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The streams, which are the Crotons and Cochituates of the prairies, had to make con- nection with our temporary houses by wooden pails instead of iron pipes, and we to learn how much easier it is to reach a bell-rcpe and turn a faucet than to be hev/ers of wood and drawers of water. Riding in the sun and the labor and excite- ment of starting had given us the appetites of Brobdignagians. Visions of savory messes, clouds of fragrant steam, in which Soyer the immortal seemed enjoying peipetnal apotheosis, floated through ourird, picking, dressing, and salting it, and impaling the cadaver upon a sharp stick, there to broil over the coals of the camp- fire into exquisite yellows and browns. And a venison steak with the costliest accompaniments, in a four-wallod restaurant, is not to be preferred to a buffiilo steak at supper, bought by a four- mile chase. Nor did bread and pork and tea comprise all our bill of fare. Some of the no- mads whom civilization was sloughing off still clung to the fare to which they had been accus- tomed; and visitors came, bringing in secret pockets mysterious black bottles, containing, if all we have heard is true, chalk, marble dust, opium, tobacco, henbane, oil of vitriol, copperas, alum, strychnine, and other exhilarating bever- ages. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 208 TUB TRAVELKIt H lloXE. Stngcs and teams continnnlly passed us, and our camp-lifc as yet lacked the seclusion which l!i\iis it its charm. Some of us were even weak i'n(ju{,'h to prefer the wliito sheets and linen pil- V P- a s, Id r- A )- II i- !t rEBBT OVEB BtTM BIVEB. low-cases of civilization to the blankets of barba- rians, and generally found our way at sundown to some inn. Still, along this crowded thoroughfare, and with these dilutions of camp-life, we met with some shni-p con- trasts. My sketch- book contains, upon consecutive pages, a picture of the Astor- like "Fuller House," at St. Paul, where I slept one night, nnd the "Traveler's Home," where I ask- ed for " something to cut" on the next day. Our road passed over two tributaries of the Mississippi — Elk River and Rum River. Spring fresh- ets had carried away their bridges, and we crossed by moans of temporary rope fer- ries. Over Rum Riv- er ferrj", near Anoka, we were earned free. Enterprising citizens reasoned with the owner of the boat, whether patriotically or namismatically I know not, and brought him to a sense of his condition as one of the pioneers of the great Northwest Ex- ploring Expedition. That body, when it had crossed, organ- [f! S94 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. --^i ONE OF OUB DOOl'OttS. ized itself into a convention and passed the fol- lowing • ' ns: " Wherti 1 kindness of the citizens of Anoka we have bee. jver Rum River free, "iJMoIjed, A hat we tender them our heartfelt thanlts! "iJ««oli'cd, That we are deeply ecnnible of the able and skillful manner in which the ferryman managed his pole, and his assistant the rudder, in the trying transit of Rum River; "7J««oiBed, That we are devoutly grateful that the rope did not break and leave us to the mercy of winds and waves ; " Resolved, That we cordially unite in recommending to Charon, the proprietor of the Styx ferry-boat, to re- frain from demanding the usual two oboli from the citi- zens, of Anoka and the ferryman of Rum River." These resolutions were adopted nem. con. The chairman was about to put the motion to adjourn to a quarter where the rum was not so liberally diluted as in the stream just crossed, when the gentleman who had offered the resolutions stepped on top of a pile of flour-sacks in his cart and ex- claimed, " Mr. Chairman, before we adjourn allow me to make a few brief remarks on a subject in which we are all deeply interested. Need I say that I allude to the great Northwest Exploring Expe- dition?" [Hear! hear! Goon! goon! Three cheers for the Saskatchewan !] The exigencies of space compel the omission of the speaker's apology for a want of prepara- tion for the occasion and his brilliant exordium. The following extracts are taken from the mau- UMcript which ho drew from his p(X'k- ct n few moments later. I have en- deavored to relievo the dryness of Ms discourse by interpolating a few skctclu'S of the members of our jjar- ty, as they appeared at various point-x of the journey. "The discovery of gold in Frazer River and its tributaries dciiopulutcd many of the small towns of Califor- nia in a few short weeks. Tracts of land, once thickly settled and well tilled, were emptied of inhabitants and left as free of the plow as they were before gold was discovered in thai El Dorado. Emigrants came from the East too, but passed on by the Golden Gate and entered the Straits of Junn de Fuca on their way to the newer and more northern El Dorado. Shall we wonder, then, that the Californians have said Fra- :;cr llivcr is a humbug? Nay, rath- er let us rejoice. Shall any croaker say we count our eggs before they are hatched ? Perha])? we do ; but it is because the eggs are golden ones, and we are sure of our goose "But the emigration is already sufficient to make the question of routes nil important. Some may •I like to go around the Horn, but not a Western man ; that is not his way of treating horns. Who wants to be huddled like cattle between the decks of a rickety old steamer for weeks and months? Who wants to go from London to Paris by the way of Jericho? The best gold fields are in the head waters of Frazer River, close to the Rocky Mountains, just over the way. We take the short cut " To use the words of a distinguished writer : ' Various causes have been n))proaching their crisis of consequence with a remarkably synchro- nous movement.' The license of the Iludson Bay Company has just expired. The land which they have shut out the world from is open to capital and labor. British Columbia has been organized. People are hearing of the northward deflection of the isothermals west of the great lakes. Bulwer's prophecy, of a cordon of free States all along our northern boundary, may yet be realized. Ten years ago who knew that northwest of Chicago lies an inhabitable area bigger than the whole United States east of the Mississippi, included between the same lines of latitude which box the great grain-growing dis- tricts of Central Europe ? Japan is opening, and the Amoor gapes to receive her coming thousands. Oregon and Washington Territories are swelling into magnificence, and the eyes of wide-awake philosophers already see in the Northern Pacific the Mediterranean of the future " And what a magnificent river system is that of the Northwestern areas — a system by itself! Think me not stupid because I am statistical. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 2»r< Tlic Ucd l{iver of tlie Nortli liooks its licad wn- tci'H in iinioiiK the liciid waters of the MissisHi|i]>i. Then it sends its waters hundreds of miles north to Lalto Winnipeg, the centre of the system. That lake is two hundred miles long, navigublo fur any class of vessels. Its main tributary is tlie Suskatchewnn [cheers], navigable to the very iiliadows of the Rocky Mountains. Of this coun- try, big enough to make half a dozen flrst-class States, Red River is the syjjhon, and Minnesota is the reservoir that its wealth will always flow into. Minnesota, too, gentlemen, as my friend Lieutenant Maury says, is the centre of the Northern thermal band — the temperate zonjc, the zone of commorce, manufactures, industrial ac- tivity, and the wealth and power of the globe. England, Franco, Russia, Germany, the New England, Middle, and North westei-n States lie in it ; the whole valley of the St. Lawrence and the great basin of the Saskatchewan lie in it. The climatic associations of this belt, upon the eastern side of the basin of the great lakes, have formed the elements of the popular delusions re- garding the climate of the region to the west and northwest of us. But how absurd is the deduc- tion I The same argument proves that the vine- clad hills of France are no better than the banks cf Newfoundland, and Central Europe as bleak and cold as our stormy Labrador. Science and observation tell us that the western coasts of continents are warmer than the eastern in the same latitude, and the northwestern areas of onr coiitinent will yet be settled with a population such as it desen-es." The orator, dismounting from his throne, was saluted with three cheers. The wit of the party called for "Hail Columbia" from the thermal band, and the twenty mounted their horses and carts and drove on. The day's programme soon settled down into this routine : The morning watch culled the cooks of the three messes at sunrise, and the cooks called their messes half an hour later. After ablutions, which were performed in proxi- mate tin basins or distant brooks, breakfast wa!> laid upon the ground and eaten. The interval, till seven or eight o'clock, was generally given to miscellaneous matters, hftrses needing to !« shod, harness to be mended, tents to be struck, jour- nals to be written up, etc. At half past seven the animals which had been nnpickctcd at sun- rise by the momi'iig watch were brought up, harnessed and sadilled, and at about eight tlio expedition started on its day's journey. Wo rested an hour or half-hour at noon, and went into camp at four. The variations upon this plan became numerous as we journeyed on. Sometimes a deep stream was to bo crossed, which occupied half the day, during which the horses rested, and could, therefore, travel later. Sometimes the greater part of a day's journey was through marshes, or the road was bad and full of slcfughs, which wearied the horses : in this case we went into camp earlier. But the prin- cipal cause of variation came to be the nearness of wood and water. These words gradually changed their original sign.:'cation into a much broader one, in our minds. Wood once meant the stuff floors and doors and desks are made of, and water was merely one of a great variety of fluids. Now wood and water became essen- tials to us. We must have them or go supjier- DUB S.'TUBALIBT BTITDTINa OBASSEe 296 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. jci^-r^-x MY FIBBT WATCU. less to bed, and start breakfiistless in the morn- ing. They stood instead of a hundred things, and were, to use the phrase of a philosopher, the fundamental data of life. By them wo lived, and moved, and had our being. On coming to the camp-ground the horses were at once unsaddled and the mules unhar- nessed, all watered and turned out to graze till twilight, when they were picketed for the night. The tents were pitched, wood cut, and water brought for the cooks, who set forth their tins, built the fires, and proceeded to business. After supper, the watch, who was on duty from sunset till midnight, built smudges for the animals, saw 4hey were properly picketed, and began his rounds. The blankets were spread in the tents, the tents smudged or mosquito nets hung, and at dark nearly all were asleep. A few lingered around the camp-fire telling stories of home, singing songs and choruses, and smoking their pipes; but soon they, too, joined the sleepers. My first watch happened to fall while we were camped on the east bank of the Mississippi. It was the morning watch, from midnight to sun- rise. A cool wind, inexpressibly refreshing after the heat of the day, blew tha blanket from my shoulders as I stepped out of the tent at the call of the first watch. Over the whole sky clouds were flying to the south, in thick billows, through the upper air, and in whiter flecks of foam below. TO RED RIVKR AND BEYOND. 207 tents dark round nging )ipes; were It 8un> after my all of were 1 the ilow. In the wi'st tlu? full nuxm was K"inK down, now t'onipletnly hidden from the siglit, and now burst- ing thruugli tlic riftH with a sudden light. In these moments the wliito tents gleamed, and the thick darki.wss which hung ocr the river, the forests 01 trees upon its western bank, and ufKjn the islands between, suddenly passed away, re- vealing their sharp outline against the sky, the rounded graceful masses of foliage, broken by hero and there a giant trunk leafless, the memo- rial uf some storm and its swift lightning stroke. Long, deep shadows stretched acri hs the river al- most to the hither shore, and where the moon- light shone fair and clear, the rapid current of the river, whose waters the north wind seemed hurrying on to their southern gulf, was trans- formed to bridges of liglit, and the illusion hard- ly passed away until a raft came floating down tlio stream out of the darkness, a single form visible ujion its wrinkled surface, his hand upon the huge paddic guiding its course through the windings of the channel as it swayed from shore to shore. St. Cloud, seven ty-flv(f miles north of St. Paul, the northern limit of the second stretch of con- tinuous navigation on the Mississippi, was our first station. Six or seven years ago there was nothing there but the forest primeval and a cabin or two. Now there is a capital hotel, tlje Ptearns House, two or three churches, a hospital of ihe Sisters of Mercy, and houses for a thou- sand people. The > 'est l)luff of the river, where St. Cloud stands, is high and steep, the prairie stretching back of it level. From various points on this bluff the river views are beautiful, esi)e- cially the one looking north to Sauk Ilapids, two or three miles above. Tlie greatest institution, the peculiar one of St. Cloud, I have failed to mention — the St. Cloud newspaper. Joseph and I called uuon its editor, the well-known Mrs. Swisshelm, and were permitted to see the most northwestern printing oflice of the cis-montane States. We found the re- puted ogre a large-eyed, lively little woman, with a masculine and unhandsome breadth and height of forehead, wearing a plain brown Quakerish dress, and occupied in sewing together a carpet for the principal room in her new house, just finishing and adjoining the old one. She was very busy, and therefore kept her position on the floor and went on with her work, telling us, how- ever, that she was glad we came, begging us to go on and talk, but launching her bark in the current of conversation before we had knocked away the shores of our own. She was absorbent and capacious of information, uniting the pro- fessional inquisitiveness of the reporter with the friendly curiosity of her sex. Her comments were shrewd and her talk often witty. Present- ly she left her work and took us into the print- ing-''fflce and sanctnm. The latter was a small apartment partitioned off from the main room, long and narrow. In one comer stood the edi- torial desk, with a pile of exchanges surmounted by the professional scissors and paste-pot. She had been compelled to use the sauctum as a liv- ing room also. At tlie right strxjd a table with the dishes laid for tea, and close at the left a c(M>king stove loaded with tea-pot, frying-pan, and kettles. Every thing ap])oarcd in c-oiifusion in this sanctum ; for it was not largo enough tn swing a cat ronifortably in, and yet was crowded with the miscellaneous contents of an editorial oflice, a kitchen, and dining-room, and scrv'cd. besides, as tiie j)asHage-way to tlie larger room beyond. In this room were the hand-press and stands of typo, one or two half-niado-tip funus and half a dozen galleys rested on the tabic, while the walls were adorned with jKJstcrs an- nouncing horse sales, houses to rent, etc. A window was broken, and the floor littered. Lean- ing against the form-table in this dingy room, the brave woman told us how she had learned to sot typo herself, and then taught boys to ; how she made uj) the forms ; how she had got along with a stitt'-neckcd and rebellious jieople ; how she had enjoyed her persecutions and mild martyrdom ; how she had endured the ren uni/usUe ilomi, and, like nil the rest of us workies, had nearly died in gcti ..»; a living. \N i.ul a sujipcr that night — not but what, in the o'dinaiy conditions of the exchequer, most of us were sure of three meals a day ; but this was a p.irticular aiid public sapper. For my part, I remember nothing of it except that the presitling oflicer was C. C. Andrews, immor- talized in " The Red River Trail," a lawyer who is making his mark in the northwest, and that, after his sensible brief speech, somebody got up and told who built the first wagon in Minne- sota, and somebody else cxitressed the opinion that tho head of navigation on the Mississippi was not St. Paul, nor S'n'anthony, nor St. Cloud, but Fort P^dmonton on the Saskatche- wan. On Monday, June 20, the train struck its tents and left St. Cloud : here beginning its experiences of camp-life with a back-ground. So far we had been treading the warp and woof of civilization — now we began to slip off the fringes of its outer- most skirts. Our direction was northwest, by the valley of Sauk River, through the lake district of Middle Minnesota to the head of navigation on Red River. Such articles as were needed had been added to our outfit, including a boat to cross streams in, which served for a wagon box on dry land. The second day out all our horses and mules ran away before brcakfust. Half the camp scoured the country in every direction in search for the runaways. They were caught four miles away, making steady tracks for St. Cloud and its pos- sible oats, led on in their desertion by two of the handsomest, smallest, and meekest-looking mules in the train. The road rewarded them with re- tributive justice that day. The sloughs were in- numerable, and indeed innumerable they con- tinued to be for weeks and weeks, only approach- ing the limits of mathematical calculation as we neared Pembina. This may seem strange when it is considered that we crossed the divide be- tween the tributaries of the Minnesota and Mis- sissippi; but, as Joseph said, '*with a general 298 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. l'. OETTINU OCT OF A BLOUOU. convexity of outline there was great conca%'ity of detail." The convex " divide," like a rounded cheek, had a small-pox of lakes, bogs, ponds, sloughs, and morasses. To give in detail the particulars of this part of our experience would be cruel to writer and reader, though it might gain the former a seat in the Chinese Paradise of Fuh, where the purg- atorial price of admission is to wade for seven years in mud up to the chin. So let me give the spirit of it all, in a lump. The only external indication of some kinds of sloughs is a ranker growth of grass, perhaps of a different color, in tlie low ground between two hills of a rolling prairie. Again, on a level prairie, where the road seems the same as that you have been traveling drj- shod, your horse's hoofs splash in wet grass. Tliis goes on, worse and worse, till you get nervous and begin to draw up your heels out of the water ; and so, perhaps, for a mile, whether in the water or out of it you can not tell, horses up to their hollies trudging through the water and grass, carts sinking deep- er than the hubs, you travel at the rate of one mile in 2.40. Verj' often, however, sloughs put on no such plausible appearance, but confess themselves at once unmistakably bad and ruin- ous to horses and carts. It is the wagon-master's business to ride ahead : f the train a few hundred yards, and, on coming to a slough, to force his horse carefully back and forth through it till ho finds the best place for crossing. I have fished for trout in Berkshire streams so small that, to an observev a hundred yards distant, I must have seemed to 'je bobbing for grasshoppers in a green meadow ; but the ap- pearance is not more novel than to see a strong horse plunging and pitching in a sea of green gi*ass that seems to have as solid a foundation as that your own horse's hoofs are printing. Some sloughs have no better or worse spot. It is mud from one side to tlie other— mud bottomless and infinite, and backing up in some infernal Symmes's hole. The foremost cart approaches, and, at the first step, the mule sinks to his knees. Some mules lie down at this point ; but moct of ours were sufficiently well broken to make one more spasmodic leap, and, though the water or mud went no higher than their fetlocks, then and there ^hey laid them down. This is the moment for human intervention, and, on the part of pro- fane mule-drivers, for an imprecation of divine intervention. The men get off' their horses and carts, and hurry to the shafts and wheels, tugging and straining, while one or two yell at and bela- bor the discouraged and mulish mule. The census man would have no difllculty at this juncture in ascertaining the persuasion to which profuno mule-drivers belong, or, at least, in Avhicli they have been reared. Some of their oatlis derive their flavor from camp-meeting rem- iniscences. Another man excels as a close-com- munion swearer, and, after damning his mule, superfluously damns the man who would not damn him. Other oaths have a tropical luxu- riance of irreverent verbiage that shows them to have been drawn from the grand and reverent phrases of the Prayer-book, and still others are of that sort which proves their users godless wTetches, with whom, for very ignorance, oaths stand in the stead of adjectives. Belabored by oaths, kicks, whip-lashes, and ropes-ends, the mule may rise and plunge and lie down, and rise again and plunge, until the cart is on solid ground ; but it was generally the quicker way to unload the can or wagon at once, TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 299 or to lighten it until the multj could get through easily. If this was inconvenient for any reason, a rope was fastened to the axle, and twenty men pulling one way would geneially succeed in beat- ing the planet pulling the other. Our Indian ])onies got through mud splendidly. Joseph was heard to recommend a stud of them for the hither side of Bunvan's Slough of Despond. They were too lazy to bo other than deliberate in getting out of a hole. They put their feet down carefully, and, like oxen, waddled along, one step or one jump at a time. So they never strained themselves as a high-spirited horse would, and yet were not so mulish as to be willing to stay stuck in the mud for centuries, until the branches of future trees should lift them up for fruit like Sir John Mandeville's sheep. Three times we crossed the tortuous Sauk, iirst by a ferry like the one at Rum River. The next time, four days afterward, we had to make our own ferry. One stout fellow swam across with a rope in his teeth, which was tied firmly to stout trees opposite each other. Then the wagon box was taken off the Wi.cols, two or three hours spent in calking it, launched, and a man in the bow, holding on to the rope which sagged down to within a yard of the water, by bending his body and keeping stiff legs, could head the bow up stream against the swift current, and pull himself and the load across. A Cree half-breed did this canoeing as dexterously from the first as if he had spent his life on the river. Horses, mules, and oxen were then pushed into the stream, one by one, their lariats tied around their noses, and held by another person in the boat, so as to guide them at once to the only place where they could get ashore. Finally, the empty carts and wagons were floated across, and pulled up the bank by a rope around the axle. Crossing other streams where the current was not swift enough to overturn the carts, and the water only deep enough to flow over the boxes, we cut saplings, made a floor on top of the frames, lifted the goods top of that, and crossed without unharnessing a mule. <"-■ OL AIM-STAKE. 