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THE GREAT LONE LAND:
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A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE
IN THE NORTH-WEST OF AMERICA.
BY
Carr. W. F BUTLER, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF “HISTORICAL EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE SIXYTY-NINTH REGIMENT,” ETC.
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“4 full fed river winding slow, By herds upon an endless plain. * id e
’ AT PO Yee enegien Gates eid tment year we fH
ee ae
And seme one pacing there alone Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, Lit with a low, large moon.”
TEXNNyYson.
WITH ILLUSIRATIONS AND ROUTE MAP.
London : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, LOW, & SEARLE,
CROWN BUILDINGS,~188, FLEET STREET. 1872.
[All rights reserved.]
esses 135563
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LONDON : GILRERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOUN’S SQUARE.
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Geen more sumecetn the te qeeiive. Deuyie ure see
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the smemh eat poner of the ery of the Vote. Usen t4s muem w oble tribe a ema siheact nd ie Gare were myer an muvhing, hin oveniage in Po fF SEN Siu i oye nyt: nyt af’ juik advasel pecs a7)
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iv PREFACE.
the land of the great white medicine-man. But at length the tribe grew discontented; they had expected to hear the recital of the wonders seen by their chief, and lo! he had come back to them as silent as though his wander- ings had ended on the Coteau of the Missouri, or by the borders of the Kitchi-Gami. Their discontent found vent "in words.
“Our father, Karkakonias, has come back to us,” they said; “ why does he not tell his children of the medi- cine of the white man? Is our father dumb that he does not speak to us of these things ?”
Then the old chief took his calumet from his lips, and replied, “If Karkakonias told his children of the medi- cines of the white man—of his war-canoes moving by fire and making thunder as they move, of his warriors more numerous than the buffalo in the days of our fathers, of all the wonderful things he has looked upon—his children would point and say, ‘Behold! Karkakonias has become in his old age a maker of lies!” No, my children, Karkakonias has seen many wonderful things, and his tongue is still able to speak; but, until your eyes have travelled as far as has his tongue, he will sit silent and smoke the calumet, thinking only of what he has looked upon.”
Perhaps I too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway chief, not because of any wonders I have
looked upon; but rather because of that well-known
PREFACE. Vv
prejudice against travellers’ tales, and of that terribly terse adjuration—*O that mine enemy might write a book!” Be that as it may, the book has been written ; and it only remains to say a few words about its title and its theories. e
The “ Great Lone Land” is no sensational name. The North-west fulfils, at the present time, every essential of that title. There is no other portion of the globe in which travel is possible where loneliness can be said to live so thoroughly. One may wander 500 miles in a direct line without seeing a human being, or an animal larger than a wolf. And if vastness of plain, and mag- nitude of lake, mountain, and river can mark a land as great, then no region possesses higher claims to that dis- tinction.
A word upon more personal matters. Some two months since I sent to the firm from whose hands this work has emanated a portion of the unfinished manuscript. I re- ceived in reply a communication to the effect that their Reader thought highly of my descriptions of real occurrences, but less of my theories. As it is possible that the general reader may fully endorse at least the latter portion of this opinion, I have only one observation to make.
Almost every page of this book has been written amid the ever-present pressure of those feelings which spring from a sense of unrequited labour, of toil and service
theoretically and officially recognized, but practically and
vi PREFACE.
professionally denied. However, a personal preface is not my object, nor should these things find allusion here, save to account in some manner, if account be necessary, for peculiarities of language or opinion which may hereafter make themselves apparent to the reader. Let it be.
In the solitudes of the Great Lone Land, whither I am once more about to turn my steps, the trifles that spring
from such disappointments will cease to trouble.
W. EF. iB. April 14th. 1872.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
VAGE
Peace—Rumours of War— Retrenchment—A Cloud in the far West —A Distant Settlement—Personal—The Purchase System—A Cable-gram—Away to the West. : . . : : -
CUAPTER IL.
