that there was any thing
+approaching to treason in the designs of the Provisional Government and
+much more to the same effect. It is needless now to enter into the
+question of how much all this was worth: at that time so much conflicting
+testimony was not easily reduced into proper limits. But on three points,
+at all events, I could form a correct opinion for myself. Had not my
+companion been arrested and threatened with instant death? Was he not
+still kept in confinement? and had not my baggage undergone confiscation
+(it is a new name for an old thing)? And was there not a flag other than
+the Union Jack flying over Fort Garry? Yes, it was true; all these things
+were realities.
+
+Then I replied, "While these things remain, I will not visit Fort Garry."
+
+Then I was told that Colonel Wolseley had written, urging the
+construction of a road between Fort Garry and Lake of the Woods, and that
+it could not be done unless I visited the upper settlement.
+
+I felt a wish, and a very strong one, to visit this upper Fort Garry and
+see for myself its chief and its garrison, if the thing could be managed
+in any possible way.
+
+From many sources I was advised that it would be dangerous to do so; but
+those who tendered this counsel had in a manner grown old under the
+despotism of M. Riel, and had, moreover, begun to doubt that the
+expeditionary force would ever succeed in overcoming the terrible
+obstacles of the long route from Lake Superior. I knew better. Of Riel I
+knew nothing, or next to nothing; of the progress of the expeditionary
+force, I knew only that it was led by a man who regarded impossibilities
+merely in the light of obstacles to be cleared from his path; and that it
+was composed of soldiers who, thus led, would go any where, and do any
+thing, that men in any shape of savagery or of civilization can do or
+dare. And although no tidings had reached me of its having passed the
+rugged portage from the shore of Lake Superior to the height of land and
+launched itself fairly on the waters which flow from thence into Lake
+Winnipeg, still its ultimate approach never gave me one doubtful thought.
+I reckoned much on the Bishop's letter, which I had still in my
+possession, and on the influence which his last communication to the
+"President" would of necessity exercise; so I decided to visit Fort
+Garry, upon the conditions that my baggage was restored intact, Mr.
+Dreever set at liberty, and the nondescript flag taken down. My
+interviewer said he could promise the first two propositions, but of the
+third he was not so certain. He would, however, despatch a message to me
+with full information as to how they had been received. I gave him until
+five o'clock the following evening, at which hour, if his messenger had
+not appeared, I was to start for the Winnipeg River, en route for the
+Expedition.
+
+Five o'clock came on the following day, and no messenger. Every thing
+was in readiness for my departure: the canoe, freshly pitched, was
+declared fit for the Winnipeg itself; the provisions were all ready to be
+put on board at a moment's notice. I gave half an hour's law, and that
+delay brought the messenger; so, putting off my intention of starting, I
+turned my face back towards Fort Garry. My former interviewer had sent me
+a letter; all was as I wished-Mr. Dreever had been set at liberty, my
+baggage given up, and he would expect me on the following morning.
+
+The Indians were in a terrible state of commotion over my going. One of
+their chief medicine-men, an old Swampy named Bear, laboured long and
+earnestly to convince me that Riel had got on what he called "the track
+of blood," the devil's track, and that he could not get off of it. This
+curious proposition he endeavoured to illustrate by means of three small
+pegs of wood, which he set up on the ground. One represented Riel,
+another his Satanic Majesty, while the third was supposed to indicate
+myself.
+
+He moved these three pegs about-very much after the fashion of a
+thimble-rigger; and I seemed to have, through my peg, about as bad a time
+of it as the pea under the thimble usually experiences. Upon the most
+conclusive testimony, Bear proceeded to show that I hadn't a chance
+between Riel and the devil, who, according to an equally clear
+demonstration, were about as bad as bad could be.
+
+I had to admit a total inability to follow Bear in the reasoning which
+led to his deductions; but that only proved that I was not a
+"medicine-man," and knew nothing whatever of the peg theory.
+
+So, despite of the evil deductions drawn by Bear from the three pegs, I
+set out for Fort Garry, and, journeying along the same road which I had
+travelled two nights previously, I arrived in sight of the village of
+Winnipeg before midday on the 23rd of July. At a little distance from the
+village rose the roof and flag-staffs of Fort Garry, and around in
+unbroken verdure stretched-the prairie lands of Red River.
+
+Passing from the village along the walls of the fort, I crossed the
+Assineboine River and saw the "International" lying at her moorings
+below the floating bridge. The captain had been liberated, and waved his
+hand with a cheer as I crossed the bridge. The gate of the fort stood
+open, a sentry was leaning lazily against the wall, a portion of which
+leant in turn against nothing. The whole exterior of the place looked old
+and dirty. The muzzles of one or two guns protruding through the
+embrasures in the flanking bastions failed even to convey the idea
+of-fort or fortress to the mind of the beholder.
+
+Returning from the east or St. Boniface side of the Red River, I was
+conducted by my companion into the fort. His private residence was
+situated within the walls, and to it we proceeded. Upon entering the gate
+I took in at a glance the surroundings-ranged in a semi-circle with their
+muzzles all pointing towards the entrance, stood some six or eight
+field-pieces; on each side and in front were bare looking, white-washed
+buildings. The ground and the houses looked equally dirty, and the whole
+aspect of the place was desolate and ruinous.
+
+A few ragged-looking dusky men with rusty firelocks, and still more
+rusty bayonets, stood lounging about. We drove through without stopping,
+and drew up at the door of my companion's house, which was situated at
+the rear of the buildings I have spoken of. From the two flag-staffs flew
+two flags, one-the Union Jack in shreds and tatters, the other a
+well-kept bit of bunting having the fleur-de-lis and a shamrock on a
+white field. Once in the house, my companion asked me if I would see Mr.
+Riel.
+
+"To call on him, certainly not," was my reply.
+
+"But if he calls on you?"
+
+"Then I will see him," replied I.
+
+The gentleman who had spoken thus soon left the room. There stood in the
+centre of the apartment a small billiard table, I took up a cue and
+commenced a game with the only other occupant of the room-the same
+individual who had on the previous evening acted as messenger to the
+Indian Settlement. We had played some half a dozen strokes when the door
+opened, and my friend returned. Following him closely came a short stout
+man with a large head, a sallow, puffy face, a sharp, restless,
+intelligent eye, a square-cut massive forehead overhung by a mass of long
+and thickly clustering hair, and marked with well-cut eyebrows--altogether,
+a remarkable-looking face, all the more so, perhaps, because it was to be
+seen in a land where such things are rare sights.
+
+This was M. Louis Riel, the head and front of the Red River Rebellion-the
+President, the little Napoleon, the Ogre, or whatever else he may be
+called. He was dressed in a curious mixture of clothing--a black
+frock-coat, vest, and trousers; but the effect of this somewhat clerical
+costume was not a little marred by a pair of Indian mocassins, which
+nowhere look more out of place than on a carpeted floor.
+
+M. Riel advanced to me, and we shook hands with all that empressement so
+characteristic of hand-shaking on the American Continent. Then there came
+a pause. My companion had laid his cue down. I still retained mine in my
+hands, and, more as a means of bridging the awkward gulf of silence which
+followed the introduction, I asked him to continue the game--another
+stroke or two, and the mocassined President began to move nervously about
+the window recess. To relieve his burthened feelings, I inquired if he
+ever indulged in billiards; a rather laconic "Never," was his reply.
+
+"Quite a loss," I answered, making an absurd stroke across the table; "a
+capital game."
+
+I had scarcely uttered this profound sentiment when I beheld the
+President moving hastily towards the door, muttering as he went, "I see I
+am intruding here." There was hardly time to say, "Not at all," when he
+vanished.
+
+But my companion was too quick for him; going out into the hall, he
+brought him back once more into the room, called away my billiard
+opponent, and left me alone with the chosen of the people of the new
+nation.
+
+Motioning M. Riel to be seated, I took a chair myself, and the
+conversation began.
+
+Speaking with difficulty, and dwelling long upon his words, Riel
+regretted that I should have shown such distrust of him and his party as
+to prefer the Lower Fort and the English Settlement to the Upper Fort and
+the society of the French. I answered, that if such distrust existed it
+was justified by the rumours spread by his sympathizers on the American
+frontier, who represented him as making active preparations to resist the
+approaching Expedition.
+
+"Nothing," he said, "was more false than these statements. I only wish to
+retain power until I can resign it to a proper Government. I have done
+every thing for the sake of peace, and to prevent bloodshed amongst the
+people of this land. But they will find," he added passionately, "they
+will find, if they try, these people here, to put me out-they will find
+they cannot do it. I will keep what is mine until the proper Government
+arrives;" as he spoke he got up from his chair and began to pace
+nervously about the room.
+
+I mentioned having met Bishop Tache in St. Paul and the letter which I
+had received from him. He read it attentively and commenced to speak
+about the Expedition.
+
+"Had I come from it?"
+
+"No; I was going to it."
+
+He seemed surprised.
+
+"By the road to the Lake of the Woods?"
+
+"No; by the Winnipeg River," I replied.
+
+"Where was the Expedition?"
+
+I could not answer this question; but I concluded it could not be very
+far from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+"Was it a large force?"
+
+I told him exactly, setting the limits as low as possible, not to deter
+him from fighting if such was his intention. The question uppermost in
+his mind was one of which he did not speak, and he deserves the credit of
+his silence. Amnesty or no amnesty was at that moment a matter of very
+grave import to the French half-breeds, and to none so much as to their
+leader. Yet he never asked if that pardon was an event on which he could
+calculate. He did not even allude to it at all.
+
+At one time, when speaking of the efforts he had made for the advantage
+of his country, he grew very excited, walking hastily up and down the
+room with theatrical attitudes and declamation, which he evidently
+fancied had the effect of imposing on his listener; but, alas! for the
+vanity of man, it only made him appear ridiculous; the mocassins sadly
+marred the exhibition of presidential power.
+
+An Indian speaking with the solemn gravity of his race looks right manful
+enough, as with moose-clad leg his mocassined feet rest on prairie grass
+or frozen snow-drift; but this picture of the black-coated Metis playing
+the part of Europe's great soldier in the garb of a priest and the shoes
+of a savage looked simply absurd. At length M. Riel appeared to think he
+had enough of the interview, for stopping in front of me he said,
+
+"Had I been your enemy you would have known it be fore. I heard you would
+not visit me, and, although I felt humiliated, I came to see you to show
+you my pacific inclinations."
+
+Then darting quickly from the room he left me. An hour later I left the
+dirty ill-kept fort. The place was then full of half-breeds armed and
+unarmed. They said nothing and did nothing, but simply stared as I drove
+by. I had seen the inside of Fort Garry and its president, not at my
+solicitation but at his own; and now before me lay the solitudes of the
+foaming Winnipeg and the pathless waters of great inland seas.
+
+It was growing dusk when I reached the Lower Fort. My canoe men stood
+ready, for the hour at which I was to have joined them had passed, and
+they had begun to think some mishap had befallen me. After a hasty supper
+and a farewell to my kind host of the Lower Fort, I stepped into the
+frail canoe of painted bark which lay restive on the swift current. "All
+right; away!" The crew, with paddles held high for the first dip, gave a
+parting shout, and like an arrow from its bow we shot out into the
+current. Overhead the stars were beginning to brighten in the intense
+blue of the twilight heavens; far away to the north, where the river ran
+between wooded shores, the luminous arch of the twilight bow spanned the
+horizon, merging the northern constellation into its soft hazy glow.
+Towards that north we held our rapid way, while the shadows deepened on
+the shores and the reflected stars grew brighter on the river.
+
+We halted that night at the mission, resuming our course at sunrise on
+the following morning. A few miles below the mission stood the huts and
+birch-bark lodges Of the Indians. My men declared that it would be
+impossible to pass without the ceremony of a visit. The chief had given
+them orders on the subject, and all the Indians were expecting it; so,
+paddling in to the shore, I landed and walked up the pathway leading to
+the chief's hut.
+
+It was yet very early in the morning, and most of the braves were lying
+asleep inside their wigwams, dogs and papooses seeming to have matters
+pretty much their own way outside.
+
+The hut in which dwelt the son of Pequis was small, low, and
+ill-ventilated. Opening the latched door I entered stooping; nor was
+there much room to extend oneself when the interior was attained.
+
+The son of Pequis had not yet been aroused from his morning's slumber;
+the noise of my entrance, however, disturbed him, and he quickly came
+forth from a small interior den, rubbing his eyelids and gaping
+profusely. He looked sleepy all over, and was as much disconcerted as a
+man usually is who has a visit of ceremony paid to him as he is getting
+out of bed.
+
+Prince, the son of Pequis, essayed a speech, but I am constrained to
+admit that taken altogether it was a miserable failure. Action loses
+dignity when it is accompanied by furtive attempts at buttoning nether
+garments, and not even the eloquence of the Indian is proof against the
+generally demoralized aspect of a man just out of bed. I felt that some
+apology was due to the chief for this early visit; but I told him that
+being on my way to meet the great Ogima whose braves were coming from the
+big sea water, I could not pass the Indian camp without stopping to say
+good-bye.
+
+Before any thing else could be said I shook Prince by the hand and walked
+back towards the river.
+
+By this time, however, the whole camp was thoroughly aroused. From each
+lodge came forth warriors decked in whatever garments could be most
+easily donned.
+
+The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading-guns were held aloft and a
+hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the salutes
+were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge to see me
+off. Putting out into the middle of the river, I discharged my four teen
+shooter in the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war whoop answered my
+salute, and paddling their very best, for the eyes of the finest canoers
+in the world were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over
+the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were
+hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and amidst
+a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks the
+waters of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of the
+varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River is,
+like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.
+
+The wind sighs over it, bending the tall reeds with mournful rustle, and
+the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes
+which form his summer home.
+
+Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters of
+an immense lake, a lake which stretched away into unseen spaces, and over
+whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of mirage and
+inverted shore land.
+
+This was Lake Winnipeg, a great lake even on a continent where lakes are
+inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a tithe of what it must
+have been in the earlier ages of the earth.
+
+The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far
+away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present
+limits these great landmarks still look down on an ocean, but it is an
+ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and
+they are now mountain ridges rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom
+of this bygone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present
+Lakes Winnipegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie lands of the Lower
+Assineboine, 100,000 square miles of water. The water has long since been
+drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels leading to Hudson Bay,
+and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the richest prairie land in the
+world.
+
+But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its
+rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once
+flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has
+twice the volume of the Rhine. 400,000 square miles of continent shed
+their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as the ocean, but,
+fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day. Not a wave, not a
+ripple on its surface; not a breath of breeze to aid the untiring
+paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had
+scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the
+steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving behind
+the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.
+
+A long low point stretching from the south shore of the lake was faintly
+visible on the horizon. It was past mid day when we reached it; so,
+putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the shore, we lighted our
+fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grande Traverse
+was entered upon. Far away over the lake rose the point of the Big Stone,
+a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high over the water.
+The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a breath rippled
+the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide expanse, all was
+as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole speck of life on the
+waters of the world. The red sun sank into the lake, warning us that it
+was time to seek the shore and make our beds for the night. A deep sandy
+bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks, seemed to invite us to its
+solitudes. Steering in with great caution amid the rocks, we landed in
+this sheltered spot, and our boat upon the sandy beach. The shore yielded
+large store of drift-wood, the relics of many a northern gale. Behind us
+lay a trackless forest; in front the golden glory of the Western sky. As
+the night shades deepened around us and the red glare of our drift-wood
+fire cast its light upon the woods and the rocks, the scene became one of
+rare beauty.
+
+As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all the
+charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little
+marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loth to
+quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as I
+thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature
+which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms.'
+They were Ojibbeways, who came to share our fire and our evening meal.
+The land was still their own. When I lay down to rest that night on the
+dry sandy shore, I long watched the stars above me. As children sleep
+after a day of toil and play, so slept the dusky men who lay around me.
+It was my first night with these poor wild sons of the lone spaces; it
+was strange and weird, and the lapping of the mimic wave against the
+rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes. Many a night
+afterwards I lay down to sleep beside these men and their brethren--many
+a night by lake-shore, by torrent's edge, and far out amidst the
+measureless meadows of the West--but "custom stales" even nature's
+infinite variety, and through many wild bivouacs my memory still wanders
+back to that first night out by the shore of Lake Winnipeg.
+
+At break of day we launched the canoe again and pursued our course for
+the mouth of the Winnipeg River. The lake which yesterday was all
+sunshine, to-day looked black and overcast--thunder-clouds hung angrily
+around the horizon, and it seemed as though Winnipeg was anxious to give
+a sample of her rough ways before she had done with us. While the morning
+was yet young we made a portage--that is, we carried the canoe and its
+stores across a neck of land, saving thereby a long paddle round a
+projecting cape. The portage was through a marshy tract covered with long
+grass and rushes. While the men are busily engaged in carrying across the
+boat and stores, I will introduce them to the reader. They were four in
+number, and were named as follows:-Joseph Monkman, cook and interpreter;
+William Prince, full Indian; Thomas Smith, ditto; Thomas Hope, ci-devant
+schoolmaster, and now self-constituted steersman. The three first were
+good men. Prince, in particular, was a splendid canoe-man in dangerous
+water. But Hope possessed the greatest capacity for eating and talking of
+any man I ever met. He could devour quantities of pemmican any number of
+times during the day, and be hungry still. What he taught during the
+period when he was schoolmaster I have never been able to find out, but
+he was popularly supposed at the mission to be a very good Christian. He
+had a marked disinclination to hard or continued toil, although he would
+impress an on looker with a sense of unremitting exertion. This he
+achieved by divesting himself of his shirt and using his paddle, as Alp
+used his sword, "with right arm bare." A fifth Indian was added to the
+canoe soon after crossing the portage.
+
+A couple of Indian lodges stood on the shore along which we were
+coasting. We put in towards these lodges to ask information, and found
+them to belong to Samuel Henderson, full Swampy Indian. Samuel, who spoke
+excellent English, at once volunteered to come with me as a guide to the
+Winnipeg River; but I declined to engage him until I had a report of his
+capability for the duty from the Hudson Bay officer in charge of Fort
+Alexander, a fort now only a few miles distant. Samuel at once launched
+his canoe, said "Good-bye" to his wife and nine children, and started
+after us for the fort, where, on the advice of the officer, I finally
+engaged him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+The Winnipeg River--The Ojibbeway's House--Rushing a Rapid--A Camp--No
+Tidings of the Coming Man--Hope in Danger--Rat Portage--A far-fetched
+Islington--"Like Pemmican".
+
+WE entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at midday and paddled up to
+Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance. Here
+I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg, getting a
+fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five o'clock in
+the evening started on my journey Up the river. Eight miles above the
+fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the twilight. In
+surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume of the Winnipeg
+was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its waters with the
+lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which stood well out into
+the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.
+
+The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us, dark and
+solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept
+the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky
+blackness the rushing water, white with foam-above, the rifted
+thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the
+thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a
+rough shelter with cross-poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling themselves
+together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the storm.
+
+I was ninety miles from Fort Garry, and as yet no tidings of the
+Expedition.
+
+A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without
+meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place
+her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations.
+To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it
+descends 360 feet in a distance of 160 miles, that it is full of eddies
+and whirlpools, of every variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts,
+that it expands into lonely pine edged lakes and far-reaching
+island-studded bays, that its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished
+rocks, that its vast solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly
+active--to say all this is but to tell in bare items of fact the
+narrative of its beauty. For the Winnipeg by the multiplicity of its
+perils and the ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the
+description of civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized
+travel. It seems part of the savage-fitted alone for him and for his
+ways, useless to carry the burden of man's labour, but useful to shelter
+the wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its
+shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through
+the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways!
+To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one
+would of a high-mettled charger which will do any thing if he be rightly
+handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To
+shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of the Barriere, to carry his canoe
+down the whirling eddies of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush
+of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the
+whirlpool below the Chute-a-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a
+skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in
+the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness
+of skill, not to be found except after generations of practice. For
+hundreds of years the Indian has lived amidst these rapids; they have
+been the playthings of his boyhood, the realities of his life, the
+instinctive habit of his old age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the
+dog is to the Esquimaux, what the camel is to those who journey across
+Arabian deserts, so is the canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore
+yields him from first to last the materials-he requires for its
+construction: cedar for the slender ribs, birch-bark to cover them,
+juniper to stitch together the separate pieces, red pine to give resin
+for the seams and crevices. By the lake or river shore, close to his
+wigwam, the boat is built;
+
+"And the forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the
+tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the
+larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in
+autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."
+
+It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances over
+land from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load it
+down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters him
+by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land is
+unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in
+it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots
+his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing
+torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water.
+
+For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees
+are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends
+its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the
+rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the
+winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the
+north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and
+with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and
+the wavy, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its
+long icy sleep.
+
+Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes
+like an arrow.
+
+The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+moments of keenest enjoyment, every thing was new and strange, and each
+hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian
+scenery.
+
+The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays when
+the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on the
+water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns would
+be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while one
+remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its
+sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the
+centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away
+from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no
+difficult matter: start at five o'clock a.m., halt for breakfast at seven
+o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away at two
+o'clock, paddle until sunset at 7:30; that was the work of each day. But
+how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and circumstance
+between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost at every hour
+of the long summer day the great Winnipeg revealed some new phase of
+beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I have
+already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the Woods to
+Lake Winnipeg, 160 miles, makes a descent of 360 feet. This descent is
+effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of terraces at
+various distances from each other; in other words, the river forms
+innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by rapids and
+perpendicular falls of varying altitude, thus when the voyageur has
+lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and launched it again
+above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted two-and-twenty feet
+of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages will give him a total
+rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles. (How cold does the bare
+narration of these facts appear beside their actual realization in a
+small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we can picture one of these
+many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of falling water, and we see, upon
+rounding some pine-clad island or ledge of rock, a tumbling mass of foam
+and spray studded with projecting rocks and flanked by dark wooded
+shores; above we can see nothing, but below the waters, maddened by their
+wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap in angry whirlpools. It is as
+wild a scene of crag and wood and water as the eye can gaze upon, but we
+look upon it not for its beauty, because there is no time for that, but
+because it is an enemy that must be conquered. Now mark how these Indians
+steal upon this enemy before he is aware of it. The immense volume of
+water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools at the foot of the fall,
+rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer water; this rush produces
+along the shores of the river a counter or back-current which flows up
+sometimes close to the foot of the fall, along this back-water the canoe
+is carefully steered, being often not six feet from the opposing rush in
+the central river, but the back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and
+the canoe, if it followed this back-current, would inevitably end in the
+same place; for a minute there is no paddling, the bow paddle and the
+steersman alone keeping the boat in her proper direction as she drifts
+rapidly up the current. Amongst the crew not a word is spoken, but every
+man knows what he has to do and will be ready when the moment comes; and
+now the moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of
+water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth
+green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a
+strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down
+into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has
+been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often
+only the choice of the whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very
+edge of the eddy there is one loud shout given by the bow paddle, and the
+canoe shoots full into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the
+united strength of the entire crew--the men work for their very lives,
+and the boat breasts across the river with her head turned full toward
+the falls; the waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over
+the gunwale, the Indians shout as they dip their paddles like lightning
+into the foam, and the stranger to such a scene holds his breath amidst
+this war of man against nature. Ha! the struggle is useless, they cannot
+force her against such a torrent, we are close to the rocks and the foam;
+but see, she is driven down by the current in spite of those wild fast
+strokes. The dead strength of such a rushing flood must prevail. Yes, it
+is true, the canoe has been driven back; but behold, almost in a second
+the whole thing is done-we float suddenly beneath a little rocky isle on
+the foot of the cataract. We have crossed the river in the face of the
+fall, and the portage landing is over this rock, while three yards out on
+either side the torrent foams its headlong course. Of the skill necessary
+to perform such things it is useless to speak. A single false stroke, and
+the whole thing would have failed; driven headlong down the torrent,
+another attempt would have to be made to gain this rock-protected spot,
+but now we lie secure here; spray all around us, for the rush of the
+river is on either side and you can touch it with an outstretched paddle.
+The Indians rest on their paddles and laugh; their long hair has escaped
+from its-fastening through their exertion, and they retie it while they
+rest. One is already standing upon the wet slippery rock holding the
+canoe in its place, then the others get out. The freight is carried up
+piece by piece and deposited on the flat surface some ten feet above;
+that done, the canoe is lifted out very gently, for a single blow against
+this hard granite boulder would shiver and splinter the frail birch-bark
+covering; they raise her very carefully up the steep face of the cliff
+and rest again on the top. What a view there is from this coigne of
+vantage! We are on the lip of the fall, on each side it makes its plunge,
+and below we mark at leisure the torrent we have just braved; above, it
+is smooth water, and away ahead we see the foam of another rapid. The
+rock on which we stand has been worn smooth by the washing of the water
+during countless ages, and from a cleft or fissure there springs a
+pine-tree or a rustling aspen. We have crossed the Petit Roches, and our
+course is onward still.
+
+Through many scenes like this we held our way during the last days of
+July. The weather was beautiful; now and then a thunder-storm would roll
+along during the night, but the morning sun rising clear and bright would
+almost tempt one to believe that it had been a dream, if the pools of
+water in the hollows of the rocks and the dampness of blanket or
+oil-cloth had not proved the sun a humbug. Our general distance each day
+would be about thirty-two miles, with an average of six portages. At
+sunset we made our camp on some rocky isle or shelving shore, one or two
+cut wood, another got the cooking things ready, a fourth gummed the seams
+of the canoe, a fifth cut shavings from a dry stick for the fire--for
+myself, I generally took a plunge in the cool delicious water--and soon
+the supper hissed in the pans, the kettle steamed from its suspending
+stick, and the evening meal was eaten with appetites such as only the
+voyageur can understand.
+
+Then when the shadows of the night had fallen around and all was silent,
+save the river's tide against the rocks, we would stretch our blankets on
+the springy moss of the crag and lie down to sleep with only the stars
+for a roof.
+
+Happy, happy days were these--days the memory of which goes very far into
+the future, growing brighter as we journey farther away from them, for
+the scenes through which our course was laid were such as speak in
+whispers, only when we have left them--the whispers of the pine-tree, the
+music of running water, the stillness of great lonely lakes.
+
+On the evening of the fifth day from leaving Fort Alexander we reached
+the foot of the Rat Portage, the twenty-seventh, and last, upon the
+Winnipeg River; above this portage stretched the Lake of the Woods, which
+here poured its waters through a deep rock-bound gorge with tremendous
+force. During the five days we had only encountered two solitary Indians;
+they knew nothing whatever about the Expedition, and, after a short
+parley and a present of tea and flour, we pushed on. About midday on the
+fourth day we halted at the Mission of the White Dog, a spot which some
+more than heathen missionary had named Islington in a moment of virtuous
+cockneyism. What could have tempted him to commit this act of desecration
+it is needless to ask.
+
+Islington on the Winnipeg! O religious Gilpin, hadst thou fallen a prey
+to savage Cannibalism, not even Sidney Smith's farewell aspiration would
+have saved the savage who devoured you, you must have killed him.
+
+The Mission of the White Dog had been the scene of Thomas Hope's most
+brilliant triumphs in the role of schoolmaster, and the youthful
+Ojibbeways of the place had formerly belonged to the band of hope. For
+some days past Thomas had been labouring under depression, his power of
+devouring pemmican had, it is true, remained unimpaired, but in one or
+two trying moments of toil, in rapids and portages, he had been found
+miserably wanting; he had, in fact, shown many indications of utter
+uselessness; he had also begun to entertain gloomy apprehensions of what
+the French would do to him when they caught him on the Lake of the Woods,
+and although he endeavoured frequently to prove that under certain
+circumstances the French would have no chance whatever against him, yet,
+as these circumstances were from the nature of things never likely to
+occur, necessitating, in the first instance, a presumption that Thomas
+would show fight, he failed to convince not only his hearers, but
+himself, that he was not in a very bad way. At the White Dog Mission he
+was, so to speak, on his own hearth, and was doubtless desirous of
+showing me that his claims to the rank of interpreter were well founded.
+No tidings whatever had reached the few huts of the Indians at the White
+Dog; the women and children, who now formed the sole inhabitants, went
+but little out of the neighbourhood, and the men had been away for many
+days in the forest, hunting and fishing. Thus, through the whole course
+of the Winnipeg, from lake to lake, I could glean no tale or tidings of
+the great Ogima or of his myriad warriors. It was quite dark when we
+reached, on the evening of the 30th July, the northern edge of the Lake
+of the Woods and paddled across its placid waters to the Hudson Bay
+Company's post at the Rat Portage. An arrival of a canoe with six
+strangers is no ordinary event at one of these remote posts which the
+great fur company have built at long intervals over their immense
+territory. Out came the denizens of a few Indian lodges, out came the
+people of the fort and the clerk in charge of it. My first question was
+about the Expedition, but here, as elsewhere, no tidings had been heard
+of it. Other tidings were however forthcoming which struck terror into
+the heart of Hope. Suspicious canoes had been seen for-some days past
+amongst the many islands of the lake; strange men had come to the fort at
+night, and strange fires had been seen on the islands-the French were out
+on the lake. The officer in charge of the post was absent at the time of
+my visit, but I had met him at Fort Alexander, and he had anticipated my
+wants in a letter which I myself carried to his son. I now determined to
+strain every effort to cross with rapidity the Lake of the Woods and
+ascend the Rainy River to the next post of the Company, Fort Francis,
+distant from Rat Portage about 1400 miles, for there I felt sure that I
+must learn tidings of the Expedition and bring my long solitary journey
+to a close. But the Lake of the Woods is an immense sheet of water lying
+1000 feet above the sea level, and subject to violent gales which lash
+its bosom into angry billows. To be detained upon some island,
+storm-bound amidst the lake, %would never have answered, so I ordered a
+large keeled boat to be got ready by midday it only required a few
+trifling repairs of sail and oars, but a great feast had to be gone
+through in which my pemmican and flour were destined to play a very
+prominent part. As the word pemmican is one which may figure frequently
+in these pages, a few words explanatory of it may be useful. Pemmican,
+the favourite food of the Indian and the half-breed voyageur, can be made
+from the flesh of any animal, but it is nearly altogether composed of
+buffalo meat; the meat is first cut into slices, then dried either by
+fire or in the sun, and then pounded or beaten out into a thick flaky
+substance; in this state it is put into a large bag made from the hide of
+the animal, the dry pulp being soldered down into a hard solid mass by
+melted fat being poured over it-the quantity of fat is nearly half the
+total weight, forty pounds of fat going to fifty pounds of "beat meat;"
+the best pemmican generally has added to it ten pounds of berries and
+sugar, the whole composition forming the most solid description of food
+that man can make. If any person should feel inclined to ask, "What does
+pemmicau taste like?" I can only reply, "Like pemmican," there is
+nothing else in the world that bears to it the slightest resemblance.
+-Can I say any thing that Will give the reader an idea of its sufficing
+quality? Yes, I think I can. A dog that will eat from four to six pounds
+of raw fish a day when sleighing, will only devour two pounds: of
+pemmican, if he be fed upon that food; yet I have seen Indians and
+half-breeds eat four pounds of it in a single day-but this is
+anticipating. Pemmican can be prepared in many ways, and it is not easy
+to decide which method is the least objectionable. There is rubeiboo and
+richot, and pemmican plain and pemmican raw, this last method being the
+one most in vogue amongst voyageurs; but the richot, to me, seemed the
+best; mixed with a little flour and fried in a pan, pemmican in this form
+can be eaten, provided the appetite be sharp and there is nothing else to
+be had--this last consideration is, however, of importance.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+The Expedition--The Lake of the Woods--A Night Alarm--A close
+Shave--Rainy River--A Night Paddle--Fort Francis--A Meeting--The Officer
+commanding the Expedition--The Rank and File--The 60th Rifles--A
+Windigo--Ojibbeway Bravery--Canadian Volunteers.
+
+The feast having been concluded (I believe it had gone on all night, and
+was protracted far into the morning), the sails and oars were suddenly
+reported ready, and about midday on the 31st July we stood away from the
+Portages du Rat into the Lake of the Woods. I had added another man to
+my crew, which now numbered seven hands, the last accession was a French
+half-breed, named Morrisseau. Thomas Hope had possessed himself of a
+flint gun, with which he was to do desperate things should we fall in
+with the French scouts upon the lake. The boat in which I now found
+myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of
+freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and
+also possessed of powerful sweeps, which were worked by the men in
+standing positions, the rise of the oar after each stroke making the
+oarsman sink back upon the thwarts only to resume again his upright
+attitude for the next dip of the heavy sweep.
+
+This is the regular Hudson Bay Mackinaw boat, used for the carrying
+trade of the great Fur Company on every river from the Bay of Hudson to
+the Polar Ocean. It looks a big, heavy, lumbering affair, but it can sail
+well before a wind, and will do good work with the oars too.
+
+That portion of the Lake of the Woods through which we now steered our
+way was a perfect maze and network of island and narrow channel; a light
+breeze from the north favoured us, and we passed gently along the rocky
+islet shores through unruffled water. In all directions there opened out
+innumerable channels, some narrow and winding, others straight and open,
+but all lying'-between shores clothed with a rich and luxuriant
+vegetation; shores that curved and twisted into mimic bays and tiny
+promontories, that rose in rocky masses abruptly from the water, that
+sloped down to meet the lake in gently swelling undulations, that seemed,
+in fine, to present in the compass of a single glance every varying
+feature of island scenery. Looking through these rich labyrinths of tree
+and moss-covered rock, it was difficult to imagine that winter could ever
+-stamp its frozen image upon such a soft summer scene. The air was balmy
+with the scented things which grow profusely upon the islands; the water
+was warm, almost tepid, and yet despite of this the winter frost would
+cover the lake with five feet of ice, and the thick brushwood of the
+islands would lie hidden during many months beneath great depths of snow.
+
+As we glided along through this beautiful scene the men kept a sharp
+look-out for the suspicious craft whose presence had caused such alarm at
+the Portage-du-Rat. We saw no trace of man or canoe, and nothing broke
+the stillness of the evening except the splash of a sturgeon in the
+lonely bays. About sunset we put ashore upon a large rock for supper.
+While it was being prepared I tried to count the islands around. From a
+projecting point I could see island upon island to the number of over a
+hundred--the wild cherry, the plum, the wild rose, the raspberry,
+intermixed with ferns and mosses in vast variety, covered every spot
+around me, and from rock and crevice the pine and the poplar hung their
+branches over the water. As the breeze still blew fitfully from the north
+we again embarked and held our way through the winding channels--at times
+these channels would grow wider only again to close together; but there
+was no current, and the large high sail moved us slowly through the
+water. When it became dark a fire suddenly appeared on an island some
+distance ahead. Thomas Hope grasped his flint gun and seemed to think the
+supreme moment had at length arrived. During the evening I could tell by
+the gestures and looks of the men that the mysterious rovers formed the
+chief subject of conversation, and our latest accession painted so
+vividly their various suspicious movements, that Thomas was more than
+ever convinced his hour was at hand. Great then was the excitement when
+the fire was observed upon the island, and greater still when I told
+Samuel to steer full towards it. As we approached we could distinguish
+figures moving to and fro between us and the bright flame, but when we
+had got within a few hundred yards of the spot the light was suddenly
+extinguished, and the ledge of rock upon which it had been burning became
+wrapped in darkness. We hailed, but there was no reply. Whoever had been
+around the fire had vanished through the trees; launching their canoe
+upon the other side of the island, they had paddled away through the
+intricate labyrinth scared by our sudden appearance in front of their
+lonely bivouac. This apparent confirmation of his worst fears in no way
+served to reanimate the spirits of Hope, and though shortly after he lay
+down with the other men in the bottom of the boat, it was not without
+misgivings as to the events which lay before him in the darkness. One man
+only remained up to steer, for it was my intention to run as long as the
+breeze, faint though it was, lasted. I had been asleep about half an hour
+when I felt my arm quickly pulled, and, looking up, beheld Samuel bending
+over me, while with one hand he steered the boat. "Here they are," he
+whispered, "here they are." I looked over the gunwale and under the sail
+and beheld right on the course we were steering two bright fires burning
+close to the water's edge. We were running down a channel which seemed to
+narrow to a strait between two islands, and presently a third fire came
+into view on the other side of the strait, showing distinctly the narrow
+pass towards which we were steering, it did not appear to be more than
+twenty feet across it, and, from its exceeding narrowness and the
+position of the fires, it seemed as though the place had really been
+selected to dispute our outward passage. We were not more than two
+hundred yards from the strait and the breeze was holding well into it.
+What was to be done? Samuel was for putting the helm up; but that would
+Have been useless, because we were already in the channel, and to run on
+shore would only place us still more in the power of our enemies, if
+enemies they were, so I told him to hold his course and run right through
+the narrow pass. The other men had sprung quickly from their blankets,
+and Thomas was the picture of terror. When he saw that I was about to run
+the boat through the strait, he instantly made up his mind to shape for
+himself a different course. Abandoning his flint musket to any body who
+would take it, he clambered like a monkey on to the gunwale, with the
+evident intention of dropping noiselessly into the water, and seeking, by
+swimming on shore, a safety which he deemed denied to him on board. Never
+shall I forget his face as he was pulled back into the boat; nor is it
+easy to describe the sudden revulsion of feeling which possessed him
+when: a dozen different fires breaking into view showed at once that the
+forest was on fire, and that the imaginary bivouac of the French was only
+the flames of burning brushwood. Samuel laughed over his mistake, but
+Thomas looked on it in no laughing light, and, seizing his gun, stoutly
+maintained that had it really been the French they would have learnt a
+terrible lesson from the united volleys of the fourteen-shooter and his
+flint musket.
+
+The Lake of the Woods covers a very large extent of country. In length it
+measures about seventy miles, and its greatest breadth is about the same
+distance; its shores are but little known, and it is only the Indian who
+can steer with accuracy through its labyrinthine channels. In its
+southern portion it spreads out into a vast expanse of open water, the
+surface of which is lashed by tempests into high-running seas.
+
+In the early days of the French fur trade it yielded large stores of
+beaver and of martens, but it has long ceased to be rich in furs. Its
+shores and islands will be found to abound in minerals whenever
+civilization reaches them.
+
+Among the Indians the lake holds high place as the favourite haunt of the
+Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone
+from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of
+ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly
+by lightning, the islands which abound in lizards although these reptiles
+are scarce elsewhere--all these make the Lake of the Woods a region
+abounding in Indian legend and superstition. There are isles upon which
+he will not dare to venture, because the evil spirit has chosen them;
+there are promontories upon which offerings must be made to the Manitou
+when the canoe drifts by their lonely shores; and there are spots watched
+over by the great Kennebic, or Serpent, who is jealous of the treasures
+which they contain. But all these things are too long to dwell upon now;
+I must haste along my way.
+
+On the second morning after leaving Rat Portage we began to leave behind
+the thickly-studded islands and to get out into the open waters. A
+thunder-storm had swept the lake during the night, but the morning was
+calm, and the heavy sweeps were not able to make much way. Suddenly,
+while we were halted for breakfast, the wind veered round to the
+north-west and promised us a rapid passage across the Grande Traverse to
+the mouth of Rainy River. Embarking hastily, we set sail for a strait
+known as the Grassy Portage, which the high stage of water in the lake
+enabled us to run through without touching ground. Beyond this strait
+there stretched away a vast expanse of water over which the white-capped
+waves were running in high billows from the west. It soon became so rough
+that we had to take on board the small canoe which I had brought with me
+from Rat Portage in case of accident, and which was towing astern. On we
+swept over the high-rolling billows with a double reef in the lug-sail.
+Before us, far away, rose a rocky promontory, the extreme point of which
+we had to weather in order to make the mouth of Rainy River. Keeping the
+boat as close to the wind as she would go, we reeled on over the tumbling
+seas. Our lee-way was very great, and for some time it seemed doubtful if
+we would clear the point; as we neared it we saw that there was a
+tremendous sea running against the rock, the white sprays shooting far up
+into the air When the rollers struck against it. The wind had now
+freshened to a gale and the boat laboured much, constantly shipping
+sprays. At last we were abreast of the rocks, close hauled, and yet only
+a hundred yards from the breakers. Suddenly the wind veered a little, or
+the heavy swell which was running caught us, for we began to drift
+quickly down into the mass of breakers. The men were all huddled together
+in the bottom of the boat, and for a moment or two nothing could be done.
+"Out with the sweeps!" I roared. All was confusion; the long sweeps got
+foul of each other, and for a second every thing went wrong. At last
+three sweeps were got to work, but they could do nothing against such a
+sea. We were close to the rocks, so close that one began to make
+preparations for doing something--one didn't well know what--when we
+should strike. Two more oars were out, and for an instant we hung in
+suspense as to the result. How they did pull! it was the old paddle-work
+forcing the rapid again; and it told; in spite of wave and wind, we were
+round the point, but it was only by a shade. An hour later we were
+running through a vast expanse of marsh and reeds into the mouth of Rainy
+River; the Lake of the Woods was passed, and now before me Lay eighty
+miles of the Riviere-de-la-Pluie.
+
+A friend of mine once, describing the scenery of the Falls of the Cauvery
+in India, wrote that "below the falls there was an island round which
+there was water on every side:" this mode of description, so very true
+and yet so very simple in its character, may fairly-be applied to Rainy
+River; one may safely say that it is a river, and that it has banks on
+Either side of it; if one adds that the banks are rich, fertile, and well
+wooded, the description will be complete--such was the river up which I
+now steered to meet the Expedition. The Expedition, where was it? An
+Indian whom we met on the lake knew nothing about it; perhaps on the
+river we should hear some tidings. About five miles from the mouth of
+Rainy River there was a small out-station of the Hudson Bay Company kept
+by a man named Morrisseau, a brother of my boatman. As we approached this
+little post it was announced to us by an Indian that Morrisseau had that
+morning lost a child. It was a place so wretched looking that its name
+of Hungery Hall seemed well adapted to it.
+
+When the boat touched the shore the father of the dead child came out of
+the hut, and shook hands with every one in solemn silence; when he came
+to his brother he kissed him, and the brother in his turn went up the
+bank and kissed a number of Indian women who were standing round; there
+was not a word spoken by any one; after awhile they all went into the
+hut in which the little body lay, and remained some time inside. In its
+way, I don't ever recollect seeing a more solemn exhibition of grief
+than this complete silence in the presence of death; there was no
+question asked, no sign given, and the silence of the dead seemed to
+have descended upon the living. In a little time several Indians
+appeared, and I questioned them as to the Expedition; had they seen or
+heard of it?
+
+"Yes, there was one young man who had seen with his own eyes the great
+army of the white braves."
+
+"Where?" I asked.
+
+"Where the road slants down into the lake, was the interpreted reply.
+
+"What were they like?" I asked again, half incredulous after so many
+disappointments.
+
+He thought for awhile: "They were like the locusts," he answered, "they
+came on one after the other." There could be no mistake about it, he had
+seen British soldiers.
+
+The chief of the party now came forward, and asked what I had got to say
+to the Indians; that he would like to hear me make a speech; that they
+wanted to know why all these men were coming through their country. To
+make a speech! it was a curious request. I was leaning with my back
+against the mast, and the Indians were seated in a line on the bank;
+every thing looked so miserable around, that I thought I might for once
+play the part of Chadband, and improve the occasion, and, as a speech was
+expected of me, make it. So I said, "Tell this old chief that I am sorry
+he is poor and hungry; but let him look around, the land on which he sits
+is rich and fertile, why does he not cut down the trees that cover it,
+and plant in their places potatoes and corn? then he will have food in
+the winter when the moose is scarce and the sturgeon cannot be caught."
+He did not seem to relish my speech, but said nothing. I gave a few plugs
+of tobacco all round, and we shoved out again into the river. "Where the
+road comes down to the lake" the Indian had seen the troops; where was
+that spot? No easy matter to decide, for lakes are so numerous in this
+land of the North-west that the springs of the earth seem to have found
+vent there. Before sunset we fell in with another Indian; he was alone in
+a canoe, which he paddled close along shore out of the reach of the
+strong breeze which was sweeping us fast up the river. While he was yet a
+long way off, Samuel declared that he had recently left Fort Francis, and
+therefore would bring us news from that place. "How can you tell at this
+distance that he has come from the fort?" I asked. "Because his shirt
+looks bright," he answered. And so it was; he had left the fort on the
+previous day and run seventy miles; he was old Monkman's Indian returning
+after having left that hardy voyageur at Fort Francis.
+
+Not a soldier of the Expedition had yet reached the fort, nor did any man
+know where they were.
+
+On again; another sun set and another sun rose, and we were still running
+up the Rainy River before a strong north wind which fell away towards
+evening. At sundown of the 3rd August I calculated that some four and
+twenty miles must yet lie between me and that fort at which, I felt
+convinced, some distinct tidings must reach me of the progress of the
+invading column. I was already 180 miles beyond the spot where I had
+counted upon falling in with them. I was nearly 400 miles from Fort
+Garry.