0LAtH4BAireT. The conclusion of all which is, that people on railroad cars don't realize what they have to be thankful for. This valley of the Sauk up which we were traveling is one of the garden spots of Minnesota. The new settlers of the last two or three years have many of them taken that direction. Claim- stakes and claim- shantios speck the road Irom one end of the river to the other. Some of the claim -shanties were built in good faith, had been lived in, and land was tilled around them. Not a few, however, were of the other sort, built to keep the letter of the law ; four walls merely, no windows, door, or roof. We often found it convenient to camp near these edifices, and sated ourselves the trouble of going half a mile for wood when we found it cut so near at hand. A terrific thunder-storm came on one after- noon in this Sauk valley to which the average thunder-storms of lat. 40° 42' long. 74° 41' are two-penny and theatrical. We were drenched, of course, with the lowest cloudful, in a moment ; but the thunder vas so near, prolonged, and hurtling, that it was enough to jnake a brave man shiver to remember that his irowscrs had a steel buckle. All day and all night the tempest continued, rain pouring, lightning flashing round the whole circuit of the heavens, and the thun- der uaintermitted. But the next morning rose as clear-skied as if the preceding had been a June day of old tradition, and not written down in the calendar of the battle-month as the anni- versary of Montebello. Our last day's travel in syl- van Sauk Valley took us to Osak- J: , is Lake. Here we camped for Sunday, in an opening in a fine forest which surrounded the lake. Sunday was a perfect day. With patient sight one might trace here and there tlie graceful scarf-like shadowy ivhiie of the highest and rarest clouds against the pure blue. No lower or coarser forms were visible any ^vhere from hori- zon to horizon, and even these would sweep into such evanes- cent folds, and ripple away into such ethereal faintness, that the eye passed them and looked through the blue ether itself. To breathe the pure air was indeed an inspiration. The wind came fresh and clear over the lake. w I'i 'l 300 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. There it lies, siirrounded by forests on every side, with only here and there vistas of open prairie. From the level of the roots of the nearest trees, and from the shadows that rest among their huge trunks, the shining beach slopes down, its white sand the floor where the waves endlessly run up, visible far out and then fused with the surface blue. I gave myself a baptism in this beautiful cold lake, and then finding an old gnarled oak whose spreading limbs made a comfortable couch overlooking the water, whiled the still hours away till the shadows of the distant trees lengthened over the lake and touched the hither shore. Osakis Lake is twelve miles long and two or three wide ; its waters are quite cold, and abound with the largest and finest kind of fresh-water fish — wall-e.yed pike, bass, perch, and other. The Doctor, our one skillful fisherman, brought in a boat-load, caught in an hour or two's drifting. The rest of the camp spent the day in reading, writing, sewing, fishing, washing, cooking, and mending wagons. Ten or twelve miles over the very worst road yet, brought us to a place which, when it gets to be a place, is to be called Alexandria. Half of the distance and more was through woods. Look up, and there was gorgeous sunlight flood- ing the fresh young leaves, lighting up old oak trunks, and glorifying the brilliant birch and ma- ple, pigeons flying or alit, robins and thrushes, and what other mellow-throated songsters I know not, making the vistas and aisles of shadow alive with sound ; but look down, and your horse was balking at a labyrinth of stumps, where there was no place to put his foot : this extending for ten rods, and there terminating in a slough ag- gravated by the floating debris of a corduroy bridge, and this ending in a mud-hole, theblac!: ness of darkness, with one stump upright tu prevent your wading comfortably through it, to transfix your horse or upset the cart. The carts and their drivers could not get through by daylight, but were compelled to stay in the woods and fight mosquitoes all night, reaching Alexandria about noon the next day. Joseph and I, on our ponies, ' ' thridded the som- bre boskage of the wood," and got to Alexandria before dark. It was slow traveling, but, on sure- footed Indian ponies, not very disagreeable. Thi' mosquitoes were our worst torment ; we avoided their terebrations by " taking the vail." ;;! '• TAKinO Tm VAIL. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 801 to MAJOB PATTEN'S OBOSBING. About the middle of the afternoon we caught glimpses through the leaves of a lake at the right of us, and soon came to the short branch road which led to it. Leading our horses down to the water's edge, we observed a blazed tree just at the margin, and an inscription neatly writ- ten on the white wood, with date and name of the company by whom it had been cut. Coming out on the beautiful prairie which is the site of Alexandria, wo were surprised to see the wagons and tents of Messrs. Burbank and Blakely's first two stage loads, showing that their road-makers were not far enough ahead for them to follow on. Is it possible that I have forgot- ten to tell the romance of that stage load ? Two Scotch girls, sisters, journeying \vithout any pro- tector save their good looks and good sense, from Scotland to Lake Athabasca, where one of them was to redeem her plighted faith and marry a Hudson Bay Company's officer. Ocean voyage alone, two or three thousand miles' travel through a strange country to St. Paul alone, then this journey by stage to Fort Abercrombie, camping out and cooking their own food, and voyaging down Red River in a batteau, near a thousand miles more, and fired at by Red Lake Indians on the way, then journeying with a Comimny's brigade to Athabasca, going north all the while and winter coming on too, and the mercury traveling down to the bulb; but her courage sinking never a bit. Hold her fast when you get her, Athabascan! She is a heroine, and should be the mother oc' heroes. And the brave bridesmaid sister I Where are " the chivalry?" Letters take about a year to, get to Athabasca, gentlemen. Three English sportsmen and their guns, tents, and dogs filled another stage, They had hunted in Canada and Florida, shnt crocodiles in the valley of the Nile, fished for salmon in Norway, and were now on their way to the buflalo-plains of the Saskatchewan to enjoy the finest sport of all. Purdy rifles, Lancaster rifles, Wesley Rich- ards's shot-guns, and Manton's shot-guns, sin- gle-barreled and double-barreled: these were their odds against brute strength and cunning. One of them was a baronet, the others Oxford men, and all might have passed a life of ease in London with society, libraries, establishments ; but this wild life, with all its discomforts and privations and actual hardships and hard work, had more attractions for them in its freedom, its romance, its adventuna. Their stories were of beleaguered proctors and bear fights, Hyde Pacific N* W. History Dept, PROVINCIAL L.lBflAI*V VICTORIA^ Ufish (of a rather coarse meat), and a plug of tobacco bought all we wanted for supper. I beg to bo excused from mentioning the fact that, at this crossing, my pony in four-feet water, and with only two rods to dry land, disgracefully icighed a "Now I lay me—" and squatted, yes ! squatted down in the water, positively refusing to obey whip or spur till I had got oif his back and walked to dry land, leading him. It is also needless to mention that my saddle, saddle-bags, Shakspeare, and sketch- book, together with all of me that is fishy in mermen, became, to use a mild term, damp. The prairie from ^'exandria to Otter Tail River was a very beautiful one, the hills moder- ately high but of gentle slopes, their green grassy sides flecked with wild flowers of a thousand brill- iant or quiet hues, and then every mile or two a high swell of land from which we could look over these smaller undulations to the great green wave rising to its height again. As we passed over these successive heights, about noon we caught sight in the distance of a beautiful lake, which, on approaching nearer, appeared to hare a line of " white caps" running through it. Little wind was blowing, but the illusion was perfect. As we approached nearer, however, and saw that the white wave remained in the same place, it occurred to us thijt we were looking at an isl- and of pelican ; and this became evident when we saw small portions of it disintegrating about the edges, and drifting away in white clouds, re- lieved againc-^ *'\c blue sky or the deeper blue of the lake, or as they floated past the tree-covered islands and promontories which pushed their gray sandy beaches out into the water from either shore. I have never seen a loke which, for ariety and grace of outline, appeared to me so beauti- ful as this, though, to be sure, its beauty was far from being of a striking sort. As Joseph and I mounted to ride on after the train we observed a large flock of the same birds circling high in air overhead. The sight was worth go- ing far to see. There were hundreds of them sweeping around in slow and stately flight — the distance transforming all their ungainliness into grace, and the bright sunlight clothing them in white splendor. To the right and left of us, from Osakis Lake, the head of the Sauk Valley, to Otter Tail or Upper Red River, lakes of every variety of out- line were visible as we journeyed on. Some were near at hand— our trail at times leading over their sandy or pebbled beaches, or upon others we looked down from the summit of a hill of rolling prairie, and again from the loftier ridges of the undulating land sea, the eye, sweep- ing the horizon, could trace the outlines of a dozen within the limits of its vision, near or re- mote — bluer than the stainless heavens, or blend- ing in the hazy distance with the long waving fsaammu 804 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. I 1' it f i Sy^'-m f IBST VIEW OF THE BED BIVEB OF THE KORTO. grass which sloped to the water's edge, or the black and brown rushes which, like timorous swimmers, did not venture far from shore, or with the deeper green of wooded capes and isl- ands, which caught the fierce sunlight and shaded its fall upon the gentle waters, casting themselves away upon the beaches, Joseph rhapsodized and I applauded. "These little lakes are my private passion — deep-set, dark-shadowed lakes, cozy nooks of sunshine that one may own within the compass of a farm — pocket-editions of poetry in velvet and gold — little lakes that, from under their wooded fringes, gleam with an under-sonl, and flash back the introverted glances of the stars from depths as pure as the heights of the down-gazing heav- ens, such a lake as you can take into your con- fidence, and talk to in qniet hours as a lover talks to the image in a golden locket, and sees the cold crystal all aglow and shadowy tvith passion like a woman's eye." It was our habit to ride ahead of the train a mile or two, or behind it, if we staid to hunt or sketch or for sight-seeing. So riding the next morning, our eyes were the first to get sight of the waters which run to the frozen seas of the north. For four or five miles, at every elevation, we had seen ahead of us a line of timber, and be- yond level prairie, which we knew must be the trees skirting the Otter Tail or Upper Red River, where, a young and wayward stream, it flows to the south and west, hither and thither, before gaining breadth and volume and gathering trib- utary waters, it turns to its final direction, and thenceforward flows with steady currents toward the northern star. The prairie within this bend, and toward which we were traveling, moreover, we knew to be level instead of rolling like that to the east ; so on we spurred, and, surmounting a summit, on the hither side of which it seemed that the nearest curve of the river must still be miles away, there the river ran at our very feet, bursting suddenly upon us in its full loveliness like a goddess disrobing. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 805 The (lay was the fourth of the month July, and this was our unexpected celebration of the Nation's gala-day. Taking the saddles from our horses, and leaving thcra to their independence, we sat down upon the brow of a high hill over- looking the rivor for miLs of its wayward wind- ings. Pen and pencil are both inadequate ; but the pencil is better than the pen. And as I i^ketched, Joseph made the oration. We remained here for the rest of the day. The place is called Dayton, after a gentleman who, like millions of his fellow-freemen, was not elected Vice-President. The present popu- lation numbers one. They live alone by him- self in a breezy log-house, with a little off-shoot containing bunks and a cooking-stove, and whose walls are hung with dried sturgeons and cat- fishes, caught in the river. Breckiu. idge is about twenty miles below Day- ton, in a southwest direction, and is situated pre- cisely at the point where the river begins its gen- eral northwardly course, at the junction of the Bois de Sioux. Fort Abercrombie is about the same distance northwest of Breckinridge ; so that our trail toward the fort from Dayton was the liypothenuse of the river's angle. When the gulfs of wood that marked the course of Red River had faded into dimness, and sunk below the horizon behind us, nothing was visible but the sky and this level grass stretch- ing away in every direction. There were lines of lighter and deeper shade in the green and yel- low herbage, flecks of brilliant flowers, cool blue ^kies, and a clearly defined horizon at the east ; und under the setting sun a yellower hue in the sky, and hazier lines upon the distant and waver- ing bands of shade and light where earth and sky met. At night we camped beside a marsh ; and when the last red streak had faded out of the sky, the full sublimity of the scene burst upon the mind. A night upon tlie prairie is worth a day at Niagara. As far as the eye can reach on every side sweep the level lines, slowly darken- ing as they approach the horizon. Nothing ob- structs or limits the view of the sky. A whole hemisphere of stars looks down upon you, arid all the earth occupying the least possible angle of vision. Just as we were camping for the night a com- pany of Red River carts appeared upon the hori- zon. At first we could hardly imagine what thej were — for a moment widening out into bat- talions, and then shrinking to the width of a sin- gle company, as the trail came directly toword or was at right angles to us, so that it seemed as if we were gazing at the evolutions of a grand army. As they came nearer the illusion was dispelled, and the train began to look like what it was — a huge land caravan. Presently we saw galloping ahead of the train a young man, well mounted, who in a few moments drew rein under the Stors and Stripes, which we had patriotical- ly hoisted when we first saw their white flag of march fluttering in the distance. The rider, a young M'Kay, who was captain of the train, was well mounted, and sat his horse finely. His clear, bronzed face was set off by a jaunty cap. IIo wore a checked flannel shirt, and each shoul- der bore its fancy wampum bead belt, that sus- pended the powder-horn and shot-pouch. He had u])on his feet moccasins worked with beads and quills, and carried in his hand a short-han- dled riding-whip, with a long thick lash of buf- falo hide. Meanwhile, as we exchanged the news and friendly questionings, the train had approached, one cart after another wheeling by inlongprocession — scores upon scores, each wheel in c ry cart having its own individual creak or shriek, and each cart drawn by an ox harness- ed in rawhide, one driver to three carts. The drivers were all half-breeds, dressed in every va- riety of costume, but nearly all showing soj- . flash of gaudy color in tl'3 invariable belt or sash, or in the moccasins, and politely touching the cap with a * ' Bon jour ! " to such of us as stoou near enough to return the salutation.^ The next morning, as wo were eating break- fast, a new party appeared, which soon turned out to be Sir George Simpson, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in America, and Vor. XXT.— No. 123.— U FOJtT ADBBOBOMOIX, WIMMi 306 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. \i\ CAMTONMENTB, FORT AUEBCBOMUIG. his attendants. He was just retuniing from his annual visit to Norway House, and was only seven days from Fort Garry. He was accom- panied by relays of hoi-ses, and himself rode in an old buggy at a spanking gait. The voice, which is said to make chief factors and chief traders and chief clerks tremble, and which makes and mars fortunes in Rupert's Land, was to us stru igers very pleasant in its tones. Our eyes followed the white round-topped liat and white capote, as long as they were visible, with great interest, until wo learned, too late, that one of the men in his party was Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer. A few hours' ride the next morning brought us to the Red River of the North again, where it flowed northwardly six miles above («'. e., south of) Fort Abercrombie. We crossed at a con- venient fording-place, where the water was little higher than the horses' flanks, and galloped on to the fort. North of Graham's Point, as we rounded a turn of the river, whose wooded margin had conceal- ed it from us hitherto, we came in sight of Fort Abercrombie — that is, of the one building erect- ed for the commander's quarters, and the canvas store-houses, which are built upon the prairie near the river bank. The log-houses, which of- flcers and privates at present occupy, are all built in a quadrangle upon a pear-shaped promontory, surrounded by water, and a trifle lower than the level of the prairie. The view on the preceding page is taken from the neck of this pear-shaped promontory, looking west toward the prairie. The view above is taken from the same spot, back to back, looking east toward the interior of the cantonment. Here were our old stage-coach friends, the Englishmen, quartered in their tents, and the Scotch lasses, by the kindness of Captain Davis, quartered in one of the completed rooms of the building shown in the first sketch, where they were awaiting the constraction of their batteau. Josei)h found an old friend in the sutler of the fort, and by him we were introduced to the commander and principal officers. We enjoyed their hearty hospitality for the remainder of the day and night. As we sat in the Captain's quar- ters at the close of the afternoon, smoking out the mosquitoes with Manilla cheroots, and listen- ing to his entertaining accounts of life on the border, an orderly brought news of another train wshing to cross the river at this point. Pres- ently they came along, the cattle bearing new armies of mosquitoes over the neck, and through the cantonment to the place where the Anson Northup was moored. Wheeling their loaded carts on the boat, they swung it back and forth, from shore to shore, till all were ferried over, then drove their oxen into the water, swimming them across, and camped in the woods on tlie opposite side of the river. The Captain gave Joseph and myself a whole house to ourselves that night, with straw beds, which were a luxury after the cold ground ; and the delicious coolness of the room, with not a mosquito to sting or sing, soon sent us to sleep, the last sounds that fell upon our ears being the songs of the half-breeds over the river — songs of their own nation, and of Sioux and Chippe- wa braves — rising and falling in monotonous cadences till all were alike unheard. The steamboat Anson Northip deserves an epic. Here is the argument, to which I hope some one will yet gird himself to write a poem. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 807 Sgi>E; Lato in the winter of 18r>8-'9, Mr. Anson Northiip, having run his boat up the Crow Wing River, a tributary of the Mississippi, the previous fall, took it to pieces, packed the cabin, machinery, and timber for building the iiull, on sleighs, which, with great difficulty, wore drawn by horses and oxen across to Otter Tail Lake, and thenco westward to the mouth of the Cheyenne on the Red River. Assisted l)y the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, but mainly depending on his own private resources, iind by hard work and perseverance, the boat was rebuilt on the banks of Red River, and launched successfully on the 19th of May, and, as the breaking bottle drenched the planks, was christened the Anson Northup. In the high- water of early spring she made her trial-trip down to Fort Garry and back. She had to lie by every night, of course, and must have been greatly delayed by the necessity of stopping to cut timber for the fire. In spite of these delays, she made the return trip in eight days; and what must the quiet Selkirkers have thought of the American steamboat ? The Albany burgomas- ters were not more amazed by the sound of the Chancellor Livingston's paddles. And now about the navigation of Red River. Such navigation is undoubtedly feasible. The boat's two trips to Fort Garry have demonstrated it. In the latter part of the fall, and in the win- ter of course, it is impracticable. After the ice breaks up, which usually happens about the 1st of May, the water is very high, and the river is navigable to as large steamboats as can make all the turns in the winding river, from Fort Aber- crombie to the mouth at Lake Winnipeg — near- ly five hundred miles. After the 1st of August the water has fallen suflSciently to reveal serious obstructions in the channel from the fort to the mouth of the Ciieycnno River, its largest tribu- tary but one, entering Red River fifty or sixty miles below the fort. But from this point to its mouth it is easily navigable in the lowest stages of water, until the ice forms in early November. The success of the boat wwks a revolution in the Company's business. Hereafter the annual outfit and returns will pass through the United St'^.tes, instead of by the difficult and circuitous passage of Hudson's Bay, to York and Moose Factories. The train did not cross the river above the fort as we did, but continued on for about fifty miles down the east side of the river to the Cheyenne Crossing, near the mouth of the Chey- enne River. Joseph and I, who had remained behind, crossed the river on the Anson Northup, swimming our horses. We therefore had to ride thirty-four miles on the trail of the train, doing their two days' travel in one day, and that the hottest of the season. The air was really furnace-like, reminding one of the accounts from India of the scorching heats of mid-day in that more tropicl climate. But when we got to camp, two hor i after sunset, there was still no rest for us. Mosqui- toes abounded, biting our hands, and necks, and faces, as we cooked our suppers, and fiying into our eyes and mouths whenever we dared to open either. At this season of the year mosquitoes are the intolerable curse of travelers, the little black fly the tolerable curse, and wood-ticks the curse. As for the rest of the entomological cre- ation, they bear no comparison with these in their power of inflicting annoyance and petty misery up( i the human race ; and one soon gets the habit, 1 found, of brushing a spider from his face, an ant from his neck, or taking any creep- ing, crawling thing from the inside of Lis near- rves an I hope ivrite a TUB " AHSON KOBTinn>.' I 808 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE TUE SMUUaB. est piece of clothing, with tho samo inJifforencc with which he brushes away a house-fly in Christian lands. But inasmuch as wood-ticks burrow into and under the skin, and stick fust and swell, and whereas these buftalo-gnats swann in millions, and of a hot, sultry afternoon, when little wind is stirring, will fly into tho eyes, ears, and nostrils by scores ; and whereas mosquitoes buzz, and pierce, and suck, and sing by tho thou- sand and tens of thousands, biting the hands, and face, and ears, and neck, when we ride through timber, and stinging us into wakeful- ness before sunrise, cheating us of the delicious " last nap," and stinging us into a passion long after sunset, barricading with their fllmy wings our way to the water, and, when both hands are occupied, perforating our tenderest cuticles, and making of our level skin a rolling prairie of blotches and pimples for disturbing their ancient and solitary reign, it becomes necessary to sleep, comfort, and happiness that traveling mankind should resort to the smudge. A few brands of rotten wood from the camp- fire, covered with dried grass and green grass, make a smudge about equally unendurable, whether inhaled by men or mosquitoes ; though of the two evils, mosquito or smudge, men pre- fer to endure that which is not quite intermina- ble, though it may be almost intolerable. Horses and mules, when the smoke begins to roll up in good volume, will stand over it, and in it, till the tears run down their long noses in streams, rather than endure the torments of mosquito- bites outside its protection. Every night we closed tho tent soon after dark, and smudged it out thoroughly, before going to blanket ; so that when we crawled in under the tent-flap, we felt rather than saw our way, and had to keep our mouths close to the ground to get enough fresh air to live on. During the night the smoke set- tles, fresh air filtrates through the canvas, and wo slept as comfortably as on Howe's spring mattresses. Wo crossed tho Red River into Dakotah Ter- ritory near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. At its mouth it is about one hundred and twenty feet wide — a deep stream, of nearly two- thirds the volume of Red River. From here to Pembina our route was through a dangerous In- dian country, inhabited by hostile Sioux. The watch was doubled, and added precau- tions taken against surprise or attack. It was a novel sensation to a peaceable man who had known no greater danger at night than the re- mote chance of being garroted on Broadway, or of being struck by lightning while sitting at liia TO UKI) IIIVKU AND HEYOND. SO'J window in Ninth Street, to bethinic liimBclf, at every sunset, of tlio proKjHict of on attack from hostile Indiiina, or ft stivinjiedc of tlie horses nnd mules gotten uj) by thievish ones, and to pre- pare for such probabilities by keeping his rido and pistols in jjcrfect order — loaded and capped, and at half-cock, and to take his turn at the watch. Joseph hod a theory, however, that the Sioux were off in somo remote portion of tiieir terri- tory, miikinfJ! treaties, and when hisVatch came around generally kicked the brands of the camj). Are, which his predecessor had carefully put out, into n blaze again, and sat down, with his pijie, in the light of it — the best possible mark for prowling Indians. He lives to tell the talc and show the hat with a bullct-holo through the crown. On Saturday, the second day after crossing at Dakotah City, as the one log-house at the cross- ing of Red River is called, wo had a long day's travel over prairie where there was no wood or water, and with the exception of an hour's rest at noon by the side of a slough where the horses could manage to drink a little, the train was kept in motion from eight in the morning till seven at night. About five o'clock the sharpest-sighted of ns horsemen, riding ahead of the train, on ascend- ing a riJgo of the pruirie which overlooked the valley of the Elm River, saw, clear away on the edge of the horizon, where tlie heat of the sun made the level lines of the prairie tremulous, and seemed to fuse earth and sky, two black sjwts, motionless, and looking like iiotliing thot we had been accustomed to see. Tliey were buffaloes, of course, wo all agreed ; or, as Jo- seph frantically exclaimed, " Viands for a regi- ment of hungry gods, brought to us in the pock- ets of Jujiitcr's old coat!" A bull's hide, you remember, with a bull inside of it. For half an hour wc all trotted along in their direction, keep- ing together, and still wondering whether they were in reality a couple of stray buffalo bulls, or somo huge boulders outraging geological ortho- doxy. The space between the rpots grew wider — they were buffalo, browsing along on the prairie, and still unconscious of our approach. Two of our horsemen tightened their reins for a brisk canter, and led off at a rate of speed which would have been ruinous to Joseph's pony, or to mine, so early in the chase. Wc kept on at a steady jog. The wind was in our faces, and the two riders ahead got within a quarter of a mile of the game before they were cva\, with KTCut good Hcnito heading them and turning thoir flight toward um, who were coming up as fast as our Hcuund-rato horitc-ficNh would permit. [ was riding Dun Hiec, now as ever, tough and lazy ; but by plying whip and opur, nnd ithrieking to him like any wild Indian, I got him into speed, and soon neared the boyn, who were now nlongsido the first of the fhaggy monsters, tiring and wheeling nwny as tlie stately old fel- lows plunged on, heedless of the galling b diets. Tho thrilling excitement of that chase ! The buffaloes galloping in their heavy, headlong way, as if they knew their lives were in the chase ; C , with one or two shots more in his revolver, and determined they should be fa- tal, close alongside tho flanks of the one into which they had emptied their barrels ; and L , wild with excitement, begging for an- other pistol or a rifle. My iwny could barely get alongside, but at last he did. C • drew back ; and I saw for an instant tho red spots on las great side bleeding; then leveled my light rifle like a pistol, with one hand, and flred, the muzzle almost against his shoulder. Ho stag- gered into a quicker flight, and in another direc- tion, nwny from tho lai^r bull, still untouched, who was thundering on ahead. lie, too, turn- od. I saw my chance ; left tho first one to those who had earned the right to dispatch him, and rode in such a way as to separate tho pair, mark- ing the foremost one for a chase. I reloaded as ■lOon as possible, all the while at full gallop, hut not gaining an inch on the buffalo, thougli dose upon his heels, not half a dozen rods awny, and he every moment turning that black, shaggy liead to the one side or the other to see his pur- suer. A stern chase is a long one. Every pore was streaming, and I threw off my coat, tied it behind me, threw awy the stirrups, clapped heels to pony, and yelled him into a faster gait. I never knew what physical excitement was before, and thought the oddest things while in that exciting race. The tones of my own voice amazed my mind. I .vondered if I should ever ask any woman to love me, in tho voice with which I besought Dan to fly faster. All pas- sion and pathos were in tho tone ; and yet, some- how, though the blood was boiling, nnd I was so light that it seemed as if the wind blew through me, my mind sat apart and wondered how it could be that its highest functions were for an instant usurped, and my heart trembled at such living semblance of its noblest moods. A mile or two of those tremendous strides be- gan to tell upon the heavy creature, and his gait grew sensibly slacker. Dan gradually gained upon him, and as I got alongside I pulled trig- ger. For the only time in all my use of the nfle the cap snapped, but the cartridge failed to catch the fire. Buffalo-bull turned with a terri- ble snort, head and horns down, and made for pony and me. He was not the bull to be in- sulted by snapping caps. Pony wouldn't fight, shame upon him! but gathered up his heels quicker than lightning, nnd leaped a great lca)> ahead of him, and around to the other side. If ho had turned, two horns would have disembow- eled him. Luckily for mo my feet were out of the stirrujm and my scat was firm, or I might have been sent kiting into the uir and down by bull's feet, instead of enjoying that spinal thrill from Dun's tightening h)ins. Buffalo-bull did not fol- low us fur, but turned and mado off at a small angle, using his IwHt legs — four of them. I brought lK)ny to a stand, toes down, drew a bead for the vital spot just behind the fore-shoulder, nnd fired. Buflido-bull, that had galloped on four legs, hobbled on three. I had fired a little too far forward, and broken the shoulder-blade. I had no more cartridges, but. walked my horse along as fast as the bull could hobble, till an- other came and dispatched him later in the day. One of our party, tho son of a rich Boston merchant — n clever scape-grace, who had trav- eled the world over, and, among other things, had bought np and killed beef for California miners in '49— superintended tho cutting-up of tho buflulo. Axes nnd butcher- knives soon dissected tlie huge carcass, nnd two carts were loaded with the meot from the two bulls, nnd wheeled into camp late that evening. Housing fires had been built, and " Bony," the scientific cook of the Agony Hall mess, gave us all steaks and fries and "bouillons" that night, nnd as long as the fresh meat lasted. The next day (Sun- day) was spent in jerking tho meat — i.e., cut- ting it in thin slices, and drying it in the sun or over a slow fire, the smoke kee])ing oft' flies and gnats. My only coat — a cordiuoy, with the pockets full of j)apcr8 — had tumbled off in the buft'ulo chase. Monday morning, an hour before sun- rise, Joseph nnd I went to search for i*. We took along a half-breed bred to i)rairic life, with keen eyes, and the promise of reward as an eye- opener. We hud for a base of operations an imaginary line drawn from the head of the first bnff'alo killed, directly west half a mile. I knew that my cont was within a hundred yards of that line. We searched for miles nnd miles around ; it was less than five miles from the camp to where the carcass lay, but not a hair of it could we see. The wolves could not have eaten it, and it cer- tainly stood up two feet from tho ground, a black, hairy mass, the most conspicuous kind of a wiy-mark. But we might as well have looked for the track of Columbus's ship, left, m the fall of 1402, east of San Salvador, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The sea is not more path- less than a level prairie. Tho next Monday afternoon we reached Pem- bina. During that week one day's travel was very much like another. Joseph compared our daily topography to successive pancakes which we seemed to be turning off the immense grid- dle of the horizon, smcking hot from the fierj' oven of the sun. On the right of us, with our glasses we could see the distant lino of timber marking the northward course of Bed River ; about every day we crossed some one of its west- JOHN BULL IN JAl'AN. 811 orn tribiifariod — flrnt a linu of bluo on tho north- ern horizon, rndolvintr itnelf into trees wiiieh wo gradiiiiliy noareil, phinj^ed into, fording tho Htreain wiiich run throiiKli thoin, and emerg- ing on the other Hide to another stretch of open pruirio, terminated ot tho diHtance of twenty or thirty miles by another timbered stream. Some- times we had no water but 8wamp water, and no wood but tho 601.1 de. varhfi, or " bullalo chips," which gave an uni)leasant flavoring to our cook's savory jjancaiics ; and onco wo got stuck, late in tlic afternoon, in tho middle of a huge marsh, wliere with great difficulty we found a bit of dry ground big enough to spread our blankets on, going suppcrless to bed, and waiting for daylight to extricate ourselves from tho wilderness of Hloughs and marshes that environed us. Elm River, fJooso Kiver, Turtle Uiver, Little Salt River, Turk River, and their numberless tributa- ries, wore those which wo crossed. On the banks of Park Kiver wc found a little orchard of blue- berries, and in less than ten minutes from tho rtrst alarm every body was on his hands and knees oniong tho bushes, renewin;^ tho joys of youth. Strawberries, too, grew thicker as wc idvanced. They were near bringing one of our party to grief— one whom wo all liked. He had a habit of walking ahead of tho train for a milo or two, picking strawberries and wool-gathering, 4nd besides, was very near-sighted. The train stopped to send after fresh meat — a young and fat bull, killed by L after a four-mile chase —and the philosopher trudged on. When wo were in motion again somebody asked, " Where's T ?" He was nowhere to bo seen. Some- thing must be done. One oflicious personage, who at that time commanded tho commander of the train, said, " Of course he is ahead," and objected to delaying the train till search was made. Joseph had no idea of leaving his friend alone on the ijrairio, and rebuked this volunteered in- humanity with tho information that he (brute) might go on as soon as ho chose, and as far as he chose ; but as for him (Joseph), tho train might travel till sundown before ho would stir another step till the missing man was found. So he took the sharp-eyed Cree half breed along with him, mounted on my horse, and started oflF in tho di- rection where, during the afternoon, a spot had been seen, which the man with the spy-glass had pronounced an Indian, and the man with a field-glass had pronounced an elk, and we with- out glasses had pronounced buffalo ; and which it was thought might be T . The train kept on slowly till it came to the first wood and water, and there camped. About sundown Jo- seph and tho Cree half-breed came into camp with the philosopher between them. The rest of the story Joseph shall tell in his own words : "Tho last authentic recollection of the phi- losopher was during the buffalo-hunting news, when he was seen, like " ' areat Orion, aloping slowly to the Weat," hunting for strawberries in labjn^nths of reflec- tion. The savant, it was known, had lost his spectacles ; and now it began to bo feared that he had lost himself in the bewildering mazes of his strawberry search. Wo had not galloped a mile before tho half-breed's quick eye caught the figure — which had lieen buflUlo, elk, Indian, and wiiut not, an hour before — standing, ap- parently motioulcss, on the summit of a distant ridge, some five miles oflP, visible to me through a glass only as a vague black line against the sky. A very anxious interval of doubt was passed at tho swiftest pace of our horses before we wore at all sure that the dim object was my best friend. Speculation gradually dawned into recognition; and as we approached him, tho geographer of tho Northwest descended from his eminence, and saluted us with a bland and quiet courtesy, as if he felt quite at home, and was going to ask us to take something. I'he geog- rai>her was utterly lost on his own ground, and had not the least idea where he was. Picking strawlwrrics he wandered outside of tho trail, forgot on which side of it ho was, ond took, of course, tho exactly wrong direction in trying to find his way back ; and so, after wandering for a while among blueberries and eagles' nests and buffalo tracks, he concluded that he was lost, and deliberately made up his mind to camp there, in sight for miles around, till he was sent for." m qJ(m TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 581 liUFrAlO i;UABE. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. IT was the middle of a hot July nftcrnoon when we came to camp on the south side of Pembina River — Pembina and the Pembinese over the ^vay. Joseph and I put on clean shirts, crossed the river in a canoe, and went to ask lor our letters and papers. The mail-car- rier, coming by a different route, had arrived be- fore us. To Magenta had been addea Monte- bello, and the thirty thousand slain; and then followed silence and newslessness for three months. Who that reads the papers has not heard of Minnesota and the man that figured in our New York Punch as a runaway with the Capitol on his shoulders ? Town lot speculators striving to have the Capitol elsewhere than at Kt. Paul (all but Minnesotians have forgotten the name of the town now — such its obscurity) ; carrying the bill making the chonge through a Legislature too virtuous for cakes and ale, and then getting a double checkmate from the Chairman of the Committee on Enrolled Bills, wht ran off with the Removal Bill in his pocket — ran off, on snow-shoes and with a dog-train, to Pembina, it was said — ran off to Room No. 27 Fuller Houi-e. St. Paul, for a fact ; and there hibernated, eat- ing surreptitious turkeys and bass by day, and drinking smuggled whisky by night, till the time of legal adjournment, disappointing the couriers sent out to overtake him, and so by bad means achieving a good end, and determining the loca- tion of tlie Capitol at its proper place, St. Paul. }82 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. The runaway Chaiiinan was Joe Rolette ; and lierc, at Pembina, lie reigns King of the Border. Short, muscular, a bullety head, the neck and chest of a young buffalo bull, small hands and feet, but with tough and knotty flexors and ex- tensors farther uj) ; full bearded, caji, shirt, nat- ty neckerchief, belt, trowsers, and dandy little moccasins — so he looks to the eye. Inside of .ill this there is a man of character, educated in Xew York ; but with a score of wild, adventur- (jus years on the frontier behind him — a man of character who asijcrts himself always, whatever the right or wrong of the assertion. Of unfail- ing good spirits, brimful of humor, blue tliree days in the year — no more and no less — sticking to his belief in a breezy, healthy way, and be- lieving first and always in Joe Rolette ; hosjnta- ble and generous beyond reckoning, and reckon- ing on equal unselfishness in return ; giving you his best horse if you ask for it, and taking your two mules if he needs them ; living for years where he might have made a fortune, and never saving a i)cnny ; ii good Catholic, believing es- pecially in absolution ; a Douglas Democrat to the spinal column, and always to be counted on for good majorities from Pembina — threatening iiorse-ponds and nine duckings to any "Black Republican" who dares settle in the vicinity, and opening his house, and larder, and stables to the blackest Re])ublican of all ; always working for a party better than for himself, and in his zeal for public ends debiting the aggregate resjjonsi- bility with the morality of the private means ; lending a passing traveler his best buffalo run- ners for a hard journey, and then running races with them at the end of the second day's travel ; affectionate to his half-breed wife, and ])roud of Ids boys — miniature Joes, of different sizes ; swearing by Louis Napoleon, and ])road of the French blood ; too generous to his debtors to be just to his creditors ; fond of his whisky, but undergoing months of total abstinence for the JOB BOLETTK. sake of his wife ; his best friend, the man who is not ham]3ered by the laws uf trade ; his worst enemy, himself. There he stauds, just off the 8Uj)erb horse, which he sits as close as a Centaur, lighting a pipe, a score of wolfish irain-dogs yelping about him ; and as he walks across the inclosure roll- ing out a sturdy welcome to ma Jille, who sits by the oj)en window waiting for him, with love and patience in \cr eyes; and lifting up the your.j^- ster who has run out for a kiss — biting off the kiss with a Crci sentence to the half-breed re- tainer standing at the horse's head waiting for orders, or a Chipjiewa salute to some Red Lake Indian waiting to beg for powder and tobacco for the winter's hunt ; and rounding all with an English damn to the yellow dog whose enthusi- asm has entangled him and his yoke between his master's legs. Joe gave us our letters, brought some tobac- co and fresh pipes, inquired the news, showed us a room, and told us to be at home in it till we left Pembina ; spoke an aside to ma Jille, in Nistoneaux, to lay a table full of plates for all his guests ; fed us with buffalo tongues and New England dough-nuts, and strawberries ; and then, with fresh \n\)Q&, we tired the night out discussing politics, the sjn-ing hunt, dogs, Joe's exjjloit with the Capitol bill, the best road to the Rocky Mountains, Governor Gorman and his "I too am a soldier," Dakotah and the Sioux Treaty, Minnesota and the Overland Route, dog-trains and train-dogs, and, first and last, Louis Najjoleon and the great battles. It was three days before the exj)edition's boil came to a head and expelled its rotten core — a tent full of scajie-graces, who, from this point, took their own way to Fraser River. The ex- pedition itself convalesced rapidly ; and, outfit- ting with fresh pemmican, was ready to start upon its travels again within the week. The interval was spent in sight-seeing, while the horses and mules rested. One day we called uj)on old Peter Haydcn. a settler since "eighteen hundred and ever so few ;" one of the first, jierhaps the very first, to lead trade through tiie valley of Red River into r-.u territories ; wJio packed liis goods back and to'th from Prairie du Chicn, then an old French trading-post, when all the tr.ide of tlie valleys of the Ohio and Mississipj)i was carried on pack- horses from Fort Pitt to Philadelphia across the Alleghanics. The old man, an Irisliman, looks weiiiiier-bcaten now, and leads a quiet life on a farm whose barley may be boasted of; at lea"*, there was a story " camp that one of our s«- vai's, holding \\\i i, talk, saw two heads of bar- ley where less fnictuous eyes could see but one. The next day Mr. Kennedy, the clerk in charge of Pembina Fort (two miles north of the mouth of Pembina River, on the banks of Red River), a Hudson Bay Company's station, call- ed, and invitetl us to visit the fort. Four of Uh filled Joe's wagon, drawn by a couple of spank- ing bays; Mr. M'Fetridgc, then the Collector at Pembina (Mr. Buchanan's best appointment the man who de ; his worst superb horse, iir, lighting a V'elping about nclosure roll- e, who sits by ■vith love and p the yovr.g^. iiting off the lalf-breed re- 1 waiting for le Red Lake and tobacco ? all with an lose enthusi- between lil.s some tobac- 2WS, showed nie in it till "la Jii'ie, in lates for all ungues and rawberries ; 1 the niglit hunt, dogs, le best roHil !ormun and ih and the Overland d, first and ittles. ition's boil en core — « this point. The ex- nd, outfit- to Stan !ek. The while the Jayden. a ever so y first, to tiver into back and d French e valleys on ])rtck. cross the in, looks life on a at lea"t, our so- s of bnr- lut one. lerk .in h of the of lied )n, call- n of us spank- ollectoi ntment I TO HED RIVER AND BEYOND. 