The “ Samaria”’—~Across the Atlantic—Shipmates--The Despot of the Deck—“ Keep her Nor’-West "~-Democrat versus Republican —<A First Glimpse—Bouston . . . - . : . .
CHAPTER 14.
Bunker—New York—Niagara—Toronto—Spring-time in Quebec—A. Summons—A Start—In good Company—Stripping a Peg—An Expedition—Poor Canada—Aun Old Glimpse at a New Laud—Rival Routes—Change of Masters—The Red River Revolt—The Half- breeds—Early Settlers—Bungliny—* Eaters, of Pemmicun”— M. Louis Riel—The Murder of Scott. . . . . .
CHAPTER 1V.
Chicago—“ Who is S. B. D.?”—Milwaukie—The Great Fusiou— Wisconsin—The Sleepiug-car—The Train Boy—Minnesota—St. Paul—I start for Lake Superior—The Future City—“ Bust up” and “ Gone on ”—The End of the Track - - .
CHAPTER V.
Lake Superior—The Dalles of the’St. Louis—The North Pacific Rail- road-——-Fond-du-Lac—Duluth—Superior City—The Great Lake— A Plan to dry up Niagara—Stage Driving—Tom’s Shanty again —St. Paul and its Neighbourkoud . . . . . . .
10
te GL
68
vill CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
PAGE
Our Cousins—Doing America—Iwo Lessons—St. Cloud—Sauk Rapids—“ Steam Pudding or Pumpkin Pic ?”—Trotting him out —Awnay forthe Red River 2. 2% 2... ee,
CHAPTER VII.
North Minnesota—A beautiful Land—Rival Savages—Abercrombic —News from the North—Plans—A Lonely Shanty—The Red River—Prairies—Sunset—Musquitoes—Going North—aA Mosquito Night—A Thunder-storm—A Prussian—Dakota—I ride for it— The Steamer “ International”—Pembina . . - .
CHAPTER VILL.
Retrospective—The Ncurth-west Passage—The Bay of Hudson—Rival Claims—The Old French Fur Trade—The North-west Company— How the Half-breeds cume—The Highlanders defeated—Progress —Old Fends . . . : : . . . . . .
CHAPTER IX.
Running the Gauntlet—Across the Line~Mischief ahead—Prepara- tions—A Night March—The Steamer captured—Tho Pursuit— Daylight—The Lower Fort—The Red Man at last—The Chief’s Speech—A Big Feed—Making ready for the Winnipeg—A Delay —I visit Fort Garry—Mr. President Riel—The Final Start—Lake Winnipeg—The First Night out—My Crew . . . . .
CHAPTER X.
The Winnipeg River—The Ojibboway’s Mouse—Rushing a Rapid— A Camp—No Tidings of the Coming Man—Hope in Danger—Rat Portage —A far-fetched Islington—“ Like Pemmican” , .
CHAPTER XI.
The Expedition—The Lake of the Woods—A Night Alarm—<A close Shave—Rainy River—A Night Paddle—Fort Francis—A Meeting —The Officer commanding the Expedition—The Rank and File— The 60th Rifles—A Windigo~—Ojibbeway Bravery—Canadian Volunteers. . . . . 6 - . . - .
CHAPTER XQ.
To Fort Garry—Down the Winnipeg—Her Majesty’s Royal Mail— Grilling a Mail-bag—Runoning a Rapid—Up the Red River—A dreary Bivouac—The President bolts—The Rebel Chich— Departure of the Regular Truoups - . e - eee
79
89
105
113
. 143
=o
155
180
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIII.
PAGE
Westward—News from the Outside World—I retrace my Steps— An Offer—-The West -- The Kissaskatchewan—The Inland Ocean— Preparations—Departure—A Terrible Plagne—A lonely Grave— Digressive—The Assineboine River—Rossette . . . .
CHAPTER XIV.
The Hudson Bay Company—Furs and Free Trade—Fort Ellice— Quick Travelling—Horses—Little Blackie—Touchwood Hills—A Snow-storm—The Sonth Saskatchewan—Attempt to cross the River—Death of poor Blackie—Carlton . : - . . .