+
+Towards evening on the 3rd it fell a dead calm, and the heavy boat could
+make but little progress against the strong running current of the river,
+so I bethought me of the little birch-bark canoe which I had brought from
+Rat Portage; it was a very tiny one, but that was no hindrance to the
+work I now\ required of it. We had been sailing all day, so my men were
+fresh. At supper I proposed that Samuel, Monkman, and William Prince
+should come on with me during the night, that we would leave Thomas Hope
+in command of the big boat and push on for the fort in the light canoe,
+taking with us only sufficient food for one meal. The three men at once
+assented, and Thomas was delighted at the prospect of one last grand feed
+all to himself, besides the great honour of being promoted to the rank
+and dignity of Captain of the boat. So we got the little craft out, and
+having gummed her all over, started once more on our upward way just as
+the shadows of the night began to close around the river. We were four in
+number, quite as many as the canoe could carry; she was very low in the
+water and, owing to some damage received in the rough waves of the Lake
+of the Woods, soon began to leak badly. Once we put ashore to gum and
+pitch her seams again, but still the water oozed in and we were wet. What
+was to be done? with these delays we never could hope to reach the fort
+by daybreak, and something told me instinctively, that unless I did get
+there that night I would find the Expedition already arrived. Just at
+that moment we descried smoke rising amidst the trees on the right shore,
+and soon saw the poles of Indian lodges. The men said they were very bad
+Indians. firom the American side--the left shore of Rainy River is
+American territory--but the chance of a bad Indian was better than the
+certainty of a bad canoe, and we stopped at the camp. A lot of half-naked
+redskins came out of the trees, and the pow-wow commenced. I gave them
+all tobacco, and then asked if they would give me a good canoe in
+exchange for my bad one, telling them that I would give them a present
+next day at the fort if one or two amongst them would come up there.
+After a short parley they assented, and a beautiful canoe was brought out
+and placed on the water. They also gave us a supply of dried sturgeon,
+and, again shaking hands all round, we departed on our way.
+
+This time there was no mistake, the canoe proved as dry as a bottle, and
+we paddled bravely on through the mists of night. About midnight we
+halted for supper, making a fire amidst the long wet grass, over which we
+fried the sturgeon and boiled our kettle; then we went on again through
+the small hours of the morning. At times I could see on the right the
+mouths of large rivers which flowed from the west: it is down these
+rivers that the American Indians come to fish for sturgeon in the Rainy
+River. For nearly 200 miles the country is still theirs, and the
+Pillager and Red Lake branches of the Ojibbeway nation yet hold their
+hunting-grounds in the vast swamps of North Minnesota.
+
+These Indians have a bad reputation, as the name of Pillager implies, and
+my Red River men were anxious to avoid falling in with them. Once during
+the night, opposite the mouth of one of the rivers opening to the west,
+we saw the lodges of a large party on our left; with paddles that were
+never lifted out of the water, we glided noiselessly by, as silently as a
+wild duck would cleave the current. Once again during the long night a
+large sturgeon, struck suddenly by a paddle, alarmed us by bounding out
+of the water and landing full upon the gunwale of the Canoe, splashing
+back again into the water and wetting us all by his curious manoeuvre. At
+length in the darkness we heard the hollow roar of the great Falls of the
+Chaudiere sounding loud through the stillness. It grew louder and louder
+as with now tiring strokes my worn-out men worked mechanically at their
+paddles. The day was beginning to break. We were close beneath the
+Chaudiere and alongside of Fort Francis. The scene was wondrously
+beautiful. In the indistinct light of the early dawn the cataract seemed
+twice its natural height, the tops of pine trees rose against the pale
+green of the coming day, close above the falls the bright morning star
+hung, diamond-like, over the rim of the descending torrent; around the
+air was tremulous with the rush of water, and to the north the
+rose-coloured streaks of the aurora were woven into the dawn. My long
+solitary journey had nearly reached its close.
+
+Very cold and cramped by the constrained position in which I had remained
+all night, I reached the fort, and, unbarring the gate, with my rifle
+knocked at the door of one of the wooden houses. After a little, a man
+opened the door in the costume, scant and unpicturesque, in which he had
+risen from his bed.
+
+"Is that Colonel Wolseley?" he asked.
+
+"No," I answered; "but that sounds well; he can't be far off."
+
+"He will be in to breakfast," was the reply.
+
+After all, I was not much too soon. When one has journeyed very far along
+such a route as the one I had followed since leaving Fort Garry in daily
+expectation of meeting with a body of men making their way from a distant
+point through the same wilderness, one does not like the idea of being
+found at last within the stockades of an Indian trading-post as though
+one had quietly taken one's ease at an inn. Still there were others to be
+consulted in the matter, others whose toil during the twenty-seven hours
+of our continuous travel had been far greater than mine.
+
+After an hour's delay I went to the house where the men were lying down,
+and said to them, "The Colonel is close at hand. It will be well for us
+to go and meet him, and we will thus see the soldiers before they arrive
+at the Fort;" so getting the canoe out once more, we carried her above
+the falls, and paddled up towards the Rainy Lake, whose waters flow into
+Rainy River two miles above the fort.
+
+It was the 4th of August-we reached the foot of the rapid which the river
+makes as it flows out of the Lake. Forcing up this rapid, we saw
+spreading out before us the broad waters of the Rainy Lake.
+
+The eye of the half-breed or the Indian is of marvellous keenness; it.
+can detect the presence of any strange object long before that object
+will strike the vision of the civilized man; but on this occasion the
+eyes of my men were at fault, and the glint of something strange upon the
+lake first caught my sight. There they are! Yes, there they were. Coming
+along with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west
+canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant
+as they shot down towards the river's source.
+
+Beyond, in the expanse of the lake, a boat or two showed far and faint.
+We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the
+head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the
+centre sat a figure in uniform with forage-cap on head, and I could see
+that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved
+a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and commenced to
+dip down its rushing waters. Quitting the rock, I got again into my
+canoe, and we shoved off into the current. Thus running down the rapid
+the two canoes drew together, until at its foot they were only a few
+paces apart.
+
+Then the officer in the large canoe, recognizing a face he had last seen
+three months before in the hotel at Toronto, called out, "Where on earth
+have you dropped from?" and with a "Fort Garry, twelve days out, sir," I
+was in his boat.
+
+The officer whose canoe thus led the advance into Rainy River was no
+other than the commander of the Expeditionary Force. During the period
+which had elapsed since that force had landed at Thunder Bay on the
+shore of Lake Superior, he had toiled with untiring energy to overcome
+the many obstacles which opposed the progress of the troops through the
+rock-bound fastnesses of the North. But there are men whose perseverance
+hardens, whose energy quickens beneath difficulties and delay, whose
+genius, like some spring bent back upon its base, only gathers strength
+from resistance. These men are the natural soldiers of the world; and
+fortunate is it for those who carry swords and rifles and are dressed in
+uniform when such men are allowed to lead them, for with such men as
+leaders the following, if it be British, will be all right--nay, if it be
+of any nationality on the earth, it will be all right too. Marches will
+be made beneath suns which by every rule of known experience ought to
+prove fatal to nine-tenths of those who are exposed to them, rivers will
+be crossed, deserts will be traversed, and mountain passes will be
+pierced, and the men who cross and traverse and pierce them will only
+marvel that doubt or distrust should ever have entered into their minds
+as to the feasibility of the undertaking. The man who led the little army
+across the Northern wilderness towards Red River was well fitted in
+every respect for the work which was to be done. He was young in years
+but he was old in service; the highest professional training had
+developed to the utmost his ability, while it had left unimpaired the
+natural instinctive faculty of doing a thing from oneself, which the
+knowledge of a given rule for a given action so frequently destroys. Nor
+was it only by his energy, perseverance, and professional training that
+Wolseley was fitted to lead men upon the very exceptional service now
+required from them. Officers and soldiers will always follow when those
+three qualities are combined in the man who leads them; but they will
+follow with delight the man who, to these qualities, unites a happy
+aptitude for command, which is neither taught nor learned, but which is
+instinctively possessed.
+
+Let us look back a little upon the track of this Expedition. Through a
+vast wilderness of wood and rock and water, extending for more than 600
+miles, 1200 men, carrying with them all the appliances of modern war, had
+to force their way.
+
+The region through which they travelled was utterly destitute of food,
+except such as the wild game afforded to the few scattered Indians; and
+even that source was so limited that whole families of the Ojibbeways had
+perished of starvation, and cases of cannibalism had been frequent
+amongst them. Once cut adrift from Lake Superior, no chance remained for
+food until the distant settlement of Red River had been reached. Nor was
+it at all certain that even there supplies could be obtained, periods of
+great distress had occurred in the settlement itself; and the disturbed
+state into which its affairs had lately fallen in no way promised to give
+greater habits of agricultural industry to a people who were proverbially
+roving in their tastes. It became necessary, therefore, in piercing this
+wilderness to take with the Expedition three month's supply of food, and
+the magnitude of the undertaking will be somewhat under stood by the
+outside world when this fact is borne in mind.
+
+Of course it would have been a simple matter if the-boats which carried
+the men and their supplies had been able to sail through an unbroken
+channel into the bosom of Lake Winnipeg; but through that long 600 miles
+of lake and river and winding creek, the rocky declivities of cataracts
+and the wild wooded shores of rapids had to be traversed, and full
+forty-seven times between lake and lake had boats, stores, and
+ammunition, had cannon, rifles, sails, and oars to be lifted from the
+water, borne across long ridges of rock and swamp and forest, and placed
+again upon the northward rolling river. But other difficulties had to be
+overcome which delayed at the outset the movements of the Expedition. A
+road, leading from Lake Superior to the height by land (42 miles), had
+been rendered utterly impassable by fires which swept the forest and
+rains which descended for days in continuous torrents. A considerable
+portion of this road had also to be opened out in order to carry the
+communication through to Lake Shebandowan close to the height of land.
+
+For weeks the whole available strength of the Expedition f had been
+employed in road-making and in hauling the boats up the rapids of the
+Kaministiquia River, and it was only on the 16th of July, after seven
+weeks of unremitting toil and arduous labour, that all these preliminary
+difficulties had been finally overcome and the leading detachments of
+boats set out upon their long and perilous journey into the wilderness.
+Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the 4th of August, just three
+weeks after that departure, the silent shores of the Rainy River beheld
+the advance of these pioneer boats who thus far had "marched on without
+impediment."
+
+The evening of the day that witnessed my arrival at Fort Francis saw also
+my departure from it; and before the sun had set I was already far down
+the Rainy River. But I was no longer the solitary white man; and no
+longer the camp-fire had around it the swarthy faces of the Swampies. The
+woods were noisy with many tongues; the night was bright with the glare
+of many fires. The Indians, frightened by such a concourse of braves, had
+fled into the woods, and the roofless poles of their wigwams alone marked
+the camping-places where but the evening before I had seen the red man
+monarch of all he surveyed. The word had gone forth from the commander to
+push on with all speed for Red River, and I was now with the advanced
+portion of the 60th Rifles en route for the Lake of the Woods. Of my old
+friends the Swampies only one remained with me, the others had been kept
+at Fort Francis to be distributed amongst the various brigades of boats
+as guides to the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River; even Thomas Hope
+had got a promise of a brigade-in the mean time pork was abundant; and
+between pride and pork what more could even Hope desire?
+
+In two days we entered the Lake of the Woods, and hoisting sail stood out
+across the waters. Never before had these lonely islands witnessed such a
+sight as they now beheld. Seventeen large boats close hauled to a
+splendid breeze swept in a great scattered mass through the high running
+seas, dashing the foam from their bows as they dipped and rose under
+their large lug-sails. Samuel Henderson led the way, proud of his new
+position, and looked upon by the soldiers of his boat as the very acme
+of an Indian. How the poor fellows enjoyed that day! no oar, no portage
+no galling weight over rocky ledges, nothing but a grand day's racing
+over the immense lake. They smoked-all day, balancing themselves on the
+weather-side to steadv the boats as they keeled over into the heavy seas.
+I think they would have-given even Mr. Riel that day a pipeful of
+tobacco; but Heaven help him if they: had caught him two days later on
+the portages of the Winnipeg! he would have had a hard time of it.
+
+There has been some Hungarian poet, I think, who has found a theme for
+his genius in the glories of the _private soldier. He had been a soldier
+himself, and he knew the wealth of the mine hidden in the unknown and
+unthought of Rank and File. It is a pity that the knowledge of that
+wealth should not be more widely circulated.
+
+Who are the Rank and File? They are the poor wild birds whose country
+has cast them off, and who repay her by offering their lives for her
+glory; the men who take the shilling, who drink, who drill, who march to
+music, who fill the graveyards of Asia; the men who stand sentry at the
+gates of world-famous fortresses, who are old when their elder brothers
+are still young, who are bronzed and burned by fierce suns, who sail
+over seas packed in great masses, who watch at night over lonely
+magazines, who shout, "Who comes there?" through the darkness, who dig
+in trenches, who are blown to pieces in mines, who are torn by shot and
+shell, who have carried the flag of England into every land, who have
+made her name famous through the nations, who are the nation's pride in
+her hour of peril and her plaything-in her hour of prosperity--these
+are the rank and file. We are a curious nation; until lately we bought
+our rank, as we buy our mutton, in a market; and we found officers and
+gentlemen where other nations would have found thieves and swindlers.
+Until lately we flogged our files with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and found
+heroes by treating men like dogs. But to return to the rank and file.
+
+The regiment-which had been selected for the work of piercing these
+solitudes of the American continent had peculiar claims for that service.
+In bygone times it had been composed exclusively of Americans, and there
+was not an Expedition through all the wars which England waged against
+France in the New World in which the 60th, or "Royal Americans," had not
+taken a prominent part. When Munro yielded to Montcalm the fort of
+William Henry, when Wolfe reeled back from Montmorenci and stormed
+Abraham, when Pontiac swept the forts from Lake Superior to the Ohio, the
+60th, or Royal Americans, had ever been foremost in the struggle. Weeded
+now of their weak and sickly men, they formed a picked 'body, numbering
+350 soldiers, of whom any nation on earth might well be proud. They were
+fit to do anything and to go any where; and if a fear lurked in the minds
+of any of them, it was that Mr. Riel would not show fight. Well led, and
+officered by men who shared with them every thing, from the portage-strap
+to a roll of tobacco, there was complete confidence from the highest to
+the lowest. To be wet seemed to be the normal condition of man, and to
+carry a pork-barrel weighing 200 pounds over a rocky portage was but
+constitutional and exhilarating exercise--such were the men with whom, on
+the evening of the 8th of August, I once more reached the neighbourhood'
+of the Rat Portage. In a little bay between many islands the flotilla
+halted just before entering the reach which led to the portage. Paddling
+on in front with Samuel in my little canoe, we came suddenly upon four
+large Hudson Bay boats with full crews of Red River half-breeds and
+Indians-they were on their way to meet the Expedition, with the object of
+rendering what assistance they could to the troops in the descent of the
+Winnipeg river. They had begun, to despair of ever falling in with it,
+and great was the excitement at the sudden meeting; the flint-gun was at
+once discharged into the air, and the shrill shouts began to echo through
+the islands. But the excitement on the side of the Expedition was quite
+as keen. The sudden shots and the wild shouts made the men in the boats
+in rear imagine that the fun was really about to begin, and that a
+skirmish through the wooded isles would be the evening's work. The
+mistake was quickly discovered. They were glad of course to meet their
+Red River friends; but somehow, I fancy, the feeling, of joy would
+certainly not have been lessened had the boats held the dusky adherents
+of the Provisional Government.
+
+On the following morning the seventeen boats commenced the descent of the
+Winnipeg river, while I remained at the Portage-du-Rat to await the
+arrival of the chief of the Expedition from Fort Francis. Each succeeding
+day brought a fresh brigade of boats under the guidance of one of my late
+canoe-men; and finally Thomas Hope came along,-seemingly enjoying life to
+the utmost--pork was plentiful, and as for the French there was no need
+to dream of them, and he could sleep in peace in the midst of fifty white
+soldiers. During six days I remained at the little Hudson Bay Company's
+post at the Rat Portage, making short excursions into the surrounding
+lakes and rivers, fishing below the rapids of the Great Chute; and in the
+evenings listening to the Indian stories of the lake as told by my worthy
+host, Mr. Macpherson, a great portion of whose life had been spent in the
+vicinity.
+
+One day I went some distance away from the fort to fish at the foot of
+one of the great rapids formed by the Winnipeg River as it runs from the
+Lake of the Woods. We carried our canoe over two or three portages, and
+at length reached the chosen spot. In the centre of the river an Indian
+was floating quietly in his canoe, casting every now and then a large
+hook baited with a bit of fish into the water. My bait consisted of a
+bright spinning piece of metal, which I had got in one of the American
+cities on my way through Minnesota. Its effect upon the fish of this
+lonely region was marvellous; they had never before been exposed to such
+a fascinating affair, and they rushed at it with avidity. Civilization on
+the rocks had certainly a better time of it, as far as catching fish
+went, than barbarism in the canoe. With the shining thing we killed three
+for the Indian's one. My companion, who was working the spinning bait
+while I sat on the rock, casually observed, pointing to the Indian, "He's
+a Windigo."
+
+"A what?" I asked.
+
+"A Windigo."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"A man that has eaten other men."
+
+"Has this man eaten other men?"
+
+"Yes; a long time ago he and his band were starving, and they killed and
+ate forty other Indians who were starving with them. They lived through
+the winter on them, and in the spring he had to fly from Lake Superior
+because the others wanted to kill him in revenge; and so he came here,
+and he now lives alone near this place."
+
+The Windigo soon paddled over to us, and I had a good opportunity of
+studying his appearance. He was a stout, low-sized savage, with coarse
+and repulsive features, and eyes fixed sideways in his head like a
+Tartar's. We had left our canoe some distance away, and my companion
+asked him to put us across to an island. The Windigo at once consented:
+we got into his canoe, and he ferried us over. I don't know the name of
+the island upon which he landed us, and very likely it has got no name,
+but in my mind, at least, the rock and the Windigo will always be
+associated with that celebrated individual of our early days, the King
+of the Cannibal Islands. The Windigo looked with wonder at the spinning
+bait, seeming to regard it as a "great medicine;" perhaps if he had
+possessed such a thing he would never have been forced by hunger to
+become a Windigo.
+
+Of the bravery of the Lake of the Woods Ojibbeway I did not form a very
+high estimate. Two instances related to me by Mr. Macpherson will suffice
+to show that opinion to have been well founded. Since the days when the
+Bird of Ages dwelt on the Coteau-des-Prairies the Ojibbeway and the Sioux
+have warred against each other; but as the Ojibbeway dwelt chiefly in the
+woods and the Sioux are denizens of the great plains, the actual war
+carried on between them has not beena unusually destructive. The
+Ojibbeways dislike to go far into the open plains; the Sioux hesitate to
+pierce the dark depths of the forest, and the war is generally confined
+to the border land, where the forest begins to merge into the plains.
+Every now and again, however, it becomes necessary to go through the
+form of a war-party, and the young men depart upon the war-path against
+their hereditary enemies. To kill a Sioux and take his scalp then becomes
+the great object of existence. Fortunate is the brave who can return to
+the camp bearing with him the coveted trophy. Far and near spreads the
+glorious news that a Sioux scalp has been taken, and for many a night the
+camps are noisy with the shouts and revels of the scalp dance from
+Winnipeg to Rainy Lake. It matters little whether it be the scalp of a
+man, a woman, or a child; provided it be a scalp it is all right. There
+is the record of the two last war-paths from the Lake of the Woods.
+
+Thirty Ojibbeways set out one fine day for the plains to war against the
+Sioux, they followed the line of the Rosseaui river, and soon emerged
+from the forest. Before them lay a camp of Sioux. The thirty braves,
+hidden in the thickets, looked at the camp of their enemies; but the more
+they looked the less they liked it. They called a council of
+deliberation; it was unanimously resolved to retire to the Lake of the
+Woods: but surely they must bring back a scalp, the women would laugh at
+them! What was to be done? At length the difficulty was solved. Close by
+there was a newly-made grave, a squaw had died and been buried. Excellent
+idea; one scalp was as good as another. So the braves dug up the buried
+squaw-, took the scalp, and departed for Rat Portage. There was a great
+dance, and it was decided that each and every one of the thirty
+Ojibbeways deserved well of his nation.
+
+But the second instance is still more revolting. A very brave Indian
+departed alone from the Lake of the Woods to war against the Sioux; he
+wandered about, hiding in the thickets by day and coming forth at night.
+One evening, being nearly starved, he saw the smoke of a wigwam; he went
+towards it, and found that it was inhabited only by women and
+children, of whom there were four altogether. He went up and asked for
+food; they invited him to enter the lodge; they set before him the best
+food they had got, and they laid a buffalo robe for his bed in the
+warmest corner of the wigwam. When night came, all slept; when midnight
+came the Ojibbeway quietly arose from his couch, killed the two women,
+killed the two children, and departed for the Lake of the Woods with
+four scalps. Oh, he was a very brave Indian, and his name went far
+through the forest! I know somebody who would have gone very far to see
+him hanged.
+
+Late on the evening of the 14th August the commander of the Expedition
+arrived from Fort Francis at the Portage-du-Rat. He had attempted to
+cross the Lake of the Woods in a gig manned by soldiers, the weather
+being too tempestuous to allow the canoe to put out, and had lost his way
+in the vast maze of islands already spoken of. As we had received
+intelligence at the Portage-du-Rat of his having set out from the other
+side of the lake, and as hour after hour passed without bringing his boat
+in sight, I got the canoe ready and, with two Indians, started to light a
+beacon-fire on the top of the Devil's Rock, one of the haunted islands of
+the lake, which towered high over the surrounding isles. We had not
+proceeded far, however, before we fell in with the missing gig bearing
+down for the portage under the guidance of an Indian who had been picked
+up en route.
+
+On the following day I received orders to start at once for Fort
+Alexander at the mouth of the Winnipeg River to engage guides for the
+brigades of boats which had still to come--two regiments of Canadian
+Militia. And here let us not-forget the men who, following in the
+footsteps of the regular troops, were now only a few marches behind their
+more fortunate comrades. To the lot of these two regiments of Canadian
+Volunteers fell the same hard toil of oar and portage which we have
+already described. The men composing these regiments were stout athletic
+fellows, eager for service, tired of citizen life, and only needing the
+toil of a campaign to weld them into as tough and resolute a body of men
+as ever leader could desire.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal Mail--Grilling a
+Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary Bivouac--The
+President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular Troops.
+
+I TOOK a very small canoe, manned by three Indians--father and two
+sons--and, with provisions for three days, commenced the descent of the
+river of rapids. How we shot down the hissing waters in that tiny craft!
+How fast we left the wooded shores behind us, and saw the-lonely isles
+flit by as the powerful current swept us like a leaf upon its bosom!
+
+It was late of the afternoon of the 15th August when I left for the last
+time the Lake of the Woods. Next night our camp was made below the
+Eagle's Nest, seventy miles from the Portage-du-Rat. A wild storm burst
+upon us at night-fall, and our bivouac was a damp and dreary one. The
+Indians lay under the canoe; I sheltered as best I could beneath a huge
+pine-tree. My oil-cloth was only four feet in length-a shortcoming on the
+part of its feet which caused mine to suffer much discomfort. Besides, I
+had Her Majesty's royal mail to keep dry, and, with the limited liability
+of my oil-cloth in the matter of length, that became no easy task--two
+bags of letters and papers, home letters and papers, too, for the
+Expedition. They had been flung into my: canoe when leaving Rat Portage,
+and I had spent the first day in-sorting them as we swept along, and now
+they were getting wet in spite of every effort to the contrary. I made
+one bag into a pillow, but the rain came through the big pine-tree,
+splashing down through the branches, putting out my fire and drenching
+mail-bags and blankets.
+
+Daylight came at last, but still the rain hissed down, making it no easy
+matter to boil our kettle and fry our bit of pork. Then we put out for
+the day's work on the river. How bleak and wretched it all was! After a
+while we found it was impossible to make head against the storm of wind
+and rain which swept the water, and we had to put back to the shelter of
+our miserable camp. About seven o'clock the wind fell, and we set out
+again. Soon the sun came forth drying and warming us all over. All day we
+paddled on, passing in succession the grand Chute-a-Jacquot, the Three
+Portages-des-Bois, the Slave Falls, and the dangerous rapids of the
+Barriere. The Slave Falls! who that has ever beheld that superb rush of
+water will forget it? Glorious, glorious Winnipeg! it may be that with
+these eyes of mine I shall never see thee again, for thou liest far out
+of the track of life, and man mars not thy beauty with ways of civilized
+travel; but I shall often see thee in imagination, and thy rocks and thy
+waters shall murmur in memory for life.
+
+That night, the 17th of August, we made our camp on a little island close
+to the Otter Falls. It came a night of ceaseless rain, and again the
+mail-bags underwent a drenching. The old Indian cleared a space in the
+dripping vegetation, and made me a rude shelter with branches woven
+together; but the rain beat through, and drenched body, bag, and baggage.
+And yet how easy it all was, and how sound one slept! simply because one
+had to do it; that one consideration is the greatest expounder of the
+possible. I could not speak a word to my Indians, but we got on by signs,
+and seldom found the want of speech--"ugh, ugh" and "caween," yes and no,
+answered for any difficulty. To make a fire and a camp, to boil a kettle
+and fry a bit of meat are the home works of the Indian. His life is one
+long picnic, and it matters as little to him whether sun or rain, snow or
+biting frost, warm, drench, cover, or freeze him, as it does to the
+moose or the reindeer that share his forest life and yield him often his
+forest fare. Upon examining the letters in-the morning the interior of
+the bags presented such a pulpy and generally deplorable appearance that
+I was obliged to stop at one of the Seven Portages for the purpose of
+drying Her Majesty's mail. With this object we made a large fire, and
+placing cross-sticks above proceeded to toast and grill the dripping
+papers. The Indians sat around, turning the letters with little sticks as
+if they were baking cakes or frying sturgeon. Under their skilful
+treatment the pulpy mats soon attained the consistency, and in many
+instances the legibility, of a smoked herring, but as they had before
+presented a very fishy appearance that was not of much consequence.
+
+This day was bright and fine. Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying
+the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we
+overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less
+than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is
+very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would
+stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and
+the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning
+but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected
+with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian war. Thus the great
+Slave Fall tells by its name the fate of two Sioux captives taken in some
+foray by the Ojibbeway; lashed together in a canoe, they were the only
+men who ever ran the Great Chute. The rocks around were black with the
+figures of the Ojibbeways, whose wild triumphant yells were hushed by the
+roar of the cataract; but the torture was a short one; the mighty rush,
+the wild leap, and the happy hunting-ground, where even Ojibbeways cease
+from troubling and Sioux warriors are at rest, had been reached. In
+Mackenzie's journal the fall called Galet-du-Bonnet is said to have been
+named by the Canadian voyageurs, from the fact that the Indians were in
+the habit of crowning the highest rock above the portage with wreaths of
+flowers and branches of trees. The Grand Portage, which is three quarters
+of a mile in length, is the great test of the strength of the Indian and
+half-breed; but, if Mackenzie speaks correctly, the voyageur has much
+degenerated since the early days of the fur trade, for he writes that
+seven pieces, weighing each ninety pounds, were carried over the Grand
+Portage by an Indian in one trip, 630 pounds borne three quarters of a mile
+by one man--the loads look big enough still, but 250 pounds is considered
+excessive now. These loads are carried in a manner which allows the whole
+strength of the body to be put into the work. A broad leather strap is
+placed round the forehead, the ends of the strap passing back over the
+shoulders support the pieces which, thus carried, lie along-the spine
+from the small of the back to the crown of the head. When fully loaded,
+the voyageur stands with his body bent forward, and with one hand
+steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
+rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
+nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
+send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.
+
+In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
+breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
+operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
+which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
+shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
+an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
+but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
+of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
+knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
+rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
+the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
+embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
+drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
+sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
+see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
+spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
+about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
+knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
+canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
+its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
+disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
+head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
+without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
+him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
+here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
+and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
+smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
+chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
+rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
+like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
+slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a
+backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and
+again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off
+some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her
+steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a
+thousand horses: for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no
+mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and
+"wave-worn precipice" there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine
+itself pours forth. The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the
+most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they
+appear to the stranger. Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the
+midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape
+seems impossible. The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can
+save it--there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself
+provides it. Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that
+rock. There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides
+than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away
+with redoubled speed. No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool
+and twisting billow.
+
+On the night of the 20th of August the whole of the regular troops of the
+Expedition and the general commanding it and his staff had reached Fort
+Alexander, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Some accidents had
+occurred, and many had been the "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no
+life had been lost; and from the 600 miles of wilderness there emerged
+400 soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous
+toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and
+whose appearance and physique--browned, tanned, and powerful told: of the
+glorious climate of these Northern solitudes, It was near sunset when the
+large canoe touched the wooden pier opposite the Fort Alexander and the
+commander of the Expedition stepped on shore to meet his men, assembled
+for the first time together since Lake Superior's distant sea had been
+left behind. It-was a meeting not devoid of those associations which make
+such things memorable, and the cheer which went up from the soldiers who
+lined the steep bank to bid him welcome had in it a note of that sympathy
+which binds men together by the inward consciousness of difficulties
+shared in common and dangers--successfully overcome together. Next day
+the united fleet put out into Lake Winnipeg; and steered for the lonely
+shores of the Island of Elks, the solitary island of the southern portion
+of the lake. In a broad, curving, sandy bay the boats found that night a
+shelter; a hundred fires threw their lights far into the lake, and
+bugle-calls startled echoes that assuredly had never been rouse before by
+notes so strange. Sailing in a wide scattered mass before a favouring
+breeze, the fleet reached about noon the following day the mouth of the
+Red River, the river whose name was the name of the Expedition, and whose
+shores had so long been looked forward to as a haven of rest from portage
+and oar labour. There it was at last, seeking through its many mouths the
+waters of the lake. And now our course lay up along the reed fringed
+river and sluggish current to where the tree-tops began to rise over the
+low marsh-land-up to where my old friends the Indians had pitched their
+camp and given me the parting salute on the morning of my departure just
+one month before. It was dusk when we reached the Indian Settlement and
+made a camp upon the opposite shore, and darkness had quite set in when I
+reached the mission-house, some three miles higher up. My old friend the
+Archdeacon was glad indeed to welcome me back. News from the settlement
+there was none--news from the outside world there was plenty. "A great
+battle had been fought near the Rhine," the old man said, "and the French
+had been disastrously defeated."
+
+Another day of rowing, poling, tracking, and sailing, and evening closed
+over the Expedition, camped within six miles of Fort Garry; but all
+through the day the river banks were enlivened with people shouting
+welcome to the soldiers, and church bells rang out peals of gladness as
+the boats passed by. This was through the English and Scotch Settlement,
+the people of which had long grown weary of the tyranny of the Dictator
+Riel. Riel--why, we have almost forgotten him altogether during these
+weeks on the Winnipeg! Nevertheless, he-had still held his own within the
+walls of Fort Garry, and still played to a constantly decreasing audience
+the part of the Little Napoleon.
+
+During this day, the 23rd August, vague rumours reached us of terrible
+things to be done by the warlike President. He would suddenly appear with
+his guns from the woods? he would blow up the fort when the troops had
+taken possession--he would die in the ruins. These and many other
+schemes of a similar description were to be enacted by the Dictator in
+the last extremity of his despair. I had spent the day in the saddle,
+scouring the woods on the right bank of the river in advance of the
+fleet, while on the left shore a company of the 60th, partly mounted,
+moved on also in advance of the leading boats. But neither Riel nor his
+followers appeared to dispute-the upward passage of the flotilla, and the
+woods through which I rode were silent and deserted. Early in the morning
+a horse had been lent to me by an individual rejoicing in the classical
+name of Tacitus Struthers. Tacitus had also assisted me to swim the steed
+across the Red River in order to gain the right shore, and, having done
+so, took leave of me with oft-repeated injunctions to preserve from harm
+the horse and his accoutrements, "For," said Tacitus, "that horse is a
+racer." Well, I suppose it must have been that fact that made the horse
+race all day through the thickets and oak woods of the right shore, but I
+rather fancy my spurs had something to say to it too.
+
+When night again fell, the whole force had reached a spot six-miles from
+the rebel fort, and camp was formed for the last time on the west bank
+of the river. And what a night and storm then broke upon the Red River
+Expedition! till the tents flapped and fell and the drenched soldiers
+shiv'ered shelterless, waiting for the dawn. The occupants of tents which
+stood the pelting of the pitiless storm were no better off than those
+outside; the surface of the ground became ankle-deep in mud and water,
+and the men lay in pools during the last hours of the night. At length a
+dismal daylight dawned over the dreary scene, and the upward course was
+resumed. Still the rain came down in torrents, and, with water above,
+below, and around, the Expedition neared its destination. If the steed of
+Tacitus had had a hard day, the night had been less severe upon him than
+upon his rider. I had procured him an excellent stable at the other side
+of the river, and upon recrossing again in the morning I found him as
+ready to race as his owner could desire. Poor beast, he was a most
+miserable-looking animal, though belying his attenuated appearance by his
+performance. The only race which his generally forlorn aspect justified
+one in believing him capable of running was a race, and a hard one, for
+existence; but for all that he went well, and Tacitus himself might have
+envied the classical outline of his Roman nose.
+
+About two miles north of Fort Garry the Red River makes a sharp bend to
+the east and, again turning round to the west, forms a projecting point
+or neck of land known as Point Douglas. This spot is famous in Red River
+history as the scene of the battle, before referred to in these pages,
+where the voyageurs and French half-breeds of the North west Fur Company
+attacked the retainers of the Hudson Bay, some time in 1813, and
+succeeded in putting to death by various methods of half-Indian warfare
+the governor of the rival company and about a score of his followers. At
+this point, where the usually abrupt bank of the Red River was less
+steep, the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance
+upon Fort Garry. The preliminary arrangements were soon completed, and
+the little army, with its two brass guns trundling along behind Red River
+carts, commenced its march across the mud-soaked prairie. How unspeakably
+dreary it all looked! the bridge, the wretched village, the crumbling
+fort, the vast level prairie, water soaked, draped in mist, and pressed
+down by low-lying clouds. To me the ground was not new--the bridge was
+the spot where only a month before I had passed the half reed sentry in
+my midnight march to the Lower Fort. Other things had changed since then
+besides the weather.
+
+Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force
+drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the
+flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed
+through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible
+about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary
+one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the
+skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west
+face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps
+of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his
+horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals
+and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who
+seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson
+Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave
+men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long
+polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in
+advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with
+unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the
+members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the
+American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision
+the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and
+their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered
+hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of
+retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the
+bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On
+the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and
+from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns
+told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the
+grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the
+highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously
+expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be
+too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed
+to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted
+that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red
+River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our
+European ideas of that virtue.
+
+That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by
+his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine
+on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth
+much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps
+an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to
+depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear
+to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W.
+B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the
+Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred.
+Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the
+more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance,
+he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and
+indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property
+and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at
+once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save
+America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for
+which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel
+council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much.
+He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his
+virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the
+rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members
+of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the
+approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound
+of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the
+troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by
+the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory
+language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel
+government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government
+House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt
+of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea.
+A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed
+the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village
+produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in
+the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors
+were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as
+though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had
+been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any
+kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but
+the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost
+to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water
+sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it
+was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system,
+that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched
+upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I
+regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the
+general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from
+the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to
+their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden
+revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power,
+would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or
+two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of
+the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to
+rights.
+
+Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long
+return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had
+arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what
+work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly
+intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was
+a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at
+the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept
+quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of
+that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his
+chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken
+Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling
+in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely
+back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run
+a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques
+Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person
+of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude,
+peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At
+length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of
+September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the
+torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander
+also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River
+Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the
+United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was
+mistaken, for it was only about to begin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An
+Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations--
+Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine
+River--Rossette.
+
+One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long
+prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of
+which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my
+last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its
+close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before
+a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores
+of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives:
+the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves
+prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.
+
+So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the
+quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of
+my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old
+associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every
+feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and
+trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be
+gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the
+moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one
+sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would
+be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my
+hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of
+ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind,
+running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea:
+I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times
+the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely
+excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and
+walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some
+guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the
+north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in
+the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky
+prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the
+star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a
+long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west
+it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the
+west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call
+chance, and dreamers destiny?
+
+A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina,
+whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had
+induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of
+September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the
+Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the
+boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known
+member of the Canadian bench.
+
+"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.
+
+"To Canada."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because there is nothing more to be done."
+
+"Oh, you must come back."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because we have a lot of despatches to send to Ottawa, and the mail is
+not safe. Come back now and you will be here again in ten days time."
+
+Go back again on the steam-boat and come up next trip--would I?
+
+There are many men who pride themselves upon their fixity of purpose, and
+a lot of similar fixidities and steadiness; but I don't. I know of
+nothing so fixed as the mole, so obstinate as the mule, or so steady as
+a stone wall, but I don't particularly care about making their general
+characteristics the rule of my life; and so I decided to go back to Fort
+Garry, just as I would have decided to start for the North Pole had the
+occasion offered.
+
+Early in the second week of October I once more drew nigh the hallowed
+precincts of Fort Garry.
+
+"I am so glad you have returned," said the governor, Mr. Archibald, when
+I met him on the evening of my arrival, "because I want to ask you if you
+will undertake a much longer journey than any thing you have yet done. I
+am going to ask you if you will accept a mission to the Saskatchewan
+Valley and through the Indian countries of the West. Take a couple of
+days to think over it, and let me know your decision."
+
+"There is no necessity, sir," I replied, "to consider the matter, I have
+already made up my mind, and, if necessary, will start in half an hour."
+
+This was on the 10th of October, and winter was already sending his
+breath over the yellow grass of the prairies.
+
+And now let us turn our glance to this great North west whither my
+wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully 900 miles as bird would fly,
+and 1200 as horse can travel, west of Red River an immense range of
+mountains, eternally capped with snow, rises in rugged masses from a vast
+stream-seared plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the
+central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers; a fitting title
+for such vast accumulation of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and
+ice valleys of this great range of mountains innumerable streams descend
+into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction,
+through groves and glades and green spreading declivities; then, assuming
+greater fixidity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill, and
+start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
+resolve themselves into two great water systems; through hundreds of
+miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
+now opening out from each other. Suddenly, the southern river bends
+towards the north, and at a point some 600 miles from the mountains pours
+its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river
+rolls in vast majestic curves steadily towards the north-east, turns
+once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed covered marsh,
+sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a
+rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake
+Winnipeg, fully 1300 miles from the glacier cradle where it took its
+birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale,
+meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hill-side, is called
+by the wild tribes who dwell-along its glorious shores the
+Kissaskatchewan, or Rapid-flowing River. But this Kissaskatchewan is not
+the only river which waters the great central region lying between Red
+River and the Rocky Mountains. The Assineboine or Stony River drains the
+rolling prairie lands 500 miles west from Red River, and many a smaller
+stream and rushing, bubbling brook carries into its devious channel the
+waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary-line
+and the pine woods of the lower Saskatchewan.
+
+So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow. How
+shall we picture it? How shall we tell the story of that great,
+boundless, solitary waste of verdure?
+
+The old, old maps which the navigators of the sixteenth century framed
+from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Varrazanno and Hudson,
+played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The
+coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate;
+but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea whose
+shores stretched far into the Polar North; a sea through which lay the
+much-coveted passage to the long sought treasures of the old realms of
+Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the
+description of ocean which they placed in the central continent, for an
+ocean there is, and an ocean through which men seek the treasures of
+Cathay, even in our own times. But the ocean is one of grass, and the
+shores are the crests of mountain ranges, and the dark pine forests of
+sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present more infinite
+variety than does this prairie-ocean of which we speak. In winter, a
+dazzling surface-of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass
+and pale pink roses; in autumn too often a-wild sea of raging-fire. No
+ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets;--no
+solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels
+the stillness, and hears the silence, the wail of the prowling wolf
+makes the voice of solitude audible, the stars look down through infinite
+silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past--time
+has been nought to it; and men have come and gone, leaving behind them
+no track, no vestige, of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of
+these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life,
+this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness
+oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so; but, for
+my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing
+oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world as it had taken
+shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less
+beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun
+brought forth the flowers.
+
+October had reached its latest week: the wild geese and swans had taken
+their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
+through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
+settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with
+the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian
+summer, and winter was coming quickly down from his far northern home.
+
+On the 24th of October I quitted Fort Garry, at ten o'clock at night,
+and, turning out into the level prairie, commenced a long journey towards
+the West. The night was cold and moonless, but a brilliant aurora flashed
+and trembled in many-coloured shafts across the starry sky. Behind me lay
+friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war,
+firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of
+saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation, and
+space!
+
+I had as a companion for a portion of the journey an officer of the
+Hudson Bay Company's service who was returning to his fort in the
+Saskatchewan, from whence he had but recently come. As attendant I had a
+French half-breed from Red River Settlement--a tall, active fellow, by
+name Pierre Diome. My means of travel consisted of five horses and one
+Red River cart. For my personal use I had a small black Canadian horse,
+or pony, and an English saddle. My companion, the Hudson Bay officer,
+drove his own light spring-waggon, and had also his own horse. I was well
+found in blankets, deer-skins, and moccassins; all the appliances of
+half-breed apparel had been brought into play to fit me out, and I found
+myself possessed of ample stores of leggings, buffalo "mittaines" and
+capots, where with to face the biting breeze of the prairie and to stand
+at night the icy bivouac. So much for personal costume; now for official
+kit. In the first place, I was the bearer and owner of two commissions.
+By virtue of the first I was empowered to confer upon two gentlemen in
+the Saskatchewan the rank and status of Justice of the Peace; and in the
+second I was appointed to that rank and status myself. As to the matter
+of extent of jurisdiction comprehended under the name of Justice of the
+Peace for Rupert's Land and the North-west, I believe that the only
+parallel to be found in the world exists under the title of "Czar of all
+the Russias" and "Khan of Mongolia;" but the northern limit of all the
+Russias has been successfully arrived at, whereas the North-west is but a
+general term for every thing between the 49th parallel of north latitude
+and the North-Pole itself. But documentary evidence of unlimited
+jurisdiction over Blackfeet, Bloods, Big Bellies (how much better this
+name sounds in French!), Sircies, Peagins, Assineboines, Crees,
+uskegoes, Salteaux, Chipwayans, Loucheaux, and Dogribs, not including
+Esquimaux, was not the only cartulary carried by me into the prairies. A
+terrible disease had swept, for some months previous to the date of my
+journey, the Indian tribes of Saskatchewan. Small-pox, in its most
+aggravated type, had passed from tribe to tribe, leaving in its track
+depopulated wigwams and vacant council-lodges; thousands (and there are
+not many thousands, all told) had perished on the great sandy plains that
+lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri. Why this most terrible of
+diseases should prey with especial fury upon the poor red man of America
+has never been accounted for by, medical authority; but that it does prey
+upon him with a violence nowhere else to be found is an undoubted fact.
+Of all the fatal methods of destroying the Indians which his white
+brother has introduced into the West, this plague of small-pox is the
+most deadly. The history of its annihilating progress is written in too
+legible characters on the desolate expanses of untenanted wilds, where
+the Indian graves are the sole traces of the red man's former domination.
+Beneath this awful scourge whole tribes have disappeared the bravest and
+the best have vanished, because their bravery forbade that they should
+flee from the terrible infection, and, like soldiers in some square
+plunged through and rent with shot, the survivors only closed more
+despairingly together when the death-stroke fell heaviest among them.
+They knew nothing of this terrible disease; it had come from the white
+man and the trader; but its speed had distanced even the race for gold,
+and the Missouri Valley had been swept by the epidemic before the men
+who carried the firewater had crossed the Mississippi. For eighty years
+these vast regions had known at intervals the deadly presence of this
+disease, and through that lapse of time its history had been ever the
+same. It had commenced in the trading camp; but the white man had
+remained comparatively secure, while his red brothers were swept away by
+hundreds. Then it had travelled on, and every thing had gone down before
+it-the chief and the brave, the medicine-man, the squaw, the papoose. The
+camp moved away; but the dread disease clung to it--dogged it--with a
+perseverance more deadly than hostile tribe or prowling war-party; and
+far over the plains the track was marked with the unburied bodies and
+bleaching bones of the wild warriors of the West.
+
+The summer which had just passed had witnessed one of the deadliest
+attacks of this disease. It had swept from the Missouri through the
+Blackfeet tribes, and had run the whole length of the North Saskatchewan,
+attacking indiscriminately Crees, half-breeds, and Hudson Bay employees.
+The latest news received from the Saskatchewan was one long record of
+death. Carlton House, a fort of the Hudson Bay Company, 600 miles
+north-west from Red River, had been attacked in August. Late in September
+the disease still raged among its few inhabitants. From farther west
+tidings had also come bearing the same message of disaster. Crees,
+half-breeds, and even the few Europeans had been attacked; all medicines
+had been expended, and the officer in charge at Carlton had perished of
+the disease.
+
+"You are to ascertain as far as you can in what places and among what
+tribes of Indians, and what settlements of Whites, the small-pox is now
+prevailing, including the extent of its ravages, and every particular you
+can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the spread of the disease.