5815 IKTEBKATIOMAL UOUNSABY I-Usr. and worst removal), with a friend on the seat, drove a swift black pacer ; and four horsemen galloped along beside the two wagons ; Joe I mounted on a superb stallion of English blood — " Fireaway" of name and stock. A dozen dogs followed our rattling wheels in full cry, barking and fightint;. Three cheers as we passed the international boundary post. Its inscription, whatever it may have been, had been quite effaced by the hatch- PEMIIINA FOBT. 584 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZIJSE. ^A s^^s-fx.'r. I 'I '^i^ I'liJiIiilNA, ANU MOUTU OF I'KMlllNA IHVEE. ets and arrows of Irdians, who used it instead of a colored lioy and board for their target. Tlic post was ])hinted by Nicollet, we were told. Later observations have proved that it is 370 yards sonth of the parallel of 4td°, the true boundary line. It seemed less than that number of yards from it north to Pembina Fort. The lodges around the fort arc those of In- dians, come in from tlieir hunts to spend their l)roceeds or outfit anew; some, perhaps, em- jiloyed by the Company. Half-breeds, however, are the ordinary " Company's servants." The long dwelling, where several families of them lived, was on our left as we passed under the high gateway of the fort. The store-houses and store were o])posite. Facing the gate was the dwelling of the officers in charge — whitewashed without, scrupulously neat within. The Scotch servants and half-breed interpret- ers of the Company were standing by the store- liouse ; the half-breed women and children were here and there about the area; half a dozen Chippcwas stood, with arms folded, seeing every motion of our party, and hearing everj' sound ; hundreds of furs were hanging against the fences ; and through the smudge-smoke issuing from the half-breeds' quarters we could catch glimpses of dark eyes and babies' hammocks n-8 winging. The river, as may be seen in the cut, runs very near the fort, and is eighty yards wide, and twelve feet deep. In 1856 it r --e thirty-five feet higher, whereby the Red River 3ettlement and Pembina were disastrously flooded, as twice in Lord Selkirk's time. These inundationg are periodical, but occur at long intenrals, and, ! probably, are much less serious now tliim foi*- : merly, for old settlers say they can note, of latt' years, a very considerable enlargomcnt of the channel, both of Red River and the Assini- boine. St. Vincent is the name of the town-site op- posite Pembina, in the northwestern corner of Minnesota exactly. It receives large nnniuil accessions to its poll-list, just before election times, from over the river; but ordinarily its l)opulation consists of a dozen half-breeds, >vith dogs and mosquitoes, ad lib. One of the last evenings of our stay in Pem- bina wo were invited to a half-breed dunce over the river. Wo crossed in a crazy dug-out, of precarious equilibrium, and heard the jiggish tiddle before we reached the house. The half- breed who had rowed us over stopped at a lodge beside the path to wake up two dark-skinned maidens and invite them to the dance. We caught a glimpse of them rising from their bed of robes, their faces lit up by pleasure at the news, as much as by the burning shred of cotton which floated on a basin of tallow on the ground in the middle of the lodge. Opening the door, and entering the log-house where the dance was briskly going on, we were greeted by a chorus of Ho ! ho ! ho ! — the universal salutation of the aboriginal (total and semi). The fiddle did not cease its scraping, nor the heels of the dancers for a moment intermit their vibrant thnraps on the plank floor. The scene was a wild one, though within four walls. A huge mud chim- ney, with an open fire-place at the right, a four- posted bed, with blankets only, in the further left-hand comer ; one or two chairs, which were politely hand^ to the strangers ; and all around 1 TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 685 BALL AT l>£MiJINA. the room, sitting iipon the floor as Indians and tailors sit, were half-breed men and women, boys and girls — twenty or thirty in all ; one mother, with bare breast, suckling her babe ; another busy in keeping her little one's toddling feet out of the pan of melted grease low on tiie mud hearth, with a cotton rag hanging over the edge, alight, which made such dark shadows in among the groups in strange places, shadow and light alternating against the rafters and the roof as the figures of the dance changed. Jigs, reels, and quadrilles were danced in rap- id succession to the sound of that " dem'J hor- rid grind," fresh dancers taking the place of those on the floor every two or three moments. The men were stripped to shirt, trowsers, belt, and moccasins ; and the women wore gowns which had no hoops. A vigorous shuffle from some thick-lipped young dancer, with his legs in flour-sacks, or a lively movement of some wrinkled hag, trying to renew the pleasures and activity of her youth, would call out a loud chorus of admiring "Ho! ho! ho!" and, fired by contagious enthusiasm, a black-eyed beauty in blue calico, and a strapping bois brule, would jump up from the floor and outdo their prede- cessors in vigor and velocity — the lights and shadows chasing each other faster and faster over the rafters ; the flame, too, swaying wildly hither and thither ; and above the thumps uf the dancers' heels, and the frequent he's 1 and the loud laughter of the ring of squatter sovereigns, rose the monomaniac fiddle-shrieks, forced out of the trembling strings as if a devil was at thi bow. Perhaps it is clear that here we saw the com- monalty. The next night Joe Ilole*te gave i\ dance in his house, and here we saw the aris- tocracy of Pembina. There was the same en- thusiasm, but less license ; a better fiddle and the fiddler better ; and more decorous dancing. Joe's little boy of eleven, home from his school at the Settlement, and his father-in-law, of near seventy, were the best of the dancers. . The lat- ter was as tireless as if his aged limbs had lost no strength by exposure to all weathers and la- bor, as a hunter and voyageur, for a long life- time ; and little Joe had extra double-shuffles, and intricate steps, and miraculously lively movements, which made his mother and little cousins very proud of him. In the intervals of the dance Madame Gan- grais, one of Joe's lady cousins, sang some wild French ballads and a Catholic hymn. Those of our boys who were singers responded with a few choruses — negro melodies, of course. Monday week after our arrival in Pembina we left for St. Joseph — a place seven miles south of latitude 49°, about thirty miles west of Pembina, and likewise on Pembina River, which stream, west of St. Joseph (or St. Jo, as it is universally called) runs (according to Cap- tain Palisser) almost entirely in British terri- tory. Along the stream from its mouth to the lakes we afterward saw, in which it takes its rise, a belt of prairie on either side, varying in 686 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 6TBAW11EBIUEB. width, and covered with trees — onk, elm, poplar, and birch the princi})al varieties. Our road was over the oi)en prairie, two or three miles north of the belt of timber, touching it here and there at the larger bends. The wonder of this day's travel was the acres and acres of strawberries through which the trail passed. Beds of them, so tliick that kneel- ing any where you could fill a hat full without more than turning around ; large, ri])e, luscious strawberries, tarter than those in our gardens, whose size has been increased at the exjiensc of a riclmess of flavor. The wheels crushed clumps of them, and were reddened like the wheels of Juggernaut. Again and again we were tempt- ed out of our saddles by some bed of thicker and finer berries than that we had just left tlie ]irint of our knees on — gluttonous strawberry-bibbers every one of us ! Wiien we could eat no more from the vines, we filled our hats full, which wie devoured in the saddle as soon as a few lo- ments' square trotting had made a jilace for new draughts of their red, ripe, pulj)y delicious- ness. Some aiC in silence, and some in thankful- ness, and some in wonder; and Jose])h mur- mured between every hatful the i)raise — of An- drew Fuller, was it r — "Doubtless God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless God never did." Half a dozen of us stopped, about noon, at the farm of Charles Bottineau, which is on a bend of the river, nineteen or twenty miles from Tembina. Caret need not have been ashamed of the table d'hote. In the last half of the afternoon we drove on to St. Joseph, galloping down one of its grassy streets as the sun was sinking behind Pembina Mountain, which fills the western horizon. The city was deserted ; its one hundred houses were nearly all shut and barred, their accustomed inmates gone to the summer bufliilo-hunt. A score or so of half-breeds, veiy young, or very old, or lame, most of them, gathered around our camp-fire ; but of the hundreds whom we saw on our return journey there were now no signs. Many that were unable to accompany the bri- gade to the ]ilains had moved away from their liomes in St. Joscj)!!, and lived in lodges near Forts Gany and Pembina, for fear of the hostile Sioux. Tlic houses were nearly all of hewn logs, mud- ded in the chinks, generally one but sometimes two stories in height, with a single chimney. Mr. N. W. Kittson has his large trading-house inclosed within a high stockade; the nunnery and church are larger buildings than the aver- age; and one or two are frame-lmnscs, whose boards came from tlie saw-mill, which adjoins the church, and was built by its thrifty jiriest ; but, with these exceptions, the houses are verj- much alike. St. Jo is a place of considerable present and greater prospective imjiortnnce. It is on our frontier, the best of all sites for a much-needed frontier fort, in the midst of a rich agricultural countiy, adjoining the great settlement of North- western Jiritish America, and is near the water- course which leads into our own territory, and insures to our benefit somewhat of the ricL^;S of the great Nortiiwestern areas, both now and when the advancing tide of settlements shall have swept over the great valleys and left them iwpulous. Since 1850 the Sioux have stolen from the pcoi)le of St. Jo more than foi.r hundred horses, many of them buflalo-runners, comman Mng from one to three hundred dollars each, and often the only property and sole means of support which their owners had. In the same time a still larg- er number of horned cattle have been stolen. Worse than all, every year has seen some deaths at the hands of the Sioux. In the absence of the hunters the Indian lurks about the place, shooting and scalping, sometimes in open day- light, those who stray away from the ])rincipal streets, and at night firing into windows heed- lessly left unshuttered, or falling upon some helpless man or woman who has ventured to cross the field to a neighbor's house. TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 687 At times the half-breeds have taken their wrongs into tlieir own bands, and have done their best tu right them. In tiie occasional bat- tles which have occurred they have exhibited a superior bravery and skill, one of their number being reckoned the equal of about half a dozen of any Indian tribe. They arc the best of horse- men. Tlic Sioux must dismount to fire wiMi accuracy. A half-breed, from long practit^e in the buffalo hunts, will fire from liorseback at full gallop without even taking a sight along the bar- rel, and tluit, too, with great rapidity and dead- ly effect, delivering half a dozen shots, before, behind, and on either side of him. while his horse is making a flying circuit within gun-shot distance of a Sioux war-party. When St. Jo was laid out by the original set- tlers, each man was allotted not merely a jior- tion of land sufficient for house and garden witii- in the limits of the city, but also a farm fronting on the Pembina River, and tlierefore combining plenty of timber with tlie rich jirairie land. Few of these farms, however, are cultivated. The peo]>le of St. Jo, like the French half-breeds of Rod River, are buffalo-hunters by profession. In tlie early spring their work begins. Before the snow is oft' the ground those who are intend- ing to go out in tiic first summer hunts begin to look about after tlieir horses and carts and cart- oxen. If they have no horses, t)' y buy or hire them. If they have no arts, they set to work to make them — quisqiie sum carl-^jj^ BT. JOSSni, FBOM PBHlllNA HOCDTAIM. 588 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. and all other housekeeping utensils that are port- able, traveling together. In last siMunier's hunt, for example, there were, in one brigade ulonc, 400 men carrying arms, 800 women and children, 800 horses, TiOO oxen, 1000 carts, about 200 tiiitn-dogs, and as many more mongrel curs. The wants of tliesc p(tople are simple and few, and al)out as easily supplied on the prairie as in tlie settlements. As for the animals, Uuioivorous, they live on grass and water ; carnivorous, they live on meat and water. Tiic brigade deserves the name of a traveling community for another reason. They sul)jcct themselves to a coilo of laws on the i)rai- rie even more rigid tlian tliose in force at iionie. The latter end of June is the time of starting for the summer hunt, of August for tlie fall hunt. A large camj) of half-breeds on theii' way to the plains is a sight to be seen. Their dress is picturesque. Men and women both wear nioc- casius worked with gaudy beads. The men's trowsers are generally of cordiu'ov (u* Cauada blue, and their coats of tlie Canadian jiattcrn, with large brass buttons, and a hood hanging between tlie shoulders. A jaunty cap surnu)unts the head, often of blue cloth, out sometimes of an otter or badger skin ; and, wliether with tlie coat or without it, a gay sasli is always worn around the waist, tiie bright tassels hanging down the left Iiip. Into tliis arc thrust the liuflalo- knife behind, and the flre-bag at the riglit side. Although it was not until the writer's return, with two friends and a couple of half-breed guides and servants, by Turtle Mount and Devil's Lake, that lie passed through the great buftalo ranges where the brigades always hunt, it is better to give the particulars of one of their chases, the pemmican making, etc., in this connection than to defer it to its proper chronological place. Women, boys, and the supernumeraries of the brigade drive the carts, each one taking charge of two or three, and jiassing his or her time in belaboring the forward ox, and yelling to the hinder ones as they lag in the march. The hunters arc mounted on fine horses, and relieve the tedium of the slow, wearisome travel with an occasional scamper after a badger seen scram- bling to his hole ; or a shot at a gray wolf, dis- turbed in his lurking-place in the long rushes of some deep marsh through which the train passes. Some of the hunters keep at a considerable dis- tance from the train, on the look-out for buffalo and signs of hostile Indians. If the latter are near, the train divides into three sections, and travel in parallel lines. The lowering and raising of the flag on the foremost cart is the sign to halt or start. At night thcj gather in a circle called a corral, where the carts are ranged side by side, with the shafts turned toward the centre of the circle, where the lodges and tents are raised, and the camp-fires made. The drudgery of the camp is performed by the half-breed women. When the train is in motion every separate wheel on every cart has its peculiar shriek. In camp these are silent; but Babel is continued by all voices, each with its i)cculiar shrillness or vehemence of lan- guix'e, by the barkings of all the dogs, compass- ing every chromatic of the canine gamut, by the lowing of the oxen and the wiiiunying of horses, roiling and kicking up their heels in the grass. But in the midst of it all matters are going on, fires ligiitcd, water boiling, ])otatoes cooking, l)eminican frying, and bread baking ; and before sunset sii]i])cr is ready in most of the messes. After supjier the \>\pc. As the twilight deepens into dark, all the an- iniiils arc brought into tlie indosure made liy the carts, and picketed there, the bulfalo-runners re- ceiving cs])ocial care ; and the watch liegins to coutnrt' the cam]). Numbers linger about the camp-fires, smoking and telling stories of buffalo- hunts, or listening to some older man as he re- counts tlic early distresses of the colonists, the wars of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Com- l>any, the long journey to I'rairio du Chien for foot! and seeds, or some attack of the Sioux upon tlie hunters in a ])ivvi(uis year. But before the light 1ms entirely died out in tlio western sky all are wrapi)ed in their bliiukets or robes — the sweet odor of kinnie-kinnic lingering in the air — and the low voices of tlie watchnicn are interrupted only by the long bowlings of distant wolves — long and exultant, sometimes, as if consciotis that tlioy are alxuit to l)egin their annual feast u\mn the carcasses of butt'alo. Early in the morning, liefore sunrise, in the cold gray dawn, dew dabbling every spear of grass, the flags are raised, and at the sign, and sound of the horn sleejiers rouse, the tents and lodges are struck by the women, the oxen har- nessed into the carts and horses saddled bj' the men. Tlui horn again sounds and the carts fall into line, and the liunters mount and the train is in motion. After about two hours of brisk travel tlie train halts an hour and a half for breakfast, and then jiushes on again till the or- der is given to halt for dinner. During the early part of the day which is to be described, no large herds had been seen ; but all were in anxious expectation of falling in with one before the day ended, so frequent were the signs of their presence in the numerous trails — the fresh dung and the trampled grass in all the marshes looking like innumerable heaps of green jackstraws. Just as the leader was sounding the horn which was the order to " catch up the horses," a rider was seen galloping at full speed down the hither side of a hill by which he had been hid from sight on the rolling prairie. All knew the message he had to bring before hearing it from his lips. He had seen a herd of hundreds stead- ily pushing their way over the prairie toward the northeast, just beyond a high ridge which was the limit of sight in the direction the brigade was then traveling — nearly due south. The oxen that had been harnessed were again loosed, all the bufl'alo- runners saddled, and every hunter eagerly ex- amined his gun and ammunition. The horses too knew what was in the wind ; and the more m W I' TO RED KIVEP AND BEYOND. R80 11 voices, each nenco of 'an- )gs, compnss- ;ainut, by the ng of horses, in tlie grass, ire going on, ues cooking, ; and before the messes. {, nil the nn- iniulo by tlic )-runners re- ch begins tu ■r about the es of buffiilo- an ns he re- olonists, the s Bay Coni- II Ciiien fur Sioux upon It before ilie itcni ,sl- rupt ascents and descents, and therefore full of l)adger-holes, dangerous alike to the horse and his rider, while the ground which they had just passed over was very nearly level, with here and there a marsh, and fenced in, so to speak, by the stream which ran hither and thither, and wound around by the dinner camp-ground. Hastening down the slope and remounting their horses, a few quick, low words from the