CHAPTER XV.
Saskatchewan—Start from Carlton—Wild Mares—Lose our Way— A long Ride—Battle River—Mistawassis the Cree—A Dance -
- CHAPTER XVI.
The Red Man—Leave Battle River—The Red Deer Hills—A long Riée—Fort Pitti—The Plague—Hauling by the Tail—A pleasant
Companion—An casy Method of Divorce—Reach Edmonton . . ’
CHAPTER XVII.
Edmonton—The Ruffian Tahakooch—French Missionaries—West- ward still—A beautiful. Land—The Blackfeet—Horses—A “ Bell- ox”? Soldier—A Blackfoot Speech—The Indian Land—First Sight of the Rocky Mountains—The Mountain House—The Mountain Assineboines—An Indian Trade—M. la Combe—Fire-water—A Night Assault a
CHAPTER XVIII. Eastward—aA beautiful Light - : - . oe : - .
CHAPTER XIX.
I start from Edmonton with Dogs—Dog-travelling—The Cabri Sack —A cold Day—Victoria— Sent to Rome”-—Reach Fort Pitt—The blind Cree—A Feast or a Famine—Death of Pe-na-koam the
195
210
230
291
Blackfoot . : . : : - : : : : - 293
CHAPTER XX.
The Buffalo—His Limits and favourite Grounds—Modes of Huntmag —A Fight—His inevitable End—I become a Medicine-man—Great Cold—Carlton—Family Responsibilities . : : : . .
315
CONTENTS.
Kr
CHAPTER XXI. PAGE The Great Sub-Arctie Forest—The ~ Forks ” of the Saskatchewan— An Iroquois—Fort-i-la-Corne—News from the outside World— All haste for Home—The solitary Wigwam—Joe Miller’s Death . 329
CHAPTER XXIL.
Cumberland—We bury poor Joe—A good Train of Dogs—The great Marsh—Mutiny—Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher—A Night with a Medicine-man—Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba—Muskeymote eats his Boots—We reach the Settlement—From the Saskatchewan tothe Seine . : - - : : . : - . - 338
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE Map ofthe Great Lone Land =. ww ww. Frontispiece Working up the Winnipez . . : . : . - . 147 I waved tothe leading Canoe . . . - - . - - 168 Across the Plains in November . . . . . . - 215
The Rocky Mountains at the Sources of the Saskatchewan . - 274 Leaving a cosy Camp at dawn . - - 298 The ** Forks” of the Saskatchewan . . . - 329
THE
GREAT LONE LAND.
CHAPTER I.
Peace—Rusovrs oF War—Retrexcrment—A Crovup mw THE rar West—A Distant SerrLeMeNt—Persovat—Tue PrurcuasE System—A_ CaBLe-GRaM—AWAay TO THE WEST.
Ir was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, 2 Burmese, or any other of the many “eses” or “eas” forming the great colonial empire of Britain who seemed capable of kicking up the semblance of a row. Newspapers had never been so dull; illustrated journals had to content themselves with pictorial representations of prize pigs, foundation stones, and provincial civic magnates. Some of the great powers were bent upon disarming; several influential per- sons of both sexes had decided, at a meeting held for the suppression of vice, to abolish standing armies. But, to be more precise as to the date of this epoch, it will be necessary to state that the time was the close of the year B