+You are to take with you such, small supply of medicines as shall be
+deemed by the Board of Health here suitable and proper for the treatment
+of small-pox, and you will obtain written instructions for the proper
+treatment of the disease, and will leave a copy thereof with the chief
+officer of each fort you pass, and with any clergyman or other
+intelligent person belonging to settlements outside the forts." So ran
+this clause in my instructions, and thus it came about that amongst many
+curious parts which a wandering life had caused me to play, that of
+physician in ordinary to the Indian tribes of the farthest west became
+the most original. The preparation of these medicines and the printing of
+the instructions and directions for the treatment of small-pox had
+consumed many days and occasioned considerable delay in my departure. At
+length the medicines were declared complete, and I proceeded to inspect
+them. Eight large cases met my astonished gaze. I was in despair; eight
+cases would necessitate slow progression and extra horses; fortunately a
+remedy arose. A medical officer was directed by the Board of Health to
+visit the Saskatchewan; he was to start at a later date. I handed over to
+him six of the eight cases, and with my two remaining ones and unlimited
+printed directions for small-pox in three stages, departed, as we have
+already seen. By forced marching I hoped to reach the distant station of
+Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan in a little less than one month, but
+much would depend upon the state of the larger rivers and upon the
+snow-fall en route. The first week in November is usually the period of
+the freezing in of rivers; but crossing large rivers partially frozen is
+a dangerous work, and many such obstacles lay between me and the
+mountains. If Edmonton was to be reached before the end of November
+delays would not be possible, and the season of my journey was one which
+made the question of rapid travel a question of the change of temperature
+of a single night. On the second day out we passed the Portage-la-prairie,
+the last settlement towards the West. A few miles farther on we crossed
+the Rat Creek, the boundary of the new province of Manitoba, and
+struck out into the solitudes. The first sight was not a cheering
+one. Close beside the trail, just where it ascended from the ravine
+of the Rat Creek, stood a solitary newly-made grave. It was the grave
+of one who had been left to die only a few days before. Thrown away
+by his companions, who had passed on towards Red River, he had lingered
+for three days all exposed to dew and frost. At length death had kindly
+put an end to his sufferings, but three days more elapsed before any
+person would approach to bury the remains. He had died from smallpox
+brought from the Saskatchewan, and no one would go near the fatal spot. A
+French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the
+black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its
+lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the
+solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally
+through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the
+wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to
+resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me,
+nearly 3000 miles would have to be traversed before I could hope to reach
+the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of
+civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a
+cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts
+of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the
+spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many
+nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little
+camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there
+stood in that long 1200 miles but six houses, and in these houses a
+terrible malady had swept nearly half the inhabitants out of life. So,
+lying down that night for the first time with all this before me, I felt
+as one who had to face not a few of those things from which is evolved
+that strange mystery called death, and looking out into the vague dark
+immensity around me, saw in it the gloomy shapes and shadowy outlines of
+the by gone which memory hides but to produce at such times. Men whose
+lot in life is cast in that mould which is so aptly described by the term
+of "having only their wits to depend on," must accustom themselves to
+fling aside quickly and at will all such thoughts and gloomy memories,
+for assuredly, if they do not so habituate themselves, they had better
+never try in life to race against those more favoured individuals who
+have things other than their wits to rely upon. The Wit will prove but a
+sorry steed unless its owner be ever ready to race it against those more
+substantial horses called Wealth and Interest, and if in that race, the
+prize of which is Success, Wit should have to carry its rider into
+strange and uncouth places, over rough and broken country, while the
+other two horses have only plain sailing before them, there is only all
+the more reason for throwing aside all useless weight and extra
+incumbrance; and, with these few digressive remarks, we will proceed into
+the solitudes.
+
+The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
+unceasing travel; clear, bright days of mellow sunshine followed by
+nights of sharp frost which almost imperceptibly made stronger the icy
+covering of the pools and carried farther and farther out into the
+running streams the edging of ice which so soon was destined to cover
+completely the river and the rill. Our route lay along the left bank of
+the Assineboine, but at a considerable distance from the river, whose
+winding course could be marked at times by the dark oak woods that
+fringed it. Far away to the south rose the outline of the Blue Hills of
+the Souris, and to the north the Riding Mountains lay faintly upon the
+horizon. The country was no longer level, fine rolling hills stretched
+away before us over which the wind came with a keenness that made our
+prairie-fare seem delicious at the close of a hard day's toil. 36, 22,
+24, 20; such were the readings of my thermometer as each morning I looked
+at it by the fire-light as we arose from our blankets-before the dawn and
+shivered in the keen hoarfrost while the kettle was being boiled.
+Perceptibly getting colder, but still clear and fine, and with every
+Breeze laden with healthy and invigorating freshness, for four days we
+journeyed without seeing man or beast; but on the morning of the fifth
+day, while camped in a thicket on the right of the trail, we heard the
+noise of horses passing near us. A few hours afterwards we passed a small
+band of Salteaux encamped farther on; and later in the day overtook a
+half-breed trader on his way to the Missouri to trade with the Sioux.
+This was a celebrated &French half breed named Chaumon Rossette. Chaumon
+had been undergoing a severe course of drink since he had left the
+settlement some ten days earlier, and his haggard eyes and swollen
+features revealed the incessant orgies of his travels. He had as
+companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
+token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
+Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
+drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
+seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
+with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
+two clear and beautiful lakes.
+
+"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"
+
+"Oui, Captain."
+
+"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
+No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."
+
+"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
+drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
+Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."
+
+Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
+semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
+the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
+cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
+proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
+line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
+study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
+"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
+his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
+that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
+had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
+Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
+could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
+over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
+Missouri.
+
+On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
+a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
+shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
+a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
+magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
+Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
+Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
+the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
+the fort. I had ridden that distance in five days and two hours.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+The Hudson Bay Company--Furs and Free Trade--Fort Ellice--Quick
+Travelling-Horses--Little Blackie--Touchwood Hills--A Snow-storm--The
+South Saskatchewan--Attempt to cross the River--Death of poor
+Blackie--Carlton.
+
+IT may have occurred to some reader to ask, What is this company whose
+name so often appears upon these pages? Who are the men composing it, and
+what are the objects it has in view? You have glanced at its early
+history, its rivalries, and its discoveries, but now, now at this present
+time, while our giant rush of life roars and surges along, what is the
+work done by this Company of Adventurers trading into the Bay of Hudson?
+Let us see if we can answer. Of the two great monopolies which the
+impecuniosity of Charles II. gave birth to, the Hudson Bay Company alone
+survives, but to-day the monopoly is one of fact, and not of law. All men
+are now free to come and go, to trade and sell and gather furs in the
+great Northern territory, but distance and climate raise more formidable
+barriers against strangers than law or protection could devise. Bold
+would be the trader who would carry his goods to the far away Mackenzie
+River; intrepid would be the voyageur who sought a profit from the lonely
+shores of the great Bear Lake. Locked in their fastnesses of ice and
+distance, these remote and friendless solitudes of the North must long
+remain, as they are at present, the great fur preserve of the Hudson Bay
+Company. Dwellers within the limits of European states can ill comprehend
+the vastness of territory over which this Fur Company holds sway. I say
+holds sway, for the north of North America is still as much in the
+possession of the Company, despite all cession of title to Canada, as
+Crusoe was the monarch of his island, or the man must be the owner of the
+moon. From Pembina on Red River to Fort Anderson on the Mackenzie is as
+great a distance as from London to Mecca. From the King's Posts to the
+Pelly Banks is farther than from Paris to Samarcand, and yet today
+throughout that immense region the Company is king. And what a king! no
+monarch rules his subjects with half the power of this Fur Company. It
+clothes, feeds, and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From
+the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and
+through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot
+than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate
+shores of the great_ Slave Lake. _Twice in the year news comes from the
+outside world-news many, many months old--news borne by men and dogs
+through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down
+the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket
+that covers the wild Indian in his cold camp has been woven in a Whitney
+loom; that knife is from Sheffield; that string of beads from Birmingham.
+Let us follow the ships that sail annually from the Thames bound for the
+supply of this vast region. It is early in June when she gets clear of
+the Nore; it is mid-June when the Orkneys and Stornaway are left behind;
+it is August when the frozen Straits of Hudson are pierced; and the end
+of the month has been reached when the ship comes to anchor off the
+sand-barred mouth of the Nelson River. For one year-the stores that she has
+brought lie in the warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they
+reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the
+Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days
+of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs
+and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at
+four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames
+and the gun in the pine woods of the Mackenzie are two widely different
+articles. The old rough flint, whose bent barrel the Indians will often
+straighten between the cleft of a tree or the crevice of a rock, has been
+made precious by the labour of many men; by the trackless wastes through
+which it has been carried; by winter-famine of those who have to vend it;
+by the years which elapse between its departure from the work shop and
+the return of that skin of sable or silver-fox for which it has been
+bartered. They are short-sighted men who hold that because the flint-gun
+and the sable possess such different values in London, these articles
+should also possess their relative values in North America, and argue
+from this that the Hudson Bay Company treat the Indians unfairly; they
+are short-sighted men, I say, and know not of what they speak. That old
+rough flint has often cost more to put in the hands of that Dogrib hunter
+than the best finished central fire of Boss or Purdey. But that is not
+all that has to be said about the trade of this Company. Free trade may
+be an admirable institution for some nations-making them, amongst other
+things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means
+follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian.
+Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade
+has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the
+earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks,
+and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine,
+and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease,
+small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears
+and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an
+institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these
+things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no
+reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or,
+for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the
+principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of
+men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or
+for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a
+future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters
+and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who
+takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy
+all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself,
+second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get
+them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may
+take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have
+been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of
+the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there
+has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the
+wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.
+
+I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in
+costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and
+hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of
+buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and
+immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for
+before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that
+were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain over
+which, for three hundred miles, there lay no fort or house of any kind.
+
+Bidding adieu to my host, a young Scotch gentleman, at Fort Ellice, my
+little party turned once more towards the North-west and, fording the
+Qu'Appelle five miles above its confluence with the Assineboine, struck
+out into a lovely country. It was the last day of October and almost the
+last of the Indian summer. Clear and distinct lay the blue sky upon the
+quiet sun-lit prairie. The horses trotted briskly on under the charge of
+an English half-breed named Daniel. Pierre Diome had returned to Red
+River, and Daniel was to bear me company as far as Carlton on the North
+Saskatchewan. My five horses were now beginning to show the effect of
+their incessant work, but it was only in appearance, and the distance
+travelled each day was increased instead of diminished as we journeyed
+on. I would not have believed it possible that horses could travel the
+daily distance which mine did without breaking down altogether under it,
+still less would it have appeared possible upon the food which they had
+to eat. We had neither hay nor oats to give them; there was nothing-but
+the dry grass of the prairie, and no time to eat that but the cold frosty
+hours of the night. Still we seldom travelled less than fifty miles
+a-day, stopping only for one hour at midday, and going on again until
+night began to wrap her mantle around the shivering prairie. My horse was
+a wonderful animal; day after day would I fear that his game little limbs
+were growing weary, and that soon he must give out; but no, not a bit of
+it; his black coat roughened and his flanks grew a little leaner, but
+still he went on as gamely and as pluckily as ever. Often during the long
+day I would dismount and walk along leading him by the bridle, while the
+other two men and the six horses jogged on far in advance; when they had
+disappeared altogether behind some distant ridge of the prairie my little
+horse would commence to look anxiously around, whinnying and trying to
+get along after his comrades; and then how gamely he trotted on when I
+remounted, watching out for the first sign of his friends again, far-away
+little specks on the great wilds before us. When the camping place would
+be reached at nightfall the first care went to the horse. To remove
+saddle, bridle, and saddle-cloth, to untie the strip of soft buffalo
+leather from his neck and twist it well around his fore-legs, for the
+purpose of hobbling, was the work of only a few minutes, and then poor
+Blackie hobbled away to find over the darkening expanse his night's
+provender. Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea
+had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some
+frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in
+the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the
+heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter
+spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South
+Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about
+in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always
+ran loose while the other three worked in harness. These loose horses,
+one might imagine, would be prone to gallop away when they found
+themselves at liberty to do so: but nothing seems farther from their
+thoughts; they trot along by the side of their harnessed comrades
+apparently as though they knew all about it now and again they stop
+behind, to crop a bit of grass or tempting stalk of wild pea or vetches,
+but on they come again until the party has been reached, then, with ears
+thrown back, the jog-trot is resumed, and the whole band sweeps on over
+hill and plain. To halt and change horses is only the work of two minutes
+--out comes one horse, the other is standing close by and never stirs
+while the hot harness is being put upon him; in he goes into the rough
+shafts, and, with a crack of the half-breed's whip across his flanks,
+away we start again.
+
+But my little Blackie seldom got a respite from the saddle; he seemed so
+well up to his work, so much stronger and better than any of the others,
+that day after day I rode him, thinking each day, "Well, to-morrow I will
+let him run loose;" but when to-morrow came he used to look so fresh and
+well, carrying his little head as high as ever, that again I put the
+saddle on his back, and another day's talk and companionship would still
+further cement our friendship, for I grew to like that horse as one only
+can like the poor dumb beast that serves us. I know not how it is, but
+horse and dog have worn themselves into my heart as few men have ever
+done in life and now, as day by day went by in one long scene of true
+companionship, I came to feel for little Blackie a friendship not the
+less sincere because all the service was upon his side, and I was
+powerless to make his supper a better one, or give him more cosy lodging
+for the night. He fed and lodged himself and he carried me--all he asks
+in return was a water-hole in the frozen lake, and that I cut for him.
+Sometimes the night came down upon us still in the midst of a great open
+treeless plain, without shelter, water, or grass, and then we would
+continue on in the inky darkness as though our march was to last
+eternally, and poor Blackie would step out as if his natural state was
+one of perpetual motion. On the 4th November we rode over sixty miles;
+and when at length the camp was made in the lea of a little clump of bare
+willows, the snow was lying cold upon the prairies, and Blackie and his
+comrades went out to shiver through their supper in the bleakest scene my
+eyes had ever looked upon.
+
+About midway between Fort Ellice and Carlton a sudden and well-defined
+change occurs in the character of the country; the light soil disappears,
+and its place is succeeded by a rich dark loam covered deep in grass and
+vetches. Beautiful hills swell in slopes more or less abrupt on all
+sides, while lakes fringed with thickets and clumps of good-sized poplar
+balsam lie lapped in their fertile hollows.
+
+This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. Around it, far into
+endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty vegetation,
+plains seared with the tracks of countless buffalo which, until a few
+years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assineboine and
+the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing these
+great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie
+thickly strewn over the surface. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons dot
+the short scant grass; and when fire has laid barer still the level
+surface, the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and
+near the dark burnt prairie. There is something unspeakably melancholy in
+the aspect of this portion of the North-west. From one of the westward
+jutting spurs of the Touchwood Hills the eye sees far away over an
+immense plain; the sun goes down, and as he sinks upon the earth the
+straight line of the horizon becomes visible for a moment across this
+blood red disc, but so distant, so far away, that it seems dream like in
+its immensity. There is not a sound in the air or on the earth; on every
+side lie spread the relics of the great fight waged by man against the
+brute creation: all is silent and deserted--the Indian and the buffalo
+gone, the settler not yet come. You turn quickly to the right or left;
+over a hill-top, close by, a solitary wolf steals away. Quickly the vast
+prairie begins to grow dim, and darkness forsakes the skies because they
+light their stars, coming down to seek in the utter solitude of the
+blackened plains a kindred spirit for the night.
+
+On the night of the 4th November we made our camp long after dark in a
+little clump of willows far out in the plain which lies west of the
+Touchwood Hills. We had missed the only lake that was known to lie in
+this part of the plain, and after journeying far in the darkness halted
+at length, determined to go supperless, or next to supperless, to bed,
+for pemmican without that cup which nowhere tastes more delicious than in
+the wilds of the North-west would prove but sorry comfort, and the supper
+without tea would be only a delusion. The fire was made, the frying-pan
+taken out, the bag of dried buffalo meat and the block of pemmican got
+ready, but we said little in the presence of such a loss as the steaming
+kettle and the hot, delicious, fragrant tea. Why not have provided
+against this evil hour by bringing on from the last frozen lake some
+blocks of ice? Alas! why not? Moodily we sat down round the blazing
+willows. Meantime Daniel commenced to unroll the oil cloth cart cover-and
+lo, in the ruddy glare of the fire, out rolled three or four large pieces
+of thick, heavy ice, sufficient to fill our kettle three times over with
+delicious tea. Oh, what a joy it was! and how we relished that cup! for
+remember, cynical friend who may be inclined to hold such happiness
+cheap and light, that this wild life of ours is a curious leveller of
+civilized habits--a cup of water to a thirsty man can be more valuable
+than a cup of diamonds, and the value of one article over the other is
+only the question of a few hours privation. When the morning of the. 5th
+dawned we were covered deep in snow, a storm had burst in the night, and
+all around was hidden in a dense sheet of driving snow-flakes; not a
+vestige of our horses was to be seen, their tracks were obliterated by
+the fast-falling snow, and the surrounding objects close at hand showed
+dim and indistinct through the white cloud. After fruitless search,
+Daniel returned to camp with the tidings that the horses were nowhere to
+be found; so, when breakfast had been finished, all three set out in
+separate directions to look again for the missing steeds. Keeping the
+snow-storm on my left shoulder, I went along through little clumps of
+stunted bushes which frequently deceived me by their resemblance through
+the driving snow to horses grouped together. After awhile I bent round
+towards the wind and, making a long sweep in that direction, bent again
+so as to bring the drift upon my right shoulder. No horses, no tracks,
+any where--nothing but a waste of white drifting flake and feathery
+snow-spray. At last I turned away from the wind, and soon struck full on
+our little camp; neither of the others had returned. I cut down some
+willows and made a blaze. After a while I got on to the top of the cart,
+and looked out again into the waste. Presently I heard a distant shout;
+replying vigorously to it, several indistinct forms came into view; and
+Daniel soon emerged from the mist, driving before him the hobbled
+wanderers; they had been hidden under the lea of a thicket some distance
+off, all clustered together for shelter and warmth. Our only difficulty
+was now the absence of my friend the Hudson Bay officer. We waited some
+time, and at length, putting the saddle on Blackie, I started out in the
+direction he had taken. Soon I heard a faint far-away shout; riding
+quickly in the direction from whence it proceeded, I heard the calls
+getting louder and louder, and soon came up with a figure heading right
+away into the immense plain, going altogether in a direction opposite to
+where our camp lay. I shouted, and back came my friend no little pleased
+to find his road again, for a snowstorm is no easy thing to steer
+through, and at times it will even fall out that not the Indian with all
+his craft and instinct for direction will be able to find his way through
+its blinding maze. Woe betide the wretched man who at such a time finds
+himself alone upon the prairie, without fire or the means of making it;
+not even the ship-wrecked-sailor clinging to the floating mast is in a
+more pitiable strait. During the greater portion of this day it snowed
+hard, but our track was distinctly-marked across the plains, and we held
+on all day. I still rode Blackie; the little fellow had to keep his wits
+at work to avoid tumbling into the badger holes which the snow soon
+rendered invisible. These badger holes in this portion of the plains were
+very numerous; it is not always easy to avoid them when the ground is
+clear of snow, but riding becomes extremely difficult when once the
+winter has set in. The badger burrows straight down for two or three
+feet, and if a horse be travelling at any pace his fall is so sudden and
+violent that a broken leg is too often the result. Once or twice Blackie
+went in nearly to the shoulder, but he invariably scrambled up again all
+right-poor fellow, he was reserved for a worse fate, and his long journey
+was near its end! A clear cold day followed the day of snow, and for the
+first time the thermometer fell below zero.
+
+Day dawned upon us on the 6th November camped in a little thicket of
+poplars some seventy miles from the South Saskatchewan; the thermometer
+stood 30 below zero, and as I drew the girths tight on poor Blackie's
+ribs that morning, I felt happy in the thought that I had slept for the
+first time under the stars with 35 degrees of frost lying on the blanket
+outside. Another long day's ride, and the last great treeless plain was
+crossed and evening found us camped near the Minitchinass, or Solitary
+Hill, some sixteen miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan. The grass
+again grew long and thick, the clumps of willow, poplar, and birch had
+reappeared, and the soil, when we scraped the snow away to make our
+sleeping place, turned up black and rich-looking under the blows of the
+axe. About midday on the 7th November, in a driving storm of snow, we
+suddenly emerged upon a high plateau. Before us, at a little distance, a
+great gap or valley seemed to open suddenly out, and farther off the
+white sides of hills and dark tree-tops rose into view. Riding to the
+edge of this steep valley I beheld a magnificent river flowing between
+great banks of ice and snow 300 feet below the level on which we stood.
+Upon each side masses of ice stretched out far into the river, but in
+the centre, between these banks of ice, ran a swift, black-looking
+current the sight of which for a moment filled us with dismay. We had
+counted upon the Saskatchewan being firmly locked in ice, and here was
+the river rolling along between its icy banks forbidding all passage.
+Descending to the low valley of the river, we halted for dinner,
+determined to try some method by which to cross this formidable barrier.
+An examination of the river and its banks soon revealed the difficulties
+before us. The ice, as it approached the open portion, was unsafe,
+rendering it impossible to get within reach of the running water.` An
+interval of some ten yards separated the sound ice from the current,
+while nearly 100 yards of solid ice lay between the true bank of the
+river and the dangerous portion; thus our first labour was to make a
+solid footing for ourselves from which to launch any raft or make-shift
+boat which we might construct. After a great deal of trouble and labour,
+we got the waggon-box roughly fashioned into a raft, covered over with
+one of our large oil-cloths, and Lashed together with buffalo leather.
+This most primitive looking craft we carried down over the ice to where
+the dangerous portion commenced; then Daniel,-wielding the axe with
+powerful dexterity, began to hew away at the ice until space enough was
+opened out to float our raft upon. Into this-we slipped the-waggon-box,
+and into the waggon-box we put the half-breed Daniel. It floated
+admirably, and on went the axe-man, hewing, as before, with might and
+main. It was cold, wet work, and, in spite of every thing, the water
+began to ooze through the oil-cloth into the waggon-box. We had to haul
+it up, empty it, and launch again; thus for some hours we kept on, cold,
+wet, and miserable, until night forced us to desist and make our camp on
+the tree-lined shore. So we hauled in the wagon and retired, baffled, but
+not beaten, to begin again next morning. There were many reasons to make
+this delay feel vexatious and disappointing; we had travelled a distance
+of 560 miles in twelve days; travelled only to find ourselves stopped by
+this partially frozen river at a point twenty miles distant from Carlton,
+the first great station on my journey. Our stock of provisions, too, was
+not such as would admit of much delay; pemmican and dried meat we had
+none, and flour, tea, and grease were all that remained to us. However,
+Daniel declared that he knew a most excellent method of making a
+combination of flour and fat which Would allay all disappointment-and I
+must conscientiously admit that a more hunger-satiating mixture than he
+produced out of the frying-pan it had never before been my lot to taste.
+A little of it went such a long way, that it would be impossible to find
+a parallel for it in portability; in fact, it went such a long way, that
+the person who dined off it found himself, by common reciprocity of
+feeling, bound to go a long way in return before he again partook of it;
+but Daniel was not of that opinion, for he ate the greater portion of our
+united shares, and slept peacefully when it was all gone. I would
+particularly recommend this mixture to the consideration of the guardians
+of the poor throughout the United Kingdom, as I know of nothing which
+would so readily conduce to the satisfaction of the hungry element in'
+our society. Had such a combination been known to Bumble. and his Board,
+the hunger of Twist would even have been satisfied by a single helping;
+but, perhaps, it might be injudicious to introduce into the sister island
+any condiment so antidotal in its nature to the removal of the Celt
+across the Atlantic--that "consummation so devoutly wished for" by the
+"leading journal."
+
+Fortified by Daniel's delicacy, we set to work early next morning at
+raft-making and ice-cutting; but we made the attempt to cross at a
+portion of the river where the open water was narrower and the bordering
+ice sounded more firm to the testing blows of the axe. One part of the
+river had now closed in, but the ice over it was unsafe. We succeeded in'
+getting the craft into the running water and, having strung together all
+the available line and rope we possessed, prepared for the venture. It
+was found that the waggon-boat would only carry one passenger, and
+accordingly I took my place in it, and with a make-shift paddle put out
+into the quick-running stream. The current had great power over the
+ill-shaped craft, and it was no easy-matter to keep her head at all
+against stream.
+
+I had not got five yards out when the whole thing commenced to fill
+rapidly with water, and I had just time to get back again to ice before
+she was quite full. We hauled her out once more, and found the oil-cloth
+had been cut by the jagged ice, so there was nothing for it but to remove
+it altogether and put on another. This was done, and soon our waggon-box
+was once again afloat. This time I reached in safety the farther side;
+but there a difficulty arose which we had not foreseen. Along this
+farther edge of ice the current ran with great force, and as the leather
+line which was attached to the back of the boat sank deeper and deeper
+into the water, the drag upon it caused the boat to drift quicker and
+quicker downstream; thus, when I touched the opposite ice, I found the
+drift was so rapid that my axe failed to catch a hold in the yielding
+edge, which broke away at every stroke. After several ineffectual
+attempts to stay the rush of the boat, and as I was being borne rapidly
+into a mass of rushing water and huge blocks of ice, I saw it was all up,
+and shouted to the others to rope in the line; but this was no easy
+matter, because the rope had got foul of the running ice, and was caught
+underneath. At last, by careful handling, it was freed, and I stood once
+more on the spot from whence I had started, having crossed the River
+Saskatchevan to no purpose. Daniel now essayed the task, and reached the
+opposite shore, taking the precaution to work up the nearer side before
+crossing; once over, his vigorous use of the axe told on the ice, and he
+succeeded in fixing the boat against the edge. Then lhe quickly clove his
+way into the frozen mass, and, by repeated blows, finally reached a spot
+from which he got on shore.
+
+This success of our long labour and exertion was announced to the
+solitude by three ringing cheers, which we gave from our side; for, be
+it remembered, that it was now our intention to use the waggon-boat to
+convey across all our baggage, towing the boat from one side to the other
+by means of our line; after which, we would force the horses to swim the
+river, and then cross ourselves in the boat. But all our plans were
+defeated by an unlooked-for accident; the line lay deep in the water, as
+before, and to raise it required no small amount of force. We hauled and
+hauled, until snap went the long rope somewhere underneath the water, and
+all was over. With no little difficulty Daniel got the boat across again
+to our side, and we all went back to camp wet, tired, and dispirited by
+so much labour and so many misfortunes. It froze hard that night, and in
+the morning the great river had its waters altogether hidden opposite our
+camp by a covering of ice. Would it bear? that was the question. We went
+on it early, testing with axe and sharp-pointed poles. In places it was
+very thin, but in other parts it rang hard and solid to the blows. The
+dangerous spot was in the very centre of the river, where the water had
+shown through in round holes on the previous day, but we hoped to avoid
+these bad places by taking a slanting course across the channel. After
+walking backwards and forwards several times, we determined to try a
+light horse. He was led out with a long piece of rope attached to his
+neck. In the centre of the stream the ice seemed to bend slightly as he
+passed over, but no break occurred, and in safety we reached the opposite
+side. Now came Blackie's turn. Somehow or other I felt uncomfortable
+about it and remarked that the horse ought to have his shoes removed
+before the attempt was made. My companion, however, demurred, and his
+experience in these matters had extended over so many years, that I was
+foolishly induced to allow him to proceed as he thought fit, even against
+my better judgment. Blackie was taken out, led as before, tied by a long
+line. I followed close behind him, to drive him if necessary. He did not
+need much driving, but took the ice quite readily. We had got to the
+centre of the river, when the surface suddenly bent downwards, and, to my
+horror, the poor horse plunged deep into black, quick-running water! He
+was not three yards in front of me when the ice broke. I recoiled
+involuntarily from the black, seething chasm; the horse, though he
+plunged suddenly down, never let his head under water, but kept swimming
+manfully round and round the narrow hole, trying all he could to get
+upon the ice. All his efforts were useless; a cruel wall of sharp ice
+struck his knees as he tried to lift them on the surface, and the
+current, running with immense velocity, repeatedly carried him back
+underneath. As soon as the horse had broken through, the man who held
+the rope let it go, and the leather line flew back about poor Blackie's
+head. I got up almost to the edge of the hole, and stretching out took
+hold of the line again; but that could do no good nor give him any
+assistance in his struggles. I shall never forget the way the poor brute
+looked at me--even now, as I write these lines, the whole scene comes
+back in memory with all the vividness of a picture, and I feel again the
+horrible sensation of being utterly unable, though almost within touching
+distance, to give him help in his dire extremity and if ever dumb animal
+spoke with unutterable eloquence, that horse called to me in his agony he
+turned to me as to one from whom he had a right to expect assistance. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. "Is there no help for him?" I cried
+to the other men. "None whatever," was the reply; "the ice is dangerous
+-all around."
+
+Then I rushed back to the shore and up to the camp where my rifle lay,
+then back again to the fatal spot where the poor beast still struggled
+against his fate. As I raised the rifle he looked at me so imploringly
+that my hand shook and trembled. Another instant, and the deadly bullet
+crashed through his head, and, with one look never to be forgotten, he
+went down under the cold, unpitying ice!
+
+It may have been very foolish, perhaps, for poor Blackie was only a.
+horse, but for all that I went back to camp, and, sitting down in the
+snow, cried like a child. With my own hand I had taken my poor friend's
+life; but if there should exist somewhere in the regions of space that
+happy Indian paradise where horses are never hungry and never tired,
+Blackie, at least, will forgive the hand that sent him there, if he can
+but see the heart that long regretted him.
+
+Leaving Daniel in charge of the remaining horses, we crossed on foot the
+fatal river, and with a single horse set out for Carlton. From the high
+north bank I took one last look back at the South Saskatchewan-it lay in
+its broad deep valley glittering in one great band of purest 'snow; but I
+loathed the sight of it, while the small round open hole, dwarfed to a
+speck by distance, marked the spot where my poor horse had found his
+grave, after having carried me so faithfully through the long lonely
+wilds. We had travelled about six miles when a figure appeared in sight,
+coming towards us upon the same track. The new-comer proved to be a Cree
+Indian travelling to Fort Pelly. He bore the name of the Starving Bull.
+Starving Bull and his boy at once turned back With us towards Carlton. In
+a little while a party of horsemen hove in sight: they had come out from
+the fort to visit the South Branch, and amongst them was the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge of the station. Our first question had reference to the
+plague. Like a fire, it had burned itself out. There was no case then in
+the fort, but out of the little garrison of some sixty souls no fewer
+than thirty-two had perished! Four only had recovered of the thirty-six
+who had taken the terrible infection.
+
+We halted for dinner by the edge of the Duck Lake; midway between the
+North and South Branches of the Saskatchewan. It was a rich, beautiful
+country, although the snow lay some inches deep. Clumps of trees dotted
+the undulating surface, and lakelets glittering in the bright sunshine
+spread out in sheets of dazzling whiteness. The Starving Bull set himself
+busily to work preparing our dinner. What it would have been under
+ordinary circumstances, I cannot state; but, unfortunately for its
+success on the present occasion, its preparation was attended with
+unusual drawbacks. Starving Bull had succeeded in killing a skunk during
+his journey. This performance, while highly creditable to his energy as a
+hunter, was by no means conducive to his success, as a cook. Bitterly did
+that skunk revente himself upon us who had borne no part in his
+destruction. Pemmican is at no time a delicacy; but pemmican flavoured
+with skunk was more than I could attempt. However, Starving Bull proved
+himself worthy of his name, and the frying-pan was-soon scraped clean
+under his hungry manipulations.
+
+Another hour's ride brought us to a high bank, at the base of which lay
+the North Saskatchewan. In the low ground adjoining the river stood
+Carlton House, a large square enclosure, the wooden walls of which were
+more than twenty feet in height. Within these palisades some dozen or
+more houses stood crowded together. Close by, to the right, many
+snow-covered mounds with a few rough wooden crosses above them marked the
+spot where, only four weeks before, the last Victim of the epidemic had
+been laid. On the very spot where I stood looking at this sceiqe, a
+Blackfoot Indian, three years earlier, had stolen out from a thicket,
+fired at, and grievously wounded the Hudson Bay officer belonging to the
+fort, and now close to the same spot a small cross marked that officer's
+last resting-place. Strange fate! he had escaped the Blackfoot's bullet
+only to be the first to succumb to the deadly epidemic. I cannot say that
+Carlton was at all a lively place of sojourn. Its natural gloom was
+considerably deepened by the events of the last few months, and the whole
+place seemed to have received the stamp of death upon it. To add to the
+general depression, provisions were by no means abundant, the few Indians
+that had come in from the plains brought the same tidings of unsuccessful
+chase--for the buffalo were "far out" on the great prairie, and that
+phrase "far out," applied to buffalo, means starvation in the North-west.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+The Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our Way--A long
+Ride-Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
+
+Two things strike the new-comer at Carlton. First, he sees evidences on
+every side of a rich and fertile country; and, secondly, he sees by many
+signs that war is the normal condition of the wild men who have pitched
+their tents in the land of the Saskatchewan that land from which we have
+taken the Indian prefix Kis, without much improvement of length or
+euphony. It is a name but little known to the ear of the outside world,
+but destined one day or other to fill its place in the long list of lands
+whose surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and
+hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well
+to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge
+mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh.
+From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to
+150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie
+spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the
+Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the winter home of the
+buffalo, the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, the future home of
+millions yet unborn. Few men have looked on this land-but the thoughts of
+many in the New World tend towards it, and crave for description and fact
+which in many instances can only be given to them at second-hand.
+
+Like all things in this world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion;
+there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell.
+It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America--it is
+too cold, it is too dry--it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is
+it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the
+eye. Man lives long in it, and the children of his body are cast in manly
+mould. The cold of winter is intense, the strongest heat of summer is not
+excessive. The autumn days are bright and-beautiful; the snow is seldom
+deep, the frosts are early to come and late to go. All crops flourish,
+though primitive and rude are the means by which they are tilled; timber
+is in places plentiful, in other places scarce; grass grows high, thick,
+and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring.
+The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in
+mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such
+fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the
+Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer
+when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red
+man stalks; war, his unceasing toil--horse-raiding, the pastime of his
+life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the
+white man, and long before.
+
+In 1776 the earliest English voyager in these regions speaks of war
+between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the
+Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the
+earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from
+what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson of
+warfare was in all cases the same to him. To say he fights is, after all,
+but to say he is a man; for whether it be in Polynesia or in Paris, in
+the Saskatchewan or in Sweden, in Bundelond or in Bulgaria, fighting is
+just the one universal "touch of nature which makes the whole world
+kin."
+
+"My good brothers," said a missionary friend of mine, some little while
+ago, to an assemblage of Crees, "My good brothers--why do you carry on
+this unceasing war with the Blackfeet and Peaginoos, with Sircies and
+Bloods? It is not good, it is not right; the great Manitou does not like
+his children to kill each other, but he wishes them to live in peace and
+brotherhood."
+
+To which the Cree chief made answer--"My friend, what you say is good;
+but look, you are white man and Christian, we are red men and worship
+the Manitou; but what is the news we hear from the traders and the
+black-robes? Is it not always the news of war? The Kitchi Mokamans (i.e.
+the Americans) are on the war-path against their brethren of the South,
+the English are fighting some tribes far away over the big lake; the
+French, and all the other tribes are fighting too! My brother, it is
+news of war, always news of war! and we--we go on the war-path in small
+numbers. We stop when we kill a few of our enemies and take a few scalps;
+but your nations go to war in countless thousands, and we hear of more of
+your braves killed in one battle than all our tribe numbers together. So,
+my brother, do not say to us that it is wrong to go on the war-path, for
+what is right for the white man cannot be wrong in his red brother. I
+have done!"
+
+During the seven days which I remained at Carlton the winter was not
+idle. It snowed and froze, and looked dreary enough within the darkening
+walls of the fort. A French missionary had come down from the northern
+lake of Isle-a-la-Crosse, but, unlike his brethren, he appeared shy and
+uncommunicative. Two of the stories which he related, however, deserve
+record. One was a singular magnetic storm which took place at
+Isle-a-la-Crosse during the preceding winter. A party of Indians and
+half-breeds were crossing the lake on the ice when suddenly their hair
+stood up on end; the hair of the dogs also turned the wrong way, and the
+blankets belonging to the part even evinced signs of acting, in an
+upright manner. I will not pretend to account for this phenomenon, but
+merely tell it as the worthy pere told it to me, and I shall rest
+perfectly satisfied if my readers hair does not follow the example of
+the Indians dogs and blankets and proceed generally after the manner of
+the "frightful porcupine." The other tale told by the pere was of a more
+tragical nature. During a storm in the prairies near the South Branch of
+the Saskatchewan a rain of fire suddenly descended upon a camp of Cree
+Indians and burned everything around. Thirty-two Crees perished in the
+flames; the ground was burned deeply for a considerable distance, and
+only one or two of the party who happened to stand close to a lake were
+saved by throwing themselves into the water. "It was," said my informant,
+"not a flash of lightning, but a rain of fire which descended for some
+moments."
+
+The increasing severity of the frost hardened into a solid mass the
+surface of the Saskatchewan, and on the morning of the 14th November we
+set out again upon our Western journey. The North Saskatchewan which I
+now crossed for the first time, is a river 400 yards in width, lying
+between banks descending steeply to a low alluvial valley. These outer
+banks are some 200 feet in height, and in some by-gone age were doubtless
+the boundaries of the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I
+had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of
+them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and
+laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now
+sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted
+two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the
+wild mares were put. At first they refused to move an inch--no, not an
+inch; then came loud and prolonged thwacking from a motley assemblage of
+Crees and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely
+used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly
+a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the
+ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off
+like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is
+easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for
+all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of
+persuasion: if the horse lies down, lick him until he gets up; if he
+stands up on his hind-legs, lick him until he reverts to his original
+position; if he bucks, jibs, or kicks, lick him, lick him, lick him;
+when you are tired of licking him, get another man to continue the
+process; if you can use violent language in three different tongues so
+much the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French,
+you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and,
+crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle
+Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the
+steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the
+horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the
+solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white
+on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far
+away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and
+-our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie.
+About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken
+snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at
+camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had
+escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose
+hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed'
+forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small
+winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point
+some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the
+Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large
+camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our
+steps.
+
+On the morning of the second day out from Carlton, the guide showed
+symptoms of haziness as to direction: he began to bend greatly to the
+south, and at sunrise he ascended a high hill for the purpose of taking a
+general survey of the surrounding country. From this hill the eye ranged
+over a vast extent of landscape, and although the guide failed
+altogether to correct his course, the hill-top yielded such a glorious
+view of sun rising from a sea of snow into an ocean of pale green barred
+with pink and crimson streaks, that I felt well repaid for the trouble of
+the long ascent. When evening closed around us that day, I found myself
+alone amidst a wild, weird scene. Far as the eye could reach in front and
+to the right a boundless, treeless plain stretched into unseen distance;
+to the left a range of steep hills rose abruptly from the plain; over all
+the night was coming down. Long before sunset I had noticed a clump of
+trees many miles ahead, and thought that in this solitary thicket we
+would make our camp for the night. Hours passed away, and yet the
+solitary clump seemed as distant as ever--nay, more, it even appeared to
+grow smaller as I approached it. At last, just at dusk, I drew near the
+wished for camping-place; but lo! it was nothing but a single bush. My
+clump had vanished, my camping-place had gone, the mirage had been
+playing tricks with the little bush and magnifying it into a grove of
+aspens. When night fell there was no trace of camp or companions, but the
+snow marks showed that I was still upon the right track. On again for two
+hours in darkness often it was so dark that it was only by giving the
+horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in
+the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing
+stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added
+to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly
+towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the
+welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes
+struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly lost his way, and after thirteen
+hours hard riding we were lucky to find this cosy nook in the
+tree-sheltered valley. The Saskatchewan was close beside us, and the dark
+ridges beyond were the Eagle Hills of the Battle River.
+
+Early next forenoon we reached the camp of Crees and the winter post of
+the Hudson Bay Company some distance above the confluence of the Battle
+Riverwith the Saskatchewan. A wild scene of confusion followed our entry
+into the camp; braves and squaws, dogs and papooses crowded round, and it
+was difficult work to get to the door of the little shanty where the
+Hudson Bay officer dwelt. Fortunately, there was no small-pox in this
+crowded camp, although many traces of its effects were to be seen in the
+seared and disfigured faces around, and in none more than my host, who
+had been one of the four that had recovered at Carlton. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed, but his handsome face was awfully marked by the
+terrible scourge. This assemblage of Crees was under the leadership of
+Mistawassis, a man of small and slight stature, but whose bravery had
+often been tested in fight against the Blackfeet. He was a man of quiet
+and dignified manner, a good listener, a fluent speaker, as much at his
+ease and as free from restraint as any lord in Christendom. He hears the
+news I have to tell him through the interpreter, bending his head in
+assent to every sentence; then he pauses a bit and speaks. "He wishes to
+know if aught can be done against the Blackfeet; they are troublesome,
+they are fond of war; he has seen war for many years, and he would wish
+for peace; it is only the young men, who want scalps and the soft words
+of the squaws, who desire war." I tell him that "the Great Mother wishes
+her red children to live at peace; but what is the use? do they not
+themselves break the peace when it is made, and is not the war as often
+commenced by the Crees as by the Blackfeet?" He says that "men have told
+them that the white man was coming to take their lands, that the white
+braves were coming to the country, and he wished to know if it was true."
+"If the white braves did come," I replied, "it would be to protect the
+red man, and to keep peace amongst all. So dear was the red man to the
+heart of the chief whom the Great Mother had sent, that the sale of all
+spirits had been stopped in the Indian country, and henceforth, when he
+saw any trader bringing whisky or fire-water into the camp, he could tell
+his young men to go and take the fire-water by force from the trader."
+
+"That is good," he repeated twice, "that is good!" but whether this
+remark of approval had reference to the stoppage of the fire-water or to
+the prospective seizure of liquor by his braves, I cannot say. Soon after
+the departure of Mistawassis from the hut, a loud drumming outside was
+suddenly struck up, and going to the door I found the young men had
+assembled to dance the dance of welcome in my honour; they drummed and
+danced in different stages of semi-nudity for some time, and at the
+termination of the performance I gave an order for tobacco all round.
+When the dancing-party had departed, a very garrulous Indian presented
+himself, saying that he had been informed that the Ogima was possessed of
+some "great medicines," and that he wished to see them. I have almost
+forgotten to remark that my store of drugs and medicines had under gone
+considerable delapidation from frost and fast travelling. An examination
+held at Carlton into the contents of the two cases had revealed a sad
+state of affairs. Frost had smashed many bottles; powders badly folded up
+had fetched way in a deplorable manner; tinctures had proved their
+capability for the work they had to perform by tincturing every thing
+that came within their reach; hopeless confusion reigned in the
+department of pills. A few glass-stoppered bottles had indeed resisted
+the general demoralization; but, for the rest, it really seemed as though
+blisters, pills, powders, scales, and disinfecting fluids had been wildly
+bent upon blistering, pilling, powdering, weighing, and disinfecting one
+another ever since they had left Fort Garry. I deposited at Carlton a
+considerable quantity of a disinfecting fluid frozen solid, and as highly
+garnished with pills as the exterior of that condiment known as a
+chancellor's pudding is resplendent with raisins. Whether this
+conglomerate really did disinfect the walls of Carlton I cannot state,
+but from its appearance and general medicinal aspect I should say that no
+disease, however virulent, had the slightest chance against it. Having
+repacked the other things as safely as possible into one large box, I
+still found that I was the possessor of medicine amply sufficient to
+poison a very large extent of territory, and in particular I had a small
+leather medicine-chest in which the glass-stoppered bottles had kept
+intact. This chest I now produced for the benefit of my garrulous friend;
+one very strong essence of smelling-salts particularly delighted him; the
+more it burned his nostrils the more he laughed and hugged it, and after
+a time declared that there could be no doubt whatever as to that article,
+-for it was a very "great medicine" indeed.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+The Red Man--Leave Battle River--The Red Deer Hills--A long Ride--Fort
+Pitt--The Plague--Hauling by the Tail--A pleasant Companion--An easy
+Method of Divorce--Reach Edmonton.
+
+EVER, towards the setting sun drifts the flow of Indian migration; ever
+nearer and nearer to that glorious range of snow-clad peaks which the red
+man has so aptly named "the Mountains of the Setting Sun." It is a
+mournful task to trace back through the long list of extinct tribes the
+history of this migration. Turning over the leaves of books belonging to
+that "old colonial time" of which Longfellow speaks, we find strange
+names of Indian tribes now utterly unknown, meetings of council and
+treaty making with Mohawks and Oneidas and Tuscaroras.