leader explained the order of the charge. A dozen or more of the fleetest runners were sent to the westward around the ridge to head the herd and start them back. The rest of the hunters gathered nnder its edge arrectis auribus. The ruse was successful. The dozen hunters coming boldly into sight directly in their path, and spreading out slowly to the right and left without chasing them, and the favorable nature of the ground, making it harder for them to go to the one side or the other than backward, turned them almost in their tracks. The herd was not so large but that veiy many of the buffiiloes could see the hunters. The sage and long-bearded veterans who had led them stopped, were crowded ahead a few yards by the pressure of those behind, and then all were huddling together, cows and calves in the centre, and the bulls crowding around, until the leaders broke through and led off at a steady gallop on the back track. This was the critical mc .ent. The dozen hunters shouted at the tops of their lungs, and settled into a steady gallop on their trail. The three hundred and fifty horsemen came flying over the ridge and down its slope in full pursuit, and in front of them all, not a quarter of a mile away, a herd of near a thousand buffaloes in headlong flight, tails out, heads down, and nostrils red and flar> ing. For the first few hundred yards the chase was " nip and tuck." The l)uffaloe8 were doing their best possible, as they always can at the beginning of a chase, and the horses had not so good ground, and were hardly settled down to their work. But soon the tremendous strides of the bufi'ulo-run- ners liegan to tell in the chase, and the heavy headlong and forehanded leaji of the buffalo to grow just jierceptibly slacker. One after an- other the swiftest of the runners caught uj) to the herd, and soon hunters and hunted were one indistinguisliablo mass thundering over the plain. Tlie green sward is torn up, cloiuls of dust arise, swift fhots like volleys of musketry buffet the air, the hunters fly along with loosened rein, trusting to their horses to clear the badger holes that here and there break the ground, and to keep their own flanks and the rider's legs from the horns of the buftuloes by whom they must pass to get alongside the fat and swifter cow singled out for prey. And still they keep up this tremendous gait, flying buffalo and pur- suing horsemen. As fust as one fires he draws the jiliig of Ills powder-horn with his teeth, pours in a hasty charge, takes one from his mouthful of wet bullets and drops it without wadding or rammer uinm the powder, settles it with a blow against the saddle, keeps the muzzle lifted till he is close to his game, then lowers and fires in the same instant without on aim, the muzzle of the gun often grazing the shaggy monster's side ; then leaning off, his horse wheels away, and loading as he flies, he spurs on in chase of another, and another, and another ; and in like manner the three hundred of them. One after one the buffaloes lagged behind, staggered, and fell, at first singly and then by scores, till in a few moments the whole herd was slain save only a few old bulls not worth the killing, which were suffered to gallop safely away. One after one the hunters drew rein, and dismounting from their drenched horses, walked back through the heaps of dead buft'alo and the puddles of blood, singlin:; out of the hundreds dead with unerring certainty the ones they had shot. Not a dispute arose among the hunters as to the ownership of any buffalo killed. To a novice in the hunt they all looked alike, differenced only by size and sex, and the plain on which all were lying was in each square rod the fac-simile of evcrj- other square. The novices had thrown on their killed a sash or coat or knife-sheath ; but the best huntere had no need of this. To their keen eyes no two rods were alike, and they could trace their course as easily as if only four and not thousands of hoofs had torn the plain. The carts driven by the women come up, knives are drawn, and with marvelous dexterity the shaggy skins are stripped off, the great, bloody frame divided, huge bones and quivering flesh, all cut into pieces of portable size, the carts loaded, and by sunset all are on their way to camp. At St. Jo all onr plans underwent a change. It became clear that the leader of the expedition 590 IlAUl'KUS NKW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. m could never juHtify the "lofty nnd hifjli Hoiiiulin;; ])hrnsi'a of \\in mnnifi'sto," ami tlmt it wuh evon (louhtfiil if we i^hmild be iiblc to >i;et throti>;h the inountaiiiB before snow fall, to Hny notliin>?(if re- turning overland. One of the seientitic gentle- men returned to St. I'aul from St. Jo by i)rivatc conveyance. Another left the cxix-dition at tlie same place, preferring to go to the Selkirk Settle- ment. There remained only our one geologist and botanist to rei)rcsent science, the through passengers for Friiser Uiver, the leader, and Jo- seph nnd I. Our horses were growing lean, ex- cepting only tough, lazy, impcrturliablc Dan Rice. Josejih parted with tears from Lady Mary, exchanging her for a light Indian jiony, j to whoso education ho henceforth devoted nil his leisure. Wo obtained at St. Jo n half-breed at- tendant, determining to bo tho masters of our own movements, and jdnuning to go as far as possible with the expedition, and return through the bulla lo-rnngcs and liy Devil's Lake, and the Sioux country to I'cmbina, by tho first of Sep- tember, ending our tour with a, visit to tho Sel- kirk Settlement, and an overland journey thence, southwest, to Crow Wing antl home. This wo did. " Joe" was the patronymic of our French half- breed attendant ; by no means Saint Joe. Tall, muscidar, with long black hair and the mandibles of nn nllij^ator. ho yot walked in a lame, clumsy Wfiy, nnd wore shoes instead of moccasins. Both his feet had been frozen, and of one all tho toes, and of tho other half the metacarpal tones also, had been amputated. IIo was hunting bnttalo with a dog-train, tho dogs ran away and left him alone in the snow, where for ten days ho lived, and nights he slept, without food by day or blankets by night : on tho last day rescued by Indians, who found him insensible and nearly frozen to death. His work was only to take care of our horses and mules, fetch wood nnd water, help tho cook, and drive tho carts. A sinister look in tho eye was the index to tho rascally part of him. For three or four days ho was tho best of new brooms ; from that time forth he began to shirk his work, finally even sham- ming crazy and playing the deuce with our time and attention, till we had driven him out of his lunacy into a genuine but ignominious stupidity equally fatal to our interests. It was more than the fellow was worth to cart his one hundred and seventy pounds along with us. But of all this we could suspect nothing when we hired him — so polite was the rascal, so handy at mending an old cart which had nonplused our metrojiolitan fingers, so guileless in his speech. \Vc hired him for, I forget how much, a month, and the next morning after the bargain was struck be- gan to pay for tho whistle. IIo must have pem- mican, and flour, and tea to leave with his wife, who was soon to be confined, and then some cloth for his shirts, and then a pair of shoes, and then would '*my master" please to give Joe a sovereign to buy wine for his poor wife, and *'my master" wouldn't think that Joe could leave no money with his wife ; and so it came to pass that, with his ncccsniticn and his wheedling, he obtained more than his wages before he began his work. This sort of credit system, however, is usual among tlx; half-brccds. Liko the In- dians tlu^y pass their lives in paying their dcl>ts, and iiave to be Irustcd with tho means of enabling them to do it. M ichcile Klein, our faithfid guide nnd cook, was a better than average specimen of the half-breed. More than fifty years old, ho was yet as active nf a boy, and light-hearted as a girl. By virtue of those ijualities which arc always rare in any ])arty of men, early in the morning, during rain- storms or when cattle have strayed, he bocnmc n kind of privileged chnraeter, was permitted to joke with nil, nnd tho one to whom nil jokes were nddrcsscd, not worth an English coat but ])Ut in tattered French. lie had lived his pres- ent life of voyngeur, hunter, guide, etc., for thirty or forty yenrs, nnd was accomplished in it. lie had been a guide in tho ]msscs of the Rocky Jloiintains, north of the Kootonnis I'ass, for twelve 3'car8, nnd his knowledge of that region, nnd of tho vnlley of Frnser River, nnd of the Saskatchewan, and Assiniboine was Ids cajiital. I'oplar groves, low sand-hills, and marshes, which the ordinary observer seems to see the du])licntcs of a iho.isand times in one month's travel, were to him as se])arate and distinct as if the whole coimtry had been mapped with minute topog- raphy, lie never failed to notice the tracks over barren places that we crossed, buflPalo, elk, antelope, or human footprints; and the breath of smf)ko beyond the farthest purple hills, light and evanoBcent na any summer cloud, ho would at once distinguish, camp-fire, or prairie-fire. A good shot, as it was well for one to be who hatl gone many a month with only a rifle nnd blanket between him nnd every fntnl possibility, he didn't mind a ducking for a small bird on the coldest day. Ho knew the times and seasons for all the game in the valleys or on tho prairie. In nothing more than his views of astronomy diil he show how comiiletely the people of Red River have been shut out from the rest of the world. Indeed he represented not only the manners and customs of more than half a century ago, but for his theoiy of the lieavens nnd enrth he went be- hind Kepler. IIo believed thnt the sun revolves nround the earth ns it apjicars to do ; conceived tho earth as one great plain, this side the only one buttered with a population, and merrily laughed at tho idea of going westward till the west is east and returning so to the place of be- ginning. His arguments were those of the Pojie and the pc socutors of Galileo. The water would drop out of the rivers and lakes nnd sea if they were turned the upside down, nnd as for tho im- mense plain on which wo live, why, it rests on an elephant, nnd tho elephant stands on the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise on a snake, and the snake has a kink in his convolutions which gives him a purchase whereby he holds up all. From St. Jo our course was northwest, a di- rection which led us along over the prairie at the foot of Pembina Alountain for two days and then TO RED mVF.n AND BEYOND. fiOl liis wlicedlinj;, L'fore he began torn, however. Like the In- g their dehts, ns of enabling nnd eook, wnc lie hulf-brcetl. 3t ns nctivens By virtue of riiro in nny , during rnin- lie beenme n lierinitted to om all jokes ;lish coat but vcd his pres- to., for thirty d in it. He f the Rocky is I'ass, for that region, and of the 1 his cajiital. irslies, which le dujilicates travel, were if the whole inute topog. 3 the tracks buflFnlo, elk. 1 the breath hills, light he would ■ie-fire. A be who had and blanket he didn't the coldest ons for all rairie. In onomy did Red River the world, inners and go, but for went be- n revolves conceived the only merrilv till the ICC of be- the Pope tcr would :a if they ir the im- rests on the back ake, and IS which up all. ;st, a di> ie at the knd then iicro.»s it. rcuiliiniv Mountain in L'lO feet high [n fact it i^ no mountain at all, nor yet a hill, hut only a terraco of table-laud, tlio ancient «horc of a great body of water which onco filled the whole of the Red River Valley. The sum- mit in quite level, and extends so for five miles westward, to another terrace level with the buffalo plains wiiich stretch on to the Missouri. The same terraco may be traced northward, and south to tlio hifh laud near the head of the Shcycnno River and Devil's Lake. Of the prairie countrj- beyond, and of the Red River generally, our ol>- scrvations confirmed the truth of Owen's state- ment, that the limestones of the Reil River form the basis of n largo portion of it. They are highly magnesiun, having 17 to 4(» jjcr cent, of alkaline earth. Another of theso Nature's steps from a lower to n higher level i..ay l)c traced from Turtl'' Mount on the 40th ])arallel to the bunks of Swan River, in 02^ 30', atid even around to Bascjiui Hill, says Sir George Simjison, on the waters of the lower Saskatchewan. Like J'em- bina Mountain, this ridge, whoso sand-hills we afterward crossed, was oiice tho shore of a vast inland sea. When its height determined the boundary of the great body of waters, not only the Red River Valley, but also Lakes Winnipeg, Miuiitoba, and Winnijiegoos, with many of their feeilers, were themselves ingulfed. The largest of the three great fragments of the jirinieval sheet of waters, viz., Lake Winnipeg, still continues to retire from its western side and to encroach on its eastern l)ank. Our first cami>ing-placo was in a cluster of Iwautifid oak groves, from which, at four or five miles' distance, wo had this view of the I'erabina Mountain plateau. Here wo began a more careful watch. At night the man on guard put out the camp-fires aa soon as all had retired, allowed the smudges to smoko but not blaze, lit his pijic behind his hat, and, in short, "kept shady." But even danger in time became commonplace. Crossing the Tembina Mountain, the views of dis- tant prairies, lakes, streams, woods, the glimpses which we caught of the nearer valleys, and the brooks which ran down them through sunny and shady places, an abrupt wild cliff, with here and there granite and limestone boulders tumbled about on clayey shale, tinged with iron like the redness of the autumn leaves, the richness of the green grass, the strength and youth of tho green leaves, filled the day with beauty. Of every day tho beginning was a sunrise and the ending a sunset, with the whole round arch of heaven for tho great display. Shut up in cities we never see all their I)eauty, the wonder of every new day, and the miracle of the closing night. Looking out of a window, or down a street, we catch at the end of tho vista a framed glimpse of brilliant coloring, but the whole large effect in the wide circle of the heavens we utterly miss; tho more delicate but not less beautiful change of colors behind, on either ."ide and over- head ; the grand tidal flow of light descending or of shade arising in the horizon opposite the sun ; the infinitely various tinting of its clouds, which no succeeding second leaves the same ; its tender neutral tints, the cool grays, and the deeper blue : and over all, perhaps, as the sun goes down, a flaming dome of red. The next day, at high noon, we scared up onr first elk. He saw us when we were half a mile away, and rushed from the poplar grove which we were heading for to a more distant one at a 'f r.92 IIARl'EU'K NKW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. rate MJttiiin our woary horse-flesh iit (Icllanco. But tlio ]ii'()8|MTt (if killing nil i-lk wiih no nioro to bo resisted thiiii tlio glimpse of otlieo flushed uiwn n liopvlesH nominee ; und ho hiilf a (lo/.en of us eapped our rifli'S und eantered ulong in the trark of IiIh threat h-a|)H, faintly hoping to Hur> round him in some of tl>" iiojilar elumps, till wo Huw him shako his '.intlers ])rouu1y and ]ilunKe into an ahljr swamp two or three miles away, after whieh we can ^ered hack ngain. That night our mosipiito an J gnat miseries rulminutud. Alkaline water in the 8wnnij)s hy ivhi<'h we had cami)od ruined tlio flavor of our tin, and gave all our horses and mules what Joseph culled "an olcmentary canai cnlnrf^cmcnt." iSlHiaking of mislcs reminus mo of n scurvy trick my mule played luc in return for consid- ornto kindness. One day I noticed that hlulos shoulder was getting sore, and therefoto put Dan Rice in the cart and saddled his suecrssor. Out of resjieet to a fraternal ufl'ection, rare nmoiig human brutes, I refrnia from mentioning hi*' in- disposition to go before or remain far behnid the train. Sixty musical clefs would not hold in their bars tho notes of liis bellowing. But pres- ently strawberries, red and ripe, tempted mc off" his back. Essaying to remount Midc, into whom must have transmigrated tho crazy soul of some defunct geometer, ho suddenly seemed to behold in me his centre, conceived himself a radius, and proposed to pass the rest of his lifo in describing a complimentary circumference, his tail doing tho tangents. Whirling away a half hour thus, my patience became Karey-fied, and I made a desperate leap for his back, caught one toe in tlu. oiirrup, and so l)ogan a half-mile gnllo]i, (Mitdoing circus Mazeppas, In time, this breame tedious, and I juni)K>, anil hap]iily ])reserving the integrity of my meer- schaum, mother Earth receiving mo 'n her green lap. No one saw my mishap; but i trudged along quietly after the vanishing flv like. Tlie man of science divided his time between Paul's Epistles and the compound microscoix;, and gave us lectures from the latter, which heli)cd our exegesis of the former, giving us wiser eyes to see the wonderful works of God. Anotlicr polished the hand mirror in which ho was accus- tomed to view, in his opinion, the hest specimen of the "noblest work." Joseph and I indulged in a theological disputation, and all of us ended the day generally by gathering about the camp- fire after sujjpcr and singing Old Hundred, Ba- Icrma, Dundee, Ward, and other tunes of that sort. On the first of Augn t we crossed a valley called by Michelle, our guide, La Belle Vallee. Its apjjcarance was like the deserted channel of a beautiful river, such as the Upper Mississippi would be if its waters had passed away and seas of long green grass tilled their place. Mound Prairie, a plain dotted here and there with mounds too few to make a rolling prairie of it, and with one regular cone-shaped and higher mound in the centre, giving it its name, was just beyond La Belle Vallee, The next day, from the last of a range of high hills, to which Joseph and I gallo])ed, away from the train, we caught Vol. XXL— No. 125.— Pp sight, for the first time, of the faint blue line in tlie northern horizon which marked the course of the Assiniboine. At the west were the range of low hills beyond which, said Minhellc, was the Mouse River. Between were innumerable lakes — some salt and some fresh — shallow ones fringed with green or black rushes, and deep ones wooded to the banks, with dark shadows underneath, or surrounded by green Blojjes, and reflecting the whole blue of heaven. Away to the right was a column of smoke, where the care- less dropping of a match had set the pmirie on fire. Mouse River ran along wiilun a mile of our camping-ground that night ; and the next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Joseph and I hurried on to its banks. There was every variety of color in the beau- tiful landscape which met our eyes; brilliant prairie flowers in the foreground, or growing in thede'bris tumbled down from the bluff on which we sat. The trees, down upon whose tops we looked — as flying birds see forests — the rushes and ranker grass near the river's ra*. 'pn, the exquisite cool grays of the sandy betch defined in such graceful curves by the brillia.?t blue re- flected from the water, the thick verdurous under- brush, here and there sentineled by stately trees, r>04 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. wliioli covered the jihiin beyond the river ; tlio li<;liter green upon tlic long level meudow seen fit the right of the river in the sketch, with troops of shadows chasing each other over its surface ; and far beyond — miles away — the dark brown of the opposite cliffs, and the faint, hazy blue of hills in the cxtrcmest distance. As I sat, trying to put on paper the briefest outline memoranda to recall this splendid land- scape, a large gray eagic came sailing along the nir, and hovered high above us. I fired witli my rifle and hit him, knocking out a few tail-feathers ; but not fatally, for he only tumbled, fluttering three or four times his own wing-spread, and then, 08 if more scared than hurt, recovered him- self and flew off into upper air. Afterward we saw him hanging over the river ; a strong breeze was blowing, but, without an a])parcnt stroke of his pinions, he kept himself steadily poised and balanced in the same sjwt, head bent looking downward, and body level. Here, too, after a long chase and considerable "circumvention," we shot at the first antelopes seen by ns. Their quick, long jumps took them out of rifle-range too soon to give us a second chance. These were our most delightful diiys. The nights were pleasantly cool, and wOjAlept well despite the mos(iuitoes. The days \<'Sre full of enjoyment, each one rewarding our labor of travel with some new beauty of landscajie or of sky, some liitMrn beauty under our feet. The horses jogged lomfortably along, their hoofs now and then crusliing heap' of cacti, which remind- ed us of Southern de?jrts and torrid heats, tho comparison cooling 'is; or the cart-wheels, as wo drove through .