+
+They are gone, and scarcely a trace remains of them. Others have left in
+lake and mountain-top the record of their names. Erie and Ottawa, Seneca
+and Cayuga tell of forgotten or almost forgotten nations which a century
+ago were great and powerful. But never at any time since first the white
+man was welcomed on the newly-discovered shores of the Western Continent
+by his red brother, never has such disaster and destruction overtaken
+these poor wild, wandering sons of nature as at the moment in which we
+write. Of yore it was the pioneers of France, England, and Spain with
+whom they had to contend, but now the whole white world is leagued in
+bitter strife against the Indian. The American and Canadian are only
+names that hide beneath them the greed of united Europe. Terrible deeds
+have been wrought out in that western land; terrible heart-sickening
+deeds of cruelty and rapacious infamy--have been, I say? no, are to this
+day and hour, and never perhaps more sickening than now in the full blaze
+of nineteenth-century civilization. If on the long line of the American
+frontier, from the Gulf of Mexico to the British boundary, a Single life
+is taken by an Indian, if even a horse or ox be stolen from a settler,
+the fact is chronicled in scores of-journals throughout the United
+States, but the reverse of the story we never know. The countless deeds
+of perfidious robbery, of ruthless murder done by white savages out in
+these Western wilds never find the light of day. The poor red man has no
+telegraph, no newspaper, no type, to tell his sufferings and his woes. My
+God, what a terrible tale could I not tell of these dark deeds done by
+the white savage against the far nobler red man! From southernmost Texas
+to most northern Montana there is but one universal remedy for Indian
+difficulty--kill him. Let no man tell me that such is not the case. I
+answer, I have heard it hundreds of times: "Never trust a redskin unless
+he be dead." "Kill every buffalo you see," said a Yankee colonel to me
+one day in Nebraska; "every buffalo dead is an Indiaan gone;" such
+things are only trifles. Listen to this cute feat of a Montana trader. A
+store-keeper in Helena City had some sugar stolen from him. He poisoned
+the sugar next night and left his door open. In the morning six Indians
+were found dead outside the town. That was a cute notion, I guess; and
+yet there are other examples worse than that, but they are too revolting
+to tell. Never mind; I suppose they have found record somewhere else if
+not in this world, and in one shape or another they will speak in due
+time. The Crees are perhaps the only tribe of prairie Indians who have as
+yet suffered no injustice at the hands of the white man. The land is
+still theirs, the hunting-rounds remain almost undisturbed; but their
+days are numbered, and already the echo of the approaching wave of
+Western immigration is sounding through the solitudes of the Cree
+country.
+
+It is the same story from the Atlantic to the Pacific. First the White
+man was the welcome guest, the honoured visitor; then the greedy hunter,
+the death-dealing vender of fire-water and poison; then the settler and
+exterminator--every where it has been the same story.
+
+This wild man who first welcomed the new-comer is the only perfect
+socialist or communist in the world. He holds all things in common with
+his tribe--the land, the bison, the river, and the moose. He is starving,
+and the rest of the tribe want food. Well, he kills a moose, and to the
+last bit the coveted food is shared by all. That war-party has taken one
+hundred horses in the last raid into Blackfoot or Peagin territory; well,
+the whole tribe are free to help themselves to the best and fleetest
+steeds before the captors will touch one out of the band. There is but a
+scrap of beaver, a thin rabbit, or a bit of sturgeon in the lodge; a
+stranger comes, and he is hungry; give him his share and let him be first
+served and best attended to. If one child starves in an Indian camp you
+may know that in every lodge scarcity is universal and that every stomach
+is hungry. Poor, poor fellow! his virtues are all his own; crimes he may
+have, and plenty, but his noble traits spring from no book-learning, from
+no school-craft, from the preaching of no pulpit; they come from the
+instinct of good which the Great Spirit has taught him; they are the
+whisperings from that lost world whose glorious shores beyond the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun are the long dream of his life. The most
+curious anomaly among the race of man, the red man of America, is passing
+away beneath our eyes into the infinite solitude. The possession of the
+same noble qualities which we affect to reverence among our nations makes
+us kill him. If he would be as the African or the Asiatic it would be all
+right for him; if he would be our slave he might live, but as he won't
+be that, won't toil and delve and hew for us, and will persist in
+hunting, fishing, and roaming over the beautiful prairie land which the
+Great Spirit gave him; in a word, since he will be free we kill him. Why
+do I call this wild child the great anomaly of the human race? I will
+tell you. Alone amongst savage tribes he has learnt the lesson which the
+great mother Nature teaches to her sons through the voices of the night,
+the forest, and the solitude. This river, this mountain, this measureless
+meadow speak to him in a language of their own. Dwelling with them, he
+learns their varied tongues, and his speech becomes the echo of the
+beauty that lies spread around him. Every name for lake or river, for
+mountain or meadow, has its peculiar significance, and to tell the Indian
+title of such things is generally to tell the nature of them also. Ossian
+never spoke with the voice of the mist-shrouded mountain or the wave-beat
+shores of the isles more thoroughly than does this chief of the Blackfeet
+or the Sioux speak the voices of the things of earth and air amidst which
+his wild life is cast.
+
+I know that it is the fashion to hold in derision and mockery the idea
+that nobility, poetry, or eloquence exist in the wild Indian. I know that
+with that low brutality which has ever made the Anglo-Saxon race deny its
+enemy the possession of one atom of generous sensibility, that dull
+enmity which prompted us to paint the Maid of Orleans a harlot, and to
+call Napoleon the Corsican robber--I know that that same instinct glories
+in degrading the savage, whose chief crime is that he prefers death to
+slavery; glories in painting him devoid of every trait of manhood, worthy
+only to share the fate of the wild beast of the wilderness--to be shot
+down mercilessly when seen. But those bright spirits who have redeemed
+the America of to-day from the dreary waste of vulgar greed and ignorant
+conceit which we in Europe have flung so heavily upon her; those men
+whose writings have come back across the Atlantic, and have become as
+household words among us--Irving, Cooper, Longfellow--have they not found
+in the rich store of Indian poetry the source of their choicest thought?
+Nay, I will go farther, because it may be said that the a poet would be
+prone to drape with poetry every subject on which his fancy lighted, as
+the sun turns to gold and crimson the dullest and the dreariest clouds:
+but Search the books of travel amongst remote Indian tribes, from
+Columbus to Catlin, from Charlevoix to Carver, from Bonneville to
+Pallisser the story is ever the same. The traveller is welcomed and made
+much of; he is free to come and go; the best food is set before him; the
+lodge is made warm and bright; he is welcome to stay his lifetime if he
+pleases. "I swear to your majesties," writes Columbus--alas! the red
+man's greatest enemy--"I swear to your majesties that there is not in the
+world a better people than these, more affectionate, affable, or mild."
+
+"At this moment," writes an American officer only ten years back, "it is
+certain a man can go about throughout the Blackfoot territory without
+molestation, except in the contingency of being mistaken at night for an
+Indian." No, they are-fast going, and soon they will be all gone, but in
+after-times men will judge more justly the poor wild creatures whom
+to-day we kill and vilify; men will go back again to those old books of
+travel, or to those pages of "Hiawatha" and "Mohican," to find that far
+away from the border-land of civilization the wild red man, if more of
+the savage, was infinitely less of the brute than was the white ruffian
+who destroyed him.
+
+I quitted the camp at Battle River on the 17th November, with a large
+band of horses and a young Cree brave who had volunteered his services
+for some reason of his own which he did not think necessary to impart to
+us. The usual crowd of squaws, braves in buffalo robes, naked children,
+and howling dogs assembled to see us start. The Cree led the way mounted
+on a ragged-looking pony, then came the baggage-sleds, and I brought up
+the rear on a tall horse belonging to the Company. Thus we held our way
+in a north-west direction over high-rolling plains along the north bank
+of the Saskatchewan towards Fort Pitt.
+
+On the morning of the 18th we got away from our camping thicket of
+poplars long before the break of day. There was no track to guide us, but
+the Cree went straight as an arrow over hill and dale and frozen lake.
+The hour that preceded the dawn was brilliant with the flash and glow of
+meteors across the North-western sky. I lagged so far behind to watch
+them that when day broke I found myself alone, miles from the party. The
+Cree kept the pace so well that it took me some hours before I again
+Caught sight of them. After a hard ride of six-and-thirty miles, we
+halted for dinner on the banks of English Creek. Close beside our
+camping-place a large clump of spruce-pine stood in dull contrast to the
+snowy surface. They looked like old friends to me--friends of the
+Winnipeg and the now distant Lake of the Woods; for from Red River to
+English Creek, a distance of 750 miles, I-had seen but a solitary
+pine-tree. After a short dinner We resumed our rapid way, forcing the
+pace with a view of making Fort Pitt by night-fall. A French half-breed
+declared he knew a short cut across the hills of the Red Deer, a wild
+rugged tract of country lying on the north of the Saskatchewan. Crossing
+these hills, he said, we would strike the river at their farther side,
+and then, passing over on the ice, cut the bend which the Saskatchewan
+makes to the north, and, emerging again opposite Fort Pitt, finally
+re-cross the river at that station. So much for the plan, and now for its
+fulfilment.
+
+We entered the region of the Red Deer Hills at about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, and continued at a very rapid pace in a westerly direction for
+three hours. As we proceeded the country became more broken, the hills
+rising steeply from narrow V-shaped valleys, and the ground in many
+places covered with fallen and decaying trees--the wrecks of fire and
+tempest. Every where throughout this wild region lay the antlers and
+heads of moose and elk; but, with the exception of an occasional large
+jackass-rabbit, nothing living moved through the silent hills. The ground
+was free from badger-holes; the day, though dark, was fine; and, with a
+good horse under me, that two hours gallop over, the Red Deer Hills was
+glorious work. It wanted yet an hour of sunset when we came suddenly upon
+the Saskatchewan flowing in a deep narrow valley between steep and lofty
+hills, which were bare of trees and bushes and clear of snow. A very wild
+desolate scene it looked as I surveyed it from a projecting spur upon
+whose summit I rested my blown horse. I was now far in advance of the
+party who occupied a parallel ridge behind me. By signs they intimated
+that our course now lay to the north; in fact, Daniel had steered very
+much too ar south, and we had struck the Saskatchewan river a long,
+distance below the intended place of crossing. Away we went again to the
+north, soon losing sight of the party; but as I kept the river on my left
+far below in the valley I knew they could not cross without my being
+aware of it. Just before sun set they appeared again in sight, making
+signs that they were about to descend into the valley and to cross the
+river. The valley here was five hundred feet in depth, the slope being
+one of the steepest I had ever seen. At the bottom of this steep descent
+the Saskatchewan lay in its icy bed, a large majestic-looking river three
+hundred yards in width. We crossed on the ice without accident, and
+winding up the steep southern shore gained the level plateau above. The
+sun was going down, right on our forward track. In the deep valley below
+the Cree and an English half-breed were getting the horses and
+baggage-sleds over the river. We made signs to them to camp in the
+valley, and we ourselves turned our tired horses towards the west,
+determined at all hazards to reach the fort that night. The Frenchman led
+the way riding, the Hudson Bay officer followed in a horse-sled, I
+brought up the rear on horseback. Soon it got quite dark, and we held on
+over a rough and bushless plateau seamed with deep gullies into which we
+descended at hap hazard forcing our weary horses with difficulty up the
+opposite sides. The night got later and later, and still no sign of Fort
+Pitt; riding in rear I was able to mark the course taken by our guide,
+and it soon struck me that he was steering wrong; our correct course lay
+west, but he seemed to be heading gradually to the North, and finally,
+began to veer even towards the East. I called out to the Hudson Bay man
+that I had serious doubts as to Daniel's knowledge of the track, but I
+was assured that all was correct. Still we went on, and still no sign of
+fort or river. At length the Frenchman suddenly pulled Up and asked us to
+halt while he rode on and surveyed the country, because he had lost the
+track, and didn't know where he had got to. Here was a pleasant prospect!
+without food, fire, or covering, out on the bleak plains, with the
+thermometer at 20 degrees of frost! After some time the Frenchman
+returned and declared that he had altogether lost his way, and that there
+was nothing for it but to camp where we were, and wait for daylight to
+proceed. I looked around in the darkness. The ridge on which we stood was
+bare and bleak, with the snow drifted off into the valleys. A few
+miserable stunted willows were the only signs of vegetation, and the wind
+whistling through their ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as
+man could look at. I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men
+who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in
+the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been
+pursuing. My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent
+resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled
+with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire,
+or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might
+reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying
+himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.
+
+Watching this for some seconds in silence, I determined to shape for
+myself a different course. I dismounted, and taking from the sled a shirt
+made of deer-skin, mounted again my poor weary horse and turned off alone
+into the darkness. "Where are you going to?" I heard my companions
+calling out after me. I was half inclined not to answer, but turned in
+the saddle and holloaed back, "To Fort Pitt, that's all." I heard behind
+me a violent bustle, as though they were busily engaged in yoking up the
+horses again, and then I rode off as hard as my weary horse could go. My
+friends took a very short time to harness up again, and they were soon
+powdering along through the wilderness. I kept on for about half an hour,
+steering by the stars due west; suddenly I came out upon the edge of a
+deep valley, and by the broad white band beneath recognized the frozen
+Saskatchewan again. I have at least found the river, and Fort Pitt, we
+knew, lay somewhere upon the bank. Turning away from the river, I held on
+in a south-westerly direction for a considerable distance, passing up
+along a bare snow-covered valley and crossing a high ridge at its end. I
+could hear my friends behind in the dark. But they had got, I think, a
+notion that I had taken leave of my senses, and they were afraid to call
+out to me. After a bit I bent my course again to the west, and steering
+by my old guides, the stars, those truest and most unchanging friends of
+the wanderer, I once more struck the Saskatchewan, this time descending
+to its level and crossing it on the ice.
+
+As I walked along, leading my horse, I must admit to experiencing a
+sensation not at all pleasant. The memory of the crossing of the South
+Branch was still too strong to admit of over-confidence in the strength
+of the ice, and as every now and again my tired horse broke through the
+upper crust of snow and the ice beneath cracked, as it always will when
+weight is placed on it for the first time, no matter how strong it may
+be, I felt by no means as comfortable as I would have wished. At last the
+long river was passed, and there on the opposite shore lay the cart track
+to Fort Pitt. We were close to Pipe-stone Creek, and only three miles
+from the Fort.
+
+It was ten o'clock when we reached the closely-barred gate of this Hudson
+Bay post, the inhabitants of which had gone to bed. Ten o'clock at night,
+and we had started at six o'clock in the morning. I had been fifteen
+hours in the saddle, and no less than ninety miles had passed under my
+horse's hoofs, but so accustomed had I grown to travel that I felt just
+as ready to set out again as though only twenty miles had been traversed.
+The excitement of the last few hours steering by the stars in an unknown
+country, and its most successful denouement, had put fatigue and
+weariness in the background; and as we sat down to a well-cooked supper
+of buffalo steaks and potatoes, with the brightest eyed little lassie,
+half Cree, half Scotch, in the North-west to wait upon us, while a great
+fire of pine wood blazed and crackled on the open hearth, I couldn't help
+saying to my companions, "Well, this is better than your hill-top and the
+fireless bivouac in the rustling willows."
+
+Fort Pitt was free from small-pox, but it had gone through a fearful
+ordeal: more than one hundred Crees had perished close around its
+stockades. The unburied dead lay for days by the road-side, till the
+wolves, growing bold with the impunity which death among the hunters ever
+gives to the hunted, approached and fought over the decay ing bodies.
+From a spot many marches to the south the Indians had come to the fort in
+midsummer, leaving behind them a long track of dead and dying men over
+the waste of distance. "Give us help," they cried, "give us help, our
+medicine-men can do nothing against this plague; from the white man We
+got it, and it is only the white man who can take it away from us."
+
+But there was no help to be given, and day by day the wretched band grew
+less. Then came another idea into the red man's brain: "If we can only
+give this disease to the white man and the trader in the fort," thought
+they, "we will cease to suffer from it ourselves;" so they came into the
+houses dying and disfigured as they were, horrible beyond description to
+look at, and sat down in the entrances of the wooden houses, and
+stretched themselves on the floors and spat upon the door-handles. It was
+no use, the fell disease held them in a grasp from which there was no
+escape, and just six weeks before my arrival the living remnant fled away
+in despair.
+
+Fort Pitt stands on the left or north shore of the Saskatchewan River,
+which is here more than four hundred yards in width. On the opposite
+shore immense bare, bleak hills raise their wind-swept heads seven
+hundred feet above the river level. A few pine-trees show their tops some
+distance away to the north, but no other trace of wood is to be seen in
+that vast amphitheatre of dry grassy hill in which the fort is built. It
+is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its
+own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so
+pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over those great grassy uplands.
+
+On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses
+for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as
+nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had
+now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once
+more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore
+of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria,
+a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which
+the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake
+Winnipeg. The order of march was ever the same; the Cree, wrapped in a
+loose blanket, with his gun balanced across the shoulder of his pony,
+jogged on in front, then came a young half-breed named Batte notte, who
+will be better known perhaps to the English reader when I say that he was
+the son of the Assineboine guide who conducted Lord Milton and Dr.
+Cheadle through the pine forests of the Thompson River. This youngster
+employed himself by continually shouting the name of the horse he was
+driving--thus "Rouge!" would be vigorously yelled out by his tongue, and
+Rouge at the same moment would be vigorously belaboured by his whip;
+"Noir!" he would again shout, when that most ragged animal would be
+within the shafts; and as Rouge and Noir invariably had this ejaculation
+of their respective titles coupled with the descent of the whip upon
+their respective backs, it followed that after a while the mere mention
+of the name conveyed to the animal the sensation of being licked. One
+horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially
+selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing
+obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French
+semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet,
+and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather
+think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the
+grudges that he owed to the man. Be that as it may, Jean l'Hereux got
+many a trouncing as he laboured along the sandy pine-covered ridges
+which rise to the north-west of Fort Pitt.
+
+On the night of the 21st November we reached the shore of the Eggo Lake,
+and made our camp in a thick clump of aspens. About midday on the
+following day we came in sight of the Saddle Lake, a favourite
+camping-ground of the Crees, owing to its inexhaustible stores of finest
+fish. Nothing struck me more as we thus pushed on rapidly along the Upper
+Saskatchewan than the absence of all authentic information from stations
+farther west. Every thing was rumour, and the most absurd rumour. "If you
+meet an old Indian named Pinguish and a boy without a name at Saddle
+Lake," said the Hudson Bay officer at Fort Pitt to me, "they may give you
+letters from Edmonton, and you may get some news from them, because they
+lost letters near the lake three weeks ago, and perhaps they may have
+found them by the time you get there." It struck me very forcibly, after
+a little while, that this "boy without a name" was a most puzzling
+individual to go in search of. The usual interrogatory question of
+"What's your name?" would not be of the least use to find such a
+personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question,
+might be to insult him. I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could
+obtain no intelligence of him whatever. Pinguish had apparently never
+been heard of. It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might
+perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his
+peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person
+had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and
+his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no
+existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury,
+it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we
+halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who
+approached was marked and seared by the disease. It was fated that this
+day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner. In addition
+to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of
+Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us. This
+individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch
+as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of
+the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia.
+But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was
+destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.
+
+"You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see," said the Hudson Bay
+officer in charge.
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?"
+
+"Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it."
+
+"Did he say he had had it himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he had," continued ny host, "only a month ago, and the coat and
+trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he
+lay all the time he had it," was the pleasant reply.
+
+After this little revelation concerning Battenotte and his habiliments, I
+must admit that I was not quite as ready to look with pleasure upon his
+performance of the duties of cook, chambermaid, and general valet as I
+had been in the earlier stage of our acquaintance; but a little
+reflection made the hole thing right again, convincing one of the fact
+that travelling, like misery, "makes one acquainted with strange
+bedfellows," and that luck has more to do with our lives than we are wont
+to admit. After leaving Saddle Lake we entered a very rich and beautiful
+country, completely clear of snow and covered deep in grass and vetches.
+We travelled hard, and reached at nightfall a thick wood of pines and
+spruce-trees, in which we made a cosy camp. I had brought with me a
+bottle of old brandy from Red River in case of illness, and on this
+evening, not feeling all right, I drew the cork while the Cree was away
+with the horses, and drank a little with my companion. Before we had
+quite finished, the Cree returned to camp, and at once declared that he
+smelt grog. He became very lively at this discovery. We had taken the
+precaution to rinse out the cup that had held the spirit, but he
+nevertheless commenced a series of brewing which appeared to give him
+infinite satisfaction. Two or three times did he fill the empty cup with
+water and drain it to the bottom, laughing and rolling his head each time
+with delight, and in order to be sure that he had got the right one he
+proceeded in the same manner with every cup we possessed; then he
+confided to Battenotte that he had not tasted grog for a long time
+before, the last occasion being one on which he had divested himself of
+his shirt and buffalo robe, in other words, gone naked, in order to
+obtain the coveted fire-water.
+
+The weather had now become beautifully mild, and on the 23rd of November
+the thermometer did not show even one degree of frost. As we approached
+the neighbourhood of the White Earth River the aspect of the country
+became very striking: groves of spruce and pine crowned the ridges; rich,
+well-watered valleys lay between, deep in the long white grass of the
+autumn. The track wound in and out through groves and wooded declivities,
+and all nature looked bright and beautiful. Some of the ascents from the
+river bottoms were so steep that the united efforts of Battenotte and the
+Cree were powerless to induce Rouge or Noir, or even Jean l'Hcreux, to
+draw the cart to the summit. But the Cree was equal to the occasion. With
+a piece of shanganappi he fastened L'Hereux's tail to the shafts of the
+cart-shafts which had already between them the redoubted Noir. This new
+method of harnessing had a marked effect upon L'Hereux; he strained and
+hauled with a persistency and vigour which I feared must prove fatal to
+the permanency of his tail in that portion of his body in which nature
+had located it, but happily such was not the case, and by the united
+efforts of all parties the summit was reached.
+
+I only remained one day at Victoria, and the 25th of November found me
+again en route for Edmonton. Our Cree had, however, disappeared. One
+night when he was eating his supper with his scalping-knife--a knife, by
+the way, with which he had taken, he informed us, three Black feet scalps
+--I asked him why he had come away with us from Battle River. Because he
+wanted to get rid of his wife, of whom he was tired, he replied. He had
+come off without saying any thing to her. "And what will happen to the
+wife?" I asked. "Oh, she will marry another brave when she finds me
+gone," he answered, laughing at the idea. I did not enter into the
+previous domestic events which had led to this separation, but I presume
+they were of a nature similar to those which are not altogether unknown
+in more civilized society, and I make no hesitation in offering to our
+legislators the example of my friend the Cree as tending to simplify the
+solution, or rather the dissolution, of that knotty point, the separation
+of couples who, for reasons best known to themselves, have ceased to
+love. Whether it was that the Cree found in Victoria a lady suitad to his
+fancy, or whether he had heard of a war-party against the Sircies, I
+cannot say, but he vanished during the night of our stay in the fort, and
+we saw him no more.
+
+As we journeyed on towards Edmonton the country maintained its rich and
+beautiful appearance, and the weather continued fine and mild. Every
+where nature had written in unmistakable characters the story of the
+fertility of the soil over which we rode--every where the eye looked upon
+panoramas filled with the beauty of lake and winding river, and grassy
+slope and undulating woodland. The whole face of the country was indeed
+one vast park. For two days we passed through this beautiful land,-and on
+the evening of the 28th November drew near to Edmonton. My party had been
+increased by the presence of two gentlemen from Victoria, a Wesleyan
+minister and the Hudson Bay official in charge of the Company's post at
+that place. Both of these gentlemen had resided long in the Upper
+Saskatchewan, and were intimately acquainted with the tribes who inhabit
+The vast territory from the Rocky Mountains to Carlton House. It was late
+in the evening, just one month after I had started from the banks of the
+Red River, that I approached the high palisades of Edmonton. As one who
+looks back at evening from the summit of some lofty ridge over the long
+track which he has followed since the morning, so now did my mind travel
+back over the immense distance through which I had ridden in twenty-two
+days of actual travel and in thirty-three of the entire journey-that
+distance could not have been less than 1000 miles; and as each camp scene
+rose again before me, with its surrounding of snow and storm-swept
+prairie and lonely clump of aspens, it seemed as though something like
+infinite space stretched between me and that far-away land which one word
+alone can picture, that one word in which so many others centre--Home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+Edmonton--The Ruffian Tahakooch--French Missionaries--Westward still--A
+beautiful Land--The Blackfeet-Horses--A "Bellox" Soldier--A Blackfoot
+Speech--The Indian Land--First Sight of the Rocky Mountains--The Mountain
+House--The Mountain Assineboines--An Indian Trade--M. la
+Combe--Fire-water--A Night Assault.
+
+EDMONTON, the head-quarters of the Hudson Bay Company's Saskatchewan
+trade, and the residence of a chief factor of the corporation, is a large
+five-sided fort with the usual flanking bastions and high stockades. It
+has within these stockades many commodious and well-built wooden houses,
+and differs in the cleanliness and order of its arrangements from the
+general run of trading forts in the Indian country. It stands on a high
+level bank 100 feet above the Saskatchewan River, which rolls below in a
+broad majestic stream, 300 yards in width. Farming operations,
+boat-building, and flour-milling are carried on extensively at the fort,
+and a blacksmith's forge is also kept going. My business with the officer
+in charge of Edmonton was soon concluded. It principally consisted in
+conferring upon him, by commission, the same high judicial functions
+which I have already observed had been entrusted to me before setting out
+for the Indian territories. There was one very serious drawback, however,
+to the possession of magisterial or other authority in the Saskatchewan,
+in as much as there existed no means whatever of putting that authority
+into force.
+
+The Lord High Chancellor of England, together with the Master of the
+Rolls and the twenty-four judges of different degrees, would be perfectly
+useless if placed in the Saskatchewan to put in execution the authority
+of the law. The Crees, Blackfeet, Peagins, and Sircies would doubtless
+have come to the conclusion that these high judicial functionaries were
+"very great medicines;" but beyond that conclusion, which they would have
+drawn more from the remarkable costume and head-gear worn by those
+exponents of the law than from the possession of any legal acumen, much
+would not have been attained. These considerations somewhat mollified the
+feelings of disappointment with which I now found myself face to face
+with the most desperate set of criminals, while I was utterly unable to
+enforce against them the majesty of my commission.
+
+First, there was the notorious Tahakooch-murderer, robber, and general
+scoundrel of deepest dye; then there was the sister of the above, a
+maiden of some twenty summers, who had also perpetrated the murder of two
+Black foot children close to Edmonton; then there was a youthful French
+half-breed who had killed his uncle at the settlement of Grand Lac, nine
+miles to the north-west; and, finally, there was my dinner companion at
+Saddle Lake, whose crime I only became aware of after I had left that
+locality. But this Tahakooch was a ruffian too desperate. Here was one of
+his murderous acts. A short time previous to my arrival two Sircies came
+to Edmonton. Tahakooch and two of his brothers were camped near the fort.
+Tahakooch professed friendship for the Sircies, and they went to his
+lodge. After a few days had passed the Sircies thought it was time to
+return to their tribe. Rumour said that the charms of the sister of
+Tahakooch had captivated either one or both of them, and that she had not
+been insensible to their admiration. Be this as it may, it was time to
+go; and so they prepared for the journey. An Indian will travel by night
+as readily as by day, and it was night when these men left the tent of
+Tahakooch.
+
+"We will go to the fort," said the host, "in order to get provisions for
+your journey."
+
+The party, three in number, went to the fort, and knocked at the gate for
+admittance. The man on watch at the gate, before unharring, looked from
+the bastion over the stockades, to see who might be the three men who
+sought an entrance. It was bright moonlight, and he noticed the shimmer
+of a gun-barrel under the blanket of Tahakooch. The Sircies were provided
+with some dried meat, and the party went away. The Sircies marched first
+in single file, then followed Tahakooch close behind them; the three
+formed one line. Suddenly, Tahakooch drew from beneath his blanket a
+short double-barrelled gun, and discharged both barrels into the back of
+the nearest Sircie. The bullets passed through one man into the body of
+the other, killing the nearest one instantly. The leading Sircie, though
+desperately wounded, ran fleetly along the moonlit path until, faint and
+bleeding, he fell. Tahakooch was close behind; but the villain's hand
+shook, and four times his shots missed the wounded wretch upon the
+ground. Summoning up all his strength, the Sircie sprung upon his
+assailant; a hand-to-hand struggle ensued; but the desperate wound was
+too much for him, he grew faint in his efforts, and the villain Tahakooch
+passed his knife into his victim's body. All this took place in the same
+year during which I reached Edmonton, and within sight of the walls of
+the fort. Tahakooch lived only a short distance away, and was a daily
+visitor at the fort.
+
+But to recount the deeds of blood enacted around the wooden walls of
+Edmonton Would be to fill a volume. Edmonton and Fort Pitt both stand
+within the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, and are consequently
+the scenes of many conflicts between these fierce and implacable enemies.
+Hitherto my route has led through the Cree country, hitherto we have seen
+only the prairies and woods through which the Crees hunt and camp; but my
+wanderings are yet far from their end. To the south-west, for many and
+many a mile, lie the wide regions of the Blackfeet and the mountain
+Assineboines; and into these regions I am about to push my way. It is a
+wild, lone land guarded by the giant peaks of mountains whose snow-capped
+summits lift themselves 17,000 feet above the sea level. It is the
+birth-place of waters which seek in four mighty streams the four distant
+oceans--the Polar Sea, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific.
+
+A few miles north-west of Edmonton a settlement composed exclusively of
+French half-breeds is situated on the shores of a rather extensive lake
+which bears the name of the Grand Lac, or St. Albert. This settlement is
+presided over by a mission of French Roman Catholic clergymen of the
+order of Oblates, headed by a bishop of the same order and nationality.
+It is a curious contrast to find in this distant and strange land men of
+culture and high mental excellence devoting their lives to the task of
+civilizing the wild Indians of the forest and the prairie--going far in
+advance of the settler, whose advent they have but too much cause to
+dread. I care not what may be the form of belief which the on-looker may
+hold--whether it be in unison or in antagonism with that faith preached
+by these men; but he is only a poor semblance of a man who can behold
+such a sight through the narrow glass of sectarian feeling, holding'
+opinions foreign to his own. He who has travelled through the vast
+colonial empire of Britain--that empire which covers one third of the
+entire habitable surface of the globe and probably half of the lone lands
+of the world must often have met with men dwelling in the midst of wild,
+savage peoples whom they tended with a strange and mother-like devotion.
+If you asked who was this stranger who dwelt thus among wild men in these
+Lone places, you were told he was the French missionary; and if you
+sought him in his lonely hut, you found ever the same surroundings, the
+same simple evidences of a faith which seemed more than human. I do not
+speak from hearsay or book-knowledge. I have myself witnessed the scenes
+I now try to recall. And it has ever been the same, East and West, far in
+advance of trader or merchant, of sailor or soldier, has gone this
+dark-haired, fragile man, whose earliest memories are thick with sunny
+scenes by bank of Loire or vine-clad slope of Rhone or Garonne, and whose
+vision in this life, at least, is never destined to rest again upon these
+oft-remembered places. Glancing through a pamphlet one day at Edmonton, a
+pamphlet which recorded the progress of a Canadian Wesleyan Missionary
+Society, I read the following extract from the letter of a Western
+missionary:--"These representatives of the Man of Sin, these priests, are
+hard-workers; summer and winter they follow the camps, suffering great
+privations. They are indefatigable in their efforts to make converts, but
+their converts," he adds, "have never heard of the Holy Ghost." "The man
+of sin "--which of us is without it? To these French missionaries at
+Grand Lac I was the bearer of terrible tidings. I carried to them the
+story of Sedan, the overwhelming rush of armed Germany into the heart of
+France, the closing of the high-schooled hordes of Teuton savagery around
+Paris; all that was hard home news to: hear. Fate had leant heavily upon
+their little congregation; out of 900 souls more than 300 had perished of
+small-pox up to the date of my arrival, and others were still sick in the
+huts along the lake. Well might the bishop and his priests bow their
+heads in the midst of such manifold tribulations of death and disaster.
+
+By the last day of November my preparations for further travel into the
+regions lying west of Edmonton were completed, and at midday on the 1st
+December I set out for the Rocky Mountain House. This station, the most
+Western and southern held by the Hudson Bay Company in the Saskatchewan,
+is distant from Edmonton about 180 miles by horse trail, and 211 miles by
+river. I was provided with five fresh horses, two good guides, and I
+carried letters to merchants in the United States, should fortune permit
+me to push through the great stretch of Blackfoot country lying on the
+northern borders of the American territory; for it was my intention to
+leave the Mountain House as soon as possible, and to endeavour to cross
+by rapid marches the 400 miles of plains to some of the mining cities of
+Montana or Idaho; the principal difficulty lay, however, in the
+reluctance of men to come with me into the country of the Blackfeet. At
+Edmonton only one man spoke the Blackfoot tongue, and the offer of high
+wages failed to induce him to attempt the journey. He was a splendid
+specimen of a half-breed; he had married a Blackfoot squaw, and spoke
+the difficult language with fluency; but he had lost nearly all his
+relations in the fatal plague, and his answer was full of quiet thought
+when asked to be my guide.
+
+"It is a work of peril," he said, "to pass the Blackfoot country all'
+pitching along the foot of the mountains; they will see our trail in the
+snow, follow it, and steal our horses, or perhaps worse still. At another
+time I would attempt it, but death has been too heavy upon my friends,
+and I don't feel that I can go."
+
+It was still possible, however, that at the Mountain House I might find
+a guide ready to attempt the journey, and my kind host at Edmonton
+provided me with letters to facilitate my procuring all supplies from his
+subordinate officer at that station. Thus fully accoutred and prepared to
+meet the now rapidly increasing severity of the winter, I started on the
+1st December for the mountains. It-was a bright, beautiful day. I was
+alone with my two retainers; before me lay an uncertain future, but so
+many curious scenes had been passed in safety during the last six months
+of my life, that I recked little of what was before me, drawing a kind of
+blind confidence from the thought that so much could not have been in
+vain. Crossing the now fast-frozen Saskatchewan, we ascended the southern
+bank and entered upon a rich country watered with many streams and
+wooded with park-like clumps of aspen and pine. My two retainers were
+first-rate fellows. One spoke English very fairly: he was a brother of
+the bright-eyed little beauty at Fort Pitt. The other, Paul Foyale, was a
+thick, stout-set man, a good voyageur, and excellent-in camp. Both were
+noted travellers, and both had suffered severely in the epidemic of the
+small-pox. Paul had lost his wife and child, and Rowland's children had
+all had the disease, but had recovered. As for any idea about taking
+infection from men coming out of places where that infection existed,
+that would have been the merest foolishness; at least, Paul and Rowland
+thought so, and as they were destined to be my close companions for some
+days, cooking for me, tying up my blankets, and sleeping beside me, it
+was just as well to put a good face upon the matter and trust once more
+to the glorious doctrine of chance. Besides, they were really such good
+fellows, princes among voyayeurs, that, small-pox or no small-pox, they
+were first-rate company for any ordinary mortal. For two days we jogged
+merrily along. The Musquashis or Bears Hill rose before us and faded away
+into blue distance behind us. After sundown on the 2nd we camped in a
+thicket of large aspens by the high bank of the Battle River, the same
+stream at whose mouth nearly 400 miles away I had found the Crees a
+fortnight before. On the 3rd December we crossed this river, and,
+quitting the Blackfeet trail, struck in a south-westerly direction
+through a succession of grassy hills with partially wooded valleys and
+small frozen lakes. A glorious country to ride over--a country in which
+the eye ranged across miles and miles of fair-lying hill and
+long-stretching valley; a silent, beautiful land upon which summer had
+stamped so many traces, that December had so far been powerless to efface
+their beauty. Close by to the south lay the country of the great
+Blackfeet nation--that wild, restless tribe whose name has been a terror
+to other tribes and to trader and trapper for many and many a year. Who
+and what are these wild dusky men who have held their own against all
+comers, sweeping like a whirlwind over the sand deserts of the central
+continent? They speak a tongue distinct from all other Indian tribes;
+they have ceremonies and feasts wholly different, too, from the feasts
+and ceremonies of other nations; they are at war with every nation that
+touches the wide circle of their boundaries; the Crows, the Flatheads,
+the Kootenies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, the Crees, the Plain
+Assineboines, the Minnitarrees, all are and have been the inveterate
+enemies of the five confederate nations which form together the great
+Blackfeet tribe. Long years ago, when their great forefather crossed the
+Mountains of the Setting Sun and settled along the sources of the
+Missouri and the South Saskatchewan, so runs the legend of their old
+chiefs, it came to pass that a chief had three sons, Kenna, or The Blood,
+Peaginou, or The Wealth, and a third who was nameless. The two first were
+great hunters, they brought to their father's lodge rich store of moose
+and elk meat, and the buffalo fell before their unerring arrows; but the
+third, or nameless one, ever returned empty-handed from the chase, until
+his brothers mocked him for his want of skill. One day the old chief said
+to this unsuccessful hunter, "My son, you cannot kill the moose, your
+arrows shun the buffalo, the elk is too fleet for your footsteps, and
+your brothers mock you because you bring no meat into the lodge; but see,
+I will make you a great hunter." And the old chief took from the
+lodge-fire a piece of burnt stick, and, wetting it, he rubbed the feet of
+his son with the blackened charcoal, and he named him Sat-Sia-qua, or The
+Blackfeet, and evermore Sat-Sia-qua was a mighty hunter, and his arrows
+flew straight to the buffalo, and his feet moved swift in the chase. From
+these three sons are descended the three tribes of Blood, Peaginou, and
+Blackfeet, but in addition, for many generations, two other tribes or
+portions of tribes have been admitted into the confederacy; These are the
+Sircies, on the north, a branch, or offshoot from the Chipwayans of the
+Athabasca; and the Gros Ventres, or Atsinas, on the southeast, a branch
+from the Arrapahoe nation who dwelt along the sources of the Platte. How
+these branches became detached from the parent stocks has never been
+determined, but to this day they speak the languages of their original
+tribe in addition to that of the adopted one. The parent tongue of the
+Sircies is harsh and guttural, that of the Blackfeet is rich and musical;
+and while the Sircies always speak Blackfeet in addition to their own
+tongue, the Blackfeet rarely master the language of the Sircies.
+
+War, as we have already said, is the sole toil and thought of the red
+man's life. He has three great causes of fight: to steal a horse, take a
+scalp, or get a wife. I regret to have to write that the possession of a
+horse is valued before that of a wife-and this has been the case for many
+years. "A horse," writes McKenzie, "is valued at ten guns, a woman is
+only worth one gun;" but at that time horses were scarcer than at
+present. Horses have been a late importation, comparatively speaking,
+into the Indian country. They travelled rapidly north from Mexico, and
+the prairies soon became covered with the Spanish mustang, for whose
+possession the red man killed his brother with singular pertinacity. The
+Indian to-day believes that the horse has ever dwelt with him on the
+Western deserts, but that such is not the case his own language
+undoubtedly tells. It is curious to compare the different names which the
+wild men gave the new-comer who was destined to work such evil among
+them. In Cree, a dog is called "Atim," and a horse, "Mistatim," or the
+"Big Dog." In the Assineboine tongue the horse is called "Sho-a-th-in-ga,"
+"Thongatch shonga," a great dog. In Blackfeet, "Po-no-ka-mi-taa" signifies
+the horse; and "Po-no-ko" means red deer, and "Emita," a dog--the "Red-deer
+Dog." But the Sircies made the best name of all for the new-comer; they
+called him the "Chistli" "Chis," seven, "Li," dogs "Seven Dogs." Thus
+we have him called the big dog, the great dog, the red-deer dog, the
+seven dogs, and the red dog, or "It-shou-ma-shungu," by the Gros Ventres.
+The dog was their universal beast of burthen, and so they multiplied the
+name in many ways to enable it to define the Superior powers of the
+new beast.
+
+But a far more formidable enemy than Crow or Cree has lately come in
+contact with the Blackfeet--an enemy before whom all his stratagem, all
+his skill with lance or arrow, all his dexterity of horsemanship is of no
+avail. The "Moka-manus" (the Big-knives), the white men, have pushed up
+the great Missouri River into the heart of the Blackfeet country, the
+fire-canoes have forced their way along the muddy waters, and behind them
+a long chain of armed posts have arisen to hold in check the wild roving
+races of Dakota and the Montana. It is a useless struggle that which
+these Indians wage against their latest and most deadly enemy, but
+nevertheless it is one in which the sympathy of any brave heart must lie
+on the side of the savage. Here, at the head-waters of the great River
+Missouri which finds its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico-here, pent up
+against the barriers of the "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the Blackfeet
+offer a last despairing struggle to the ever-increasing tide that hems
+them in. It is not yet two years since a certain citizen soldier of the
+United States made a famous raid against a portion of this tribe at the
+head-waters of the Missouri. It so happened that I had the opportunity of
+hearing this raid described from the rival points of view of the Indian
+and the white man, and, if possible, the brutality of the latter--brutality
+which was gloried in--exceeded the relation of the former. Here is
+the story of the raid as told me by a miner whose "pal" was present in
+the scene. "It was a little afore day when the boys came upon two
+redskins in a gulch near-away to the Sun River" (the Sun River flows into
+the Missouri, and the forks lie below Benton). "They caught the darned
+red devils and strapped them on a horse, and swore that if they didn't
+just lead the way to their camp that they'd blow their b---- brains out;
+and Jim Baker wasn't the coon to go under if he said he'd do it--no, you
+bet he wasn't. So the red devils showed the trail, and soon the boys came
+out on a wide gulch, and saw down below the lodges of the Pagans. Baker
+just says, 'Now, boys, says he, 'thar's the devils, and just you go in
+and clear them out. No darned prisoners, you know; Uncle Sam ain't agoin'
+to keep prisoners, I guess. No darned squaws or young uns, but just
+kill'em all, squaws and all; it's them squaws what breeds'em, and them
+young uns will only be horse-thieves or hair-lifters when they grows up;
+so just make a clean shave of the hull brood. Wall, mister, ye see, the
+boys jist rode in among the lodges afore daylight, and they killed every
+thing that was able to come out of the tents, for, you see, the redskins
+had the small-pox bad, they had, and a heap of them couldn't come out
+nohow; so the boys jist turned over the lodges and fixed them as they lay
+on the ground. Thar was up to 170 of them Pagans wiped out that mornin',
+and thar was only one of the boys sent under by a redskin firing out at
+him from inside a lodge. I say, mister, that Baker's a bell-ox among
+sodgers, you bet."
+
+One month after this slaughter on the Sun River a band of Peagins were
+met on the Bow River by a French missionary priest, the only missionary
+whose daring spirit has carried him into the country of these redoubled
+tribes. They told him of the cruel loss their tribe had suffered at the
+hands of the "Long-knives;" but they spoke of it as the fortune of war,
+as a thing to be deplored, but to be also revenged: it was after the
+manner of their own war, and it did not strike them as brutal or
+cowardly; for, alas! they knew no better. But what shall be said of these
+heroes--the outscourings of Europe--who, under the congenial guidance of
+that "bell-ox" soldier Jim Baker, "wiped out them Pagan redskins"? This
+meeting of the missionary with the Indians was in: its way singular. The
+priest, thinking that the loss of so many lives would teach the tribe how
+useless must be a war carried on against-the Americans, and how its end
+must inevitably be the complete destruction of the Indians, asked the
+chief to assemble his band to listen to his counsel and advice. They met
+together in the council-tent, and then the priest began. He told them
+that "their recent loss was only the beginning of their destruction, that
+the Long knives had countless braves, guns and rifles beyond number,
+fleet steeds, and huge war-canoes, and that it was useless for the poor
+wild man to attempt to stop their progress through the great Western
+solitudes." He asked them "why were their faces black and their hearts
+heavy? was it not for their relatives and friends so lately killed, and
+would it not be better to make peace while yet they could do it, and thus
+save the lives of their remaining friends?"
+
+While thus he spoke there reigned a deep silence through the council-tent,
+each one looked fixedly at the ground before him; but when the
+address was over the chief rose quietly, and, casting around a look full
+of dignity, he asked, "My brother, have you done, or is there aught you
+would like yet to say to us?"
+
+To this the priest made answer that he had no more to say.
+
+"It is well," answered the Indian; "and listen now to what I say to you;
+but first," he said, turning to his men, "you, my brethren, you, my sons,
+who sit around me, if there should be aught in my words from which you
+differ, if I say one word that you would not say yourselves, stop me, and
+say to this black-robe I speak with a forked tongue." Then, turning again
+to the priest, he continued, "You have spoken true, your words come
+straight; the Long-knives are too many and too strong for us; their guns
+shoot farther than ours, their big guns shoot twice" (alluding to shells
+which exploded after they fell); "their numbers are as the buffalo were
+in the days of our fathers. But what of all that? do you want us to
+starve on the land which is ours? to lie down as slaves to the white man,
+to die away one by one in misery and hunger? It is true that the
+long-knives must kill us, but I say still, to my children and to my
+tribe, fight on, fight on, fight on! go on fighting to the very last man;
+and let that last man go on fighting too, for it is better to die thus,
+as a brave man should die, than to live a little time and then die like a
+coward. So now, my brethren, I tell you, as I have told you before, keep
+fighting still. When you see these men coming along the river, digging
+holes in the ground and looking for the little bright sand" (gold), "kill
+them, for they mean to kill you; fight, and if it must be, die, for you
+can only die once, and it is better to die than to starve."
+
+He ceased, and a universal hum of approval running through the dusky
+warriors told how truly the chief had spoken the thoughts of his
+followers; Again he said, "What does the white man want in our land? You
+tell us he is rich and strong, and has plenty of food to eat; for what
+then does he come to our land? We have only the buffalo, and he takes
+that from us. See the buffalo, how they dwell with us; they care not for
+the closeness of our lodges, the smoke of our camp-fires does not fright
+them, the shouts of our young men will not drive them away; but behold
+how they flee from the sight, the sound, and the smell of the white man!
+Why does he take the land from us? who sent him here? He puts up sticks,
+and he calls the land his land, the river his river, the trees his trees.
+Who gave him the ground, and the water, and the trees? was it the Great
+Spirit? No; for the Great Spirit gave to us the beasts and the fish, and
+the white man comes to take the waters and the ground where these fishes
+and these beasts live--why does he not take the sky as well as the
+ground? We who have dwelt on these prairies ever since the stars fell"
+(an epoch from which the Blackfeet are fond of dating, their antiquity)
+"do not put sticks over the land and say, Between these sticks this land
+is mine; you shall not come here or go there."
+
+Fortunate is it for these Blackfeet tribes that their hunting grounds lie
+partly on British territory--from where our midday camp was made on the
+2nd December to the boundary-line at the 49th parallel, fully 180 miles
+of plain knows only the domination of the Blackfeet tribes. Here, around
+this midday camp, lies spread a fair and fertile land; but close by,
+scarce half a day's journey to the south, the sandy plains begin to
+supplant the rich grass-covered hills, and that immense central desert
+commences to spread out those ocean-like expanses which find their
+southern limits far down by the waters of the Canadian River,1200 miles
+due south of the Saskatchewan. This immense central sandy plateau is the
+true home of the bison. Here were raised for countless ages these huge
+herds whose hollow tramp shook the solid roof of America during the
+countless cycles which it remained unknown to man. Here, too, was the
+true home of the Indian: the Commanche, the Apache, the Kio-wa, the
+Arapahoe, the Shienne, the Crow, the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Omahaw, the
+Mandan, the Manatarree, the Blackfeet, the Cree, and the Assineboine
+divided between them the immense region, warring and wandering through
+the vast expanses until the white race from the East pushed their way
+into the land, and carved out states and territories from the Mississippi
+to the Rocky Mountains. How it came to pass in the building of the world
+that to the north of that great region of sand and waste should spread
+out suddenly the fair country of the Saskatchewan, I must leave to the
+guess-work of other and more scientific writers; but the fact remains,
+that alone, from Texas to the sub-Arctic forest, the Saskatchewan Valley
+lays its fair length for 800 miles in mixed fertility.
+
+But we must resume our Western way. The evening of the 3rd December found
+us crossing a succession of wooded hills which divide the water system of
+the North from that of the South Saskatchewan. These systems come so
+close together at this region, that while my midday kettle was filled
+with water which finds its way through Battle River into the North
+Saskatchewan, that of my evening meal was taken from the ice of the
+Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's; River, whose waters seek through Red Deer
+River the South Saskatchewan.
+
+It was near sunset when we rode by the lonely shores of the Gull Lake,
+whose frozen surface stretched beyond the horizon to the north. Before
+us, at a distance of some ten miles, lay the abrupt line of the Three
+Medicine Hills, from whose gorges the first view of the great range of
+the Rocky Mountains was destined to burst upon my sight; But not on this
+day was I to behold that long-looked-for vision. Night came quickly down
+upon the silent wilderness; and it was long after dark when we made our
+camps by the bank of the Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's River, and turned
+adrift the weary horses to graze in a well-grassed meadow lying in one of
+the curves of the river. We had ridden more than sixty miles that day.
+
+About midnight a heavy storm of snow burst upon us, and daybreak revealed
+the whole camp buried deep in snow. As I threw back the blankets from my
+head (one always lies covered up completely), the wet, cold mass struck
+chillily upon my face. The snow was wet and sticky, and therefore things
+were much more wretched than if the temperature had been lower; but the
+hot tea made matters seem brighter, and about breakfast-time the snow
+ceased to fall and the clouds began to clear away. Packing our wet
+blankets together, we set out for the three Medicine Hills, through whose
+defiles our course lay; the snow was deep in the narrow valleys, making
+travelling slower and more laborious than before. It was midday when,
+having rounded the highest of the three hills, we entered a narrow gorge
+fringed with a fire-ravaged forest. This gorge wound through the hills,
+preventing a far-reaching view ahead; but at length its western
+termination was reached, and there lay before me a sight to be long
+remembered. The great chain of the Rocky Mountains rose their snow-clad
+sierras in endless succession. Climbing one of the eminences, I gained a
+vantage-point on the summit from which some by-gone fire had swept the
+trees. Then, looking west, I beheld the great range in unclouded glory.
+The snow had cleared the atmosphere, the sky was coldly bright. An
+immense plain stretched from my feet to the mountain--a plain so vast
+that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one
+continuous level, and at the back of this level, beyond the pines and the
+lakes and the river-courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable,
+silent--a mighty barrier rising-midst an immense land, standing sentinel
+over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes
+of this Great Lone Land. Here, at last, lay the Rocky Mountains.
+
+Leaving behind the Medicine Hills, we descended into the plain and held
+our way until sunset towards the west. It was a calm and beautiful
+evening; far away objects stood out sharp and distinct in the pure
+atmosphere of these elevated regions. For some hours we had lost sight of
+the mountains, but shortly before sunset the summit of a long ridge was
+gained, and they burst suddenly into view in greater magnificence than at
+midday. Telling my men to go on and make the camp at the Medicine River,
+I rode through some fire-wasted forest to a lofty grass-covered height
+which the declining sun was bathing in floods of glory. I cannot hope to
+put into the compass of words the scene which lay rolled beneath from
+this sunset-lighted eminence; for, as I looked over the immense plain and
+watched the slow descent of the evening sun upon the frosted crest of
+these lone mountains, it seemed as if the varied scenes of my long
+journey had woven themselves into the landscape, filling with the music
+of memory the earth, the sky, and the mighty panorama of mountains. Here
+at length lay the barrier to my onward wanderings, here lay the boundary
+to that 4000 miles of unceasing travel which had carried me by so many
+varied scenes so far into the lone-land; and other thoughts were not
+wanting. The peaks on which I gazed were no pigmies; they stood the
+culminating monarchs of the mighty range of the Rocky Mountains. From the
+estuary of the Mackenzie to the Lake of Mexico no point of the American
+continent reaches higher to the skies. That eternal crust of snow seeks
+in summer widely-severed oceans. The Mackenzie, the Columbia, and the
+Saskatchewan spring from the peaks whose teeth-like summits lie grouped
+from this spot into the compass of a single glance. The clouds that cast
+their moisture upon this long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean
+which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic,
+Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness
+began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the
+pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in
+many-coloured silver, and then the lonely peaks grew dark and dim.
+
+As thus I watched from the silent hill-top this great mountain-chain,
+whose summits slept in the glory of the sunset, it seemed no stretch of
+fancy which made the red man place his paradise beyond their golden
+peaks. The "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the "Bridge of the World,"
+Thus he has named them, and beyond them the soul first catches a glimpse
+of that mystical land where the tents are pitched midst everlasting
+verdure and countless herds and the music of ceaseless streams.
+
+That night there came a frost, the first of real severity that had fallen
+upon us. At daybreak next morning, the 5th December, my thermometer
+showed 22 degrees below zero, and, in spite of buffalo boots and moose
+"mittaines," the saddle proved a freezing affair; many a time I got down
+and trotted on in front of my horse until feet and hands, cased as they
+were, began to be felt again. But the morning, though piercingly cold,
+was bright with sunshine, and the snowy range was lighted up in many a
+fair hue, and the contrasts of pine wood and snow and towering wind-swept
+cliff showed in rich beauty. As the day wore on we entered the pine
+forest which stretches to the base of the mountains, and emerged suddenly
+upon the high banks of the Saskatchewan. The river here ran in a deep,
+wooded valley, over the western extremity of which rose the Rocky
+Mountains; the windings of the river showed distinctly from the height on
+which we stood; and in mid-distance the light blue smoke of the Mountain
+House curled in fair contrast from amidst a mass of dark green pines.
+
+Leaving my little party to get my baggage across the Clear Water River, I
+rode on ahead to the fort. While yet a long way off we had been descried
+by the watchful eyes of some Rocky Mountain Assineboines, and our arrival
+had been duly telegraphed to the officer in charge. As usual, the
+excitement was intense to know what the strange party could mean. The
+denizens of the place looked upon themselves as closed up for the
+winter, and the arrival of a party with a baggage-cart at such a time
+betokened something unusual. Nor was this excitement at all lessened when
+in answer to a summons from the opposite bank of the Saskatchewan I
+announced my name and place of departure. The river was still open, its
+rushing waters had resisted so far the efforts of the winter to cover
+them up, but the ice projected a considerable distance from either shore;
+the open water in the centre was, however, shallow, and when the rotten
+ice had been cut away on each side I was able to force my horse into it.
+In he went with a great splash, but he kept his feet nevertheless; then
+at the other side the people of the fort had cut away the ice too, and
+again the horse scrambled safely up. The long ride to the West was over;
+exactly forty-one days earlier I had left Red River, and in twenty-seven
+days of actual travel I had ridden 1180 miles.
+
+The Rocky Mountain House of the Hudson Bay Company stands in a level
+meadow which is clear of trees, although dense forest lies around it at
+some little distance. It is indifferently situated with regard to the
+Indian trade, being too far from the Plain Indians, who seek in the
+American posts along the Missouri a nearer and more profitable exchange
+for their goods; while the wooded district in which it lies produces furs
+of a second-class quality, and has for years been deficient in game. The
+neighbouring forest, however, supplies a rich store of the white spruce
+for boat-building, and several full-sized Hudson Bay boats are built
+annually at the fort. Coal of very fair quality is also plentiful along
+the river banks, and the forge glows with the ruddy light of a real coal
+fire--a friendly sight when one has not seen it during many months. The
+Mountain House stands within the limits of the Rocky Mountain
+Assineboines, a branch of-the once famous Assineboines of the Plains
+whose wars in times not very remote made them the terror of the prairies
+which lie between the middle Missouri and the Saskatchewan. The
+Assineboines derive their name, which signifies "stone-heaters," from a
+custom in vogue among them before the advent of the traders into their
+country. Their manner of boiling meat was as follows: a round hole was
+scooped in the earth, and into the hole was sunk a piece of raw hide;
+this was filled with water, and the buffalo meat placed in it, then a
+fire was lighted close by and a number of round stones made red hot; in
+this state they were dropped into, or held in, the water, which was thus
+raised to boiling temperature and the meat cooked. When the white man
+came he sold his kettle to the stone-heaters, and henceforth the practice
+disappeared, while the name it had given rise to remained--a name which
+long after the final extinction of the tribe will still exist in the
+River Assineboine and its surroundings. Nothing testifies more
+conclusively to the varied changes and vicissitude's Indian tribes than
+the presence of this branch of the Assineboine nation in the pine forests
+of the Rocky Mountains. It is not yet a hundred years since the
+"Ossinepoilles" were found by one of the earliest traders inhabiting the
+country between the head of the Pasquayah or Saskatchewan and the
+country of the Sioux, a stretch of territory fully 900 miles in length.
+
+Twenty years later they still were numerous along the whole line of the
+North Saskatchewan, and their lodges were at intervals seen along a
+river line of 800 miles in length, but even then a great change had come
+upon them. In 1780 the first epidemic of small-pox swept over the Western
+plains, and almost annihilated the powerful Assineboines. The whole
+central portion of the tribe was destroyed, but the outskirting portions
+drew together and again made themselves a terror to trapper and trader.
+In 1821 they were noted for their desperate forays, and for many years
+later a fierce conflict raged between them and the Blackfeet; under the
+leadership of a chief still famous in Indian story--Tehatka, or the
+"Left-handed;" they for a long time more than held their own against
+these redoubtable warriors. Tehatka was a medicine-man of the first
+order, and by the exercise of his superior cunning and dream power he was
+implicitly relied on by his followers; at length fortune deserted him,
+and he fell in a bloody battle with the Gros Ventres near the Knife
+River, a branch of the Missouri, in 1837. About the same date small-pox
+again swept the tribe, and they almost disappeared from the prairies. The
+Crees too pressed down from the North and East, and occupied a
+great-portion of their territory; the Blackfeet smote them hard on the
+south-west frontier; and thus, between foes and disease, the Assineboines
+of to-day have dwindled down into far-scattered remnants of tribes.
+Warned by the tradition of the frightful losses of earlier times from the
+ravages of small-pox, the Assineboines this year kept far out in the
+great central prairie along the coteau, and escaped the infection
+altogether, but their cousins, the Rocky Mountain Stonies, were not so
+fortunate, they lost some of their bravest men during the pre ceding
+summer and autumn. Even under the changed circumstances of their present
+lives, dwelling amidst the forests and rocks instead of in the plains and
+open country, these Assineboines of the Mountains retain many of the
+better characteristics of their race; they are brave and skilful men,
+good hunters of red deer, moose, and big horn, and are still held in
+dread by the Blackfeet, who rarely venture into their country. They are
+well acquainted with the valleys and passes through the mountains, and
+will probably take a horse over as rough ground as any men in the
+creation.
+
+At the ford on the Clear Water River, half a mile from the Mountain
+House, a small clump of old pine-trees stands on the north side of the
+stream. A few years ago a large band of Blood Indians camped round this
+clump of pines during a trading expedition to the Mountain House. They
+were under the leadership of two young chiefs, brothers. One evening a
+dispute about some trifling matter arose, words ran high, there was a
+flash of a scalping-knife, a plunge, and one brother reeled back with a
+fearful gash in his side, the other stalked slowly to his tent, and sat
+down silent and impassive. The wounded man loaded his gun, and keeping
+the fatal wound closed together with one hand walked steadily to his
+brothers tent; pulling back the door-casing, he placed the muzzle of his
+gun to the heart of the man who sat immovable all the time, and shot him
+dead, then, removing his hand from his own mortal wound, he fell lifeless
+beside his brother's body. They buried the two brothers in the same grave
+by the shadow of the dark pine-trees. The band to which the chiefs
+belonged broke up and moved away into the great plains--the reckoning of
+blood had been paid, and the account was closed. Many tales of Indian war
+and revenge could I tell--tales gleaned from trader and missionary and
+voyageur, and told by camp-fire or distant trading post, but there is no
+time to recount them now, a long period of travel lies before me and I
+must away to enter upon it; the scattered thread must be gathered up and
+tied together too quickly, perhaps, for the success of this wandering
+story, but not an hour too soon for the success of another expedition
+into a still farther and more friendless region. Eight days passed
+pleasantly at the Mountain House; rambles by day into the neighbouring
+hills, stories of Indian life and prairie scenes at the evening fire
+filled up the time, and it was near mid-December before I thought of
+moving my quarters.
+
+The Mountain House is perhaps the most singular specimen of an Indian
+trading post to be found in the wide territory of the Hudson Bay Company.
+Every precaution known to the traders has been put in force to prevent
+the possibility of surprise during "a trade." Bars and bolts and places
+to fire down at the Indians who are trading abound in every direction; so
+dreaded is the name borne by the Black feet, that it is thus their
+trading post has been constructed. Some fifty years ago the Company had
+a post far south on the Bow River in the very heart of the Blackfeet
+country. Despite of all precautions it was frequently plundered And at
+last burnt down by the Blackfeet, and since that date no attempt has ever
+been made to erect another fort in their country.
+
+Still, I believe the Blackfeet and their confederates are not nearly so
+bad as they have been painted, those among the Hudson Bay Company who are
+best acquainted with them are of the same opinion, and, to use the words
+of Pe to-pee, or the Perched Eagle, to Dr. Hector in 1857, "We see but
+little of the white man," he said, "and our young men do not know how to
+behave; but if you come among us, the chiefs will restrain the young men,
+for we have power over them. But look at the Crees, they have long lived
+in the company of white men, and nevertheless they are just like dogs,
+they try to bite when your head is turned--they have no manners; but the
+Blackfeet have large hearts and they love to show hospitality." Without
+going the length of Pe-to-pee in this estimate of the virtues of his
+tribe, I am still of opinion that under proper management these wild
+wandering men might be made trusty friends. We have been too much
+inclined to believe all the bad things said of them by other tribes, and,
+as they are at war with every nation around them, the wickedness of the
+Blackfeet'has grown into a proverb among men. But to go back to the
+trading house. When the Blackfeet arrive on a trading visit to the
+Mountain House they usually come in large numbers, prepared for a brush
+with either Crees or Stonies. The camp is formed at some distance from
+the fort, and the braves, having piled their robes, leather, and
+provisions on the backs of their wives or their horses, approach in long
+cavalcade. The officer goes out to meet them, and the gates are closed.
+Many speeches are made, and the chief, to show his "big heart," usually
+piles on top of a horse a heterogeneous mass of buffalo robes, pemmican,
+and dried meat, and hands horse and all he carries over to the trader.
+After such a present no man can possibly enter tain for a moment a doubt
+upon the subject of the big-heartedness of the donor, but if, in the
+trade which ensues: after this present has been made, it should happen
+that fifty horses are bought by the Company, not one of all the band will
+cost so dear as that which demonstrates the large heartedness of the
+brave.
+
+Money-values are entirely unknown in these trades. The values of articles
+are computed by "skins;" for instance, a horse will be reckoned at 60
+skins; and these 60 skins will be given thus: a gun, 15 skins; a capote,
+10 skins; a blanket, 10 skins; ball and powder, 10 skins; tobacco, 15
+skins total, 60 skins. The Bull Ermine, or the Four Bears, or the Red
+Daybreak, or whatever may be the brave's name, hands over the horse, and
+gets in return a blanket, a gun, a capote, ball and powder, and tobacco.
+The term "skin" is a very old one in the fur trade; the original
+standard, the beaver skin or, as it was called, "the made beaver" was
+the medium of exchange, and every other skin and article of trade was
+graduated upon the scale of the beaver; thus a beaver, or a skin, was
+reckoned equivalent to 1 mink skin, one marten was equal to 2 skins, one
+black fox 20 skins, and so on; in the same manner, a blanket, a capote, a
+gun, or a kettle had their different values in skins. This being
+explained, we will now proceed with the trade.
+
+Sapoomaxica, or the Big Crow's Foot, having demonstrated the bigness of
+his heart, and received in return a tangible proof of the corresponding
+size of the trader's, addresses his braves, cautioning them against
+violence or rough behaviour. The braves, standing ready with their
+peltries, are in a high state of excitement to begin the trade. Within
+the fort all the preparations have been completed, communication cut off
+between the Indian room and the rest of the buildings, guns placed up in
+the loft overhead, and men all get ready for any thing that might turn
+up; then the outer gate is thrown open, and a large throng enters the
+Indian room. Three or four of the first-comers are now admitted through
+a narrow passage into the trading-shop, from the shelves of which most
+of the blankets, red cloth, and beads have been removed, for the red man
+brought into the presence of so much finery would unfortunately behave
+very much after the manner of a hungry boy put in immediate
+juxtaposition to bath-buns, cream-cakes, and jam-fritters, to the
+complete collapse of profit upon the trade to the Hudson Bay Company.
+The first Indians admitted hand in their peltries through a wooden
+grating, and receive in exchange so many blankets, beads, or strouds.
+Out they go to the large hall where their comrades are anxiously
+awaiting their turn, and in rush another batch, and the doors are locked
+again. The reappearance of the fortunate braves with the much-coveted
+articles of finery adds immensely to the excitement. What did they see
+inside? "Oh, not much, only a few dozen blankets and a few guns, and a
+little tea and sugar;" this is terrible news for the outsiders, and the
+crush to get\in increases tenfold, under the belief that the good things
+will all be gone. So the trade progresses, until at last all the
+peltries and provisions have changed hands, and there is nothing more to
+be traded; but some times things do not run quite so smoothly.
+Sometimes, when the stock of pemmican or robes is small, the braves
+object to see their "pile" go for a little parcel of tea or sugar. The
+steelyard and weighing-balance are their especial objects of dislike.
+"What for you put on one side tea or sugar, and on the other a little
+bit of iron?" they say; "we don't know what that medicine is-but, look
+here, put on one side of that thing that swings a bag of pemmican, and
+put on the other side blankets and tea and sugar, and then, when the two
+sides stop swinging, you take the bag of pemmican and we will take the
+blankets and the tea: that would be fair, for one side will be as big as
+the other." This is a very bright idea on the part of the Four Bears,
+and elicits universal satisfaction all round. Four Bears and his
+brethren are, however, a little bit put out of conceit when the trader
+observes, "Well, let be as you say. We will make the balance swing
+level between the bag of pemmican and the blankets, but we will carry
+out the idea still further. You will put your marten skins and your
+otter and fisher skins on one side, I will put against them on the other
+my blankets, and my gun and ball and powder; then, when both sides are
+level, you will take the ball and powder and the blankets, and I will
+take the marten and the rest of the fine furs." This proposition throws
+a new light upon the question of weighing-machines and steelyards, and,
+after some little deliberation, it is resolved to abide by the old plan
+of letting the white trader decide the weight himself in his own way,
+for it is clear that the steelyard is a great medicine which no brave
+can understand, and which can only be manipulated by a white
+medicine-man.
+
+This white medicine-man was in olden times a terrible demon in the eyes'
+of the Indian. His power reached far into the plains; he possessed three
+medicines of the very highest order: his heart could sing, demons sprung
+from the light of his candle, and he had a little box stronger than the
+strongest Indian. When a large band of the Blackfeet would assemble at
+Edmonton, years ago, the Chief Factor would-win-dup his musical box, get
+his magic lantern ready, and take out his galvanic battery. Imparting
+with the last-named article a terrific shock to the frame of the Indian
+chief, he would warn him that far out in the plains he could at will
+inflict the same medicine upon him if he ever behaved badly. "Look," he
+would say, "now my heart beats for you," then the spring of the little
+musical box concealed under his coat would be touched, and lo! the heart
+of the white trader would sing with the strength of his love for the
+Blackfeet. "To-morrow I start to cross the mountains against the Nez
+Perces," a chief would say, "what says my white brother, don't he dream
+that my arm will be strong in battle, and that the scalps and horses of
+the Nez Perces will be ours?" "I have dreamt that you are to draw one of
+these two little sticks which I hold in my hand. If you draw the right
+one, your arm will be strong, your eye keen, the horses of the Nez Perces
+will be yours; but, listen, the fleetest horse must come to me; you will
+have to give me the best steed in the band of the Nez Perces. Woe betide
+you if you should draw the wrong stick!" Trembling with fear, the
+Blackfoot would approach and draw the bit of wood. "My brother, you are a
+great chief, you have drawn the right stick--your fortune is assured,
+go." Three weeks later a magnificent horse, the pride of some Nez Perce
+chief on the lower Columbia, would be led into the fort on the
+Saskatchewan, and when next the Blackfoot chief came to visit the white
+medicine-man a couple of freshly taken scalps would dangle from his spear
+shaft.
+
+In former times, when rum was used in the trade, the most frightful
+scenes were in the habit of occurring in the Indian room. The fire-water,
+although freely diluted with water soon reduced the assemblage to a state
+of wild hilarity, quickly followed by stupidity and sleep. The fire-water
+for the Crees was composed of three parts of water to one of spirit,
+that of the Blackfeet, seven of water to one of spirit, but so potent is
+the power which alcohol in any shape his well-diluted liquor, was wont to
+become helplessly intoxicated. The trade usually began with a present
+of-fire water all round--then the business went on apace. 'Horses, robes,
+tents, provisions, all would be proffered for one more drink at the
+beloved poison. Nothing could exceed the excitement inside the tent,
+except it was the excitement outside. There the anxious crowd could only
+learn by hearsay what was going on within. Now and then a brave, with an
+amount of self-abnegation worthy of a better cause, would issue from the
+tent with his cheeks distended and his mouth full of the fire-water, and
+going along the ranks of his friends he would squirt a little of the
+liquor into the open mouths of his less fortunate brethren.
+
+But things did not always go so smoothly. Knives were wont to flash,
+shots to be fired--even-now the walls of the Indian rooms at Fort Pitt
+and Edmonton show many traces of bullet marks and knife hacking done in
+the wild fury of the intoxicated savage. Some ten years ago this most
+baneful distribution was stopped by the Hudson Bay Company in the
+Saskatchewan district, but the free traders still continued to employ
+alcohol as a means of acquiring the furs belonging to the Indians. I was
+the bearer of an Order in Council from the Lieutenant-Governor
+prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the sale, distribution, or possession
+of alcohol, and this law, if hereafter enforced, will do much to remove
+at least one leading source of Indian demoralization.
+
+The universal passion for dress is strangely illustrated in the Western
+Indian. His ideal of perfection is the English costume of some forty
+years ago. The tall chimney-pot hat with round narrow brim, the coat with
+high collar going up over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow.
+All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this
+ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all
+beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large
+feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago
+in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of
+considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at
+all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most
+ridiculous-looking costume a Blackfeet chief will readily exchange his
+beautifully-dressed deerskin Indian shirt embroidered with porcupine
+quills and ornamented with the raven locks of his enemies--his head-dress
+of ermine skins, his flowing buffalo robe: a dress in which he looks
+every inch a savage king for one in which he looks every inch a foolish
+savage. But the new dress does not long survive--bit by bit it is found
+unsuited to the wild work which its: owner has to perform; and although
+it never loses the high estimate originally set upon it, it,
+nevertheless, is discarded by virtue of the many inconveniences arising
+out of running buffalo in'a tall beaver,-or fighting in a tail coat
+against Crees.
+
+During the days spent in the Mountain House I enjoyed the society of the
+most enterprising and best informed missionary in the Indian countries-M.
+la Combe. This gentleman, a native of Lower Canada, has devoted himself
+for more than twenty years to the Blackfeet and Crees of the far-West,
+sharing their sufferings, their hunts, their summer journeys, and their
+winter camps--sharing even, unwillingly, their war forays and night
+assaults. The devotion which he has evinced towards these poor wild
+warriors has not been thrown away upon them, and Peere la Combe is the
+only man who can pass and repass from Blackfoot camp to Cree camp with
+perfect impunity when these long-lasting enemies are at war. On one
+occasion he was camped with a small party of Blackfeet south of the. Red
+Deer River. It was night, and the lodges were silent and dark, all save
+one, the lodge of the chief, who had invited the black-robe to his tent
+for the night and was conversing with him as they lay on the buffalo
+robes, while the fire in the centre of the lodge burned clear and bright.
+Every thing was quiet, and no thought of war-party or lurking enemy was
+entertained. Suddenly a small dog put his head into the lodge. A dog is
+such an ordinary and inevitable nuisance in the camp of the Indians, that
+the missionary never even noticed the partial intrusion. Not so the
+Indian; he hissed out, "It is a Cree dog. We are surprised! run!" then,
+catching his gun in one hand and dragging his wife by the other, he
+darted from his tent into the darkness. Not one second too soon, for
+instantly there crashed through the leather lodge some score of bullets,
+and the wild war-whoop of the Crees broke forth through the sharp and
+rapid detonation of many muskets. The Crees were upon them in force.
+Darkness, and the want of a dashing leader on the part of the Crees,
+Saved the Blackfeet from total destruction, for nothing could have helped
+them had their enemies charged home; but as soon as the priest had
+reached the open which he did when he saw how matters stood-he called
+loudly to the Blackfeet not to run, but to stand and return the fire of
+their attackers. This timely advice checked the onslaught of the Crees,
+who were in numbers nmore than sufficient to make an end of the Blackfeet
+party in a few minutes. Mean time, the Blackfeet Women delved busily in
+the earth with knife and finger, while the men fired at random into the
+darkness. The lighted, semi-transparent tent of the chief had given a
+mark for the guns of the Crees; but that was quickly overturned, riddled'
+with balls and although the Crees continued to fire without intermission,
+their shots generally went high. Sometimes the Crees would charge boldly
+up to within a few feet of their enemies, then fire and rush back again,
+yelling all the time, and taunting their enemies. The pere spent the
+night in attending to the wounded Blackfeet. When day dawned the Crees
+drew off to count their losses; but it was afterwards ascertained that
+eighteen of their braves had been killed or wounded, and of the small
+party of Blackfeet twenty had fallen--but who cared? Both sides kept
+their scalps, and that was every thing.
+
+This battle served not a little to increase the reputation in which the
+missionary was held as a "great medicine-man." The Blackfeet ascribed to
+his "medicine" what was really due to his pluck; and the Crees, when they
+learnt that he had been with their enemies during the fight, at once
+found in that fact a satisfactory explanation for the want of courage
+they had displayed.
+
+But it is time to quit the Mountain House, for winter has run on into
+mid-December, and 1500 miles have yet to be travelled, but not travelled
+towards the South. The most trusty guide, Piscan Munro, was away on the
+plains; and as day after day passed by, making the snow a little deeper
+and the cold a little colder, it was evident that the passage of the 400
+miles intervening between the Mountain House and the nearest American
+Fort had become almost an impossibility.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+Eastward--A beautiful Light.
+
+On the 12th of December I said "Good-bye" to my friends at the Mountain
+House, and, crossing the now ice-bound torrent of the Saskatchewan,
+turned my steps, for the first time during many months towards the East.
+With the same two men, and eight horses, I passed quickly through
+the snow-covered country. One day later I looked my last look at the
+far-stretching range of the Rocky Mountains from the lonely ridges of
+the Medicine Hills. Henceforth there would be no mountains. That immense
+region through which I had traveled--from Quebec to these Three Medicine
+Hills--has not a single mountain ridge in its long 3000 miles; woods,
+streams, and mighty rivers, ocean-lakes, rocks, hills, and prairies,
+but no mountains, no rough cloud-seeking summit on which to rest the
+eye that loves the bold outlined of peak and precipice.
+
+"Ah! doctor, dear," Said an old Highland woman, dying in the Red River
+Settlement long years after she had left her Highland home--"Ah! doctor,
+dear, if I could but see a wee bit of hill I thinking I might get well
+again."
+
+Camped that night near a beaver lodge on the Pas-co-pe, the conversation
+turned upon the mountains we had just left.
+
+"Are they the greatest mountains in the world?" asked Paul Foyale.
+
+"No, there are others nearly as big again."
+
+"Is the Company there, too?" again inquired the faithful Paul.
+
+I was obliged to admit that the Company did not exist in the country of
+these very big mountains, and I rather fear that the admission somewhat
+detracted from the altitude of the Himalayas in the estimation of my
+hearers.
+
+About an hour before daybreak on the 16th of December a Very remarkable
+light was visible for some time in the zenith, A central orb, or heart of
+red and crimson light, became suddenly visible a little to the north of
+the zenith; around this most luminous centre was a great ring, or circle
+of bright light, and from this outer band there flashed innumerable rays
+far-into the surrounding darkness. As I looked at it, my thoughts
+traveled far away to the proud city by the Seine. Was she holding herself
+bravely against the German hordes? In olden times these weird lights of
+the sky were supposed only to flash forth when "kings or heroes" fell.
+Did the sky mirror the earth, even as the ocean mirrors the sky? While I
+looked at the gorgeous spectacle blazing above me, the great heart of
+France was red with the blood of her sons, and from the circles of the
+German league there flashed the glare of cannon round the doomed but
+defiant city.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+I start from Edmonton with Dogs--Dog-travelling--The Cabri Sack--A Cold
+Day--Victoria--"Sent to Rome"--Reach Fort Pitt--The blind Cree--A Feast or
+a Famine--Death of Pe-na-koam the Blackfoot.
+
+I was now making my way back to Edmonton, with the intention of there
+exchanging my horses for dogs, and then endeavouring to make the return
+journey to Red River upon the ice of the River Saskatchewan. Dog
+travelling was a novelty. The cold had more than reached the limit at
+which the saddle is a safe mode of travel, and the horses suffered so
+much in pawing away the snow to get within reach of the grass lying
+underneath, that I longed to exchange them for the train of dogs, the
+painted cariole, and little baggage-sled. It took me four days to
+complete the arrangements necessary for my new journey; and, on the
+afternoon of the 20th December, I set out upon a long journey, with dogs,
+down the valley of the Saskatchewan. I little thought then of the
+distance before me; of the intense cold through which I was destined to
+travel during two entire months of most rigorous winter; how day by day
+the frost was to harden, the snow to deepen, all nature to sink more
+completely under the breath of the ice-king. And it was well that all
+this was hidden from me at the time, or perhaps I should have been
+tempted to remain during the winter at Edmonton, until the spring had set
+free once more the rushing waters of the Saskatchewan.
+
+Behold me then on the 20th of December starting from Edmonton with three
+trains of dogs--one to carry myself, the other two to drag provisions,
+baggage, and blankets and all the usual paraphernalia of winter travel.
+The cold which, with the exception of a few nights severe frost, had
+been so long-delayed now seemed determined to atone for lost time by
+becoming suddenly intense. On the night of the 21st December we reached,
+just at dusk, a magnificent clump of large pine-trees on the right bank
+of the river. During the afternoon the temperature had fallen below zero;
+a keen wind blew along-the frozen river, and the dogs and men were glad
+to clamber up the steep clayey bank into the thick shelter of the pine
+bluff', amidst whose dark-green recesses a huge fire was quickly alight.
+While here we sit in the ruddy blaze: of immense dry pine logs it will be
+well to say a few words on dogs and dog driving.
+
+Dogs in the territories of the North-west have but one function--to haul.
+Pointer, setter, lurcher, foxhound, greyhound, Indian mongrel, miserable
+cur or beautiful Esquimaux, all alike are destined to pull a sled of some
+kind or other during, the months of snow and ice: all are destined to
+howl under the driver's lash; to tug wildly at the moose-skin collar; to
+drag until they can drag no more, and then to die. At what age a dog is
+put to haul I could never satisfactorily ascertain, but I have seen dogs
+doing some kind of hauling long be fore the peculiar expression of the
+puppy had left their countenances. Speaking now with the experience of
+nearly fifty days of dog travelling, and the knowledge of some twenty
+different trains of dogs of all sizes, ages, and degrees, watching them
+closely on the track and in the camp during 1300 miles of travel, I may
+claim, I think, some right to assert that I possess no inconsiderable
+insight into the habits, customs, and thoughts (for a dog thinks far
+better than many of his masters) of the hauling dog. When I look back
+again upon the long list of "Whiskies," "Brandies," "Chocolats,"
+"Corbeaus," "Tigres," "Tete Noirs," "Cerf Volants," "Pilots,"
+"Capitaines," "Cariboos," "muskymotes," "Coffees," and "Nichinassis" who
+individually and collectively did their best to haul me and my baggage
+over that immense waste of snow and ice, what a host of sadly resigned
+faces rises up in the dusky light of the fire! faces seared by whip-mark
+and blow of stick, faces mutely conscious that that master for whom the
+dog gives up every thing in this life was treating him in a most brutal
+manner. I do not for an instant mean to assert that these dogs were not,
+many of them, great rascals and rank imposters; but Just as slavery
+produces certain vices in the slave which it would be unfair to hold him
+accountable for, so does this perversion of the dog from his true use to
+that of a beast of burthen produce in endless variety traits of cunning
+and deception in the hauling-dog. To be a thorough expert in dog-training
+a man must be able to imprecate freely and with considerable variety in
+at least three different languages. But whatever number of tongues the
+driver may speak, one is indispensable to perfection in the art, and that
+is French: curses seem useful adjuncts in any language, but curses
+delivered in French will get a train of dogs through or over any thing.
+There is a good story told which illustrates this peculiar feature in
+dog-training. It is said that a high dignitary of the Church was once
+making a winter tour through his missions in the North-west. The driver,
+out of deference for his freight's profession, abstained from the use of
+forcible language to his dogs, and the hauling was very indifferently
+performed. Soon the train came to the foot of a hill, and notwithstanding
+all the efforts of the driver with whip and stick the dogs were unable to
+draw the cariole to the summit.
+
+"Oh," said the Church dignitary, "this is not at all as good a train of
+dogs as the one you drove last year; why, they are unable to pull me up
+this hill!"
+
+"No, monseigneur," replied the owner of the dogs, "but I am driving them
+differently; if you will only permit me to drive them in the old way you
+will see how easily they will pull the cariole to the top of this hill;
+they do not understand my new method."
+
+"By all means," said the bishop; "drive them then in the usual manner."
+
+Instantly there rang out a long string of "sacre chien," "sacre diable,"
+and still more unmentionable phrases. The effect-upon the dogs was
+magical; the cariole flew to the summit; the progress of the episcopal
+tour was undeniably expedited, and a-practical exposition was given of
+the poet's thought, "From seeming evil still aducing good."
+
+Dogs in the Hudson Bay territories haul in various ways. The Esquimaux in
+the far North run their dogs abreast. The natives of Labrador and along
+the shores of Hudson Bay harness their dogs by many separate lines in a
+kind of band or pack, while in the Saskatchewan, and Mackenzie River
+territories the dogs are put one after the other, in tandem fashion. The
+usual number allowed to a complete train is four, but three, and
+sometimes even two are used. The train of four dogs is harnessed to the
+'cariole, or sled, by means of two long traces; between these traces the
+dogs stand one after the other, the head of one dog being about a foot
+behind the tail of the dog in front of him. They are attached to the
+traces by a round collar which slips on over the head and ears and then
+lies close on the swell of the neck; this collar buckles on each side to
+the traces, which are kept from touching the ground by a back-band of
+leather buttoned under the dog's ribs or stomach. This back band is
+generally covered with little brass bells; the collar is also hung with
+larger bells, and tufts of gay-coloured ribbons or fox-tails are put upon
+it. Great pride is taken in turning out a train of dogs in good style.
+Beads, bells, and embroidery are freely used to bedizen the poor brutes,
+and a most comical effect is produced by the appearance of so much finery
+upon the woefully frightened dog, who, when he is first put into his
+harness, usually looks the picture of fear. The fact is patent that in
+hauling the dog is put to a work from which his whole nature revolts,
+that is to say the ordinary dog; with the beautiful dog of the Esquimaux
+breed the case is very different. To haul is as natural to him as to
+point is natural to the pointer. He alone looks jolly over the work and
+takes to it kindly, and consequently he alone of all dogs is the best and
+most lasting hauler; longer than any other dog will his clean firm feet
+hold tough over the trying ice, and although other dogs will surpass him
+in the speed which they will maintain for a few days, he alone can travel
+his many hundreds of miles and finish fresh and hearty after all. It is a
+pleasure to sit behind such a train of dogs; it is a pain to watch the
+other poor brutes toiling at their traces. But, after all it is the same
+with dog-driving as with every other thing; there are dogs and there
+-are dogs, and the distance from one to the other is as, great as that
+between a Thames barge and a Cowes schooner.
+
+The hauling-dogs day is a long tissue of trial. While yet the night is
+in its small hours, and the aurora is beginning to think of hiding its
+trembling lustre in the earliest dawn, the hauling-dog has his slumber
+rudely broken by the summons of his driver. Poor beast! All night long he
+has lain curled up in the roundest of round balls hard by the camp;
+there, in the lea of tree-stumps or snow-drift, he has dreamt the dreams
+of peace and comfort. If the night has been one of storm, the
+fast-falling flakes have added to his sense of warmth by covering him
+completely beneath them. Perhaps, too, he will remain unseen by the
+driver when the fatal moment comes for harnessing-up. Not a bit of it. He
+lies ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his
+hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and
+moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or
+aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along
+through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it
+is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If
+there is no track in the snow a man goes in front on snow-shoes, and the
+leading dog, or "foregoer," as he is called, trots close behind him. If
+there should be a track, however faint, the dog-will follow it himself;
+and when sight fails to show it, or storm has hidden it beneath drifts,
+his sense of smell will enable him to keep straight. Thus through the
+long waste we journey on, by frozen lakelet, by willow copse, through
+pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter's day draws to
+its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place
+for the night. Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his
+day's work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful,
+he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists
+himself a bed and goes fast asleep. But the real moment of pleasure is
+still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe,
+on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish from
+the provision-sled, tells him that his is about to begin. He springs
+lightly up and watches eagerly these preparations for his supper. On
+the plains he receives a daily ration of 2 lbs. of pemmican. In the
+forest and lake country, where fish is the staple food, he gets two large
+white-fish raw. He prefers fish to meat, and will work better on it too.
+His supper is soon over; there is a short after-piece of growling and
+snapping at hungry comrade, and then he lies down out in the snow to
+dream that whips have been abolished and hauling is discarded for ever,
+sleeping peacefully until morning, unless indeed some band of wolves
+should prowl around and, scenting campfire, howl their long chorus to the
+midnight skies.
+
+And now, with this introductory digression on dogs, let us return to our
+camp in the thick pine-bluff on the river bank.
+
+The night fell very cold. Between supper and bed there is not much time
+when present cold and perspective early-rising are the chief features of
+the night and morning. I laid down my buffalo robe with more care than
+usual, and got into my sack of deer-skins with a notion that the night
+was going to be one of unusual severity. My sack of deer-skins--so far it
+has been scarcely mentioned in this journal, and yet it played no
+insignificant part in the nightly programme. Its origin and construction
+were simply these. Before leaving Red River I had received from a
+gentleman, well known in the Hudson Bay Company, some most useful
+suggestions as to winter travel. His residence of many years in the
+coldest parts of Labrador, and his long journey into the interior of that
+most wild and sterile land, had made him acquainted with all the
+vicissitudes of northern travel. Under his direction I had procured a
+number of the skins of the common cabri, or small deer, had them made
+into a large sack of some seven feet in length and three in diameter. The
+skin of this deer is very light, but possesses, for some reason with
+which I am unacquainted, a power of giving great warmth to the person it
+covers. The sack was made with the hair turned inside, and was covered on
+the outside with canvass. To make my bed, therefore, became a very simple
+operation: lay down a buffalo robe, unroll the sack, and the thing was
+done. To get into bed was simply to get into the sack, pull the hood over
+one's head, and go to sleep. Remember, there was no tent, no outer
+covering of any kind, nothing but the trees--sometimes not many of
+them--the clouds, or the stars.
+
+During the journey with horses I had generally found the bag too warm,
+and had for the most part slept on it, not in it; but now its time was
+about to begin, and this night in the pine-bluff was to record a signal
+triumph for the sack principle applied to shake-downs.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning the men got up, unable to sleep on
+account of the cold, and set the fire going. The noise soon awoke me, but
+I lay quiet inside the bag, knowing what was going on outside. Now,
+amongst its other advantages, the sack possessed one of no small value.
+It enabled me to tell at once on awaking what the cold was doing outside;
+if it was cold in the sack, or if the hood was fastened down by frozen
+breath to the opening, then it must be a howler outside; then it was time
+to get ready the greasiest breakfast and put on the thickest duffel-socks
+and mittens. On the morning of the 22nd all these symptoms were
+manifest; the bag was not warm, the hood was frozen fast against the
+opening, and one or two smooth-haired dogs were shivering close beside my
+feet and on top of the bag. Tearing under the frozen mouth of the sack, I
+got out into the open. Beyond a doubt it was cold; I don't mean cold in
+the ordinary manner, cold such as you can localize to your feet, or your
+fingers, or your nose, but cold all over, crushing cold. Putting on coat
+and moccassins as close to the fire as possible, I ran to the tree on
+which I had hung the thermometer on the previous evening; it stood at 37
+below zero at 3:30 in the morning. I had slept well; the cabri sack was a
+very Ajax among roosts; it defied the elements. Having eaten a tolerably
+fat breakfast and swallowed a good many cups of hot tea, we packed the
+sleds, harnessed the dogs, and got away from the pine bluff two hours
+before daybreak. Oh, how biting cold it was! On in the grey snow light
+with a terrible wind sweeping up the long reaches of the river; nothing
+spoken, for such cold makes men silent, morose, and savage. After four
+hours travelling, we stopped to dine. It was only 9:30, but we had
+breakfasted six hours before. We were some time before we could make
+fire, but at length it was set going, and we piled the dry driftwood fast
+upon the flames. Then I set up my thermometer again; it registered 39
+below zero, 71 degrees of frost. What it must have been at day break I
+cannot say; but it was sensibly colder than at ten o'clock, and I do not
+doubt must have been 45 below zero. I had never been exposed to any thing
+like this cold before. Set full in the sun at eleven o'clock, the
+thermometer rose only to 26 below zero, the sun seemed to have lost all
+power of warmth; it was very low in the heavens, the day being the
+shortest in the year; in fact, in the centre of the river the sun did not
+show above the steep south bank, while the wind had full sweep from the
+north-east. This portion of the Saskatchewan is the farthest north
+reached by the river in its entire course. It here runs for some distance
+a little north of the 51th parallel of north latitude, and its elevation
+above the sea is about 1801 feet. During the whole day we journeyed on,
+the wind still kept dead against us, and at times it was impossible to
+face its terrible keenness. The dogs began to tire out; the ice cut
+their feet, and the white surface was often speckled with the crimson
+icicles that fell from their wounded toes. Out of the twelve dogs
+composing my cavalcade, it would have been impossible to select four good
+ones. Coffee, Tete Noir, Michinass, and another whose name I forget,
+underwent repeated whalings at the hands of my driver, a half-breed from
+Edmonnton named Frazer. Early in the afternoon the head of Tete Noir was
+reduced to shapeless pulp from tremendous thrashings. Michinass, or the
+"Spotted One," had one eye wherewith to watch the dreaded driver, and
+coffee had devoted so much strength to wild lurches and sudden springs in
+order to dodge the descending whip, that he had none whatever to bestow
+upon his legitimate toil of hauling me. At length, so useless did he
+become, that he had to be taken out altogether from the harness and left
+to his fate on the river. "And this," I said to myself, "is dog-driving;
+this inhuman thrashing and varied cursing, this frantic howling of dogs,
+this bitter, terrible cold is the long-talked of mode of winter travel!"