^nd among the clumps of white poplar and spotted alder, sinking into the elastic caqxjt of running cedar and trailing arbutus. In such i)laces Joseph and I dismounted as quick- ly as if the odorous carjMjt was from the loom wiiich wove the caqiet of the Arabian Prince ; and there — happy as princes ought to be, but nev- er are — wc whiled away the summer afternoons till long shadows warned us to hurry on after the train, Josei)h reading Tennyson and Biyant, wliom he carried in blue and gold ; the tones of his voice or tiie scratch of my pencil never fright- ening the trustful brown-birds tiiat hojipcd about us, not afraid sometimes to skip on an extended foot or arm, where they stood and chirped and cocked their tiny heads this way and that, but nmi' Ki.i.ii:ii ill diiys. The WQjAlcpt well ys \mc full of our liibor of nndscape or of •ur feet. The heir lioofs now wliich remind- rrid heats, tho •art-wheels, as lumps of white into the elastic iling arbutus, inted as quick- rom the loom iibian Prince ; to be, but ncv- fier afternoons lurry on after n and Biynnt. ; tlie tones of I never fright- hojiped about 1 an extended I cliirped and and that, but TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 595 never whispered tho wise things and the secrets which they might liave told. Sand-hill cranes — liuge birds, delicious to eat, and wortli creeping a iiundred rods to siioot — would start from many hollows as we came up over the nearest hill, and we could see their ungainly majesties putting on airs and stalking about on the top of distant sand-hills, taking care to fly before we were within rifle-shot, and mocking us witii their clanging cry till their white, van-like wings were taint white s])ecks in the distant air. ^Monday, tlie 8th of August, we camped near a knoll whence the Assiniboine and the tribu- taries of Qii'Apiwlle River were both visible. Fort EUicc, to wiiicli we were journeying, was two or three miles this side of the junction of these two rivers. Our leader b.ad persisted that we were going too fur north to strike the fort ; and a few days before had become so convinced that his o\i . practiced ignorance was sujierior to the guide's uneducated knowledge (for Mi- chelle had been so stui)id as to travel all over the country wiiliout any com])ass save the sun in bright days, and tiie compass-weed in cloudy ones), tluit he had ordered our line of directi(m to be cluinged more to tiie west. As a conse- (juence, the next day we had to return to the northeast — losing one or two days' travel — to strike the fort; and found, when there, that the scape-graces heretofore mentioned, who had trav- eled over the two sides of the right-angled trian- gle whose hypothenusc we described, had passed two or three days before — tiiough, to be sure, we had had science and a fearful amoimt of expe- rience in our aid ; and they had stupidly fol- lowed their noses and the advice of those who, like Michelle, had been over the road. Early the next morning we struck the hunt- ers' trail from Fort Ellice (S.W.) to Moosehead .Mountain, and galloped our horses in its ruts for miles in a frenzy of delight. It was the road which led to London and Paris and New York, and all the centres of civilization and wealth and knowledge in the world. For days and days we had gone path' .ss ; but here was a trail, a;ul all along its triple tracks — miles awaj', to be sure — were lying the beauties and tho wonders of the world, and home and friends. On we galloped, homeward, for a dozen miles or so, Josepii and I, and got to Fort Ellice in ; hour or two before the train, and just in time to escajie a thorough wetting in a hea^■y thuiuler- storm. All about the stockades were Indiiin lodges, and crowds of the eopper-eolored Ilia- wathas came out to see us. Villainous Vermil- lion, lamp-black, and yellow-ochro disfigured their earthly habitations with hideous symbols, among which appeared some rejnilsi^e represent- ations of the Deity; and vcrmillicm, Limp-black, and yellow-ochre disfigured also the tenements in wiiieh their iuilf-starved sotds were housed. The rain fell faster, and we hurried into the inclos- uro of tho fort, gave our horses to one of the half-breed attendants standing about, and c.*\r- ried our saddle-bags into the main room of the houso occupied by the trader in charge, Mr. William M'Kay. Ho soon came in, drip- ping with rain, and welcomed his unexpected guests in the friendliest way. Disapjiearing for a few moments in one of the family rooms which opened into this main hall on either side, he presently came out in dry clothes, with pipes and tobacco — kinnie-kinnic and dried winter- green leaves for our smoking — and we drew our chairs up for an exchange of news and in- formation. Presently dinner was served, and we sat down to fresh buffalo-steaks, hot bread, rice-pudding, strawberry-pie, "nd hyson tea well decocted. The table was of jilain wood, painted a greenish-brown, and the chairs — heavy oak, higii-backed, and substantial — were made by half-breeds, and the Belgian giant might have sat u))on them with impunity. The hospitality with which we were entertained here was one of the pleasantest incidents of our journey ; and it is to the Hudson's Bay Company's credit that they so carefully select men who jxjssess both tho siittvitci- in modo to the passing traveler, and tho Zotiaviler in modo to scajie-grace Indians. While we were at dinner one of Mr. M'Kay's Indian retainers .sat on the floor in the adjoining apart- ment, and devoured his 'juflalo-steak as happily as if ha])py to sit below the salt; and his h:\\i- breed wife waited ui)on her lord's guests at table. yir. M'Kay was born in tlie country, he wever, and had never been nearer civilization than Red River, his father having served the Company before him. The Qu'Appelle, or Calling River, is the principal tributary of the Assiniboine River; which, in its turn, is the principal tributary of Red River. It enters from the west, a few miles above the great south bend of the Assini- boine, and just at Fort Ellice. It is the river whose head-waters are linked to the head-waters of a considerable tributary of the great Saskat- chewan ; and an English engineer has proposed to dig a canal connecting the two, in order to turn the waters of the south branch of the Saskat- chewan into the Qu'Appelle and Assiniboine, so enlarging those streams as to make them nav- igable at all seasons of the year ; and thus, by avoiding the great rapids at the njouth of the Saskatchewan, to create n shorter, straighter, and unobstructed channel from Red River Settle- ment to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The cut would certainly not be so expensive as. the Erie Caiwl ; and when the inducements are as great as those which aided that ])roject, doubt- less another De Witt Clinton will be born. We staid for several days at the fort ; and one of our day's tramps in the vicinity was to the junction of the Qu'Appelle and the Assini- boine — a view worth all the work it cost us. For three or four milen we followed the wind- ing trail through beautiful groves, here and there broken up by lakes and ponds covered with duel s, and at last came to a long descent 'hrough a magnificent forest of poplars. Tho dn ight was sifted through the dense foliage overiiead into cool shadows, and on every side the beautiful gray trunks environed us, shutting out all glimps- 1 k 1 1 1 59G IIARPEUS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JUNCTION OF THE AB8I.NIH0INE ANI> 4JU Ari'ELI.K RIVERS. es of the outer world. At every few rods wo scared away a flock of pij^toons tliat went whir- ring through tlio loaves and branchnvi. At the foot of the blutt" way the Qu'A]ii)elle, which we struck a mile or two from its mouth. Tying the horses, we jjaddled over on a few jilaiiks loosely tinkered together, and pushing through the for- est, which nearly covered the bottom land, came at last in full view of a sjjlendid bluft", liigher than Bunker Hi'l Monument, and looking like a huge fortification which Milton's angels might have built after the great combat. There is nothing at the East like the grand view from this high bluff. We could trace the windings of cither river by the giant embankments which confined their waters. Hero and there we beheld broad stretches of water where it widened out, swecp- ing broadly and indolently around some project- ing point, or caught brilliant glimpses of its nar- rower char lels through the thick green tree-tops wliich we overlooked. Far off to either horizon the gorge winds hither and thither, the near blufi's flanked successively by the more distant ones, a deeper color or a din>mer haze indicating the junction of some tributary stream, the vast ex- panse of green tree-tops checkered by the shad- ows of passing clouds. An eagle drifted down the air miles away, and flocks of ])igeons were wing- ing tlioir short swift flights from the summit of one po})lar grove to another, in tlicir flight over- looking uli this wide ex])an,se, and then sudden- ly sinking through the leaves out of the warm air and bright heaven of sunlight into the cool ^■hadows of the forest. The point where the rivers met was in tht h)w bottom land between the bluffs, three miles away from where we stood, and after wandering about the blufls for miles up and down to get the finest views, we laid our course for that. Through sand jilains, wherean Indian had trudged along before us, digging witli his tipsini-stick, and leaving the track of his moccasins with toes turned in, one foot straight before the other, we laboriously plodded. Little spires of grass, two or three spears in each, came up through the sand, and around every one circles were trtcc I where the wind, sweeping through the hoUir.. had bent their tips to the ground — circles as poi feet as the Italian drew and tliought it proved In could build n cathedral. Hetween the clumps of poplar, further on, our path was j)avcd with a more bcautil'al AIosuiA; i-h .n any ii; cathedral 1^ 4: TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 697 aisles. Tlie lines were drawn in the decjiest j green, vines of running cedar, and the inter- spaces filled with an elastic carpet of grayish red ] sand or ■ pale gray moss of the loveliest tint, j Wading tiien through six or eight hundred yards of marsh-rushes high as our shoulders, and then plunging into and through a half mile of the thickest underhrush, stumbling over fallen trees, and tearing our corduroys among the dense and tangled thorn-brakes where was scarcely a square foot of em]3ty air, suddenly we came ujion the point of land which marked the junction of the rivers. Indians in tlieir canoes and traders in their hatteaux have passed it many times ; but not this centuiy has it been seen f m\ that point, surely, by any other eyes than ours. The bank where we stood was nearly perpen- dicular, the tree roots projecting its top ten feet above the water. Ojjposite, the bank was of shelv- ing sand. There was as much water in the As- siniboine above the junction as in the Jlinnesota at the same season of the year. The sand-lianks and bars, strewn with broken fragments of trees and other debris, and the concavities in the low banks, proved the recurrence of s])ring overflows. Both the Assiniboine and the Qu'Appelle were pahtinq witu the doctor. turbid, but not so much so as Rod River. The Assiniboine had the lightest and swiftest current, the Qu'Ap]>elle the largest and deepest. Returning to camp by the cool j)urple light of a sunset sky, we heard as we neared the tents, whicii were pitched half a mile from the fort, tiic Indians who were camped about tlie stock- ades, singing, beating their drums, and dancing the war-dance. They were a small war.p(\rty just returned from an expedition against the 8'oux, and brought back as their trophies a scalp dried and stretched upon a hoop and a human baud. Their monotonous thumps upon the drums divided and measured the silence, and presently the hideous chanting of the men, alternating with the softer antiphone of the women and children, broke upon the air. As we approached the fort the scene was more plainly visible. The red camp-fire lighted up their skin lodges and the tall stockades, and made more impenetrable the tliick darkii-^ss of the ravine through which Beaver Creek ran, nearly two hundred feet be- low. This seal]) dance they keep up for the vic- tory with faces jr;, f.dly black, every night and morning till thj snow falls, the women joining the dance, and the little children, naked coppers that can barely tod- dle, taught to whet their puny passions into the fierceness of adult hate and re- venge as faitlifully as we teach the lit- tle ones we lom to fjld their hands, close tlieir eyes, and pray night and morning to "Our Father in heaven." A woman danced and beat with her hands this fresh scalp, and a little child mocked its eld- ers with the bloody white hand dangling from its neck. The Indians pass- ed their days in gam- bling mninly, the squaws in making moccasins. At the risk of adding to our traveling po])ulation we jiassed an after- noon in their lodges, introducing ourselves to their good graces with tobacco. In one tent a dozen of the dirty tribe were ])lay- ing jjoker with greasy cards ; bullets the stakes. A wrinkled old hag joined them, as loud-mouthed cer- tainly, and as filthy 598 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. I of manner and speech — so our interpreter siiid — as any of tliem. In another lodge two of the women were sewing moccasins und playing with their babies triced up in their standing cradles. The men dawdled or played cards, and raced horses, or set their dogs on a young bufl'ulo- heifer owned at the fort, or hung around our tents watching all our motions, and trying to get a chance to steal even an old nail ; the wo- men only worked. And whoever undertakes the civilization of these savages must begin with I he women, if he would ever see any fruit of ills labors. Dr. C. L. Anderson, our geologist and botan- ist, left us here to descend the Assiniboiiie to Fort Garry in a birch canoe, with a single Indian guide, who could not speak a word of English. Two of us carried his canoe and traps in a wagon down to the river where he was to begin his Journey, and saw him safely loaded and em- i)arked. The Doctor had been our consulting scientific dictionary ; and we regretted only the loss of his society more than the privation of looking upon nature, bays and breezes, rocks, strata, alluvial dejjosits, temperatures, isother- nials and plants, ■ litotrapious and otlier, alone, und with very unsi j es. Besides, he took his microscope away lim, and so shut up the door to one of our ^ . Infinites, though, to be sure, it didn't require a microscope to unvail the infinite littleness of some things which he left behind him. Lacking a shoe to throw after the Doctor for luck, Joseph took the biggest of two fighting dogs that had followed our wagon :ind pitched him into the middle of the river as the Indian paddled away down the stream, his I'hargi; hardly daring to look over his shoulder tor fear of upsetting the canoe. The same day our party broke up. The Fra- ser River boys had quite completod their outfits, and supplied the place of the leader of the ex- pedition, who declined to go any further with them, with a guide familiar with the country, and who promised to put them well on their way for the Kootonais Pass before leaving them. Joseph, whom they all loved, went on a few miles with them, and we who were now on our return journey, had to cut sticks and leave them in the trail slanting .' 2 way we had gone — an aid to the pilgrim's progress, which he stoutly resented when ho caught up with us at night- tiiU. There is no report extant of those parting moments ; but it has been conjectured that Jo- seph made them an affecting speech, in which it is to be hoped he dilated upon the superiority i)f instinct over the mariner's compass for the purposes of northwest exjjlorers, and the great advantage to be gained in the long-run by mak- ing mules and horses travel in the summcrmonths oight hours continuously, through the heat of the lay, instead of in the cool of the morning and evening. If he did not, then the " frightful ex- ample" which wo carried with us all Bummer tailed to teach its proper lesson. One thing is certain, the little blue and gold copy of Bryant's I'oems which had consoled us so far he gave to one of the emigrants, and if he keeps up his old habits of spouting, it is quite likely to prove un- true that the " Oregon hears no sound save his own dashings." Our leader here traded off the tent, which sev- eral of the party had helped him to buy, for a young Buffalo cow, henceforth the companion of our journeyings. Our share in the cow was the amusement her antics uftbrded us, and the pleas- ure we enjoyed in having our daily rate of travel slackened for her benefit, about twenty per cent. " Jessie" — for that was her name — had an indis- j)osition to keep her nose at a fixed distance from the ground, and also objected to having the chain, which held her to tlie tail-l)oard of the Colonel's wagon, in contact with her bare skull. So on the first Sunday after leaving Fort Ellice we halted all day, and the great buffalo tamer constructed a pair of tongs and a ring, which, with infinite lai)or, be at last succeeded in getting into the cow's nuse. She could not stand as much pull- ing on her Schnciderian membrane as ujjon her horns, and so was more tractable ; but now and then she would butt the heavy loaded wagon out of the ruts with tremendous vigor, or, getting down on her knees, tojijjle it over, or lie down herself and be pulled along by horns and nose in a shocking way. A little colt, that was under the protection of Joe and his mare, soon lost its first aAve of the strange monster, and came to a realizing sense of the fact that the cow could not chase him very far. whatever her pretensions; and it was his especial delight to come galloping u]) at full speed behind the low, and, wheeling with- in safe limits, kick up his heels at poor " Jessie,'' who, whether frightened or tormented, generally made the Colonel's seat an uneasy one for a few moments after. The first day out we met a small party of plain hunters who reported twenty Sioux at Turtle Mountain, and one brigade of hunters returneil to White Horse Plains. Of course we kept a closer watch, though the event proved it need- less. The blue, timber-skirted line of the Assini- boine was visible on our left for a day or two, and we crossed two of its small tributary streams in the first and second days' journey. The coun- try had the same general character as that be- fore described — a little more marshy, perhai)s, but the same slightly rolling ])rairie land, with here and there ))oijlar groves. Three or four days after leaving Fort Ellice, we noticed several jjrai- rie-fires on the horizon, and jiresently came upon the fresh tracks of Indians. They could hardly have been two hours l)efore us, but fortunately our paths coincided only a little way. On Wednesday, tiie 1 7th of August, about noon, we came upon our own old trail, by which ,ve had gone needlessly so much to the west of Fort Ellice; then we were twenty, now but five. Following it backward, wc nooncd at a beautiful spot, between the range of sand-hills of which I have before spoken and a lake, where we had had a strawberry feast twelve days before. Not a berry remained. Leaving here the Moosehead ■I .1> II T TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 699 VOBDINO AT THE BAM>-UILLS. Monntain and Fort Garry trail for the open coun- f^^' try, we traveled on, and before nightfall struck '.: the Turtle Mountain trail, ciioosin^ a camp- ground just beyond Calumet or I'ipo River (a, tributary of the Assiniboine), which at this point was forty feet wide and about four feet deep. Eight or ten miles from this camping-ground was Mouse River. On the north side of it were high sand-hills, some of them wooded to the top, and from their summits we had a magnificeut view of the counti-y in every direction. These hills are a favorite camping-ground of the plain hunters. Deep, well-worn trails con- verge here from every direction, and the prairie, at the foot of the hills, is covered with the debris of old encampments, broken buHalo-bones, tufts of hair, frames for drying the meat preparatory to powdering it for pemmican, old moccasins, strips of calico, broken lodge poles, fragments of blue crockery of tiie Hudson's Bay Company j)attern, and fire holes were dug in the earth at convenient intervals. Fording the river in some rapids, where the water was about one hundred feet wide and from four to six feet deep, and ])ressing through the thick willow clum])8 and the oak groves which skirt the banks of the rim of the stream, we camped in a little hollow near the river where the ground was relieved against the sky within gunshot on every side except that toward the liver. While Joo was curing his lunacy by rigging "his masters" a mosquito net, Michelle and I rigged a cou])le of polos, and went for a string of tish. We caught a fine mess of white-fish, and, for aught I know, might have continued adding to the string till now. They bit very freely, and played splendidly. The meat was not unlike that of Connecticut River shad, though, if possi- ble, more delicate, with fewer bones. The eagles and fish-hawks envied us our sport ; for several of them circled in the air over our heads, and when we landed our prey, they often swooped low enough for us to have struck them with our lance- wood tips. From this time till we reached Pembina Mount- ain, Michelle and Joe lived in constant fear of an attack of the Sioux, and the former always chose n camping-ground protected like the pres- ent one. For ourselves we had little fear, though we kcj)t a careful watch ; for we knew that all the warriors of that tribe had gone furtbT south to a great treaty-making with our India i agents, and for a few weeks our line of travel however dangerous at any other time, was quite safe to a well-armed party like ours. We had now entered upon the great buffalo ranges, and had not traveled ten miles before we saw a few bulls, six or eight miles to the east. I mounted Dan Rice and trotted slowly off in their direction, hoping to turn them toward the train, which kept steadily on its way. But while mak- ing my way through a piece of low marshy ground they got out of sight. Returning to the trail I met Joseph, who had remained behind to write up his journal. As we drew nearer to the train we saw the Colonel mount Fireaway, and canter off Bt a lively rate to the east, beckoning us to follow him. We put spurs to our horses and galloped on. He had seen a bull and en It' de- 600 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, scendinc; jnto a denf coulee for water, and follow- ing his directions, we beat it np for a few rods, until we met him returning from the opposite direction. While we stood there wondering what had become of the creatures, they broke cover far beyond us, and started over the prairie at a steady gallop, the ciilf taking the lead. We all joined the chase, though the prairie was full of badgcr- holcs and the game small. Tlii' excitement and the hope of a good supper were too mucii to resist. Fireaway's tremendous leaps soon took him outside the animals and turned them toward us. By skillful riding the Colonel sepa- rated the calf, which ran like a young antelope, from the old bull, and, with one well-directed shot, which broke his back-bone just behind the skull, tumbled him to the ground, dead. The old bull galloped away ; but in the course of the afternoon the train came up to where he had halted, and Joseph, mounted on his light pony. Lady Jane, made a beautiful chase, and shot the fellow not ten rods from the trail. It was a barren triumph for Joseph, however ; for the monster, though he had run so well and died game, had a hind-leg stiff with spavin, and be- sides had been badly gored, so that nothing of him was fit to eat save the tongue, which he would have spared to have kept Michelle's un- ruly member from wagging — Michelle, who knew a lame buffalo from a well one a thousand miles away. Michelle dissected the calf with a dexterity which, if employed upon a human subject, would have insured him a Wood prize at the Bellevue Hospital, and for two days our larder was full. Traveling as we were without a trail, the mariner's comjjaas and the primitive intuitions of our leader again came in conflict. As it hap- pened the latter conquered for a time, and so we were secured a visit to the great south bend of Mouse Kiver and the Hare mountains, wliich, if wo had followed Michelle's instructions and taken a bee-lino from Fort Ellice to Turtle Mountain, we should never have seen. On the afternoon of the 19th, as we were journeying slowly along, Jessie, the buffulo-cow, trotting comfortably behind the Colonel's wagon, Joe bringing up the carts, Joseph and I jogging along on our horses ; and Michelle far ahead on foot with his rifle, keeping to his direction of "south 60° east" around and over hills, down valleys and through marshes, as steadily as if electric currents had polarized him into perpetual fealty to that point of the compass, we began to discern from the high points of land high ridges at the east which seemed gradually rising higher and higher in a line about parallel with our course. These grew to mountains (or what are called such, in the absence of larger sjjecimens) the next day. Joe, who had sworn to us that ho had wintered at Turtle Moimtain, thought it was that veritable peak which we now saw, al- though so much f:irther to the east than we had expected. Michelle preserved a discreet non- commitalism, asserting that from one point of view it did look like Turtle Mountain, and then again it didn't. His defense of his o^vn remem- brances had succeeded so poorly against primi- tive instincts in another case that he was not disposed to say too much. The Colonel con- ^■^Sf^^^~'l :i#^g^E^iM SOUTn BEND OF MOCBB BIVBB, tit a trnil, the litivo intuitions ct. As it haj)- a time, and so •eat south bend untnins, which, istructions and lice to Turtle seen. On the ere journeying 3-cow, trotting 's wagon, Joe ind I jogging e far ahead on s direction of er hills, down steadily as if into perpetual i, we began to id high ridges r rising higher illel with our i (or what are er s])ecimen8) )rn to us that in, thought it now saw, al- than we had discreet non- one point of ain, and then 1 own remem- gainst primi- he was not Colonel con- TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND, fiOl f-.