+To say that I was disgusted and stunned by the prospect of such work for
+hundreds of Miles would be-only to speak a portion of what I felt. Was
+the cold always to be so crushing? were the dogs always to be the same
+wretched creatures? Fortunately, no; but it was only when I reached
+Victoria that night, long after dark, that I learned that the day had
+been very exceptionally severe, and that my dogs were unusually miserable
+ones.
+
+As at Edmonton so in the fort at Victoria the small-pox had again broken
+out; in spite of cold and frost the infection still lurked in many
+places, and in none more fatally than in this little settlement where,
+during the autumn, it had wrought so much havoc among the scanty
+community. In this distant settlement I spent the few days of Christmas;
+the weather had become suddenly milder, although the thermometer still
+stood below zero.
+
+Small-pox had not been the only evil from which Victoria had suffered
+during the year which was about to close; the Sircies had made many raids
+upon it during the summer, stealing-down the sheltering banks of a small
+creek which entered the Saskatchewan at the opposite side, and then
+swimming the broad river during the night and lying hidden at day in the
+high corn-fields of the mission. Incredible though it may appear, they
+continued this practice at a time when they were being; swept away by the
+small-pox; their bodies were found in one instance dead upon the bank of
+the river they had crossed by swimming when the fever of the disease had
+been at its height. Those who live their lives quietly at home, who sleep
+in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of
+what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test. With us,
+to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with
+the casual illnesses of our civilization: when he lies down it is to
+sleep for a few hours, or-for ever. Thus these Sircies had literally kept
+the war-trail till they died. When the corn-fields were being cut around
+the mission, the reapers found unmistakable traces of how these wild men
+had kept the field undaunted by disease. Long black hair was found where
+it had fallen from the head of some brave in the lairs from which he had
+watched the horses of his enemies; the ruling passion had been strong in
+death. In the end, the much-coveted horses were carried off by the few
+survivors, and the mission had to bewail the loss of some of its best
+steeds. One, a mare belonging to the missionary himself, had returned to
+her home after an absence of a few days, but she carried in her flank a
+couple of Sircie arrows. She had broken away from the band, and the
+braves had sent their arrows after her in an attempt to kill what they
+could not keep. To add to the-misfortunes of the settlement, the buffalo
+were far out in the great plains; so between disease, war, and famine,
+Victoria had had a hard time of it.
+
+In the farmyard of the mission-house there lay-a curious block of metal
+of immense weight'; it was ringed,-deeply indented, and polished on the
+outer edges of the indentations by the wear and friction of many years.
+Its history was a curious one. Longer than any man could say, it had lain
+on the summit of a hill far out in the southern prairies. It had been a
+medicine-stone of surpassing virtue among the Indians over a vast
+territory. No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity
+without paying a visit to this great-medicine: it was said to be
+increasing yearly in weight. Old men remembered having heard old men say
+that they had once lifted it easily from the ground. Now no single man
+could carry it. And it was no wonder that this metallic stone should be a
+Manito-stone and an object of intense veneration to the Indian; it had
+come down from heaven; it did not belong to the earth, but had descended
+out of the sky; it was, in fact an aerolite. Not very long before my,
+visit this curious stone had been removed from the hill upon which it had
+so long rested and brought to the Mission of Victoria by some person from
+that place: When the Indians found that it had been taken away, they
+were loud in the expression of their regret. The old medicine men
+declared that its removal would lead to great misfortunes and that war,
+disease, and dearth of buffalo would afflict the tribes of the
+Saskatchewan. This was not a prophecy made after the occurrence of the
+plague of small-pox, for in a magazine published by the Wesleyan Society
+in Canada there appears a letter from the missionary, setting forth the
+predictions of the medicine-men a year prior to my visit. The letter
+concludes with an expression of thanks that their evil prognostications
+had not been attended with success. But a few months later brought all
+the three evils upon the Indians; and never, probably, since the first
+trader had reached the country had so many afflictions of war, famine,
+and plague fallen upon the _Crees and the Blackfeet as during the year
+which succeeded the useless removal of their Manito-stone from the lone
+hill-top upon which the skies had cast it.
+
+I spent the evening of Christmas Day in the house of the missionary. Two
+of his daughters sang very sweetly to the music of a small melodian. Both
+song and strain were sad--sadder, perhaps, than the words or music could
+make them; for the recollection of the two absent ones, whose
+newly-made graves, covered with their first snow, lay close outside,
+mingled with the hymn and deepened the melancholy of the music.
+
+On the day after Christmas Day I left Victoria, with three trains of
+dogs, bound for Fort Pitt. This time the drivers were all English
+half-breeds, and that tongue was chiefly used to accelerate the dogs. The
+temperature had risen considerably, and the snow was soft and clammy,
+making the "hauling" heavy upon the dogs. For my own use I had a very
+excellent train, but the other two were of the useless class.` As
+before, the beatings were incessant, and I witnessed the first example
+of a very common occurrence in dog-driving--I beheld the operation known
+as "sending a dog to Rome." This consists simply of striking him over the
+head with a large stick until he falls perfectly senseless to the
+ground; after a little he revives, and, with memory of the awful blows
+that took his consciousness away full upon him, he pulls franticly at his
+load. Oftentimes a dog is "sent to Rome" because he will not allow the
+driver to arrange some hitch in the harness; then, while he is
+insensible, the necessary alteration is carried out, and when the dog
+recovers he receives a terrible lash of the whip to set him going again.
+The half-breeds are a race easily offended, prone to sulk if reproved;
+but at the risk of causing delay and inconvenience I had to interfere'
+with a peremptory order that "sending to Rome" should be at once
+discontinued in my trains. The wretched "Whisky," after his voyage to the
+Eternal City, appeared quite overcome with what he had there seen, and
+continued to stagger along the trail, making feeble efforts to keep
+straight. This tendency to wobble caused the half-breeds to indulge in
+funny remarks, one of them calling the track a "drunken trail."
+Eventually, "Whisky" was abandoned to his fate. I had never been a
+believer in the pluck and courage of the men who are the descendants of
+mixed European and Indian parents. Admirable as guides, unequalled as
+voyageurs, trappers, and hunters, they nevertheless are wanting in those
+qualities which give courage or true manhood. "Tell me your friends and I
+will tell you what you are ": is a sound proverb, and in no sense more
+true than when the bounds of man's friendships are stretched Wide.
+enough to admit those dumb companions, the horse and the dog. I never
+knew a man yet, or for that matter a woman, worth much who did not like
+dogs and horses, and I would always feel inclined to suspect a man who
+was shunned by a dog. The cruelty so systematically practised upon dogs
+by their half-breed drivers is utterly unwarrantable. In winter the poor
+brutes become more than ever the benefactors of man, uniting in
+themselves all the services of horse and dog--by day they work, by night
+they watch, and the man must be a very cur in nature who would inflict,
+at such a time, needless cruelty upon the animal that renders him so much
+assistance. On this day, the 29th December, we made a night march in the
+hope of reaching Fort Pitt. For four hours we walked on through the dark
+until the trail led us suddenly into the midst of an immense band of
+animals, which commenced to dash around us in a high state of alarm. At
+first we fancied in the indistinct moonlight that they were buffalo, but
+another instant sufficed to prove them horses. We had, in fact, struck
+into the middle of the Fort Pitt band of horses, numbering some ninety or
+a hundred head. We were, however, still a long way from the fort, and as
+the trail was utterly lost in the confused medley of tracks all round us,
+we were compelled to halt for the night near midnight. In a small clump
+of willows we made a hasty camp and lay down to sleep. Daylight next
+morning showed that conspicuous landmark called the Frenchman's Knoll
+rising north-east; and lying in the snow close beside us was poor
+"Whisky." He had followed on during the night from the place where he had
+been abandoned on the previous day, and had come up again with his
+persecutors while they lay asleep; for, after all, there was one fate
+worse than being "sent to Rome," and that was being left to starve. After
+a few hours run we reached Fort Pitt, having travelled about 150 miles
+in three days and a half.
+
+Fort Pitt was destitute of fresh dogs or drivers, and consequently a
+delay of some days became necessary before my onward journey could be
+resumed. In the absence of dogs and drivers Fort Pitt, however, offered
+small-pox to its visitors. A case had broken out a few days previous to
+my arrival impossible to trace in any way, but probably the result of
+some infection conveyed into the fort during the terrible visitation of
+the autumn. I have already spoken of the power which the Indian possesses
+of continuing the ordinary avocations of his life in the presence of
+disease. This power he also possesses under that most terrible
+affliction-the loss of sight. Blindness is by no means an uncommon
+occurrence among the tribes of the Saskatchewan. The blinding glare of
+the snow-covered plains, the sand in summer, and, above all, the dense
+smoke of the tents, where the fire of wood, lighted in the centre, fills
+the whole lodge with a smoke which is peculiarly trying to the sight-all
+these causes render ophthalmic affections among the Indians a common
+misfortune. Here is the story of a blind Cree who arrived at Fort Pitt
+one day weak with starvation: From a distant camp he had started five
+days before, in company with his wife. They had some skins to trade, so
+they loaded their dog and set out on the march--the woman led the way,
+the blind man followed next, and the dog brought up the rear. Soon they
+approached a plain upon which buffalo were feeding. The dog, seeing the
+buffalo, left the trail, and, carrying the furs with him, gave chase.
+Away out of sight he went, until there was nothing for it but to set out
+in pursuit of him. Telling her husband to wait in this spot until she
+returned, the woman now started after the dog. Time passed,--it was
+growing late, and the wind swept coldly over the snow. The blind man began
+to grow uneasy; "She has lost her way," he said to himself; "I will go
+on, and we may meet." He walked on--he called aloud, but there was no
+answer; go back he could not; he knew by the coldness of the air that
+night had fallen on the plain, but day and night were alike to him. He
+was alone--he was lost. Suddenly he felt against his feet the rustle of
+long sedgy grass--he stooped down and found that he had reached the
+margin of a frozen lake. He was tired, and it was time to rest; so with
+his knife he cut a quantity of long dry grass, and, making a bed for
+himself on the margin of the lake, lay down and slept. Let us go back to
+the woman. The dog had led her a long chase, and it was very late when
+she got back to the spot where she had left her husband-he was gone, but
+his tracks in the snow were visible, and she hurried after him. Suddenly
+the wind arose, the light powdery snow began to drift in clouds over the
+surface of the plain, the track was speedily obliterated and night was
+coming on. Still she followed the general direction of the footprints,
+and at last came to the border of the same lake by which her husband was
+lying asleep, but it was at some distance from the spot. She too was
+tired, and, making a fire in a thicket, she lay down to sleep. About the
+middle of the night the man awoke and set out again on his solitary way.
+It snowed all night: the morning came, the day passed, the night closed
+again--again the morning dawned, and still he wandered on. For three days
+he travelled thus over an immense plain, without food, and having only
+the snow wherewith to quench his thirst. On the third day he walked into
+a thicket; he felt around, and found that the timber was dry; with his
+axe he cut down some wood, then struck a light and made a fire. When the
+fire was alight he laid his gun down beside it, and went to gather more
+wood; but fate was heavy against him, he was unable to find the fire
+which he had lighted, and by which he had left his gun. He made another
+fire, and again the same result. A third time he set to work; and now, to
+make certain of his getting back, again, he tied a line to a tree close
+beside his fire, and then set on to gather wood. Again the fates smote
+him-his line broke, and he had to grope his way in weary search. But
+chance, tired of ill-treating him so long, now stood his friend--he found
+the first fire, and with it his gun and blanket. Again he travelled on,
+but now his strength began to fail, and for the first time his heart sank
+within him--blind, starving, and utterly lost, there seemed no hope on
+earth for him. "Then," he said, "I thought of the Great Spirit of whom
+the white men speak, and I called aloud to him, 'O Great Spirit! have
+pity on me, and show me the path! and as I said it I heard close by the
+calling of a crow, and I knew that the road was not far off. I followed
+the call; soon I felt the crusted snow of a path under my feet, and the
+next day reached the fort." He had been five days without food.
+
+No man can starve better than the Indian--no man can feast better either.
+For long days and nights, he will go without sustenance of any kind; but
+see him when the buffalo are near, when the cows are fat; see him then if
+you want to know what quantity of food it is possible for a man to
+consume at a sitting. Here is one bill of fare:--Seven men in thirteen
+days consumed two buffalo bulls, seven cabri, 40 lbs. of pemmican, and a
+great many ducks and geese, and on the last day there was nothing to eat.
+I am perfectly aware that this enormous quantity could not have
+weighed less than 1600 lbs. at the very lowest estimate, which would
+give a daily ration to each man of 18 lbs.; but, incredible as this may
+appear, it is by no means impossible. During the entire time I remained
+at Fort Pitt the daily ration issued to each man was 10 lbs. of beef.
+Beef is so much richer and coarser food than buffalo meat, that 10 lbs.
+of the former would be equivalent-to 15lbs. or 16 lbs. of the latter, and
+yet every scrap of that 10 lbs. was eaten by the man who received it. The
+women got 5 lbs., and the children, no matter how small, 3 lbs. each.
+Fancy a child in arms getting 3 lbs. of beef for its daily sustenance!
+The old Orkney men of the Hudson Bay Company servants must have seen in
+such a ration the realization of the poet's lines, "O Caledonia, stern
+and wild! Meet nurse for a poetic child," etc. All these people at Fort
+Pitt were idle, and therefore were not capable of eating as much as if
+they had been on the plains. The wild hills that surround Fort Pitt are
+frequently the scenes of Indian ambush and attack, and on more than one
+occasion the fort itself has been captured by the Blackfeet. The region
+in which Fort Pitt stands is a favourite camping-ground of the Crees,
+and the Blackfeet cannot be persuaded that the people of the fort are not
+the active friends and allies of their enemies in fact, Fort Pitt and
+Carlton are looked upon by them as places belonging to another company
+altogether from the one which rules at the Mountain House and at
+Edmonton. "If it was the same company," they-say, "how could they give
+our enemies, the Crees, guns and powder; for do they not give us guns
+and powder too?" This mode of argument, which refuses to recognize that
+species of neutrality so dear to the English heart, is eminently
+calculated to lay Fort Pitt open to Blackfeet raid. It is only a few
+years since the place was plundered by a large band, but the general
+forbearance displayed by the Indians on that occasion is nevertheless
+remarkable. Here is the story:
+
+One morning the people in the fort beheld a small party of Blackfeet on a
+high hill at the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. The usual flag
+carried by the chief was waved to denote a wish to trade, and accordingly
+the officer in charge pushed off in his boat to meet and hold converse
+with the party. When he reached the other side he found the chief and a
+few men drawn up to receive him.
+
+"Are there Crees around the fort?" asked the chief.
+
+"No," replied the trader; "there are none with us."
+
+"You speak with a forked tongue," answered the Blackfoot--dividing his
+fingers as he spoke to indicate that the-other was speaking falsely.
+
+Just at that moment something caught the traders eye in the bushes along
+the river bank; he looked again and saw, close alongside, the willows
+swarming with naked Blackfeet. He made one spring back into his boat, and
+called to his men to shove off; but it was too late. In an instant two
+hundred braves rose out of the grass and willows and rushed into the
+water; they caught the boat and brought her back to the shore; then,
+filling her as full as she would hold with men, they pushed off for the
+other side. To put as good a face upon matters as possible, the trader
+commenced a trade, and at first the batch that had crossed, about forty
+in number, kept quiet enough, but some-of their number took the boat back
+again to the south shore and brought over the entire band; then the wild
+work commenced, bolts and bars were broken open, the trading-shop was
+quickly cleared out, and in the highest spirits, laughing loudly at the
+glorious fun they were having, the braves commenced to enter the houses,
+ripping up the feather beds to look for guns and tearing down calico
+curtains for finery. The men of the fort were nearly all away in the
+plains, and the women and children were in a high state of alarm.
+Sometimes the Indians would point their guns at the women, then drag them
+off the beds on which they were sitting and rip open bedding and
+mattress, looking for concealed weapons; but no further violence was
+attempted, and the whole thing was accompanied by such peals of laughter
+that it was evident the braves had not enjoyed such a "high old time" for
+a very long period. At last the chief, thinking, perhaps, that things had
+gone quite far enough, called out, in a loud voice, "Crees! Crees!" and,
+dashing out of the fort, was quickly followed by the whole band.
+
+Still in high good humour, the braves recrossed the river, and, turning
+round on the farther shore, fired a volley to Wards the fort; but as the
+distance was at least 500 yards, this parting salute was simply as a
+bravado. This band was evidently bent on mischief. As they retreated
+south to their own country they met the carts belonging to the fort on
+their way from the plains; the men in charge ran off with the fleetest
+horses, but the carts were all captured and ransacked, and an old
+Scotchman, a servant of the Company, who stood his ground, was reduced to
+a state bordering upon nudity by the frequent demands of his captors.
+
+The Blackfeet chiefs exercise great authority over their braves; some of
+them are men of considerable natural abilities, and all-must be brave and
+celebrated in battle. To disobey the mandate of a chief is at times to
+court instant death at his hands. At the present time the two most
+formidable chiefs of the Blackfeet nations are Sapoo-max-sikes, or "The
+Great Crow's Claw;" and Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, or "The Great Swan."
+These men are widely different in their characters; the Crow's Claw being
+a man whose word once given can be relied on to the death, but the
+other is represented as a man of colossal size and savage disposition,
+crafty and treacherous.
+
+During the year just past death had struck heavily among the Blackfeet
+chiefs. The death of one of their greatest men, Pe-na-koam, or "The
+Far-off Dawn," was worthy of a great brave. When he felt that his last
+night had come, he ordered his best horse to be brought to the door of
+the tent, and mounting him he rode slowly around the camp; at each
+corner he halted and called out, in a loud voice to his people, "The last
+hour of Pe-na-koam has come; but to his people he says, Be brave;
+separate into small parties, so that this disease will have less power
+to kill you; be strong to fight our enemies the Crees, and be able to
+destroy them. It is no matter now that this disease has come upon us, for
+our enemies have got it too, and they will also die of it. Pe-na-koam
+tells his people before he dies to live so that they may fight their
+enemies, and be strong." It is said that, having spoken thus, he died
+quietly. Upon the top of a lonely hill they laid the body of their chief
+beneath a tent hung round with scarlet cloth; beside him they put six
+revolvers and two American repeating rifles, an at the door of his tent
+twelve horses were slain, so that their spirits would carry him in the
+green prairies of the happy hunting-grounds; four hundred blankets were
+piled around as offerings to his memory, and then the tribe moved away
+from the spot, leaving the tomb of their dead king to the winds and to
+the wolves.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of Hunting--A Fight
+--His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great Cold-Carlton--Family
+Responsibilities.
+
+WHEN the early Spanish adventurers penetrated from the sea-board of
+America into the great central prairie region, they beheld for the first
+time a strange animal whose countless numbers covered the face of the
+country. When De Soto had been buried in the dark waters of the
+Mississippi, the remnant of his band, pursuing their western way, entered
+the "Country of the Wild Cows." When in the same year explorers pushed
+their way northward from Mexico into the region of the Rio-del-Norte,
+they looked over immense plains black with moving beasts. Nearly 100
+years later settlers on the coasts of New England heard from
+westward-hailing Indians of huge beasts on the shores of a great lake not
+many days journey to the north-west. Naturalists in Europe, hearing of
+the new animal, named it the bison; but the colonists united in calling
+it the buffalo, and, as is usual in such cases, although science clearly
+demonstrated that it was a bison, and was not a buffalo, scientific
+knowledge had not a chance against practical ignorance, and "buffalo"
+carried the day. The true home of this animal lay in the great prairie
+region between the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the Texan forest,
+and the Saskatchewan River and although undoubted evidence exists to show
+that at some period the buffalo reached in his vast migrations the shores
+of the Pacific and the Atlantic; yet since the party of De Soto only
+entered the Country of the Wild Cows after they had crossed the
+Mississippi, it may fairly be inferred that the Ohio River and the lower
+Mississippi formed the eastern boundaries to the wanderings of the herds
+since the New World has been known to the white man. Still even within
+this immense region, a region not less than 1,000,000 of square miles in
+area, the havoc worked by the European has been terrible. Faster even
+than the decay of the Indian has gone on the destruction-of the bison and
+only a few years must elapse before this noble beast, hunted down in the
+last recesses of his breeding-grounds, will have taken his place in the
+long list of those extinct giants which once dwelt in our world. Many
+favourite spots had this huge animal throughout the great domain over
+which he roamed-many beautiful scenes where, along river meadows, the
+grass in winter was still succulent and the wooded "bays" gave food and
+shelter, but-no more favourite ground than this valley of the
+Saskatchewan; thither he wended his way from the bleak plains of the
+Missouri in herds that passed and passed for days and nights in seemingly
+never-ending numbers. Along the countless creeks and rivers that add
+their tribute to the great stream, along the banks of the Battle River
+and the Vermilion River, along the many White Earth Rivers and Sturgeon
+Creeks of the upper and middle Saskatchewan, down through the willow
+copses and aspen thickets of the Touchwood Hills and the Assineboine, the
+great beasts dwelt in all the happiness of calf-rearing and connubial
+felicity. The Indians who then occupied these regions killed only what
+was required for the supply of the camps-a mere speck in the dense herds
+that roamed up to the very doors of the wigwams; but when the trader
+pushed his adventurous way into the fur regions of the North, the herds
+of the Saskatchewan plains began to experience a change in their
+surroundings. The meat, pounded down` and mixed with fat into "pemmican,"
+was found to supply a most excellent food for transport service, and
+accordingly vast numbers of buffalo were destroyed to supply the demand
+of the fur traders. In the border-land between the wooded country and the
+plains, the Crees, not satisfied with the ordinary methods of destroying
+the buffalo, devised a plan by which great multitudes could be easily
+annihilated. This method of hunting, consists in the erection of strong
+wooden enclosures called pounds, into which the buffalo are guided by the
+supposed magic power of a medicine-man. Sometimes for two days the
+medicine-man will live with the herd, which he half guides and half
+drives into the enclosures; sometimes he is on the right, sometimes on
+the left, and sometimes, again, in rear of the herd, but never to
+windward of them. At last they approach the pound, which is usually
+concealed in a thicket of wood. For many miles from the entrance to this
+pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead
+out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the
+medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd,
+finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed,
+until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across
+the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. Then
+commences the slaughter. From the wooded fence around arrows and bullets
+are poured into the dense plunging mass of buffalo careering wildly round
+the ring. Always going in one direction, with the sun, the poor beasts
+race on until not a living thing is left; then, when there is nothing
+more to kill, the cutting-up commences, and pemmican-making goes on.
+
+Widely different from this indiscriminate slaughter is the fair hunt on
+horseback in the great open plains. The approach, the cautious survey
+over some hill-top, the wild charge on the herd, the headlong flight, the
+turn to bay, the flight and fall--all this contains a large share of that
+excitement which we call by the much abused term sport. It is possible,
+however, that many of those who delight in killing placid pheasants and
+stoical partridges might enjoy the huge battue of an Indian "pound" in
+preference to the wild charge over the sky bound prairie, but, for my
+part, not being of the privileged few who breed pheasants at the expense
+of peasants (what a difference the "h" makes in Malthusian theories!), I
+have been compelled to seek my sport in hot climates instead of in hot
+corners, and in the sandy bluffs of Nebraska and the Missouri have drawn
+many an hour of keen enjoyment from the long chase of the buffalo. One
+evening, shortly before sunset, I was steering my way through the sandy
+hills of the Platte Valley, in the State of Nebraska, slowly towards Fort
+Kearney; both horse and rider were tired after a long day over sand-bluff
+and meadow-land, for buffalo were plenty, and five tongues dangling to
+the saddle told that horse, man, and rifle had not been idle. Crossing a
+grassy ridge, I suddenly came in sight of three buffalo just emerging
+from the broken bluff. Tired as was my horse, the sight of one of these
+three animals urged me to one last chase. He was a very large bull,
+whose black shaggy mane and dewlaps nearly brushed the short prairie grass
+beneath him. I dismounted behind the hill, tightened the saddle-girths,
+looked to rifle and cartridge touch, and then remounting rode slowly
+over the intervening ridge. As I came in view of the three beasts
+thus majestically stalking their way towards the Platte for the luxury of
+an evening drink, the three shaggy heads were thrown up--one steady look
+given, then round went the animals and away for the bluffs again. With a
+whoop and a cheer I gave chase, and the mustang, answering gamely to my
+call, launched himself well over the prairie. Singling out the large
+bull, I urged the horse with spur and voice, then, rising in the stirrups
+I took a snap-shot at my quarry. The bullet struck him in the flanks, and
+quick as lightning he wheeled down upon me. It was now my turn to run. I
+had urged the horse with voice and spur to close with the buffalo, but
+still more vigorously did I endeavour, under the altered position of
+affairs, to make him increase the distance lying between us. Down the
+sandy incline thundered the huge beast, gaining on us at every stride.
+Looking back over my shoulder, I saw him close to my horse's tail, with
+head lowered and eyes flashing furiously-under their shaggy covering. The
+horse was tired; the buffalo was fresh, and it seemed as though another
+instant must bring pursuer and pursued into wild collision. Throwing back
+my rifle over the crupper; I laid it at arm's length, with muzzle full
+upon the buffalo's head. The shot struck the centre of his forehead, but
+he only shook his head when he received it; still it seemed to check his
+pace a little, and as we had now reached level ground the horse began to
+gain something upon his pursuer. Quite as suddenly as he had charged the
+bull now changed his tactics. Wheeling off he followed his companions,
+who by this time had vanished into the bluffs. It never would have done
+to lose him after such a fight, so Ii brought the mustang round again,
+and gave chase. This time a shot fired low behind the shoulder brought my
+fierce friend to bay. Proudly he turned upon me, but now his rage was
+calm and stately, he pawed the ground, and blew with short angry snorts
+the sand in clouds from the plain; moving thus slowly towards me, he
+looked the incarnation of strength and angry pride. But his doom was
+sealed. I remember so vividly all the wild surroundings of the scene--the
+great silent waste, the two buffalo watching from a hill-top the fight of
+their leader, the noble beast himself stricken but defiant, and beyond,
+the thousand glories of the prairie sunset. It was only to last an
+instant, for the giant bull, still with low-bent head and angry snorts,
+advancing slowly towards his puny enemy, sank quietly to the plain and
+stretched his limbs in death. Late that night I reached the American
+fort with six tongues hanging to my saddle, but never since that hour,
+though often but a two days ride from buffalo, have I sought to take the
+life of one of these noble animals. Too soon will the last of them have
+vanished from the great central prairie land; never again will those
+countless herds roam from the Platte to the Missouri, from the Missouri
+to the Saskatchewan; chased for his robe, for his beef, for sport, for
+the very pastime of his death, he is rapidly vanishing from the land. Far
+in the northern forests of the Athabasca a few buffaloes may for a time
+bid defiance to man, but they, too, must disappear and nothing be left of
+this giant beast save the bones that for many an age will whiten the
+prairies over which the great herds roamed at will in times before the
+white man came.
+
+It was the 5th of January before the return of the dogs from an Indian
+trade enabled me to get away from Fort Pitt. During the days I had
+remained in the fort the snow covering had deepened on the plains and
+winter had got a still firmer grasp upon the river and meadow. In two
+days travel we ran the length of the river between Fort Pitt and Battle
+River, travelling rapidly over the ice down the centre of the stream. The
+dogs were good ones, the drivers well versed in their work, and although
+the thermometer stood at 20 degrees below zero on the evening of the 6th,
+the whole run tended in no small degree to improve the general opinion
+which I had previously formed upon the delights of dog-travel. Arrived at
+Battle River, I found that the Crees had disappeared since my former
+visit; the place was now tenanted only by a few Indians and half-breeds.
+It seemed to be my fate to encounter cases of sickness at every post on
+my return journey. Here a woman was lying in a state of complete
+unconsciousness with intervals of convulsion and spitting of blood. It
+was in vain that I represented my total inability to deal with such a
+case. The friends of the lady all declared that it was necessary that I
+should see her, and accordingly I was introduced into the miserable hut
+in which she lay. She was stretched upon a low bed in one corner of a
+room about seven feet square; the roof approached so near the ground that
+I was unable to stand straight in any part of the place; the rough floor
+was crowded with women squatted thickly upon it, and a huge fire blazed
+in a corner, making the heat something terrible. Having gone through the
+ordinary medical programme of pulse feeling, I put some general
+questions to the surrounding bevy of women which, being duly interpreted
+into Cree, elicited the fact that the sick woman had been engaged in
+carrying a very heavy load of wood on her back for the use of her lord
+and master, and that while she had been thus employed she was seized with
+convulsions and became senseless. "What is it?" said the Hudson Bay man,
+looking at me in a manner which seemed to indicate complete confidence in
+my professional sagacity. "Do you think it's small-pox?" Some
+acquaintance with this disease enabled me to state my deliberate
+conviction that it was not small-pox, but as to what particular form of
+the many "ills that flesh is heir to" it really was, I could not for the
+life of me determine. I had not even that clue which the Yankee
+practitioner is said to have established for his guidance in the case of
+his infant patient, whose puzzling ailment he endeavoured to
+diagnosticate by administering what he termed "a convulsion powder,"
+being a whale at the treatment of convulsions. In the case now before me
+convulsions were unfortunately of frequent occurrence, and I could not
+lay claim to the high powers of pathology which the Yankee had asserted
+himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circumstances I judged it
+expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a
+compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of
+infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next
+morning that--whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to
+state the patient had shown decided symptoms of rallying, and took my
+departure from Battle River with the reputation of being a "medicine-man"
+of the very first order.
+
+I now began to experience the full toil and labour of a winter journey.
+Our course lay across a bare, open region on which for distances of
+thirty to forty miles not one tree or bush was visible; the cold was very
+great, and the snow, lying loosely as it had fallen, was so soft that the
+dogs sank through the drifts as they pulled slowly at their loads. On the
+evening of the 10th January we reached a little clump of poplars on the
+edge of a large plain on which no tree was visible. It was piercingly
+cold, a bitter wind swept across the snow, making us glad to find even
+this poor shelter against the coming night. Two hours after dark the
+thermometer stood at minus 38 degrees, or 70 degrees of frost. The wood
+was small and poor; the wind howled through the scanty thicket, driving
+the smoke into our eyes as we cowered over the fire. Oh, what misery it
+was! and how blank seemed the prospect before me! 900 miles still to
+travel, and to-day I had only made about twenty miles, toiling from dawn
+to dark through blinding drift and intense cold. On again next morning
+over the trackless plain, thermometer at minus 20 in morning, and minus
+12 at midday, with high wind, snow, and heavy drift. One of my men, a
+half-breed in name, an Indian in reality, became utterly done up from
+cold and exposure-the others would have left him behind to make his own
+way through the snow, or most likely to lie down and die, but I stopped
+the doggs until he came up, and then let him lie on one of the sleds for
+the remainder of the day. He was a miserable-looking wretch, but he ate
+enormous quantities of pemmican at every meal. After four days of very
+arduous travel we reached Carlton at sunset on the 12th January. The
+thermometer had kept varying between 20 and 38 degrees below zero every
+night, but on the night of the 12th surpassed any thing I had yet
+experienced. I spent that night in a room at Carlton, a room in which a
+fire had been burning until midnight, nevertheless at daybreak on the 13th
+the thermometer showed -20 degrees on the table close to my bed. At
+half-past ten o'clock, when placed outside, facing north, it fell to -44
+degrees, and I afterwards ascertained that an instrument kept at the
+mission of Prince Albert, 60 miles east from Carlton, showed the enormous
+amount of 51 degrees below zero at daybreak that morning, 83 degrees of
+frost. This was the coldest night during the winter, but it was clear,
+calm, and fine. I now determined to leave the usual winter route from
+Carlton to Red River, and to strike out a new line of travel, which,
+though very much longer than the trail via Fort Pelly, had several
+advantages to recommend it to my choice. In the first place, it promised a
+new line of country down the great valley of the Saskatchewan River to its
+expansion into the sheet of water called Cedar Lake, and from thence
+across the dividing ridge into the Lake Winnipegosis, down the length of
+that water and its southern neighbour, the Lake Manitoba, until the
+boundary of the new province would be again reached, fully 700 miles from
+Carlton. It was a long, cold travel, but it promised the novelty of
+tracing to its delta in the vast marshes of Cumberland and the Pasquia,
+the great river whose foaming torrent I had forded at the Rocky Mountains,
+and whose middle course I had followed for more than a month of wintry
+travel.
+
+Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had
+nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those
+instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude
+had commenced--that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all
+rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself
+round and round before he lies down to sleep--the instinct bred in him in
+that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the
+long grasses of the primeval prairies--so man, in the midst of his
+civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of
+the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt. My
+lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely
+coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds
+himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination
+and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it
+is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee
+at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago
+time "When wild in woods the noble savage ran." But be this as it may,
+-this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under
+the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown
+monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long
+before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one
+to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings
+like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from
+that long  total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of
+the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would
+relish with keen appetite the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious
+tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the
+fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and
+pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of
+enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow
+without one feeling of despondency. These icy nights, too, were often
+filled with the strange meteors of the north. Hour by hour have I watched
+the many-hued shafts of the aurora trembling from their northern home
+across the starlight of the zenith, till their lustre lighted up the
+silent landscape of the frozen river with that weird light which the
+Indians name "the dance of the dead spirits." At times, too, the "sun
+dogs" hung about the sun so close, that it was not always easy to tell
+which was the real sun and which the mock one; but wild weather usually
+followed the track of the sun dogs; and whenever I saw them in the
+heavens I looked for deeper snow and colder bivouacs.
+
+Carlton stands on the edge of the great forest region whose shores, if we
+may use the expression, are washed by the waves of the prairie ocean
+lying south of it; but the waves are of fire, not of water. Year by year
+the great torrent of flame moves on deeper and deeper into the dark ranks
+of the solemn-standing pines; year by year a wider region is laid open to
+the influences of sun and shower, and soon the traces of the conflict are
+hidden beneath the waving grass, and clinging vetches, and the clumps of
+tufted prairie roses. But another species of vegetation also springs up
+in the track of the fire; groves of aspens and poplars grow out of the
+burnt soil, giving to the country that park-like appearance already
+spoken of. Nestling along the borders of the innumerable lakes that stud
+the face of the Saskatchewan region, these poplar thickets sometimes
+attain large growth, but the fire too frequently checks their progress,
+and many of them stand bare and dry to delight the eye of the traveller
+with the assurance of an ample store of bright and warm firewood for his
+winter camp when the sunset bids him begin to make all cosy against the
+night.
+
+After my usual delay of one day, I set out from Carlton, bound for the
+pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan. My first stage was to be a short
+one. Sixty miles east from Carlton lies the small Presbyterian mission
+called Prince Albert. Carlton being destitute of dogs, I was obliged to
+take horses again into use; but the distance was only a two days march,
+and the track lay all the way upon the river. The wife of one of the
+Hudson Bay officers, desirous of visiting the mission, took advantage of
+my escort to travel to Prince Albert; and thus a lady, a nurse, and an
+infant aged eight months, became suddenly added to my responsibilities,
+with the thermometer varying between 70 and 80 degrees of frost I must
+candidly admit to having entertained very grave feelings at the
+contemplation of these family liabilities. A baby at any period of a
+man's life is a very serious affair, but a baby below zero is something
+appalling.
+
+The first night passed over without accident.` I resigned my deerskin bag
+to the lady and her infant, and Mrs. Winslow herself could not have
+desired a more peaceful state of slumber than that enjoyed by the
+youthful traveller. But the second night was a terror long to be
+remembered; the cold was intense. Out of the inmost recesses of my
+abandoned bag came those dire screams which result from infantile
+disquietude. Shivering, under my blanket, I listened to the terrible
+commotion going on in the interior of that cold-defying construction that
+so long had stood my warmest friend.
+
+At daybreak, chilled to the marrow, I rose, and gathered the fire together
+in speechless agony: no wonder, the thermometer stood at 40 degrees
+below zero; and yet, can it be believed? the baby seemed to be perfectly
+oblivious to the benefits of the bag, and continued to howl unmercifully.
+Such is the perversity of human nature even at that early age! Our
+arrival at the mission put an end to my family responsibilities, and
+restored me once more to the beloved bag; but the warm atmosphere of a
+house soon revealed the cause of much of the commotion of the night.
+"Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" displayed two round red marks upon its
+chubby countenance! "Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" had, in fact, been
+frost-bitten about the region of the nose and cheeks, and hence the
+hubbub. After a delay of two days at the mission, during which the
+thermometer always showed more than 60 degrees of frost in the early
+morning, I continued my journey towards the east, crossing over from the
+North to the South Branch of the Saskatchewan at a point some twenty
+miles from the junction of the two rivers--a rich and fertile land, well
+wooded and watered, a region destined in the near future to hear its
+echoes wake to other sounds than those of moose-call or wolf-howl. It was
+dusk in the evening of the 19th of January when we reached the high
+ground which looks down upon the "forks" of the Saskatchewan River. On
+some low ground at the farther side of the North Branch a camp-fire
+glimmered in the twilight. On the ridges beyond stood the dark pines of
+the Great Sub-Arctic Forest, and below lay the two broad converging
+rivers whose immense currents; hushed beneath the weight of ice, here
+merged into the single channel of the Lower Saskatchewan--a wild, weird
+scene it looked as the shadows closed around it. We descended with
+difficulty the steep bank and crossed the river to the camp-fire on the
+north shore. Three red-deer hunters were around it; they had some freshly
+killed elk meat, and potatoes from Fort-a-la-Corne, eighteen miles below
+the forks; and with so many delicacies our supper a-la-fourchette,
+despite a snow-storm, was a decided success.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois
+--Fort-a-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The
+solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
+
+AT the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the
+Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where
+the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling
+north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From
+Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region
+of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an
+ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch
+far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires
+sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the
+forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of
+autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place
+to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the
+extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of
+the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded
+tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the
+great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a
+circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp
+and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded
+tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great
+preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the
+marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest
+mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here
+are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to
+precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur
+trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan,
+the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the
+systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and
+thee Arctic Ocean.
+
+This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or
+other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men
+shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the shores
+of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two
+great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the
+trader! Less than 100 miles of canal through low alluvial soil have only
+to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the
+head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible
+supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the
+height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have
+rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the
+harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have
+risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral
+wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will
+ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the
+mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of
+the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the
+arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible
+that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave
+unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east
+have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the
+countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the
+Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become
+the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on
+the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters
+the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another
+picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and
+man's labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of
+plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and
+the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the
+buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter
+before us.
+
+As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan
+and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their
+most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans,
+at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error,
+and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of
+the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of
+Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on
+the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of
+Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des
+Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more
+conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to
+have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact
+that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took
+possession of it.
+
+During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay
+Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to
+the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The
+descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different
+portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in
+all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable
+warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have
+they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of
+Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech
+addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary
+station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
+
+"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told
+us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white
+tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in
+different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other
+towards the setting sun?"
+
+"Well, it is true."
+
+"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for
+evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in
+the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point
+out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the
+man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a
+savage!
+
+Fort-a-la-Corne lies some twenty miles below the point of junction of the
+rivers. Towards Fort-a-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety,
+for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from
+Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie
+River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and
+travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and Cumberland, was due
+at Fort-a-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on
+to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose
+echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes
+of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could
+accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river,
+'close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the
+packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his
+head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a
+musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had
+not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected,
+and I determined to await its arrival.
+
+Two days passed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally
+through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the
+board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things,
+although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand
+heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening
+of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the
+raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his
+hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many
+miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to
+move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow
+was very deep to Cumberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200
+miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such
+was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
+Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held
+out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris,
+and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain
+on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So
+the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon
+before I ceased to read.
+
+Early on the following morning, the express was hauled from its cache and
+brought to the fort; but it failed to throw much later light upon the
+meagre news of the previous evening. Old Adam was tried for verbal
+intelligence, but he too proved a failure. He had carried the packet from
+Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Carlton for more than a score of
+winters, and, from the fact of his being the bearer of so much news in
+his lifetime, was looked upon by his compeers as a kind of condensed
+electric telegraph; but when the question of war was fairly put to him,
+he gravely replied that at the forts he had heard there was war, and
+"England," he added, "was gaining the day." This latter fact was too much
+for me, for I was but too well aware that had war been declared in
+November, an army organization based upon the Parliamentary system was
+not likely to have "gained the day" in the short space of three weeks.
+
+To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry
+Became now the chief object of my life. I lightened my baggage as much as
+possible, dispensing with many comforts of clothing and equipment, and on
+the morn ing of the 23rd January started for Cumberland. I will not dwell
+on the seven days that now ensued, or how from long before dawn to verge
+of evening we toiled down the great silent river. It was the close of
+January, the very depth of winter. With heads bent down to meet the
+crushing blast, we plodded on, oft times as silent as the river and the
+forest, from whose bosom no sound ever came, no ripple ever broke, no
+bird, no beast, no human face, but ever the same great forest-fringed
+river whose majestic turns bent always to the north-east. To tell, day
+after day, the extreme of cold that now seldom varied would be to inflict
+on the reader a tiresome record; and, in truth, there would be no use in
+attempting it; 40 below zero means so many things impossible to picture
+or to describe, that it would be a hopeless task to enter upon its
+delineation. After one has gone through the list of all those things that
+freeze; after one has spoken of the knife which burns the hand that would
+touch its blade, the tea that freezes while it is being dlrunk, there
+still remains a sense of having said nothing; a sense which may perhaps
+be better understood by saying that 40 degrees below zero means just one
+thing more than all these items--it means death, in a period whose duration
+would expire in the hours of a winter's daylight, if there was no fire or
+means of making it on the track.
+
+Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one
+Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be
+able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The
+fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would
+I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus,
+doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at Cumberland, I
+Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his
+fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I
+hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by
+the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new
+constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles
+on the long road upon which I was travelling.
+
+On the 29th January we reached the shore of Pine Island Lake, and saw in
+our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we
+stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within
+sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man
+was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds,
+marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the
+fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped
+and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the
+conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man
+still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the
+Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"
+a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to
+the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in
+Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had
+died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and
+the men from Cumberland had taken away the body a few hours before.
+Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat
+moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man
+said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to
+die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces
+from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff
+well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly
+rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of
+language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the
+dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange antithesis
+appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the
+fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor
+Joe Miller conferred on me--the dog-sled that had carried his body had
+made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it
+to the Fort of Cumberland.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
+
+Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of Dogs--The great
+Marsh--Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a Medicine-man--
+Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his Boots--We reach the
+Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
+
+CUMBERLAND HOUSE, the oldest post of the Company in the interior, stands
+on the south shore of Pine Island Lake; the waters of which seek the
+Saskatchewan by two channels--Tearing River and Big-stone River. These
+two rivers form, together with the Saskatchewan and the lake, a large
+island, upon which stands Cumberland. Time moves slowly at such places
+as Cumberland, and change is almost unknown. To-day it is the same as it
+was 100 years ago. An old list of goods sent to Cumberland, from England
+in 1783 had precisely the same items as one of 1870. Strouds, cotton,
+beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still
+traded for marten and musquash. In its day Cumberland has had
+distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a
+sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great
+explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the
+fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked
+earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to
+grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the
+light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The
+graveyard and the funeral had few of those accessories of the modern
+mortuary which are supposed to be the characteristics of civilized
+sorrow. There was no mute, no crape, no parade--nothing of that imposing
+array of hat-bands and horses by which man, even` in the face of the
+mighty mystery, seeks still to glorify the miserable conceits of life;
+but the silent snow-laden pine-trees, the few words of prayer read in the
+flickering light of the lantern, the hush of nature and of night, made
+accessions full as fitting, as all the muffled music and craped sorrow of
+church and city.
+
+At Cumberland I beheld for the first time a genuine train of dogs. There
+was no mistake about them in shape or form, from fore-goer to hindermost
+hauler. Two of them were the pure Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed,
+fox-headed, long-furred, clean-legged animals whose ears, sharp-pointed
+and erect, sprung from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair;
+Pomeranians multiplied by four; the other two were a curious compound of
+Esquimaux and Athabascan, with hair so long that eyes were scarcely
+'visible. I had suffered so long from the wretched condition and
+description of the dogs of the Hudson Bay Company, that I determined to
+become the possessor of those animals, and, although I had to pay
+considerably more than had ever been previously demanded as the price of
+a train of dogs in the North, I was still glad, to get them at any
+figure. Five hundred miles yet lay between me and Red River-five hundred
+miles of marsh and frozen lakes, the delta of the Saskatchewan and the
+great Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba.
+
+It was the last day of January when I got away from Cumberland with this
+fine train of dogs and another 2 serviceable set which belonged to a
+Swampy Indian named Bear, who had agreed to accompany me to Red River.
+Bear was the son of the old man whose evolutions with the three pegs had
+caused so much commotion among the Indians at Red River on the occasion
+of my visit to Fort Garry eight months earlier. He was now to be my close
+companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place
+here to anticipate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a
+voyageur, snow-shoer and camp-maker a place second to none in the long
+list of my employees. Soon after quitting Cumberland we struck the
+Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great
+region of marsh and swamp. During five days our course lay through vast
+expanses of stiff frozen reeds, whose corn-like stalks rattled harshly
+against the parchment sides of the cariole as the dog-trains wound along
+through their snow-covered roots. Bleak and dreary beyond expression
+stretched this region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. The cold
+remained all the time at about the same degree--20 below zero. The camps
+were generally poor and miserable ones. Stunted willow is the chief
+timber of the region, and fortunate did we deem ourselves when at
+nightfall a low line of willows would rise above the sea of reeds to bid
+us seek its shelter for the night. The snow became deeper as we
+proceeded. At the Pasquia three feet lay level over the country, and the
+dogs sank deep as they toiled along. Through this great marsh the
+Saskatchewan winds in tortuous course, its flooded level in summer scarce
+lower than the alluvial shores that line it. The bends made by the river
+would have been too long to follow, so we held a straight track through
+the marsh, cutting the points as we travelled. It was difficult to
+imagine that this many-channelled, marsh-lined river could be the same
+noble stream whose mountain birth I had beheld far away in the Rocky
+Mountains, and whose central course had lain for so many miles through
+the bold precipitous bank of the Western prairies.
+
+On the 7th February we emerged from this desolate region of lake and
+swamp, and saw before us in the twilight a ridge covered with dense
+woods. It was the west shore of the Cedar Lake, and on the wooded
+promontory towards which we steered some Indian sturgeon-fishers had
+pitched their lodges. But I had not got thus far without much trouble and
+vexatious resistance. Of the three men from Cumberland, one had utterly
+knocked up, and the other two had turned mutinous. What cared they for my
+anxiety to push on for Red River? What did it matter if the whole world
+was at war? Nay, must I not be the rankest of impostors; for if there was
+war away beyond the big sea, was that not the very reason why any man
+possessing a particle of sense should take his time over the journey, and
+be in no hurry to get back again to his house?
+
+One night I reached the post of Moose Lake a few hours before daybreak,
+having been induced to make the flank march by representations of the
+wonderful train of dogs at that station, and being anxious to obtain
+them in addition to my own: It is almost needless to remark that these
+dogs had no existence except in the imagination of Bear and his
+companion. Arrived at Moose Lake (one of the most desolate spots-I had'
+ever looked upon), I found out that the dog-trick was not the only one
+my men intended playing upon me, for a message was sent in by Bear to
+the effect that his dogs were unable to stand the hard travel of the
+past week, and that he could no longer accompany me. Here was a pleasant
+prospect--stranded on the wild shores of the Moose Lake with one train of
+dogs, deserted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and
+fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway
+House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then
+tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.
+I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though
+it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red
+River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole
+North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there;
+for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to
+put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious institution
+is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the
+eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly assured that
+the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at
+my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the
+wooded shores of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great
+marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the
+Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.
+
+The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on
+all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the
+question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was
+attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A
+loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine,
+and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the
+Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of
+Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"
+I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to
+drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point
+had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the
+morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that
+could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the
+efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that
+seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad
+time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the
+"Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and
+relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery,
+but its eight-by-ten of superficial space held some eighteen persons, the
+greater number of whom were greasy with the oil of the sturgeon. Meantime
+a supper of sturgeon had been prepared for me, and great was the
+excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have
+reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not
+at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and
+many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but
+even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers
+towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon
+in the eyes of such a whale as Chicag.
+
+Glad to escape from the suffocating hole, I emptied my fire-bag of
+tobacco among the group and got out into the cold night-air. What a
+change! Over the silent snow-sheeted lake, over the dark isles and the
+cedar shores, the moon was shining amidst a deep blue sky. Around were
+grouped a few birch-bark wigwams. My four dogs, now well known and trusty
+friends, were holding high carnival over the heads and tails of Chicag's
+feast. In one of the wigwams, detached from the rest, sat a very old man
+wrapped in a tattered blanket. He was splitting wood into little pieces,
+and feeding a small fire in the centre of the lodge, while he chattered
+to himself all the time. The place was clean, and as I watched the little
+old fellow at his work I decided to make my bed in his lodge. He was no
+other than Parisiboy, the medicine-man of the camp, the quaintest little
+old savage I had ever encountered. Two small white mongrels alone shared
+his wigwam. "See," he said, "I have no one with me but these two dogs."
+The curs thus alluded to felt themselves bound to prove that they were
+cognizant of the fact by shoving forward their noses one on each side of
+old Parisiboy, an impertinence on their part which led to their sudden
+expulsion by being pitched headlong out of the door. Parisiboy now
+commenced a lengthened exposition of his woes. "His blanket was old and
+full of holes, through which the cold found easy entrance. He was a very
+great medicine-man, but he was very poor, and tea was a luxury which he
+seldom tasted." I put a handful of tea into his little kettle, and his
+bright eyes twinkled with delight under their shaggy brows. "I never go
+to sleep," he continued; "it is too cold to go to sleep; I sit up all
+night splitting wood and smoking and keeping the fire alight; if I had
+tea I would never lie down at all." As I made my bed he continued to sing
+to himself, chatter and laugh with a peculiar low chuckle, watching me
+all the time. His first brew of tea was quickly made; hot and strong, he
+poured it into a cup, and drank it with evident delight; then in went
+more water on the leaves and down on the fire again went the little
+kettle.` But I was not permitted to lie down without interruption. Chicag
+headed a deputation of his brethren, and grew loud over the recital of
+his grievances. Between the sturgeon and the Company he appeared to think
+himself victim, but I was unable to gather whether the balance of
+ill-treatment lay on the side of the fish or of the corporation. Finally
+I got rid of the lot, and crept into my bag. Parisiboy sat at the other
+side of the fire, grinning and chuckling and sipping his tea. All night
+long I heard through my fitful sleep his harsh chuckle and his song.
+Whenever I opened my eyes, there was the little old man in the same
+attitude, crouching over the fire, which he sedulously kept alight. How
+many brews of tea he made, I can't say; but when daylight came he was
+still at the work, and as I replenished the kettle the old leaves seemed
+well-nigh bleached by continued boilings.
+
+That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of
+Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar
+Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three
+Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since
+that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores.
+The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake
+from those of Lake Winnipegoosis. From one lake to the other is a
+distance of about four miles. Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is
+quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis,
+when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of
+the latter lake. These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same
+level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their
+respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than
+its neighbour the Winnipegoosis. The question is one of considerable
+interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line
+of communication between the waters of Red River and those of
+Saskatchewan.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of
+Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until
+the sky alone bounded the prospect. But there were many islands scattered
+over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the
+pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the
+dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay. On one of these islands we
+camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a
+huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms. This Lake Winnipegoosis, or
+the "Small Sea,'" is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120
+miles in length and some 30 in width. Its shores and islands are densely
+wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the
+black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern shores he
+beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.
+This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line
+between civilization and savagery. Within the limit of the oak lies the
+country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which
+my steps have wandered so far. Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal
+Lake, I passed across the belt of forest which. Lies between the two
+lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day's
+journey to the Waterhen River. This river carries the surplus water of
+Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba. For another
+hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the
+pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the shores.
+Along the whole line of the western shores of these lakes the bold ridges
+of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the
+forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water. These four
+mountain ranges never exceed an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea.
+They are wooded to the summits, and long ages ago their rugged cliffs
+formed, doubtless, a fitting shore-line to that great lake whose
+fresh-water billows were nursed in a space twice larger than even
+Superior itself can boast of; but, as has been stated in an earlier
+chapter, that inland ocean has long since shrunken into the narrower
+limits of Winnipeg, Winnipegoosis, and Manitoba-the Great Sea, the Little
+Sea, and the Straits of the God.
+
+I have not dwelt upon the days of travel during which we passed down the
+length of these lakes. From the camp of Chicag I had driven my own train
+of dogs; with Bear the sole companion of the journey. Nor were these days
+on the great lakes by any means the dullest of the journey, Cerf Volant,
+Tigre, Cariboo, and Muskeymote gave ample occupation to their driver.
+Long before Manitoba was reached they had learnt a new lesson-that men
+were not all cruel to dogs in camp or on the road. It is true that in the
+learning of that lesson some little difficulty was occasioned by the
+sudden loosening and disruption of ideas implanted by generations of
+cruelty in the dog-mind of my train. It is true that Muskeymote, in
+particular, long held aloof from offers of friendship, and then suddenly
+passed from the excess of caution to the extreme of imprudence,
+imagining, doubtless, that the millennium had at length arrived, and
+that dogs were henceforth no more to haul. But Muskeymote was soon set
+right upon that point, and showed no inclination to repeat his mistake.
+Then there was Cerf Volant, that most perfect Esquimaux. Cerf Volant
+entered readily into friendship, upon an under-standing of an additional
+half-fish at supper every evening. No alderman ever loved his turtle
+better than did Cerf Volant love his white fish; but I rather think that
+the white fish was better earned than the turtle--however we will let
+that be matter of opinion. Having satisfied his hunger, which, by the
+way, is a luxury only allowed to the hauling-dog once a day, Cerf Volant
+would generally establish himself in close proximity to my feet,
+frequently on the top of the bag, from which coigne of vantage he would
+exchange fierce growls with any dog who had the temerity to approach us.
+None of our dogs were harness-eaters, a circumstance that saved us the
+nightly trouble of placing harness and cariole in the branches of a tree.
+On one or two occasions Muskeymote, however, ate his boots. "Boots!" the
+reader will exclaim; "how came Muskeymote to possess boots? We have heard
+of a puss in boots, but a dog, that is something new." Nevertheless
+Muskeymote had his boots, and ate them, too. This is how a dog is put in
+boots. When the day is very cold--I don't mean in your reading of that
+word, reader, but in its North-west sense--when the morning, then, comes
+very cold, the dogs travel fast, the drivers run to try and restore the
+circulation, and noses and cheeks which grow white beneath the bitter
+blast are rubbed with snow caught-quickly from the ground without pausing
+in the rapid stride; on such mornings, and they are by no means uncommon,
+the particles of snow which adhere to the feet of the dog form sharp
+icicles between his toes, which grow larger and larger as he travels. A
+nowing old hauler will stop every now and then, and tear out these
+icicles with his teeth, but a young dog plods wearily along leaving his
+footprints in crimson stains upon the snow behind him. When he comes into
+camp, he lies down and licks his poor wounded feet, but the rest is only
+for a short time, and the next start makes them worse than before. Now
+comes the time for boots. The dog-boot is simply a fingerless glove drawn
+on over the toes and foot, and tied by a running string of leather round
+the wrist or ankle of the animal; the boot itself is either made of
+leather or strong white cloth. Thus protected, the dog will travel for
+days and days with wounded feet, and get no worse, in fact he will
+frequently recover while still on the journey. Now Muskeymote, being a
+young dog, had not attained to that degree of wisdom which induces older
+dogs to drag the icicles from their toes, and consequently Muskeymote had
+to be duly booted every morning--a cold operation it was too, and many a
+run had I to make to the fire while it was being performed, holding my
+hands into the blaze for a moment and then back again to the dog. Upon
+arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet,
+and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with moccassins of the men, to dry.
+It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote
+performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.
+
+The night-camps along the lakes were all good ones; it took some time to
+clear away the deep snow and to reach the ground, but wood for fire and
+young spruce tops for bedding were plenty, and fifteen minutes axe work
+sufficed to fell as many trees as our fire needed for night and morning.
+From wooded point to wooded point we journeyed on over the frozen lakes;
+the snow lying packed into the crevices and uneven places of the ice
+formed a compact level surface, upon which the dogs scarce marked the
+impress of their feet, and the sleds and cariole bounded briskly after
+the train, jumping the little wavelets of hardened snow to the merry
+jingling of innumerable bells. On snow such as this dogs will make a run
+of forty miles in a day, and keep that pace for many days in succession,
+but in the soft snow of the woods or the river thirty miles will form a
+fair day's work for continuous travel.
+
+On the night of the 19th of February we made our last camp on the ridge
+to the south of Lake Manitoba, fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without
+a feeling of regret was the old work gone through for the last time--the
+old work of tree-cutting, and fire-making, and supper-frying, and
+dog-feeding. Once more I had reached those confines of civilization on
+whose limits four months earlier I had made my first camp on the
+shivering Prairie of the Lonely Grave; then the long journey lay before
+me, now the unnumbered scenes of nigh 3000 miles of travel were spread
+out in that picture which memory sees in the embers of slow-burning
+fires, when the night-wind speaks in dreamy tones to the willow branches
+and waving grasses. And if there be those among my readers who can il
+comprehend such feelings, seeing only in this return the escape from
+savagery to civilization--from the wild Indian to the Anglo-American,
+from the life of toil and hardship to that of rest and comfort-then words
+would be useless to throw light upon the matter, or to better enable
+such men to understand that it was possible to look back with keen regret
+to the wild days of the forest and the prairie. Natures, no matter how we
+may mould them beneath the uniform pressure of the great machine called
+civilization, are not all alike, and many men's minds echo in some shape
+or other the voice of the Kirghis woman, which says, "Man must keep
+moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are
+in movement: it is but the dead and the earth that remain in one place."
+
+There are many who have seen a prisoned lark sitting on its perch,
+looking listlessly through the bars, from some brick wall against which
+its cage was hung; but at times, when the spring comes round, and a bit
+of grassy earth is put into the narrow cage, and, in spite of smoke and
+mist, the blue sky looks a moment on the foul face of the city, the little
+prisoner dreams himself free, and, with eyes fixed on the blue sky
+and feet clasping the tiny turf of green sod, he pours forth into the dirty
+street those notes which nature taught him in the never-to-be-forgotten
+days of boundless freedom. So I have seen an Indian, far down
+in Canada, listlessly watching the vista of a broad river whose waters
+and whose shores once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him
+of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the
+wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting
+sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his
+listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo
+from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the
+shores of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners of
+our civilization. He who has once tasted the unworded freedom of the
+Western wilds must ever feel a sense of constraint within the boundaries
+of civilized life. The Russian is not the only man who has the Tartar
+close underneath his skin. That Indian idea of the earth being free to
+all men catches quick and lasting hold of the imagination--the mind
+widens out to grasp the reality of the lone space and cannot shrink again
+to suit the requirements of fenced divisions. There is a strange
+fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my
+home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or
+power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly
+remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of
+churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again
+to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the
+portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land.
+
+It is time to close. It was my lot to shift the scene of life with
+curious rapidity. In a shorter space of time than it had taken to
+traverse the length of the Saskatchewan, I stood by the banks of that
+river whose proud city had just paid the price of conquest in blood and
+ruin--yet I witnessed a still heavier ransom than that paid to German
+robbers. I saw the blank windows of the Tuileries red with the light of
+flames fed from five hundred years of history, and the flagged courtyard
+of La Roquette running deep in the blood of Frenchmen spilt by France,
+while the common enemy smoked and laughed, leaning on the ramparts of St.
+Denis.
+
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.'.
+
+GOVERNOR ARCHIBALD'S INSTRUCTIONS.
+
+Fort Garry, 10th October, 1870.
+
+W. F. Butler, Esq., 69th Regiment.
+
+SIR,--Adverting to the interviews between his honour the
+Lieutenant-Governor and yourself on the subject of the proposed mission
+to the Saskatchewan, I have it now in command to acquaint you with the
+objects his honour has in view in asking you to undertake the mission,
+and also to define the duties he desires you to perform.
+
+In the first place, I am to say that representations have been made from
+various quarters that within the last two years much disorder has
+prevailed in the settlements along the line of the Saskatchewan, and
+that the local authorities are utterly powerless for the protection of
+life and property within that region. It is asserted to be absolutely
+necessary for the protection, not only of the Hudson Bay Company's Forts,
+but for the safety of the settlements along the river, that a small body
+of troops should be sent to some of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company,
+to assist the local authorities in the maintenance of peace and order.
+
+I am to enclose you a copy of a communication on this subject from Donald
+A. Smith, Esq., the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and also. an
+extract of a letter from W. J. Christie, Esq., a chief factor stationed
+at Fort Carlton, which will give you some of the facts which have been
+adduced to show the representations to be well grounded.
+
+The statements made in these papers come from the officers of the Hudson
+Bay Company, whose views may be supposed to be in some measure affected
+by their pecuniary interests.
+
+It is the desire of the Lieutenant-Governor that you should examine the
+matter entirely from an independent point of view, giving his honour for
+the benefit of the Government of Canada your views of the state of
+matters on the Saskatchewan in reference to the necessity of troops being
+sent there, basing your report upon what you shall find by actual
+examination.
+
+You will be expected to report upon the whole question of the existing
+state of affairs in that territory, and to state your views on what may
+be necessary to be done in the interest of peace and order.
+
+Secondly, you are to ascertain, as far as you can, in what places and
+among what tribes of Indians, and what settlements of whites, the
+small-pox is now prevailing, including the extent of its ravages and
+every particular you can ascertain in connexion with the rise and the
+spread of the disease. You are to take with you such small supply of
+medicines as shall be considered by the Board of Health here suitable and
+proper for the treatment of small-pox, and you will obtain written
+instructions for the proper treatment of the disease, and will leave a
+copy thereof with the chief officer of each fort you pass, and with any
+clergyman or other intelligent person belonging to settlements outside
+the forts.
+
+You will also ascertain, as far as in your power, the number of Indians
+on the line between Red River and the Rocky Mountains; the different
+nations and tribes into which they are divided and the particular
+locality inhabited, and the language spoken, and also the names of the
+principal chiefs of each tribe.
+
+In doing this you will be careful to obtain the information without in
+any manner leading the Indians to suppose you are acting under authority,
+or inducing them to form any expectations based on your inquiries.
+
+You will also be expected to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature of
+the trade in furs conducted upon the Saskatchewan, the number and
+nationality of the persons employed in what has been called the Free
+Trade there, and what portion of the supplies, if any, come from the
+United States territory, and what portion of the furs are sent thither;
+and generally to make such inquiries as to the source of trade in that
+region as may enable the Lieutenant-Governor to form an accurate idea of
+the commerce of the Saskatchewan.
+
+You are to report from time to time as you proceed westward, and forward
+your communications by such opportunities as may occur. The
+Lieutenant-Governor will rely upon your executing this mission with all
+reasonable despatch.
+
+(Signed) S. W. HILL, P. Secretary.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIEUTENANT BUTLER'S REPORT.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+The Hon. Adams G. Archibald, Lieut.-Governor, Manitoba.
+
+SIR,--Before entering into the questions contained in the written
+instructions under which I acted, and before attempting to state an
+opinion upon the existing situation of affairs in the Saskatchewvan, I
+will briefly allude to the time occupied in travel, to the route
+followed, and to the general circumstances attending my journey.
+
+Starting from Fort Garry on the 25th October, I reached Fort Ellice at
+junction of Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers on the 30th of the same
+month. On the following day I continued my journey towards Carlton, which
+place was reached on the 9th November, a detention of two days having
+occurred upon the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, the waters of
+which were only partially frozen. After a delay of five days in Carlton,
+the North Branch of the Saskatchewan was reported fit for the passage of
+horses, and on the morning of the 14th November I proceeded on my western
+journey towards Edmonton. By this time snow had fallen to the depth of
+about six inches over the country, which rendered it necessary to
+abandon the use of wheels for the transport of baggage, substituting a
+light sled in place of the cart which had hitherto been used, although I
+still retained the same mode of conveyance, namely the saddle, for
+personal use. Passing the Hudson Bay Company Posts of Battle River, Fort
+Pitt and Victoria, I reached Edmonton on the night of the 26th November.
+For the last 200 miles the country had become clear of snow, and the
+frosts, notwithstanding the high altitude of the region, had decreased in
+severity. Starting again on the afternoon of the 1st December, I
+recrossed the Saskatchewan River below Edmonton and continued in a
+south-westerly direction towards the Rocky Mountain House, passing
+through a country which, even at that advanced period of the year, still
+retained many traces of its summer beauty. At midday on the 4th December,
+having passed the gorges of the Three Medicine Hills, I came in sight of
+the Rocky Mountains, which rose from the western extremity of an immense
+plain and stretched their great snow-clad peaks far away to the northern
+and southern horizons.
+
+Finding it impossible to procure guides for the prosecution of my journey
+south to Montana, I left the Rocky Mountain House on the 12th December
+and commenced my return travels to Red River along the valley of the
+Saskatchewan. Snow had now fallen to the depth of about a foot, and the
+cold had of late begun to show symptoms of its winter intensity. Thus on
+the morning of the 5th December my thermometer indicated 22 degrees below
+zero, and again on the 13th 16 below zero, a degree of cold which in itself
+was not remarkable, but which had the effect of rendering the saddle by no
+means a comfortable mode of transport.
+
+Arriving at Edmonton on the 16th December, I exchanged my horses for
+dogs, the saddle for a small cariole, and on the 20th December commenced
+in earnest the winter journey to Red River. The cold, long delayed, now\
+began in all its severity. On the 22nd December my thermometer at ten
+o'clock in the morning indicated 39 degrees below zero, later in the day a
+biting wind swept the long reaches of the Saskatchewan River and rendered
+travelling on the ice almost insupportable. To note here the long days of
+travel down the great valley of the Saskatchewan, at times on the frozen
+river and at times upon the neighbouring plains, would prove only a
+tiresome record. Little by little the snow seemed to deepen, day by day
+the frost to obtain a more lasting power and to bind in a still more
+solid embrace all visible Nature. No human voice, no sound of bird or
+beast, no ripple of stream to break the intense silence of these vast
+solitudes of the Lower Saskatchewan. At length, early in the month of
+February, I quitted the valley of Saskatchewan at Cedar Lake, crossed the
+ridge which separates that sheet of water from Lake Winnipegoosis, and,
+descending the latter lake to its outlet at Waterhen River, passed from
+thence to the northern extremity of the Lake Manitoba. Finally, on the
+18th February, I reached the settlement of Oak Point on south shore of
+Manitoba, and two days later arrived at Fort Garry.
+
+In following the river and lake route from Carlton, I passed in
+succession the Mission of Prince Albert, Forts-a-la-Corne and Cumberland,
+the Posts of the Pas, Moose Lake, Shoal River and Manitoba House, and,
+with a few exceptions, travelled upon ice the entire way.
+
+The journey from first to last occupied 119 days and embraced a distance
+of about 2700 miles.
+
+I have now to offer the expression of my best acknowledgements to the
+officers of the various posts of the Hudson Bay Company passed en route.
+To Mr. W. J. Christie, of Edmonton, to Mr. Richard Hardistry, of
+Victoria, as well as to Messrs. Hackland, Sinclair, Ballenden, Trail,
+Turner, Belanger, Matheison, McBeath, Munro, and MacDonald, I am indebted
+for much kindness and hospitality, and I have to thank Mr. W. J. Christie
+for information of much value regarding statistics connected with his
+district. I have also to offer to the Rev. Messrs. Lacombe, McDougall,
+and Nisbet the expression of the obligations which I am under towards
+them for uniform kindness and hospitality.
+
+
+
+GENERAL REPORT.
+
+Having in the foregoing pages briefly alluded to the time occupied in
+travel, to the route followed, and to the general circumstances attending
+my journey, I now propose entering upon the subjects contained in the
+written instructions under which I acted, and in the first instance to
+lay before you the views which I have formed upon the important question
+of the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+The institutions of Law and Order, as understood in civilized
+communities, are wholly unknown in the regions of the Saskatchewan,
+insomuch as the country is without any executive organization, and
+destitute of any means to enforce the authority of the law.
+
+I do not mean to assert that crime and outrage are of habitual occurrence
+among the people of this territory, or that a state of anarchy exists in
+any particular portion of it, but it is an undoubted fact that crimes of
+the most serious nature have been committed, in various places, by
+persons of mixed and native blood, without any vindication of the law
+being possible, and that the position of affairs rests at the present
+moment not on the just power of an executive authority to enforce
+obedience, but rather upon the passive acquiescence of the majority of a
+scant population who hitherto have lived in ignorance of those
+conflicting interests which, in more populous and civilized communities,
+tend to anarchy and disorder.
+
+But the question may be asked, If the Hudson Bay Company represent the
+centres round which the half-breed settlers have gathered, how then does
+it occur that that body should be destitute of governing power, and
+unable to repress crime and outrage? To this question I would reply that
+the Hudson Bay Company, being a commercial corporation, dependent for its
+profits on the suffrages of the people, is of necessity cautious in the
+exercise of repressive powers; that, also, it is exposed in the
+Saskatchewan to the evil influence which free trade has ever developed
+among the native races; that, furthermore, it is brought in contact with
+tribes long remarkable for their lawlessness and ferocity; and that,
+lastly, the elements of disorder in the whole territory of Saskatchewan
+are for many causes, yearly on the increase. But before entering upon
+the subject into which this last-consideration would lead me, it will be
+advisable to glance at the various elements which comprise the population
+of this Western region. In point of numbers, and in the power which they
+possess of committing depredations, the aboriginal races claim the
+foremost place among the inhabitants of the Saskatchewan. These tribes,
+like the Indians of other portions of Rupert's Land and the North-west,
+carry on the pursuits of hunting, bringing the produce of their hunts to
+barter for the goods of the Hudson Bay Company; but, unlike the Indians
+of more northern regions, they subsist almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+and they carry on among themselves an unceasing warfare which has long
+become traditional. Accustomed to regard murder as honourable war,
+robbery and pillage as the traits most ennobling to man hood, free from
+all restraint, these warring tribes of Crees, Assineboines, and Blackfeet
+form some of the most savage among even the races of Western America.
+
+Hitherto it maybe said that the Crees have looked upon the white man as
+their friend, but latterly indications have not been wanting to
+foreshadow a change in this respect--a change which I. have found many
+causes to account for, and which, if the Saskatchewan remains in its
+present condition, must, I fear, deepen into more positive enmity. The
+buffalo, the red man's sole means of subsistence, is rapidly
+disappearing; year by year the prairies, which once shook beneath the
+tread of countless herds of bisons, are becoming denuded of animal life,
+and year by year the affliction of starvation comes with an
+ever-increasing intensity upon the land. There are men still living who
+remember to have hunted buffalo on the shores of Lake Manitoba. It is
+scarcely twelve years since Fort Ellice, on the Assineboine River, formed
+one of the principal posts of supply for the Hudson Bay Company; and the
+vast prairies which flank the southern and western spurs of the Touchwood
+Hills, now utterly silent and deserted, are still white with the bones of
+the migratory herds which, until lately, roamed over their surface.
+
+Nor is this absence of animal life confined to the plains of the
+Qu'Appelle and of the Upper Assineboine--all along the line of the North
+Saskatchewan, from Carlton to Edmonton House, the same scarcity prevails;
+and if further illustration of this decrease of buffalo be wanting, I
+would state that, during the present winter, I have traversed the plains
+from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains without seeing even one
+solitary animal upon 1200 miles of prairie. The Indian is not slow to
+attribute this lessening of his principal food to the presence of the
+white and half-breed settlers, whose active competition for pemmican
+(valuable as supplying the transport service of the Hudson Bay Company)
+has led to this all but total extinction of the bison.
+
+Nor does he fail to trace other grievances--some real, some imaginary-to
+the same cause. Wherever the half-breed settler or hunter has established
+himself he has resorted to the use of poison as a means of destroying the
+wolves and foxes which were numerous on the prairies. This most
+pernicious practice has had the effect of greatly embittering the Indians
+against the settler, for not only have large numbers of animals been
+uselessly destroyed, inasmuch as fully one-half the animals thus killed
+are lost to the trapper, but also the poison is frequently communicated
+to the Indian dogs, and thus a very important mode of winter transport is
+lost to the red man. It is asserted, too, that horses are sometimes
+poisoned by eating grasses which have become tainted by the presence of
+strychnine; and although this latter assertion may not be true, yetits
+effects are the same, as the Indian fully believes it. In consequence of
+these losses a threat has been made, very generally, by the natives
+against the half-breeds, to the effect that if the use of poison was
+persisted in, the horses belonging to the settlers would be shot.
+
+Another increasing source of Indian discontent is to be found in the
+policy pursued by the American Government in their settlement of the
+countries lying south of the Saskatchewan. Throughout the territories of
+Dakota and Montana a state of hostility has long existed between the
+Americans and the tribes of Sioux, Black feet, and Peagin Indians. This
+state of hostility has latterly degenerated on the part of the Americans,
+into a war of extermination; and the policy of "clearing out" the red man
+has now become a recognized portion of Indian warfare. Some of these acts
+of extermination find their way into the public records, many of them
+never find publicity. Among the former, the attack made during the
+spring of 1870 by a large party of troops upon a camp of Peagin Indians
+close to the British boundary-line will be fresh in the recollection of
+your Excellency. The tribe thus attacked was suffering severely from
+small-pox, was surprised at daybreak by the soldiers, who, rushing in
+upon the tents, destroyed 170 men, women, and children in a few moments.
+This tribe forms one of the four nations comprised in the Blackfeet
+league, and have their hunting-grounds partly on British and partly on
+American territory. I have mentioned the presence of small-pox in
+connexion with these Indians. It is very generally believed in the
+Saskatchewan that this disease was originally communicated to the
+Blackfeet tribes by Missouri traders with a view to the accumulation of
+robes; and this opinion, monstrous though it may appear, has been
+somewhat terrified by the Western press when treating of the epidemic
+last year. As I propose to enter at some length into the question of this
+disease at a later portion of this report, I now only make allusion to it
+as forming one of the grievances which the Indian affirms he suffers at
+the hands of the white man.
+
+In estimating the causes of Indian discontent as bearing upon the future
+preservation of peace and order in the Saskatchewan, and as illustrating
+the growing difficulties which a commercial corporation like the Hudson
+Bay Company have to contend against when acting in an executive capacity,
+I must now allude to the subject of Free Trade. The policy of a free
+trader in furs is essentially a short-sighted one-he does not care about
+the future--the continuance and partial well-being of the Indian is of no
+consequence to him. His object is to obtain possession of all the furs
+the Indian may have at the moment to barter, and to gain that end he
+spares no effort. Alcohol, discontinued by the Hudson Bay Company in
+their Saskatchewan district for many years, has been freely used of late
+by free traders from Red River; and, as great competition always exists
+between the traders and the employees of the Company, the former have not
+hesitated to circulate among the natives the idea that they have suffered
+much injustice in their intercourse with the Company. The events which
+took place in the Settlement of Red River during the winter of '69 and '70
+have also tended to disturb the minds of the Indians--they have heard of
+changes of Government, of rebellion and pillage of property, of the
+occupation of forts belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and the stoppage
+of trade and ammunition. Many of these events have been magnified and
+distorted--evil-disposed persons have not been wanting to spread abroad
+among the natives the idea of the downfall of the Company, and the
+threatened immigration of settlers to occupy the hunting-grounds and
+drive the Indian from the land. All these rumours, some of them vague and
+wild in the extreme, have found ready credence by camp-fires and in
+council-lodge, and thus it is easy to perceive how the red man, with many
+of his old convictions and beliefs rudely shaken, should now be more
+disturbed and discontented than he has been at any former period.
+
+In endeavouring to correctly estimate the present condition of Indian
+affairs in the Saskatchewan the efforts and influence of the various
+missionary bodies must not be overlooked. It has only been during the
+last twenty years that the Plain Tribes have been brought into contact
+with the individuals whom the contributions of European and Colonial
+communities have sent out on missions of religion and civilization. Many
+of these individuals have toiled with untiring energy and undaunted
+perseverance in the work to which they have devoted themselves, but it is
+unfortunately true that the jarring interests of different religious
+denominations have sometimes induced them to introduce into the field of
+Indian theology that polemical rancour which so unhappily distinguishes
+more civilized communities.
+
+To fully understand the question of missionary enterprise, as bearing
+upon the Indian tribes of the Saskatchewan valley, I must glance for a
+moment at the peculiarities in the mental condition of the Indians which
+render extreme caution necessary in all inter course between him and the
+white man. It is most difficult to make the Indian comprehend the true
+nature of the foreigner with whom he is brought in contact, or rather, I
+should say, that having his own standard by which he measures truth and
+falsehood, misery and happiness, and all the accompaniments of life, it
+is almost impossible to induce him to look at the white man from any
+point of view but his own. From this point of view every thing is
+Indian. English, French, Canadians, and Americans are so many tribes
+inhabiting various parts of the world, whose land is bad, and who are not
+possessed of buffalo--for this last desideratum they (the strangers) send
+goods, missions, etc., to the Indians of the Plains. "Ah!" they say, "if
+it was not for our buffalo where would you be? You would starve, your
+bones would whiten the prairies." It is useless to tell them that such is
+not the case, they answer, "Where then does all the pemmican go to that
+you take away in your boats and in your carts?" With the Indian, seeing
+is believing, and his world is the visible one in which his wild life is
+cast. This being understood, the necessity for caution in communicating
+with the native will at once be apparent-yet such caution on the part of
+those who seek the Indians as missionaries is not always observed. Too
+frequently the language suitable for civilized society has been addressed
+to the red man. He is told of governments, and changes in the political
+world, successive religious systems are laid before him by their various
+advocates. To-day he is told to believe one religion, to-morrow to have
+faith in another. Is it any wonder that, applying his own simple tests to
+so much conflicting testimony, he becomes utterly confused, unsettled,
+and suspicious? To the white man, as a white man, the Indian has no
+dislike; on the contrary, he is pretty certain to receive him with
+kindness and friendship, provided always that the new-comer will adopt
+the native system, join the hunting-camp, and live on the plains; but to
+the white man as a settler, or hunter on his own account, the Crees and
+Blackfeet are in direct antagonism. Ownership in any particular portion
+of the soil by an individual is altogether foreign to men who, in the
+course of a single summer, roam over 500 miles of prairie. In another
+portion of this report I hope to refer again to the Indian question, when
+treating upon that clause in my instructions which relates exclusively to
+Indian matters. I have alluded here to missionary enterprise and to the
+Indian generally, as both subjects are very closely connected with the
+state of affairs in the Saskatchewan.
+
+Next in importance to the native race is the half-breed element in the
+population which now claims our attention.
+
+The persons composing this class are chiefly of French descent originally
+of no fixed habitation, they have, within the last few years, been
+induced by their clergy to form scattered settlements along the line of
+the North Saskatchewan. Many of them have emigrated from Red River, and
+others are either the discharged servants of the Hudson Bay Company or
+the relatives of persons still in the employment of the Company. In
+contradistinction to this latter class they bear the name of "free men"
+and if freedom from all restraint, general inaptitude for settled
+employment, and love for the pursuits of hunting be the characteristics
+of free men, then they are eminently entitled to the name they bear. With
+very few exceptions, they have preferred adopting the exciting but
+precarious means of living, the chase, to following the more certain`
+methods of agriculture. Almost the entire summer is spent by them upon
+the plains, where they carry on the pursuit of the buffalo in large and
+well organized bands, bringing the produce of their hunt to trade with
+the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+In winter they generally reside at their settlements, going to the nearer
+plains in small parties and dragging the frozen buffalo meat for the
+supply of the Company's posts. This preference for the wild life of the
+prairies, by bringing them more in contact with their savage brethren,
+and by removing them from the means of acquiring knowledge and
+civilization, has tended in no small degree to throw them back in the
+social scale, and to make the establishment of a prosperous colony almost
+an impossibility--even starvation, that most potent inducement to toil,
+seems powerless to promote habits of industry and agriculture. During
+the winter season they frequently undergo periods of great privation,
+but, like he Indian, they refuse to credit the gradual extinction of the
+buffalo, and persist in still depending on that animal for their food.
+Were I to sum up the general character of the Saskatchewan half-breed
+population, I would say: They are gay, idle, dissipated, unreliable, and
+ungrateful, in a measure brave, hasty to form conclusions and quick to
+act upon them, possessing extra ordinary power-of endurance, and capable
+of undergoing immense fatigue, yet scarcely-ever to be depended on in
+critical moments, superstitious and ignorant, having a very deep-rooted
+distaste to any fixed employment, opposed to the Indian, yet widely
+separated from the white man--altogether a race presenting, I fear, a
+hopeless prospect to those who would attempt to frame, from such
+materials, a future nationality. In the appendix will be found a
+statement showing the population and extent of the half-breed settlements
+in the West. I will here merely remark that the principal settlements are
+to be found in the Upper Saskatchewan, in the vicinity of Edmonton House,
+at which post their trade is chiefly carried on.
+
+Among the French half-breed population there exists the same political
+feeling which is to be found among their brethren in Manitoba, and the
+same sentiments which produced the outbreak of 1869-70 are undoubtedly
+existing in the small communities of the Saskatchewan. It is no easy
+matter to understand how the feeling of distrust towards Canada, and a
+certain hesitation to accept the Dominion Government, first entered into
+the mind of the half-breed, but undoubtedly such distrust and hesitation
+have made themselves apparent in the Upper Saskatchewan, as in Red River,
+though in a much less formidable degree; in fact, I may fairly close this
+notice of the half-breed population by observing that an exact
+counterpart of French political feeling in Manitoba may be found in the
+territory of the Saskatchewan, but kept in abeyance both by the isolation
+of the various settlements, as well as by a certain dread of Indian
+attack which presses equally upon all classes.
+
+The next element of which I would speak is that composed of the white
+settler, European and American,` not being servants of the Hudson Bay
+Company. At the present time this class is numerically insignificant,
+and were it not that causes might at any moment arise which would
+rapidly develop it into consequence, it would not now claim more than a
+passing notice. These causes are to be found in the existence of gold
+throughout a large extent of the territory lying at the eastern base of
+the Rocky Mountains, and in the effect which the discovery of gold-fields
+would have in inducing a rapid movement of miners from the already
+over-worked fields of the Pacific States and British Columbia. For some
+years back indication of gold, in more or less quantities, have been
+found in almost every river running east from the mountains. On the
+Peace, Athabasca, McLeod, and Pembina Rivers, all of which drain their
+waters into the Arctic Ocean, as well as on the North Saskatchewan, Red
+Beer, and Bow Rivers, which shed to Lake Winnipeg, gold has been
+discovered. The obstacles which the miner has to contend with are,
+however, very great, and preclude any thing but the most partial
+examination of the country. The Blackfeet are especially hostile towards
+miners, and never hesitate to attack them, nor is the miner slow to
+retaliate; indeed he has been too frequently the aggressor, and the
+records of gold discovery are full of horrible atrocities committed upon
+the red man. It has only been in the neighbourhood of the forts of the
+Hudson Bay Company that continued washing for gold could be carried on.
+In the neighbourhood of Edmonton from three to twelve dollars of gold
+have frequently been "washed" in a single day by one man; but the miner
+is not satisfied with what he calls "dirt washing," and craves for the
+more exciting work in the dry diggings where, if the "strike" is good,
+the yield is sometimes enormous. The difficulty of procuring provisions
+or supplies of any kind has also prevented "prospecting" parties from
+examining the head-waters of the numerous streams which form the sources
+of the North and South Saskatchewan. It is not the high price of
+provisions that deters the miner from penetrating these regions, but the
+absolute impossibility of procuring any. Notwithstanding the many
+difficulties which I have enumerated, a very determined effort will in
+all probability be made, during the coming summer, to examine the
+head-waters of the North Branch of the Saskatchewan. A party of miners,
+four in number, crossed the mountains late in the autumn of 1870, and are
+now wintering between Edmonton and the Mountain House, having laid in
+large supplies for the coming season. These men speak with confidence of
+the existence of rich diggings in some portion of the country lying
+within the outer range of the mountains. From conversations which I have
+held with these men, as well as with others who have partly investigated
+the country, I am of opinion that there exists a very strong probability
+of the discovery of gold-fields in the Upper Saskatchewan at no distant
+period. Should this opinion be well founded, the effect which it will
+have upon the whole Western territory will be of the utmost consequence.
+
+Despite the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of such
+discoveries, or the plains or passes leading to them, a general influx of
+miners will take place into the Saskatchewan, and in their track will
+come the waggon or pack-horse of the merchant from the towns of Benton or
+Kootenais, or Helena. It is impossible to say what effect such an influx
+of strangers would have upon the plain Indians; but of one fact we may
+rest assured, namely, that should these tribes exhibit their usual spirit
+of robbery and murder they would quickly be exterminated by the miners.
+
+Every where throughout the Pacific States and along the central
+territories of America, as well as in our own colony of British Columbia,
+a war of extermination has arisen, under such circum stances, between the
+miners and the savages, and there is good reason to suppose that similar
+results would follow contact with the proverbially hostile tribe of
+Blackfeet Indians.
+
+Having in the foregoing remarks reviewed the various elements which
+compose the scanty but widely extended population of the Saskatchewan,
+outside the circle of the Hudson Bay Company, I have now to refer to that
+body, as far as it is connected with the present condition of affairs in
+the Saskatchewan.
+
+As a governing body the Hudson Bay Company has ever had to contend
+against the evils which are inseparable from monopoly of trade combined
+with monopoly of judicial power, but so long as the aboriginal
+inhabitants were the only people with whom it came in contact its
+authority could be preserved; and as it centred within itself whatever
+knowledge and enlightenment existed in the country, its officials were
+regarded by the aboriginals as persons of a superior nature, nay, even in
+bygone times it was by no means unusual for the Indians to regard the
+possession of some of the most ordinary inventions of civilization on the
+part of the officials of the Company as clearly demonstrating a close
+affinity between these gentlemen and the Manitou, nor were these
+attributes of divinity altogether distasteful to the officers, who found
+them both remunerative as to trade and conducive to the exercise of
+authority. When, however, the Free Traders and the missionary reached the
+Saskatchewan this primitive state of affairs ceased-with the
+enlightenment of the savage came the inevitable discontent of the'
+Indian, until there arose the condition of things to which I have already
+alluded. I am aware that there are persons who, while admitting the
+present unsatisfactory state of the Saskatchewan, ascribe its evils more
+to mistakes committed by officers of the Company, in their management of
+the Indians, than to any material change in the character of the people;
+but I believe such opinion to be founded in error. It would be
+impossible to revert to the old management of affairs. The Indians and
+the half-breeds are aware of their strength, and openly speak of it; and
+although I am far from asserting that a more determined policy on the
+part of the officer in charge of the Saskatchewan District would not be
+attended by better results, still it is apparent that the great isolation
+of the posts, as well as the absence of any fighting element in the class
+of servants belonging to the Company, render the forts on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in a very great degree, helpless, and at the mercy of the
+people of that country. Nor are the engaged servants of the Company a
+class of persons with whom it is at all easy to deal. Recruited
+principally from the French half-breed population, and exposed, as I
+have already shown, to the wild and lawless life of the prairies, there
+exists in reality only a very slight distinction between them and their
+Indian brethren, hence it is not surprising that acts of insubordination
+Should be of frequent occurrence among these servants, and that personal
+violence towards superior officers should be by no means an unusual event
+in the forts of the Saskatchewan; indeed it has only been by the exercise
+of manual force on the part of the officials in charge that the semblance
+of authority has sometimes been preserved. This tendency towards
+insubordination is still more observable among the casual servants or
+"trip men" belonging to the Company. These persons are in the habit of
+engaging for a trip or journey, and-frequently select the most critical
+moments to demand an increased rate of pay, or to desert en masse.
+
+At Edmonton House, the head-quarters of the Saskatchewan District, and at
+the posts of Victoria and Fort Pitt, this state of lawlessness is more
+apparent than on the lower portion of the river. Threats are frequently
+made use of by the Indians and half-breeds as a means of extorting
+favourable terms from the officers in charge, the cattle belonging to the
+posts are uselessly killed, and altogether the Hudson Bay Company may be
+said to retain their tenure of the Upper Saskatchewan upon a base which
+appears insecure and unsatisfactory.
+
+In the foregoing remarks I have entered at some length into the question
+of the materials comprising the population of the Saskatchewan, with a,
+view to demonstrate that the condition of affairs in-that territory is
+the natural result of many causes, which have been gradually developing
+themselves, and which must of necessity undergo still further
+developments if left in their present state. I have endeavoured to point
+out how from the growing wants of the aboriginal inhabitants, from the
+conflicting nature of the interests of the half-breed and Indian
+population, as well as from the natural constitution of the Hudson Bay
+Company, a state of society has arisen in the Saskatchewan which
+threatens at no distant day to give rise to grave complications; and
+which now has the effect of rendering life and property insecure and
+preventing the settlement of those fertile regions which in other
+respects are so admirably suited to colonization.
+
+As matters at present rest, the region of the Saskatchewan is without
+law, order, or security for life or property; robbery and murder for
+years have gone unpunished; Indian massacres are unchecked even in the
+close vicinity of the Hudson Bay Company's posts, and all civil and legal
+institutions are entirely unknown.