^~-*f^E^ I; eluded tliat it was Turtle Mountain, and that :l he had all along been in the right in urging it- Michelle to kec]) a course further to the east. W So the train was turned to the north of east, and we jnishod straight for the highest peak. By the middle of the afternoon wc were near enough to see that a river nnd wide bottom lands inter- vened, and a half hour's steady canter brought us to the great South Bend of Mouse River. We camped at the summit of one of the bluffs overlooking the bend, protected on the south also by a steep ravine, down which a little stream, tiiat was almost a torrent, tore its way to the more secret places in the valley, where we could sit and watch the deer and antelopes as they came to drink. On Sunday two or three of us crossed the great plateau, ascended Hare Mountain, and from its cold, windy top saw, away to the south, the long blue line of Turtle Mountain, made known to us, beyond a doubt, by the two blue and rounded arches rising out of it. Pembina Mountain, the course of Mouse River, our first fording-placc by the sloping plateau, our second crossing- place near the sand-hills, Moosehead Moimtain, Prospect Hill, and the fainter blue of the Assini- boine hills were all visil)le within the circle of the horizon ; while far to the south, but full in sight, arose the clear blue line of the long-desired ' Turtle Mountain, crowned with its double ])eaks. The day ended in rain. Joseph and the Colonel had returned to camp, leaving me with my sketch-book, Dan Rice, and rifle. A huge drop on the paper-pad was the first warning tiiat the storm threatened all day had really come. Galloping to a grove of oaks, I kept dry under the trees and waited some hours for the rain to hold up ; but the end was not yet. It was obviously inconvenient to remain there all night, and so a couple of hours before sunset I mounted Dnn and set off for the camp. We had to cross two small streams, and Dan desired to be excused from jumping from bank to bank, and so we spent a drenching hour search- ing up and down the banks for a place where he could descend gradually to the water. This fairly accomplished, we soon came to the foot of the great bluff on the top of which the train was encamped. Along its foot ran another stream, wooded for a quarter of a mile on either bank, and fordable in but one or two places. In spite of the flapping leaves, the bedraggling boughs, the stumps in the way, the swamps in which Dan twenty times was bogged and lost two shoes, and the discouraging process of break- ing a way to three different but alike unfordable places in the stream, at last I made my own way on foot through the underbrush to the stream, first tying Dan outside the wood, and then, by wading down stream, at last found a place where the bank shelved sufficiently, and the trees were few enough, to permit a horse's approach and crossing ; and from this spot final- ly found a road to Dan, trusting to Providence to bo able to get from the stream through the woods on the other side and so to camp. There the Colonel was aslee)> insiile liis covered wagon, with which he had sui)plii'd the jiluce of our tent — the only dry place within five hun- dred miles — and the two half-breeds were hud- dling under the carts. Self-saeri firing Joscjih was rolled up in a heaj) of blankets, over which he had pathetically stretched our mosquito-net, and there he sat smoking a pipe, watching the streams running through the top and down its sides, and discoursing to himself upon the muta- bility of all I'-.iman affairs — especially tents. Joseph gave me the half of his btankets, only stipulating thi ' I should strip till I came to a dry surface. We divided our last morsel, a cold buffalo-tongue, and then submitted to the rain for the rest of the day, all night, and the next morning till nearly noon, by which time we were cuddling up together under the jwrtion of the blanket yet preserved from the rain, which was a piece in its centre about tlie size of a half- dollar. When the sun came out overhead at noon, and the rain censed enough for us to light a fire and fry pancakes, happier mortals were never seen, the storm having demonstrated in British America the same truth as the pain in Socrates's shin, in old Greece, just before he drank hem- lock and began his immortality. The next day we crossed another half-breed's trnil from Fort Garry to White Horse Plains, and numberless buffalo trails besides. These are wide and deep single tracks worn by the hoofs of buffalo, which, when migrating in small herds, if undisturbed, and if not feeding, always travel in single file. The marsh grass, into wliich they had gone for water, was trodden down, the dung was fresh, the tracks recent, and the places numerous where they had torn away the grass with their hoofs and rolled in the dirt to dislodge the flies. The reddish pur- ple arch of Turtle Mountain was visible to us through the summer haze all the afternoon, rising higher and higher, the trees upon its sides hourly becoming more distinct, resolving themselves first into clumps and groves, then into single trees. The next day we reached it. Turtle Mountain is only a high range of hills, heavily timbered, with beautiful prairies here and there dotted with groves stretching away from it on every side. It takes its jiaine, of course, from its peculiar outline as it rises up out of the prairie. Its general direction is north and south, with a deflection of the lower end, eastward, from 25° to 30°, After passing this lower end we had a better though distant view of its highest butte, the one whose blue crown we had seen from the top of Hare Mountain, overtopping all the surrounding range. This, our half-breeds told us, rises more perpendicu- larly from the prairie, and is dilBcult of ascent. Riding along with Michelle the next morning, half a mile ahead of the train, we caught sight of two buffalo bulls quietly feeding on a green slope near a marsh a mile or two to the south- east. Our horses were tired with months of continuo""* travel, unfit to run, and, to tell the 002 IIAUPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 1 i truth, I iilwiivH despaired of seeing Dan Rice equal his first ex]>loit. But our supply of meat was entirely exhaust- ed, and of tallow too, which is to the imiirie trav- eler butter, lard, and whatever else tluit is nec- essary in cooking and unctuous in nature. So as wc came nearer tlie two buffalo I spurred ahead of old Michelle, taking the left-hand val- leys, where my horse and I were hid from sight. Michelle waited the result just back of the brow of a hill. Galloping^n half a mile, I thought the valley between us not too wide for a long rifle shot, and dismounting, went to the summit of the hill. One of the bulls had lain down, his back turned toward me, and so no good shot was jjossible ; and the other was just over the farther slope of the hill, kicking up his heels in the air, and crushing to pulp the flies that tormented him. There was no alternative but to ride to the next hill, a quarter of a mile beyond. For two or three minutes horse and rider were in full siglit, if they had turned their heads to see ; but they did not, and in an instant more wc were hidden by the hill. Here I dismounted again, untied the lariat from the saddle-bow, leaving it to trail under the horse's feet that it might keep him in the valley, and then hastened to the top of the hill. The bulls were still there, the further one (juietly feeding. A long marsh lay between us, empty of water except in the spring, but at all seasons full of long tliick grass, breast high, and the whole oval fringed with a golden rim of helianthus — the flowers growing rarer as on the slope of the hills the color of the grass was (■hanged to a lighter green ; and here and there, in the circle, stood clumps of shrubbery like sentinels guarding the tombs of departed water- nymphs. My weapon was the same Maynard rifle spoken of before, which a man may load and tire a dozen times in a minute if he be quick at taking aim, and not likely to be made nervous by excitement or danger. I put a half-dozen car- tridges in my hand, and set the primer, which pays out tape caps as fast as the rifle is cocked, and be- gan the approach. I might have fired at once upon the recumbent bull — the distance was not more than a hundred and fifty yards — but, except ants. Once more he rose to his feet, stagger- ed a few slow steps toward me, then shuddered with his vast bulk from head to tail, dropped on his knees, nnd failing to balance himself there, fell heavily over upon his side, breathed a few more great gasps, pawed the air, and then was still. Last of all, he stretched out his throat on the long jiraii-ie grass, dyed with his blood, and gently gave away his final breath. Before I reached the spot where the first bull fell, the train had come up, and Michelle, with a dexterity acquired by more than thirty years' practice, had taken off the skin, and was cut- ting out the bos or hump, which, next to the tongue, is the choicest bit for eating. In less than an hour both were caiTcd — rib pieces and humps and shoulder-pieces, we supplied with fresh meat for a week and jerked meat for a fortnight — and the train was moving on. That night, after supper, as we gathered around the camp-fires, and while the red light was fading out of the clouds high in the sky, and the purjile passing down beyond the level horizon, old Michelle entertained us with such stories of his adventurous life — of his buffalo hunts on snow-shoes — of his chases after herds of thousands — the goring and tossing and tramp- ling, bursting guns and broken limbs — such stories as, if put on paper, would make all the exploits of amateurs seem as tame and safe as crossing the main street of a countrj' village. The next day we crossed the great trails from Fort Garry to Turtle Mountain, and passed a large encampment ground near a running stream, which had the same general appearance as the one by the sand-hills on Mouse River. The buffa- lo trails were very numerous, and crossed our path in every direction, converging to and diverging from the ravines, coulees, and marshes, where they had sought water. The place for miles and miles, in every direction, was one huge Golgotha. The bleaching bones and skulls of buffaloes, slain in former years by the hunters, whitened the green giuss on every acre, almost on every rood of ground ; and the fresher carcasses of those killed during the year's hunt were scattered over ij fl04 IIAUPER'S NKW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. thu jjroiind, and tiiiiifcd the air in every direc- tion. We cDiild ainiost follow the trai'k of the hunters in their cliase, where the fight hud hcen thickest, and hundreds covered a siiijjle aero or two ; and where some sturdier hull had kej)! up a longer Higlit, and linally, in an agony of thirst, had fallen and died in the middle of a marsh. The grass was of a greener green, and the flow- j ers had a livelier hue which had heen watered with their hlood. The rank verdure made a striking frame for the great black-haired skulls, or the heavy arching rib-bones, now bleached to whiteness, or perchance covered with shreds of flesh which the crows and hiiwks and foxes and wolves had not (juitc devoured. As the train passed on through this sickening ])laco the crows ' and hawks rose from their carrion feast, and iiovered in the air, shrieking and cawing, till wo had passed ; and the gaunt gray wolves, scared away by our a]iproach, ran off over the ])rairie in long, lithe flexile lea))s, now and then jiaus- ing in the tiiiikest grass, and turning to watch tis, licking their chops until we again came near- er, and then leaping away to liido in the long rushes of some distant marsh. All night we coidd hear their long, melancholy bowlings, and, as if not satisfied with their filthy feast by day, they lurked abont the camj), frightening the horses into a stampede, and not nnfrequcnt- ly chewing up their hide lariats within a dozen feet of their heads. I Our journey from Turtle Mountain to Devil's Lake Avas accomplished within a few days. Buf- falo chases were an everyday occurrence with us, and game of every feathered kind was equally abundant. One Saturday afternoon we brought up in a "pocket" near the Lac de Gros Butte, \ where we were protected on two sides by water, ! and on one side by an imjjassable marsh, in ' which, at every few moments, we could hear the whirr of ducks alighting or rising. A narrow neck of land was the only ])oint at wliich the In- ' diuns could have got at us. The sIkmvs of the lake, which takes its name from a high bill near by, were strewn with the carcasses of dead l)uf- fulo, with bilge wolf-tracks on the sand all about them, who had either been severely wounded by the half-breeds, and bad escaped to the water to drink, or, having been juirsued, had attcm])ted to swim acrcjss the lake and perished. Here we had wood to build our fires for the first time since leaving Turtle Mountain. Instead of t, wc had bad to sjilit u]) the least necessary parts of our carts for kindling wood, and cook our jian- cakcs over red-hot Imis de vavlie. The next day was a rainy one ; but the rain did not i)rcvent us from taking a horseback ride to Devil's Lake. It was through much tribula- tion that we succeeded even in getting to so ill- named a place as Miniwakan. Wc had to ford half a dozen streams, swimming two or three of them, wade through iiuirshes, and in crossing one stream whoso banks were difficult of ascent or descent, we went around into the lake where it emjitied, outside of its mouth, and bad to trav- el by compass (having laid our direction) for nearly half a mile through water acep as the horse's shoulders, and where the tall rank rushes rose from six to ten feet higher still, shutting out tlie view of every thing but the sky, which looked in oar environment as if we were behold- ing it from a well. Truth nor our i)rimitive in- tuitions could have hardly served us as well as the com]iass did ; for we .struck the narrow prom- ontory, for which we had been steering so blind- ly, nt its only accessible point. At every stej) we started up crowds of blue herons, cranes, gulls, snipe, clucks, geese, and sheitpokes. The rain fell continuously all the afternoon, and we could not see the opposite shores of Dev- il's Lake, which are doubtless visible at some points in clear weather. We could, however, now and then get a faint glimpse of the timber on a point of land, shaped like a spoon, it is OEVIL'a L&KB. TO llKl) UIVEU AND HKYONI). cori u (sliorrs of I lie I IiIkIi liill lu'iir ;'S of (lend huf- Hiind all al)(>iit ly woiiiuU.'d In- to the wiitor to liiul iittenii)ted hed. Ilorp wc the first tiinc iiBteadof t, we 2S8iiry parts of cook our jmu- ; but the rnin horsebnck ride much tribula- itting to so ill. Vc lind to ford wo or three of id in crossing icult of ascent he lake where id had to trav- direction) for r deep as the ill rank rushes still, shutting he sky, which 3 were behold- r ])rimitive in- us as well as narrow prom- iring so blind- At every step irons, cranes, said, with the bowl end pointing out into the lake, where the half-breeds and Indians slaugh- ' ter hundreds yearly. They surround them in : large companies, just as the elephants are trapped in Ceylon, or as the buffaloes themselves are . caught in timber-trajis in some parts of the Sas- katchewan district ; and by careful and not too rapid chasing large herds are at last forced to enter over this neck of land, where the water shuts them in on every side, and mounted horse- men are behind them who may then shoot them down at their leisure. The Devil's Lake region is a favorite camp- ing-ground of the Sioux, and therefore is moFt shunned by the half-breeds, except when tiuy go in large and powerful companies. The great brigades of course hunt them with impunity; and we came upon their tracks, their camping- grounds, miles of burned prairie or of Golgothas, their trails, and the lieaps of bones, broken, and the marrow dug out, which told where they had been making pemmican, every day almost from Turtle Mountain to Devil's Lake and Pembina. Beyond this point, therefore, across, southwest, to the mouth of the Sheyenne on Red River, or further into the Sioux country, Michelle, thought- — »^% G06 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ful of tho husband of his wife, and tho tittlicr of hiH babies waiting for him at St. Jo, rcfu«cd to go. Ho tlio f'plorcr wuh ti:>iiblo to learn if tho hypotlicnuHO of tho triangle from Upper Red Uivcr to tho south bend of tho Saskatchewan was as niu(;h iiettor and briefer for travelers as it is for mathematicians. From tho Lac do Gros Butte, therefore, we, all together, took tho straight Devil's Lake and .St. .Fo trail. My journal of the date says : "Wo have ended now our travel without trails, ard soon trails will l>o roads, and roads railroads, to carry us Eastward llo !" The last day of August, late in tho afternoon, wo came to tho brow of Pembina Mount or ]>la- tcjiu, from which wo could overlook St. Jo, livo miles away. Wo were still 500 miles from the outposts of American civilization ; but wo greeted the log-houses of tho half-breeds with as much enthusiasm as we could jmssibly have done the dorno of liio Now York City Hall with tho Hgaro of Justice surmounting it. Tho trail was worn deep ; tho trees on the plateau, and down its side, were large and thickly leafed, and no- thing could have added to the beauty of sunset, which cast such long shadows down the side of tho hill and over tho prairie, except, perhaps, tho sight of a tmin of half-breeds returning from the summer hunts, with loaded carts creaking heav- ily along tho winding road, down the mountain side, tho men in their bright colors, and their horses gayly caparisoned — homo in sight, tho last camping-ground passed.' Some such sight as tiiis we saw a little after sunrise tho next day. While at breakfast wc iicard, near by in a ravino of the thick woods which surrounded us on every side, Sioux war- songs. Michelle and Joe, fearful that a wur- party of tho rascals was on our track, hurried to the horses, unpickctcd and harnossed them, load- ed tho carts, and all of us were in the saddle and ])ushing on briskly to St. Jo in less than five minutes. It was a false alarm, however. We heard nothing farther from them as wi' galloped on through the mi\jcstic woods which covered the slo|)0 of the mount and skirted the I'embina Uivcr on cither side. Wo slackened our pace after putting tho river between us, and entering St. Jo, drove to Kittson's Post. Wi- hod hardly (^t, inside of tho stockades, shaken hands with every man in the town, onswered in- terrogatories propounded in French, ChipiHJwa. Cree, and Nistoneaux, before we heard a volley of musketry in tho woods, rapidly succeeded by another and another, and mingled with shouts and halloos that could come from none but semi- civilized throats. Tho party soon emerged from the woods ; the very carts dragged along at a lively trot, swift riders galloping ahead, some of them with huge white buti'alo skins trailing from their shoulders, like tho vestments of a priest at high mass, and painted with savage devices and in gaudy col- ors ; others in the blanket and Icggins of Sioux braves, tricked out with painted quills or brill- iant wampum ; others still in the half-breed dress, woolens, with handsome bead decoration?, skin caps — a motley crowd, headed by Battisto Wilkie, tho President of tho Councilors *■ St. Jo. It was a dcjaitation of half-breed '•n- ing from a grand treaty-making with t \ at Devil's Lake. (title, Wioux war- rful timt a wiir- »rufk, hurried fo p«s«l them, load- TO in the »n Wo slackened etween us, and n's l»o8t. We ckndcs, shaken n, answered in- icli, Chipjiewn. heard a volley r succeeded by nny of which is stationed here, wh'.se rations are :u\>- plied by tiie Hudson's Bay Company. As you enter the spacious ijuad' angle ly the nrchtd gate-way, which opens to the sou h close to the bank of the Assinil)oinc, the ir.iprcssion is the usual one at sight of soltliers' barracks ; but pass- ing to the building at the northern end of the square, and by the soldiers and servants who arc straggling about, this imjircssion vanislies ns you come in view of the spacious edifice in which Ciiief Factor M'Tavish, who is also Governor M''I avish, of the colony of Assiniboia, resides. We were treated witli };reat courtesy by the ' lovernor during our stay in the settlement, and the innumerable (piestions which the current of conversation nnd recent events led us to ask, were responded to with an unfniling freedom and sincerity. In some of the Canadian commis- sioners' reports the reticence nnd the misrepre- sentations of the Company's officers are dwelt ui)on, but in this quarter, at least — and it is the highest in the settlement — we found neither. Governor M'Tavish is a gentleman of Scotch birth or descent, as his name nnd apjicarance in- dicate. His figure is tall, and his head finely sha])ed, with a broad, high brow, which, without ))articularly jutting eycbrow.s, gives you the im- pression of mental calibre. The wrinkles upon his forehead and fjice are such as care, not age, accf)unts for, and are set-ofi" by the Palmerston style of whisker and a heavy mustache, together with long sandy hair, in which the streaks of gray are only beginning to njipcar. His man- ners had the quiet, well-bred tone cftcncr found among Englishmen than others, and his voice is low from the same cause or from some bronchial affection. Energy, determination, nnd execu- tive ability were the obvious characteristics of the num. What wc had lieforc learned of his culture nnd tastes was confirmed by the books which wc saw lying on the table and book-cases. At many of the posts of the Company the year's business is done up in a few weeks, nnd till the same sea,son rolls around again there is an absence of nil employment, and a closing out of all nc'vs, such ns affords the conimon food of thought to most persoriS linked by daily or week- ly news]iapers to the rest of the worlil. Some of the Com])any's of.iccrs are wise enough to im- prove these long intervals of leisure, taking c.nic to supply themselves with books, which do not fpcrish with the single using. The Governor was long stationed at York Factory, where nil the business of the year is crowded into the brief two months in which the shijjs of sujiply from En- gland, and the boats from the interior posts with furs, arrived nnd departed, and there or elsewhere made himself a learned man. In regard to the settlement of the northwestern TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. 