+
+I now enter upon that portion of your Excellency's instructions which has
+reference to the epidemic of small-pox in the Saskatchewan. It is about
+fifty years since the first great epidemic of small pox swept over the
+regions of the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, committing great ravages
+among the tribes of Sioux, Gros-Ventres, and Flatheads upon American
+territory; and among the Crees and Assineboines of the British. The
+Blackfeet Indians escaped that epidemic, while, on the other hand, the
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Qu'Appelle Plains, were almost entirely
+destroyed. Since that-period the disease appears to have visited some of
+the tribes at intervals of greater or less duration; but until this and
+the previous year its ravages were confined to certain localities and did
+not extend universally throughout the country. During the summer and
+early winter of '69 and '70 reports reached the Saskatchewan of the
+prevalence of small-pox of a very malignant type among the South Peagin
+Indians, a branch of the great Blackfeet nation. It was hoped, however,
+that the disease would be confined to the Missouri River, and the Crees
+who, as usual, were at war with their traditional enemies, were warned
+by Missionaries and others that the prosecution of their predatory
+expeditions into the Blackfeet country would in all probability carry
+the infection into the North Saskatchewan. From the South Peagin tribes,
+on the head-waters of the Missouri, the disease spread rapidly through
+the kindred tribes of Blood, Blackfeet, and Lucee Indians, all which new
+tribes have their hunting-grounds north of the boundary-line.
+Unfortunately for the Crees, they failed to listen to the advice of those
+persons who had recommended a suspension of hostilities. With the opening
+of spring the war-parties commenced their raids; a band of seventeen
+Crees penetrated, in the month of April, into the Blackfeet country, and
+coming upon a deserted camp of their enemies in which a tent was still
+standing, they proceeded to ransack it, This tent contained the dead
+bodies of some Blackfeet, and although these bodies presented a very
+revolting spectacle, being in an advanced stage of decomposition, they
+were nevertheless-subjected to the usual process of mutilation, the
+scalps and clothing being also carried away.
+
+For this act the Crees paid a terrible penalty; scarcely had they
+reached their own country before the disease appeared among them, in its
+most virulent and infectious form. Nor were the consequences of this raid
+less disastrous to the whole Cree nation. At the period of the-year to
+which I allude, the early summer, these Indians usually assemble together
+from different directions in large numbers, and it was towards one of
+those numerous assemblies that the returning war-party, still carrying
+the scalps and clothing of the Blackfeet, directed their steps. Almost
+immediately upon their arrival the disease broke out amongst them in its
+most malignant form. Out of the seventeen men who took part in the raid,
+it is asserted that not one escape the infection, and only two of the
+number appear to have survived. The disease, once-introduced into the
+camp, spread with the utmost rapidity; numbers of men, women, and
+children fell victims to it during the month of June; the cures of the
+medicine-men were found utterly-unavailing to arrest it, and, as a last
+resource, the camp broke up into small parties, some directing their
+march towards Edmonton, and others to Victoria, Saddle Lake, Fort Pitt,
+and along the whole line of the North Saskatchewan. Thus, at the same
+period, the beginning of July, small-pox of the very worst description
+was spread throughout some 500 miles of territory, appearing almost
+simultaneously at the Hudson Bay Company's posts from the Rocky Mountain
+House to Carlton.
+
+It is difficult to imagine, a state of pestilence more terrible than
+that which kept pace with these moving parties of Crees during the summer
+months of 1870. By streams and lakes, in willow copses,'! and upon bare
+hill-sides, often shelterless from the fierce rays of the summer sun and
+exposed to the rains and dews of night, the poor plague-stricken wretches
+lay down to die--no assistance of any kind, for the ties of family were
+quickly loosened, and mothers abandoned their helpless children upon the
+wayside, fleeing onward to some fancied place of safety. The district
+lying between Fort Pitt and Victoria, a distance of about 140 miles, was
+perhaps the scene of the greatest suffering.
+
+In the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Pitt two camps of Crees
+established themselves, at first in the hope of obtaining medical
+assistance, and failing in that--for the officer in charge soon exhausted
+his slender store--they appear to have endeavoured to convey the
+infection into the fort, in the belief that by doing so they would cease
+to suffer from it themselves. The dead bodies were left unburied close to
+the stockades, and frequently Indians in the worst stage of the disease
+might be seen trying to force an entrance into the houses, or rubbing
+portions of the infections matter from their persons against the
+door-handles and window-frames of the dwellings. It is singular that only
+three persons within the fort should have been infected with the disease,
+and I can only attribute the comparative immunity enjoyed by the
+residents at that post to the fact that Mr. John Sinclair had taken the
+precaution early in the summer to vaccinate all the persons residing
+there, having obtained the vaccine matter from a Salteaux Indian who had
+been vaccinated at the Mission of Prince Albert, presided over by Rev.
+Mr. Nesbit, sometime during the spring. In this matter of vaccination a
+very important difference appears to have existed between the Upper and
+Lower Saskatchewan. At the settlement of St. Albert, near Edmonton, the
+opinion prevails that vaccination was of little or no avail to check-the
+spread of the disease, while, on the contrary, residents on the lower
+portion of the Saskatchewan assert that they cannot trace a single case
+in which death had ensued after vaccination had been properly performed.
+I attribute this difference of opinion on the benefits resulting from
+vaccination to the fact that the vaccine matter used at St. Albert and
+Edimonton was of a spurious description, having been brought from Fort
+Benton, on the Missouri River, by traders during the early summer, and
+that also it was used when the disease had reached its height, while, on
+the other hand, the vaccination carried on from Mr. Nesbit's Mission
+appears to have been commenced early in the spring, and also to have been
+of a genuine description.
+
+At the Mission of St. Albert, called also "Big Lake," the disease
+assumed a most malignant form; the infection appears to have been
+introduced into the settlement from two different sources almost at the
+same period. The summer hunting-party met the Blackfeet on the plains and
+visited the Indian camp (then infected with small-pox) for the purpose of
+making peace and trading. A few days later the disease appeared among
+them and swept off half their number in a very short space of time. To
+such a degree of helplessness were they reduced that when the prairie
+fires broke out in the neighbourhood of their camp they were unable to do
+any thing towards arresting its progress or saving their property. The
+fire swept through the camp, destroying a number of horses, carts, and
+tents, and the unfortunate people returned to their homes at Big Lake
+carrying the disease with them. About the same time some of the Crees
+also reached the settlement, and the infection thus communicated from
+both quarters spread with amazing rapidity. Out of a total population
+numbering about 900 souls, 600 caught the disease, and up to the date of
+my departure from Edmonton (22nd December) 311 deaths had occurred. Nor
+is this enormous percentage of deaths very much to be wondered at when we
+consider the circumstances attending this epidemic. The people, huddled
+together in small hordes, were destitute of medical assistance or of even
+the most ordinary requirements of the hospital. During the period of
+delirium incidental to small-pox, they frequently wandered forth at night
+into the open air, and remained exposed for hours to dew or rain; in the
+latter stages of the disease they took no precautions against cold, and
+frequently died from relapse produced by exposure; on the other hand,
+they appear to have suffered but little pain after the primary fever
+passed away. "I have frequently," says Pere Andre, "asked a man in the
+last stages of small pox,-whose end was close at hand, if he was
+suffering much pain; and the almost invariable reply was, None
+whatever." They seem also to have died without suffering, although the
+fearfully swollen appearance of the face, upon which scarcely a feature
+was visible, would lead to the supposition that such a condition must of
+necessity be accompanied by great pain.
+
+The circumstances attending the progress of the epidemic at Carlton House
+are worthy of notice, both on account of the extreme virulence which
+characterized the disease at that post, and also as no official record
+of this visitation of small-pox would be complete which failed to bring
+to the notice of your Excellency the undaunted: heroism displayed by a
+young officer of the Hudson Bay Company who was in temporary charge of
+the station. At the breaking out of the disease, early in the month of
+August, the population of Carlton: numbered about seventy souls. Of these
+thirty-two persons caught the infection, and twenty-eight persons died.
+Throughout the entire period of the epidemic the officer already alluded
+to, Mr. Wm. Traill, laboured with untiring perseverance in ministering to
+the necessities of the sick, at whose bedsides he was to be found both
+day and night, undeterred by the fear of infection, and undismayed by the
+unusually loathsome nature of the disease. To estimate with any thing
+like accuracy the losses caused among the Indian tribes is a matter of
+considerable difficulty. Some tribes and portions of tribes suffered much
+more severely than others. That most competent authority, Pere Lacombe,
+is of opinion that neither the Blood nor Blackfeet Indians had, in
+proportion to their numbers, as many casualties as the Crees, whose
+losses may be safely stated at from 600 to 800 persons. The Lurcees, a
+small tribe in close alliance with the Blackfeet, suffered very severely,
+the number of their tents being reduced from fifty to twelve. On the.'
+other hand, the Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, warned by the
+memory of the former epidemic, by which they were almost annihilated,
+fled at the first approach of the disease, and, keeping far out in the
+south-eastern prairies, escaped the infection altogether. The very heavy
+loss suffered by the Lurcees to which I have just alluded was, I
+apprehend, due to the fact that the members of this tribe have long been
+noted as persons possessing enfeebled constitutions, as evidenced by the
+prevalence of goitre almost universally amongst them. As a singular
+illustration of the intractable nature of these Indians, I would mention
+that at the period when the small-pox was most destructive among them
+they still continued to carry on their horse-stealing raids against the
+Crees and half-breeds in the neighbourhood of Victoria Mission. It was
+not unusual to come upon traces of the disease in the corn-fields around
+the settlement, and even the dead bodies of some Lurcees were discovered
+in the vicinity of a river which they had been in the habit of swimming
+while in the prosecution of their predatory attacks. The Rocky Mountain
+Stonies are stated to have lost over fifty souls. The losses sustained by
+the Blood, Blackfeet, and Peagin tribes are merely conjectural; but, as
+their loss in leading men or chiefs has been heavy, it is only reasonable
+to presume that the casualties suffered generally by those tribes have
+been proportionately severe. Only three white persons appear to have
+fallen victims to the disease, one an officer of the Hudson Bay Company
+service at Carlton, and two members of the family of the Rev. Mr.
+McDougall, at Victoria. Altogether, I should be inclined to estimate the
+entire loss along the North Saskatchewan, not including Blood, Blackfeet,
+or Peagin Indians, at about 1200 persons. At the period of my departure
+from the Saskatchewan, the beginning of-the present year, the disease
+which committed such terrible havoc among the scanty population of that
+region still lingered in many localities. On my upward journey to the
+Rocky Mountains I had found the forts of the Hudson Bay Company free from
+infection: On my return journey I found cases of small-pox in the Forts,
+of Edmonton, Victoria, and Pitt--cases which, it is true, were of a
+milder description than those of the autumn and summer, but which,
+nevertheless, boded ill for the hoped for disappearance of the plague
+beneath the snows and cold of winter. With regard to the supply of
+medicine sent by direction of the Board of Health in Manitoba to the
+Saskatchewan, I have only to remark that I conveyed to Edmonton the
+portion of the supply destined for that station. It was found, however,
+that many of the bottles had been much injured by frost, and I cannot in
+any way favourably notice either the composition or general selection of
+these supplies.
+
+Amongst the many sad traces of the epidemic existing in the Upper
+Saskatchewan I know of none so touching as that which is to be found in
+an assemblage of some twenty little orphan children gathered together
+beneath the roof of the sisters of charity at the settlement of St.
+Albert. These children are of all races, and even in some instances the
+sole survivors of what was lately a numerous family. They are fed,
+clothed, and taught at the expense of the Mission; and when we consider
+that the war which is at present raging in France has dried up the
+sources of charity from whence the Missions of the North-west derived
+their chief support, and that the present winter is one of unusual
+scarcity and distress along the North Saskatchewan, then it will be
+perceived what a fitting object for the assistance of other communities
+is now existing in this distant orphanage of the North.
+
+I cannot close this notice of the epidemic without alluding to the danger
+which will arise in the spring of introducing the infection into
+Manitoba. As soon as the prairie route becomes practicable there will be
+much traffic to and from the Saskatchewan--furs and robes will be
+introduced into the settlement despite the law which prohibits their
+importation. The present quarantine establishment at Rat Creek is
+situated too near to the settlement to admit of a strict enforcement of
+the sanitary regulations. It was only in the month of October last year
+that a man coming direct from Carlton died at-this Rat Creek, while his
+companions, who were also from the same place, and from whom he caught
+the infection, passed on into the province. If I might suggest the course
+which appears to me to be the most efficacious, I would say that a
+constable stationed at Fort Ellice during the spring and summer months
+who would examine freighters and others, giving them bills of health to
+enable them to enter the province, would effectually meet the
+requirements of the situation. All persons coming from the West are
+obliged to pass close to the neighbourhood of Fort Ellice. This station
+is situated about 170 miles west of the provincial boundary, and about
+300 miles south-east of the South Saskatchewan, forming the only post of
+call upon the road between Carlton and Portage la-Prairie. I have only to
+add that, unless vaccination is made compulsory among the half-breed
+inhabitants, they will, I fear, be slow to avail themselves of it. It
+must not be forgotten that with the disappearance of the snow from the
+plains a quantity of infected matter--clothing, robes, and portions of
+skeletons--will again be come exposed to the atmosphere, and also that
+the skins of wolves, etc., collected during the present winter will be
+very liable to contain infection of the most virulent description.
+
+The portion of-your Excellency's instructions which has reference to the
+Indian tribes of the Assineboine and Saskatchewan regions now claims my
+attention.
+
+The aboriginal inhabitants of the country lying between Red River and
+the Rocky Monntains are divided into tribes of Salteaux, Swampies, Crees,
+Assineboines, or Stonies of the Plains, Blackfeet and Assineboines of the
+Mountains. A simpler classification, and one which will be found more
+useful when estimating the relative habits of these tribes, is to divide
+them into two great classes of Trairie Indians and Thickwood Indians--the
+first comprising the Blackfeet with their kindred tribes of Bloods,
+Lurcees, and Peagins, as also the Crees of the Saskatchewan and the
+Assineboines of the Qu'Appelle; and the last being composed of the Rocky
+Mountain Stonies, the Swampy Crees, and the Salteaux of the country lying
+between Manitoba and Fort Ellice. This classification marks in reality
+the distinctive characteristics of the Western Indians. On the one hand,
+we find the Prairie tribes subsisting almost entirely upon the buffalo,
+assembling together in large camps, acknowledging the leadership and
+authority of men conspicuous by their abilities in war or in the chase,
+and carrying on a perpetual state\of warfare with the other Indians of
+the plains. On the other hand, we find the Indians of the woods
+subsisting by fishing and by the pursuit of moose and deer, living
+together in small parties, admitting only a very nominal authority on
+the part of one man, professing to entertain hostile feelings towards
+certain races, but rarely developing such feelings into positive
+hostilities--altogether a much more peacefully disposed people, because
+less exposed to the dangerous influence of large assemblies.
+
+Commencing with the Salteaux, I find that they extend westward from
+Portage-la-Prairie to Fort Ellice, and from thence north to Fort Pelly
+and the neighbourhood of Fort-a-la-Corne, where they border and mix with
+the kindred race of Swampy or Muskego Crees. At Portage-la-Prairie and in
+the vicinity of Fort Ellice a few Sioux have appeared since the outbreak
+in Minnesota and Dakota in 1862. It is probable that the number of this
+tribe on British territory will annually increase with the prosecution of
+railroad enterprise and settlement in the northern portion of the United
+States. At present, however, the Sioux are strangers at Fort Ellice, and
+have not yet assumed those rights of proprietorship which other tribes,
+longer resident, arrogate to themselves. The Salteaux, who inhabit the
+country lying west of Manitoba, partake partly of the character of
+Thickwood, and partly of Prairie Indians--the buffalo no longer exists in
+that portion of the country, the Indian camps are small, and the
+authority of the chief merely nominal. The language spoken by this tribe
+is the same dialect of the Algonquin tongue which is used in the
+Lac-la-Pluie District and throughout the greater portion of the
+settlement.
+
+Passing north-west from Fort Ellice, we enter the country of the Cree
+Indians, having to the north and east the Thickwood Crees, and to the
+south and west the Plain Crees. The former, under the various names of
+Swampies or Muskego Indians, inhabit the country west of Lake Winnipeg,
+extending as far as Forts Pelly and a-la-Corne, and from, the latter
+place, in a north-westerly direction, to Carlton and Fort Pitt. Their
+language, which is similar to that spoken by their cousins, the Plain
+Crees, is also a dialect of the Algonquin tongue. They are seldom found
+in large numbers, usually forming camps of from four to ten families.
+They carry on the pursuit of the moose and red deer, and are, generally
+speaking, expert hunters and trappers.
+
+Bordering the Thickwood Crees on the south and west lies the country of
+the Plain Crees--a land of vast treeless expanses, of high rolling
+prairies, of wooded tracts lying in valleys of many-sized streams, in a
+word, the land of the Saskatchewan. A line running direct from the
+Touchwood Hills to Edmonton House would measure 500 miles in length, yet
+would lie altogether within the country of the Plain Crees. They inhabit
+the prairies which extend from the Qu'Appelle to the South Saskatchewan,
+a portion of territory which was formerly the land of the Assineboine,
+but which became the country of the Crees through lapse of time and
+chance of war. From the elbow of the South Branch of the Saskatchewan the
+Cree nation extends in a west and north-west direction to the vicinity
+of the Peace Hills, some fifty miles south of Edmonton. Along the entire
+line there exists a state of perpetual warfare during the months of
+summer and autumn, for here commences the territory over which roams the
+great Blackfeet tribe, whose southern boundary lies be yond the Missouri
+River, and whose western limits are guarded by the giant peaks of the
+Rocky Mountains. Ever since these tribes became known to the fur-traders
+of the North-west and Hudson Bay Companies there has existed this state
+of hostility amongst them. The Crees, having been the first to obtain
+fire-arms from the white traders, quickly-extended their boundaries, and
+moving from the Hudson Bay and the region of the lakes overran the
+plains of the Upper Saskatchewan. Fragments of other tribes scattered at
+long intervals through the present country of the Crees attest this
+conquest, and it is-probable that the whole Indian territory lying
+between the Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line would have been
+dominated over by this tribe had they not found themselves opposed by the
+great Blackfeet nation, which dwelt along the sources of the Missouri.
+
+Passing west from Edmonton, we enter the country of the Rocky Mountain
+Stonies, a small tribe of Thickwood Indians dwelling along the source of
+the North Saskatchewan and in the outer ranges of the Rocky Mountains,-a
+fragment, no doubt, from the once-powerful Assineboine nation which has
+found a refuge amidst the forests and mountains of the West. This tribe
+is noted as possessing hunters and mountain guides of great energy and
+skill. Although at war with the Blackfeet, collisions are not frequent
+between them, as the Assineboines never go upon war-parties; and the
+Blackfeet rarely venture into the wooded country.
+
+Having spoken in detail of the Indian tribes inhabiting the line of
+fertile country lying between Red River and the Rocky Mountains, it only
+remains for me to allude to the Blackfeet with the confederate tribes of
+Blood, Lurcees and Peagins. These tribes inhabit the great plains lying
+between the Red Deer River and the Missouri, a vast tract of country
+which, with few exceptions, is treeless, and sandy--a portion of the
+true American desert, which extends from the fertile belt of the
+Saskatchewan to the borders of Texas. With the exception of the Lurcees,
+the other confederate tribes speak the same language--the Lurcees, being
+a branch of the Chipwayans of the North, speak a language peculiar to
+themselves, while at the same time understanding and speaking the
+Blackfeet tongue. At war with their hereditary enemies, the Crees, upon
+their northern and eastern boundaries--at war with Kootanais and
+Flathead tribes on south and west--at war with Assineboines on the
+south-east and north-west--carrying on predatory excursions against the
+Americans on the Missouri, this Blackfeet nation forms a people of whom
+it may truly be said that they are against every man, and that every man
+is against them. Essentially a wild, lawless, erring race, whose natures
+have received the stamps of the region in which they dwell; whose
+knowledge is read from the great book which Day, Night, and the Desert
+unfold to them; and who yet possess a rude eloquence, a savage pride,
+and a wild love of freedom of their own. Nor are there other indications
+wanting to lead to the hope that this tribe may yet be found to be
+capable of yielding to influences to which they have heretofore been
+strangers, namely, Justice and Kindness.
+
+Inhabiting, as the Blackfeet do, a large extent of country which, from
+the arid nature of its soil mist ever prove useless for purposes of
+settlement and colonization, I do not apprehend that much difficulty will
+arise between them and the whites, provided always that measures are
+taken to guard against certain possibilities of danger, and that the
+Crees are made to unnderstand that the forts and settlements along the
+Upper Saskatchewan must be considered as neutral ground upon which
+hostilities cannot be waged against the Black feet. As matters at present
+stand, whenever the Blackfeet venture in upon a trading expedition to the
+forts of the Hudson Bay Company they are generally assaulted by the
+Crees, and savagely murdered. Pee Lacombe estimates the nunber of
+Blackfeet killed in and around Edmonton alone during his residence in the
+West, at over forty men, and he has assured me that to his knowledge the
+Blackfeet have never killed a Cree at that place, except in self-defence.
+Mr. W. J. Christie, chief factor at Edmonton house, confirms this
+statement. He says, "The Blackfeet respect the whites more than the Crees
+do, that is, a Blackfoot will never attempt the life of a Cree at our
+forts, and bands of them are more easily controlled in an excitement,
+than Crees. It would be easier for one of us to save the life of a Cree
+among a band of Blackfeet than it would be to save a Blackfoot in a band
+of Crees." In consequence of these repeated assaults in the vicinity of
+the forts, the Blackfeet can with difficulty be persuaded that the whites
+are not in active alliance with the Crees. Any person who studies the
+geographical position of the posts of the Hudson Bay Company cannot fail
+to notice the immense extent of country intervening between the North
+Saskatchewan and the American boundary-line in which there exists no fort
+or trading post of the Company. This blank space upon the maps is the
+country of the Blackfeet. Many years ago a post was established upon the
+Bow River, in the heart of the Blackfeet country, but at that time they
+were even more lawless than at present, and the position had to be
+abandoned on account of the expenses necessary to keep up a large
+garrison of servants. Since that time (nearly forty years ago) the
+Blackfeet have only had the Rocky Mountain House to depend on for
+supplies, and as it is situated far from the centre of their country it
+only receives a portion of their trade. Thus we find a very active
+business carried on by the Americans upon the Upper Missouri, and there
+can be little doubt that the greater portion of robes, buffalo leather,
+etc. traded by the Blackfeet finds its way down the waters of the
+Missouri. There is also another point connected with Americau trade
+amongst the Blackfeet to which I desire to draw special attention.
+Indians visiting the Rocky Mountain House during the fall of 1870 have
+spoken of the existence of a trading post of Americans from Fort Benton,
+upon the Belly River, sixty miles within the British bounndary-line. They
+have asserted that two American traders, well-known on the Missouri,
+named Culverston and Healy, have established themselves at this post for
+the purpose of trading alcohol, whiskey, and arms and ammunition of the
+most improved description, with the Blackfeet Indians; and that an active
+trade is being carried on in all these articles, which, it is said, are
+constantly smuggled across the boundary-line by people from Fort Benton.
+This story is apparently confirmed by the absence of the Blackfeet from
+the Rocky Mountain House this season, and also from the fact of the arms
+in question (repeating rifles) being found in possession of these
+Indians. The town of Benton on the Missouri River has long been noted for
+supplying the Indians with arms and ammunition; to such an extent has
+this trade been carried on, that miners in Montana, who have suffered
+from Indian attack, have threatened on some occasions to burn the stores
+belonging to the traders, if the practice was continued. I have already
+spoken of the great extent of the Blackfeet country; some idea of the
+roamings of these Indians may be gathered from a circumstance connected
+wit the trade of the Rocky Mountain House. During the spring and summer
+raids which the Blackfeet make upon the Crees of the Middle Saskatchewan,
+a number of horses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company and to settlers
+are yearly carried away. It is a general practice for persons whose
+horses have been stolen to send during the fall to the Rocky Mountain
+House for the missing animals, although that station is 300 to 600 miles
+distant from the places where the thefts have been committed. If the
+horse has not perished from the ill treatment to which he has been
+subjected by his captors, he is usually found at the above-named station,
+to which he has been brought for barter in a terribly worn out condition.
+In the Appendix marked B will be found information regarding the
+localities occupied by-the Indian tribes, the names of the principal
+chiefs, estimate of numbers in each tribe, and other information
+connected with the aboriginal inhabitants, which for sake of clearness I
+have arranged in a tabular form.
+
+It now only remains for me to refer to the last clause in the
+instructions under which I acted, before entering into an expression of
+the views which I have formed upon the subject of what appears necessary
+to be done in the interests of peace and order in the Saskatchewan.
+The fur trade of the Saskatchewan District has long been in a declining
+state, great scarcity of the richer descriptions of furs, competition of
+free traders, and the very heavy expenses incurred in the maintenance of
+large establishments, have combined to render the district a source of
+loss to the Hudson Bay Company. This loss has, I believe, varied annually
+from 2000 to 6000 pounds, but heretofore it has been somewhat
+counter-balanced by the fact that the Inland Transport Line of the
+Company was dependent for its supply of provisions upon the buffalo meat,
+which of late years has only been procurable in the Saskatchewan. Now,
+however; that buffalo can no longer be procured in numbers, the Upper
+Saskatchewan becomes more than ever a burden to the Hudson Bay Company;
+still the abandonment of it by the Company might be attended by more
+serious loss to the trade than that which is incurred in its retention,
+Undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, if abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company,
+would be speedily occupied by traders from the Missouri, who would also
+tap the trade of the richer fur-producing districts of Lesser Slave Lake
+and the North. The products-of the Saskatchewan proper principally
+consists of provisions, including pemmican and dry meat, buffalo robes
+and leather, linx, cat, and wolf skins. The richer furs; such as otters,
+minks, beavers, martins, etc., are chiefly procured in the Lesser Slave
+Lake Division of the Saskatchewan District. With regard to the subject of
+Free Trade in the Saskatchewan, it is at present conducted upon
+principles quite different from those existing in Manitoba. The free men
+or "winterers" are, strictly speaking, free traders, but they dispose of
+the greater portion of their furs, robes, etc., to the Company. Some, it
+is true, carry the produce of their trade or hunt (for they are both
+hunters and traders) to Red River, disposing of it to the merchants in
+Winnipeg, but I do not imagine that more than one-third of their trade
+thus finds its way into the market. These free men are nearly all French
+half-breeds, and are mostly outfitted by the Company. It has frequently
+occurred that a very considerable trade has been carried on with alcohol,
+brought by free men from the Settlement of Red River; and distributed to
+Indians and others in the Upper Saskatchewan. This trade has been
+productive of the very worst consequences, but the law prohibiting the
+sale or possession of liquor is now widely known throughout the Western,
+territory, and its beneficial effects have already been experienced.
+
+I feel convinced that if the proper means are taken the suppression of
+the liquor traffic of the West can be easily accomplished.
+
+A very important subject is that which has reference to the communication
+between the Upper Saskatchewan and Missouri Rivers.
+
+Fort Benton on the Missouri has of late become a place of very
+considerable importance as a post for the supply of the mining districts
+of Montana. Its geographical position is favourable. Standing at the head
+of the navigation of the Missouri, it commands: the trade of Idaho and
+Montana.-'A steamboat, without breaking bulk, can go from New Orleans to
+Benton, a distance of 4000 miles. Speaking from the recollection of
+information obtained at Omaha three years ago, it takes about thirty days
+to ascend the river from that town to Benton, the distance being about
+2000 miles. Only boats drawing two or three feet of water can perform the
+journey, as there are many shoals and shifting sands to obstruct heavier
+vessels. It has been estimated that between thirty or forty steamboats
+reached Benton during the course of last summer. The season, for
+purposes of navigation, may be reckoned as having a duration of about
+four months. Let us now travel north of the American boundary-line, and
+see what effect Benton is likely to produce upon the trade of the
+Saskatchewan. Edmonton lies N.N.W. from Benton about 370 miles. Carlton
+about the same distance north-east. From both Carlton and Edmonton to
+Fort Benton the country presents no obstacle whatever to the passage of
+loaded carts or waggons, but the road from Edmonton is free from
+Blackfeet during the summer months, and is better provided with wood and
+water. For the first time in the history of the Saskatchewan, carts
+passed safely from Edmonton to Benton during the course of last summer.
+These carts, ten in number, started from Edmonton in the month of May,
+bringing furs, robes, etc., to the Missouri. They returned in the month of
+June with a cargo consisting of flour and alcohol.
+
+The furs and robes realized good prices, and altogether the journey was
+so successful as to hold out high inducements to other persons to attempt
+it during the coming summer. Already the merchants of Benton are bidding
+high for the possession of the trade of the Upper Saskatchewan, and
+estimates have been received by missionaries offering to deliver goods at
+Edmonton for 7 (American currency) per 100 lbs., all risks being insured.
+In fact it has only been on account of the absence of a frontier custom
+house that importations of bonded goods have not already been made via
+Benton.
+
+These facts speak for themselves.
+
+Without doubt, if the natural outlet to the trade of the Saskatchewan,
+namely the River Saskatchewan itself, remains in its present neglected
+state, the trade of the Western territory will seek a new source, and
+Benton will become to Edmonton what St. Paul in Minnesota is to Manitoba.
+
+With a view to bringing the regions of the Saskatchewan into a state of
+order and security, and to establish the authority and jurisdiction of
+the Dominion Government, as well as to promote the colonization of the
+country known as the "Fertile Belt," and particularly to guard against
+the deplorable evils arising out of an Indian war, I would recommend the
+following course for the consideration of your Excellency. 1st--The
+appointment of a Civil Magistrate or Commissioner, after the model of
+similar appointments in Ireland and in India. This official would be
+required to make semi-annual tours through the Saskatchewan for the
+purpose of holding courts; he would be assisted in the discharge of his
+judicial functions by the civil magistrates of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have been already nominated, and by others yet to be appointed from
+amongst the most influential and respected persons of the French and
+English half-breed population. This officer should reside in the Upper
+Saskatchewan.
+
+2nd. The organization of a well-equipped force of from 100 to 150 men,
+one-third to be mounted, specially recruited and engaged for service in
+the Saskatchewan; enlisting for two or three years service, and at
+expiration of that period to become military settlers, receiving grants
+of land, but still remaining as a reserve force should their services be
+required.
+
+3rd. The establishment of two Government stations, one on the Upper
+Saskatchewan, in the neighbourhood of Edmonton, the other at the
+junctions of the North and South Branches of the River Saskatchewan,
+below Carlton. The establishment of these stations to be followed by the
+extinguishment of the Indian title, within certain limits, to be
+determined by the geographical features of the locality; for instance,
+say from longitude of Carlton House eastward to junction of-two
+Saskatchewans, the northern and southern limits being the river banks.
+Again, at Edmonton, I would recommend the Government to take possession
+of both banks of the Saskatchewan River, from Edmonton House to Victoria,
+a distance of about 80 miles, with a depth of, say, from six to eight
+miles. The districts thus taken possession of would immediately become
+available for settlement, Government titles being given at rates which
+would induce immigration. These are the three general propositions, with
+a few additions to be mentioned hereafter, which I believe will, if
+acted upon, secure peace and order to the Saskatchewan, encourage
+settlement, and open up to the influences of civilized man one of the
+fairest regions of the earth. For the sake of clearness, I have em
+bodied these three suggestions in the shortest possible forms. I will now
+review the reasons which recommend their adoption and the benefits likely
+to accrue from them.
+
+With reference to the first suggestion, namely, the appointment of a
+resident magistrate, or civil commissioner. I would merely observe that
+the general report which I have already made on the subject of the state
+of the Saskatchewan, as well as the particular statement to be found in
+the Appendix marked D, will be sufficient to prove the necessity of that
+appointment. With regard, however, to this appointment as connected with
+the other suggestion of military force and Government stations or
+districts, I have much to advance. The first pressing necessity is the
+establishment, as speedily as possible, of some civil authority which
+will give a distinct and tangible idea of Government to the native and
+half-breed population, now so totally devoid of the knowledge of what law
+and civil government may pertain to. The establishment of such an
+authority, distinct from, and independent of, the Hudson Bay Company, as
+well as from any missionary body situated in the country, would
+inaugurate a new series of events, a commencement, as it were, of
+civilization in these vast regions, free from all associations connected
+with the former history of the country, and separate from the rival
+systems of missionary enterprise, while at the same time lending
+countenance and support to all. Without some material force to render
+obligatory the ordinances of such an authority matters would, I believe,
+become even worse than they are at present, where the wrong-doer does not
+appear to violate any law, because there is no law to violate. On the
+other hand, I am strongly of opinion that any military force which would
+merely be sent to the forts of the Hudson Bay Company would prove only a
+source of useless expenditure to the Dominion Government, leaving matters
+in very much the same state as they exist at present, affording little
+protection outside the immediate circle of the forts in question, holding
+out no inducements to the establishment of new settlements, and liable to
+be mistaken by the ignorant people of the country for the-hired defenders
+of the Hudson Bay Company. Thus it seems to me that force without
+distinct civil government would be useless, and that civil government
+would be powerless without a material force. Again, as to the purchase of
+Indian rights upon certain localities and the formation of settlements,
+it must be borne in mind that no settlement is possible in the
+Saskatchewan until some such plan is adopted.
+
+People will not build houses, rear stock, or cultivate land in places
+where their cattle are liable to be killed and their crops stolen. It
+must also be remembered that the Saskatchewan offers at present not only
+a magnificent soil and a fine climate, but also a market for all farming
+produce at rates which are exorbitantly high. For instance, flour sells
+from 2 pounds 10 shillings to 5 pounds per 100 lbs.; potatoes from 5
+shillings to 7 shillings a bushel; and other commodities in proportion.
+No apprehension need be entertained that such settlements would remain
+isolated establishments. There are at the present time many persons
+scattered through the Saskatchewan who wish to become farmers and
+settlers, but hesitate to do so in the absence of protection and
+security. These persons are old servants of the Hudson Bay Company who
+have made money, or hunters whose lives have been passed in the great
+West, and who now desire to settle down. Nor would another class of
+settler be absent. Several of the missionaries in the Saskatchewan have
+been in correspondence with persons in Canada who desire to seek a home
+in this western land, but who have been advised to remain in their
+present country until matters have become more settled along the
+Saskatchewan. The advantages of the localities which I have specified,
+the junction of the branches of the Saskatchewan River and the
+neighbourhood of Edmonton, may be stated as follows:--Junction of north
+and south branch--a place of great future military and commercial
+importance, commanding navigation of both rivers; enjoys a climate
+suitable to the production of all cereals and roots, and a soil of
+unsurpassed fertility; is situated about midway between Red River and the
+Rocky Mountains, and possesses abundant and excellent supplies of timber
+for building and fuel; is below the presumed interruption to steam
+navigation on Saskatchewan River known as "Coal Falls," and is situated
+on direct cart-road from Manitoba to Carlton.
+
+Edmonton, the centre of the Upper Saskatchewan, also the centre of a
+large population (half-breed)-country lying between it and Victoria very
+fertile, is within easy reach of Blackfeet, Cree, and Assineboine
+country; summer frosts often injurious to wheat, but all other crops
+thrive well, and even wheat is frequently a large and productive crop;
+timber for fuel plenty, and for building can be obtained in large
+quantities ten miles distant; coal in large quantities on bank of river
+and gold at from three to ten dollars a day in sand bars.
+
+Only one other subject remains for consideration (I presume that the
+establishment of regular mail communication and steam navigation would
+follow the adoption of the course I have recommended, and, therefore,
+have not thought fit to introduce them), and to that subject I will now
+allude before closing this Report, which has already reached proportions
+very much larger than I had anticipated. I refer to the Indian question,
+and the best mode of dealing with it. As the military protection of the
+linq of the Saskatchewan against Indian attack would be a practical
+impossibility without a very great expenditure of money, it becomes
+necessary that all precautions should be taken to prevent the outbreak of
+an Indian war, which, if once commenced, could not fail to be productive
+of evil consequences. I would urge the advisability of sending a
+Commissioner to meet the tribes of the Saskatchewan during their summer
+assemblies.
+
+It must be borne in mind that the real Indian Question exists many
+hundred miles west of Manitoba, in a region where the red man wields a
+power and an influence of his own. Upon one point I would recommend
+particular caution, and that is, in the selection of the individual for
+this purpose. I have heard a good deal of persons who were said to
+possess great knowledge of the Indian character, and I have seen enough
+of the red man to estimate at its real worth the possession of this
+knowledge. Knowledge of Indian character has too long been synonymous
+with knowledge of how to cheat the Indian--a species of cleverness which,
+even in the science of chicanery, does not require the exercise of the
+highest abilities. I fear that the Indian has already had too many
+dealings with persons of this class, and has now got a very shrewd idea
+that those who possess this knowledge of his character have also managed
+to possess themselves of his property.
+
+With regard to the objects to be attended to by a Commission of the kind
+I have referred to, the principal would be the establishment of peace
+between the warring tribes of Crees and Blackfeet. I believe that a peace
+duly entered into, and signed by the chiefs of both nations, in the
+presence and under the authority of a Government Commissioner, with that
+show of ceremony and display so dear to the mind of the Indian, would be
+lasting in its effects. Such a peace should be made on the basis of
+restitution to Government in case of robbery. For instance, during time
+of peace a Cree steals five horses from a Black-foot. In that case the
+particular branch of the Cree nation to which the thief belonged would
+have to give up ten horses to Government, which would be handed over to
+the Black-feet as restitution and atonement. The idea of peace on some
+such understanding occurred to me in the Saskatchewan, and I questioned
+one of the most influential of the Cree chiefs upon the subject. His
+answer to me-was that his band would agree to such a proposal and abide
+by it, but that he could not speak for the other bands. I would also
+recommend that medals, such as those given to the Indian chiefs of Canada
+and Lake Superior many years ago, be distributed among the leading men of
+the Plain Tribes. It is astonishing with what religious veneration these
+large silver medals have been preserved by their owners through all the
+vicissitudes of war and time, and with what pride the well-polished
+effigy is still pointed out, and the words "King George" shouted by the
+Indian, who has yet a firm belief in the present existence of that
+monarch. If it should be decided that a body of troops should be
+despatched to the West, I think it very advisable that the officer in
+command of such body should make himself thoroughly acquainted with the
+Plain Tribes, visiting them at least annually in their camps, and
+conferring with them on points connected with their interest. I am also
+of opinion that if the Government establishes itself in the Saskatchewan,
+a third post': should be formed, after the lapse of a year, at the
+junction of the Medicine and Red Deer Rivers in latitude 52.18 north, and
+longitude 114.15 west, about 90 miles south of Edmonton. This position is
+well within the Blackfeet country, possesses a good soil, excellent
+timber, and commands the road to Benton. This post need not be the centre
+of a settlement, but merely a military, customs, missionary, and trading
+establishment.
+
+Such, Sir, are the views which I have formed upon the whole question of
+the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan. They result from the
+thought and experience of-many long days of travel through a large
+portion of the region to which they have reference. If I were asked
+from what point of view I have looked upon this question, I would answer
+From that point which sees a vast country lying, as it were, silently
+awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls
+unceasingly from Europe to America. Far off as lie the regions of the
+Saskatchewan from the Atlantic sea-board on which that wave is thrown,
+remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern slopes of the
+Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is destined to reach those
+beautiful solitudes, and to convert the wild luxuriance of their now
+Useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence. And
+If it-be matter for desire that across this immense continent, resting
+upon the two greatest oceans of the world, a powerful nation should.
+arise with the strength and the manhood which race and climate and
+tradition would assign to it--a nation which would look with no evil eye
+upon the old mother land from whence it sprung, a nation which, having no
+bitter memories to recall would have no idle prejudices to perpetuate
+then surely it is worthy of all toil of hand and brain, on the part of
+those who to-day rule, that this great link in the chain of such a future
+nationality should no longer remain undeveloped, a prey to the conflicts
+of savage races, at once the garden and the wilderness of the Central
+Continent.
+
+W. F. BUTLER, Lieutenant, 69th Regiment. Manitoba, 10th March, 1871.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A
+
+Settlements (Half-breed) in Saskatchewan.
+
+PRINCE ALBERT.--English half-breed. A Presbyterian Mission presided over
+by Rev. Mr. Nesbit. Small post of Hudson Bay Company with large farm
+attached. On North Branch of Saskatchewan River, 35 miles above junction
+of both branches; a fine soil, plenty of timber, and good wintering
+ground for stock; 50 miles east of Carlton, and 60 west of
+Fort-a-la-Corne.
+
+WHITEFISH LAKE.--English. Wesleyan Mission--only a few settlers--soil
+good--timber plenty. Situated north-east of Victoria 60 miles.
+
+LAC LA BICHE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission. Large farm
+attached to mission with water grist mill, etc. Soil very good and timber
+abundant; excellent fishery. Situated at 70 miles north-west from Fort
+Pitt.
+
+VICTORIA.--English half-breed. Wesleyan Mission. Large farm, soil good,
+altogether a rising little colony. Situated on North Branch of
+Saskatchewan River, 84 miles below Edmonton Mission, presided over by
+Rev. J. McDougall.
+
+ST. ALBERT.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic Mission and residence of
+Bishop (Grandin); fine church building, school and convent, etc. Previous
+to epidemic, 900 French, the largest settlement in Saskatchewan; very
+little farming done, all hunters. Situated 9 miles north of Edmonton;
+orphanage here.
+
+ST. ANNE.--French half-breed. Roman Catholic. Settlers mostly emigrated
+to St. Albert. Good fishery; a few farms existing and doing well. Timber
+plenty, and soil (as usual) very good; 50 miles north-west from Edmonton.
+
+
+
+Information concerning Native Tribes of Saskatchewan River Living
+between Red River and Rocky Mountains. (Transcriber's Note: The original
+presents this in tabular form. Where a field is blank, I have shown this
+by . . . Fields are: Name of Tribe. Locality Occupied. No. by Pellitier
+Pressent Estimate. Language. Where Trading. Names of Chiefs.)
+
+Salteaux-Assiniboine River--. . .--. . .-Salteaux--Forts Ellice and
+Pelly. Koota. . . . .
+
+Crees--N. Saskatchewan--11,500-7000-Cree--Carlton, Pitt, Victoria,
+Edmonton, Battle River-Sgamnat, Sweet Grass--. . .
+
+Blackfeet--S. Saskatchewan-6000-4000-Blackfeet--R. Mount. House--The Big
+Crow--Represented as being a good man.
+
+Blood-S. Saskatchewan-2800-2000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Swan--A great
+villain.
+
+Peagin--49 Parallel-4400-3000-Ditto--R. Mount. House--The Horn--. . . .
+
+Lorcees--Red Deer River-1100-200-Ditto, Chipawayan--R. Mount. House,
+Edmonton.
+
+Assineboine--S. of Qu'Appelle-1000-500-Assineboine--Qu'Appelle--. . . --. .
+
+Wood Crees--North of Carlton-425--. . . Cree-Forts-a-la-Corne and
+Carlton-Misstawasis--A good man.
+
+Rocky Mountain Assimneboine--Rocky Mountains-225--. . . Assineboine--R.
+Mount. House, Assineboine--The Bear's Paw--. . .
+
+Estimated population of half-breed about 2000 souls, forming many
+scattered settlements not permanently located.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+Names of persons whose appointment to the Commission of the Peace would
+be recommended:
+
+All officers of Hudson Bay Company in charge of posts. Mr. Chanletain, of
+St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. Brazeau. Mr. McKenzie, of Victoria. Mr.
+Wm. Borwick, St. Albert Mission, Edmonton. Mr. McGillis, residing near
+Fort Pitt.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX D.
+
+List of some of the crimes which have been committed in Saskatchewan
+without investigation or punishment:
+
+Murder of a man named Whitford near Rocky Mountains.
+
+Murder of George Daniels by George Robertson at White Mud River, Near
+Victoria.
+
+Murder of French half-breed by his nephew at St. Albert.
+
+Murder of two Lurcee Indians by half-breed close to Edmonton House.
+
+Murderous attack upon a small party of Blackfeet Indians (men, women,
+and children), made by Crees, near Edmonton, in April, 1870, by which
+several of the former were killed and wounded. This attack occurred after
+the safety of these Indians had been purchased from the Crees by the
+officer of the Hudson Bay Company in charge at Edmonton, and a guard
+provided for their safe passage across the rivers. This guard, composed
+of French half-breeds from St. Albert opened out to right and left when
+the attack commenced, and did nothing towards saving the lives of the
+Blackfeet, who were nearly all killed or wounded. There is now living
+close to Edmonton a woman who beat out the brain of a little child aged
+two years on this occasion; also a half-bred man who is the foremost
+instigator to all these atrocities. Besides these murders and acts of
+violence robbery is of continual occurrence in the Saskatchewan. The
+outrages specified above have taken place during the last few years.
+
+
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Lone Land, by W. F. Butler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT LONE LAND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15401.txt or 15401.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/0/15401/
+
+Produced by Col Choat
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/15401.zip b/15401.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a99c3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15401.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a80afcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #15401 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15401)