800 »»i FOBT OAIIBY. areas, it "lay bo well here to observe that, inas- much as timbor occurs mainly on the hanks of rivers, their population will he greatly retarded or increased by the knowledge of the existence of other kinds of fuel at accessible points. We had bp-T 'cpeatedly informed by half-breeds of the existence of coal or lignite in strata in the banks of Mouse River and the Saskatchewan. Governor M'Tavish showed us pieces of lignite from that river — the first that we had seen — and confirmed the fact of its existence on the upper waters of Mouse River. He added, that it was used habitually during the winter at Fort Pitt ; and a retired chief factor, whom we afterward visited, told us that at his former station, at the Carlton House, it had supplied their blacksmith's forge. The important bearing of this fact upon the futiu'e population of tlie northwestern coun- try is apparent. There is considcmble pine tim- ber upon the great streams of this northern riv- er system ; and if trees were planted with i)ains by all new settlers, a sufficient supply for or- dinary purposes might be kept up. But it is to be taken into the account, that in these high latitudes the winter season is of longer duration than in the equally fertile and likewise tiraber- itvnirie districts of our own Northwestern \s the II' 111 shall arise these i iiu of c():ii will, ihercfiirc, bo worked, and wW' >n; ply the fuel of iiiillMUS for a thousand yeas; . Such difficulties as arc now had in burning it will not be experienced wh a coal stoves Mipply thepjace of the oi)en hearth. I sujipose that Norman W. Kittson i he man who has done as much as ny one to break up their happy solitude. As lung ago as 184-i he was guilty of forging the rst link which con- nected the Mi«sissip))i and the Red River of the North. As always, trade wn^ tlio occasion of the enterprise. Ilis store, wliioli 's formerly at Pembina, on our side of t!ic i .ational line, tapped the rich fur trade, in i, norch of the line, the Hudson's Bay Company had a monoj). oly, and perhaps he now and then purchased from hunters i irth of the line skins to balance those which the Company's men gathered south of it. Now the license of exclusive trade has ex|)ired, and Mr. Kittson is allowed an open ri- valry in the settlement itself. His store stands en tlie east bank of the Red Ri\ er, ojiposite the mouth of the Assiniboino. He and other enter- prising traders, during the year 1857, sent through »10 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. St. Paul liouses, for exjiortation below, more thnn •■? 120,000 worth of furs. Moreover, traders and private parties arc sending money as well as furs to St. Paul, for sujiplies. Formerly they had to rely on tho favor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and undergo the delay, and share the expense of the long trij) of the ships from York Factory to England and back. Now the round trip can be made, by way of St. Paul and New York, in thirty to forty days, and in the year mentioned as much money's woi-th of money as of furs was left by these people in St. Paul— 8120,000. A day or two after our visit to Fort Garry, Jo- seph and I hired two saddle-horses, for a trip to the lower stone fort, properly called Lower Fort Garry. Wo had crossed the river at this point before in a canoe, but the difficulty experienced in getting our horses over the two rivers — Red River and the Assinibuine — gave us a realizing sense of the nature of the ferry and ferryman, and new facts for generalization as to the char- acter of the Red River half-breeds. I believe the person who leases the ferry-boat pays £20 a year for the privilege, and charges three-pence for a passage; but the ferry-boy, according to our observation, spends a portion of his time dodging the demands on his paddles and his pa- tience. The bank of the river is of stratified clay, which in rainy weather is exceedingly slip- pery, and accumulates in tremendous quantities about the feet ; and there is nothing to prevent horse, cart, or man from slipping from the top of the bank into the river, except a log or two where the boat lands. It has never entered into the mind of the owner of the ferry, I presume, to save liimself the delay of carts in getting down the bank carefully, by building a ])lank walk with elects from its top down to low- water murk. The ferry-boat is a flat boat twice as long as broad, and tackled to a cable which is stretched from shore to shore, The rope which connects the forward end of tlic boat with the cable being shortened, the side of the boat is swung arountl so that the current helps to shove it over. The same steep and muddy bank is at the west side of the river ; also on tlie south side of the Assin- iboiac — the same lazy ferry over it, and the same unplanked bank on its nortli side. Moi-cover, there is no boat rnnning straight across the Rod River below the Assiniboinc. To cross trom Uic east side of the Red River to the side below tlio Assiniboinc. where Fort Garry stands, one must needs cross both rivers in this tedious way, sul)- ject * time. It was dark before we had got Imlf-Wiiy to the lower fort, Wc drew " TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND, BESIUENCE OF J. U, UABKlO'rT, ESQ. bridle, therefore, at the residence of Mr. J. H. Harriott, a retired chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to wliom we had letters, and whose residence was a mile nearer than the low- er fort, where we had at first intended to pass the night. A true gentleman of the old school — that we were within the walls of his house was sufficient reason why he should treat us like princes. Though, to tell the truth, we did not even have the honor of resembling princes hicoipiito. One summer's journey on the jirairies had reduced us almost to extremities in tlie matter of clothing. We wore borrowed " bilcd shirts," mine covered with a borrowed coat once and a half too large, and Joseph's covered with a coat, his own, so ragged that that had to be conce.iled by an over- coat just a little better. As for our trowscrs, " the least said the soonest mended ;" and they would have stood but little mending more. With hair uncut and beards untrimmed, sun-burned, and looking more like foot-pads than gentlemen, we had ventured upon this journey with a degree of confidence in the natural agreeableness of our countenances and amenity of our manners — that they would interpret us aright — such as, under better clothes, wo should never have dared to indulge. As we rode along in the twilight, we had amused ourselves by assuming to bo what we must have seemed — Dick Tur))ins, Jack She|)herds, patent-safe men — but before riding into Mr. Harriott's gate recovered our dignity as possible princes. None of our suspicions seemed to have entered the minds of our host and hostess. While we remained under their roof — a period protracted at their own request — we were the recipients of a bountiful hospitality. From numerous long and interesting conver- sations with our host, we obtained many i)artic- ulars regarding the management and practical working of the Company's operations, and es- pecially regarding the geography of the Sas- katchewan district and the district lying be- tween its waters and those of the Missouri and of the Rocky Mountains, from the Kootonais pass northward. In the various capacities of clerk, chief trader, and cliief factor, Mr. Harriott had traveled over or resided in many jjlaces in tliis vast territory. Now esta))lishing a trading- post at ihe foot of the Rocky Jlountains ; now in charge of tlie Carlton House or of Fort Pitt, on the head-waters of the Saskatchewan ; and, again, leading parties, with a rich freight of furs, through a dangerous Indian country ; and there, or elsewhere, having such liair-!)rendth escapes, and such exciting adventures, undergoing such risks, and hardsliips, and exposure, as would make one thrill to hear, though never to be heard from his lijjs except by solicitation, which added the charm of unconscious modesty to what was alreadv sufficientlv brave and admira- ble. A view of Mr. Harriott's residence is given above, and may be taken as a type of the better class of dwellings in the Selkirk settlement. It is built of limestone, quarried from the native rock, and within and without was planned by its owner. One fact reveals some of the causes of the stagnation of things at Red River. Mr. H., when building his house, left in the spacious dining-room an arcliing alcove for a side-board, at the same time giving a cabinet-maker at the settlement an order to fill it. Several years have elapsed, but what with the cabinet-maker hunting, and farming, and doing nothing, Mr. H. has not yet seen even the wootl of which his side-board is to be made. A few well-selected b(K)ks, house-plants in the windows, choice engraviiij^'s on the wall, ridin<; 312 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. LOWER FOKT (lAIUtV. ■i whips and pfims in the hall, tobacco jar anrl pipes on the side-table, a melodeon and accordeon and music-box in the room which New England- ■•rs call a jiarlor, tell the story of how the pleas- ant summer days and long winter nights are whiled away, and how a life of exposure and ad- venture and toil is rounded with rest and calm and domestic peace. One jileasant afternoon our host ordered liis carriage to the door and drove us to the " Stone Fort." The horses were a gay pair, and whirled their load down the graveled walk and over the bridge and along the road at a pace that needed a strong hand on the reins. The carryall was i)f a soberer sort, im])orted from Enjdand by way of Hudson's Bay and York Factory, and of a j)at- tern not nc v in fashion here or there — low, heavy wheels, thick, sulistantial whiffle-trees, high dash-board, and a body like that of the car- riages of well-to-do English squires half a cen- tury ago. We were soon at the fort. The view here given was taken from the south — the direction in which we came. The fort is built of solid limestone, as are many of the buildings inclosed, and is, perhaps, the most imposing of the CoffiJ.my's structures. It was erected at the advice of Sir George Simpson, but has never been of the use which was anticipated for it. Its capacious buildings serve mainly for the storage of furs and provisions, and the large crops which are gathered from the farm. A distillery near by, where the Company once undertook to manu- facture their licjuor, is no longer used for that purpose. When Assiniboia is ma<1>" •• colony, the fort may be bought for government offices. One Sunday morning I had the i)leasure of accompanying my host and his wife to the church of St. Andrews, of which Archdeacon Hunter is in charge. The church was well filled: the congregation a well-dressed one — not ditfering greatly, I think, from one which might be seen in any country village in England, since it consisted, in the bulk, neither of French half- breeds, who are almost always Catholics, nor of Scotch, who worship at the kirk, but mainly of the English and their descendants : together with a few half-breeds here and there, Com- pany's servants and officers, a retired chief trad- er and factor or two, and on the walls the tablet of one who had lately died. The sketch below of the church edifice, in which Archdeacon Hunter officiates, may give .". faint idea of its appearance and situation. If is, perhaps, the neatest building in Red River. Constructed of limestone, from the quarries near at hand, the stone has been dressed and piled with more regard to arcliitectural rules j than any other. A wall of the same kind of I stone surrounds the chiu'ch and the prave-j-ard in its rear. Its position upon the banks of the rivir is a very fine one. Standing npon its pori.h one may look up or down the river and see the neat homes and farms of the settlers, while its tasty outlines form a jirominent object in the landscape to those gazing upon it from either direction. Dining with Thomas Sinclair, a gentleman long resident at Red River, I learned that the Anson Northtip was not the first boat, though doubtless the first steamboat on the Red River of the North. In the back-ground of the sketch of Bishop Anderson's church, there is tc be seen the roof of a steam mill — the only one on Red River, The machinery of this mill, which giinds wheat and saws logs indiscriminately. Mr. Sinclair was commissioned to transport from St. Paul to Fort Garry. The perils of the land transit may be faintly appreciated by one who has read of what we suffered in our less dif- \ ficult undertaking. Probably it would have 1 TO RED RIVER AND BEYOND. M been still more diifi- cult to carry such heavy loads by the plains. This he did not attempt to do, but camped at Graham's I'oint, two miles above Fort Abercrombie, and there made a rude boat or batteau. Noah's ark could not have served its ma- ker's purpose better. Mr. Sinclair's boat was ■'».'> feet long, and 13 feet wide. Unlike Noah, Mr. Sinclair had no oakum, pitch, or tar wherewith to calk the seams. This seemed to balk his hopes, but the diffi- culty was overcome by usirtg basswood and grooving the planks. They were so green and damp that water ran ahead of the planer. But not a drop ran into the boat when they were put to- gctlier, and the cargo — all the machinery of an engine twenty- horse power, was land- ed at the settlement in safety. Unless the name of the Indian who fii-st dipped a paddle there can be ascertained let this pass as the first navigation of Red River. James Sinclair, the brother of the gentleman just mentioned, has been likely to lose something TUE KIBU. ST. ANDKBW'S CIirRCU. of his proper fame. It is claimed, apparently on good authority, that he first discovered the pass through the Rocky Moiintains, now named after Captain Talissier, and went through it three several times ; first, in 1 84 1 with two familiesof emigrants: .^_ second, in 1848 with -.:^S seven men going to California ; and in ]8,"i4 with his own family, and a num- ber of cattle, his in- tention being to start a stock farm in Ore- gon. In one of his journeys, perhaps the last, tlio ])arty which he led were compelled to leave their carts by the roadside on this side of the mountains, and pack their stuff through. These carts were seen by some of Captain Palissier's men, and indeed used 314 IIATlPEll'S NEW MONTHLY RLVGAZINE. to boil their tea with, and must have siynificcl to one who saw them that the pass had been dis- covered and used. Returning toward Fort Gariy wo passed the kirk, whicli is the place of worship of the old Scotch settlers. It was our good fortune to spend the night at the house of one of tiie most intelli- gent of these, Mr. Donald Murray, of Frog Plain, lie had been personally familiar with the progress of the settlement from Lord Selkirk's time till now, and entertained us till long past midnight with his reminiscences. The Scotch settlers, who occupy with the English the portion of tlie settlement around Fort Garry, are mostly farm- ers. They may send lmntei"s to the plains or pay for their outfit, but themselves rarely go, ex- cept for pleasure. Tiiey are by far the most so- ber and industrious class of the community, and luive been the salt which has saved it till now. Tliey abide in the old ways. The majority of the English residents at the settlement, together with many of the more intelligent half-breeds, worship in the church of which a sketch has been given above (Archdeacon Hunter's), or in that under the care of Bishop Anderson, given below. The bishop was absent from the settlement dur- ing our visit, and we did not have the pleasure of seeing or hearing him. Tiie half-breeds and natives are for the most part Catholics, and their religious services are held in the large cathedral of St. Boniface, opposite Fort Garry. The Right Reverend the Bishopof St. Boniface, in the colony of Assiniboia, gave us extremely interesting ac- counts of the religious and educational establish- ments in his diocese. Bishop Tache has him- self been in the country for fifteen years, and no unprejudiced observer can fail to see tlie fruits of his industry and pious zeal. His diocese is im- mense, and the care of tlie missions in the in- terior country where it extends, which are alto- gether heathen missions, is no small part of his self-denying and laborious work. Besides this, tliere is under his charge, and constituting the more engrossing division of his labor, the min- istration and aid afforded to tlie Catholic popu- lation of Red River and neigliborhood. A Cana- dian like themselves, their brother, tiierefore, and their friend, no outward circumstances restrict the influence which his character and high office enable him to exercise. There are four parishes in Red River — St. Boniface, St. Norbert, St. Francis Xavier, St. Charles. St. Boniface includes within its limits the central and most populous part of tlie settle- ment. Mgr. J. N. Provencher was its first bishop, having landed at Fort Douglas about the middle of July, 1818. In two years was laid the foun- dation of the first religious edifice — a wpoden chapel. The Church of St. Boniface, Bishop Tache's cathedral, now replaces it. It is, perhaps, the finest, certainly the most imposing building in the settlement. It is 100 feet in length, 45 in breadth, and 40 in height, not reckoning the spire. In its two tinned and airy towers is a fine and well-matched peal of three bells, weighing upward of ICOO pounds. In tl)e rear of the cathedral, witii a lower roof, is the dwelling of the bishop. He escorted us, by a rear entrance, through his house into the cathe- dral, on the occasion of our first visit to him, and a more striking surprise could not have been pre- pared for us. We came out by n door at the side of the altar, and there suddenly beheld pil- lared aisles, frescoed roof, and all the gorgeous paraphernalia with which the Mother Church solicits and attracts her communicants. To a nice taste the effect might have seemed a little gaudy, but when we learned that the Sisters of Charity and some of the Brothers had accom- j)lishcd these decorations without aid or pattern, the offense passed ; for piety takes rank above taste, or else what excuse have we for the bare walls, the stingy paint, to say nothing of the beg- garly pinched ceremonial in some abodes of our enlightened Protestant worshi]) ? Indeed, of a Sun- day or a fete day, when the church is thronged ; when, after a successful hunt and safe return, the half-breeds gather to the cathedral in all their fanciful variety of dress, their brilliaJit sashes, and blue or white capotes ; the dress of the wo- men, too, not less brilliantly catching the eye, there is a sense of harmony gratified by this like- ness and general prevalence of striking colors, which would never be elicited by the same throngs in a country meeting-house in New England. A tablet in the wall commemorates the piety and labors of the earliest bishop. Bishop Tache's house is large, and he shared it, as well as his private residence, with his clergy, the Brothers of his schools, and some orphans. Formerly the boys' school of the Brothers of the Christian doctrine was kej)! in the bishop's house, but for a year or two now they have had posses- sion of the building erected for them a few hun- dred feet north of the cathedral — seen in t'-* sketch above. It was here that little Joe Role .