“nf ‘“¢
2 TIE GREAT LONE LAND.
1869, just twenty-two months ago. Looking back at this most piping period of peace from the stand-point of to- day, it is not at all improbable that even at that tranquil moment a great power, now very much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at each other’s throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power that possessed a deeper insight into the future than did its neighbours. It is hardly to be gainsaid that there was, about that period, another great power popularly supposed to dwell amidst darkness—a power which is said also to possess the faculty of making Scriptural quotations to his own advantage. It is not at all unlikely that amidst this scene of universal quietude he too was watching certain little snow-wrapt hamlets, scenes of straw-yard and deep thatched byre in which cattle munched their winter pro- vender—watching them with the perspective scent of death and destruction in his nostrils; gloating over them with the knowledge of what was to be their fate before another snow time had come round. It could not be supposed that amidst such an era of tranquillity the army of England should have been allowed to remain in a very formidable position. When other powers were talking of disarming, was it not necessary that Great Britain should actually disarm? of course there was a slight difference existing between the respective cases, inasmuch as Great Britain had never armed; but that distinction was not taken into account, or was not deemed of sufficient im- portance to be noticed, except by a few of the opposition
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 3
journals; and is not every one aware that when a country is governed on the principle of parties, the party which is ealled the opposition must be in the wrong? So it was decreed about this time that the fighting force of the British nation should be reduced. It was useless to speak of the chances of war, said the British tax-payer, speak- ing through the mouths of innumerable members of the British Legislature. Had not the late Prince Consort and the late Mr. Cobden come to the same conclusion from the widely different pomts of great exhibitions and free trade, that war could never be? And if, in the face of great exhibitions and universal free trade—even if war did become possible, had we not ambassadors, and legations, and consulates all over the world; had we not military attachés at every great court of Europe; and would we not know all about it long before it commenced? No, no, said the tax-payer, speaking through the same medium as before, reduce the army, put the ships of war out of com~ mission, take your largest and most powerful transport steamships, fill them full with your best and most ex~- perienced skilled military and naval artisans and labourers, send them across the Atlantic to forge guns, anchors, and material of war in the navy-yards of Norfolk and the arsenals of Springfield and Rock Island; and let us hear no more of war or its alarms. It is true, there were some persons who thought otherwise upon this subject, but many of them were men whose views had become warped and deranged in such out-of-the-way places as Southern Russia, Eastern China, Central Hindoostan, Southern Africa, and Northern America—military men, who, in fact, could not be expected to understand questions of grave political economy, astute matters of place and party, upon which the very existence of the parliamentary system B2
4 THE GREAT LONE AND.
depended; and who, from the ignorance of these nice distinctions of liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal, had imagined that the strength and power of the empire was not of secondary importance to the strength and power of a party. But the year 1869 did not pass altogether into the bygone without giving a faint echo of disturbance jn one far-away region of the earth. It is true, that not the smallest breathing of that strife which was to make the succeeding year crimson through the centuries had yet sounded on the continent of Europe. No; all was as quiet there as befits the mighty hush which precedes colossal conflicts. But far away in the very farthest West, so far that not one man in fifty could tell its whereabouts, up somewhere between the Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Supcrior,.along a river called the Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who or what they were, had risen in insurrection. Well- informed persons said these insurgents were only Indians, others, who had relations in America, averred that they were Scotchmen, and one journal, well-known for its clearness upon all subjects connected with the American Continent, asserted that they were Frenchmen. Amongst so much conflicting testimony, it was only natural that the average Englishman should possess no very decided opinions upon the matter; in fact, it came to pass that the average Englishman, having heard that somebody was rebelling against him somewhere or other, looked to his atlas and his journal for information on the subject, and having failed in obtaining any from either source, naturally concluded that the whole thing was something which no fellow could be expected to understand. As, however, they who follow the writer of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
THE GREAT LONE LAND. a 5
to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon.
About the time when Napoleon was carrying half a mil- lion of men through the snows of Russia, a Scotch noble- man of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk ; other British lords had tried in earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century, had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord Selkirk’s experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded it. The earlier ad- venturers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michi- gan. Indeed, so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the Atlantic that all means of commu- nication in that direction was utterly unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its descent of 700 feet,
6 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
lay between them and the ocean, and then only to reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice- bound outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of latest summer. No wonder that the in- fant colony had hard times in store for it—hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and summer inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more before we part. Enough for us now to know that the little colony, in spite of opposition, increased and. multiplied ; people lived in it, were married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years after its formation, it rose in insurrection.
And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain so until the end; if you be eruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me, it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the indivi- dual “1,” and to retain it until we part.
It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a distinguished military func- tionary an intimation to the effect that a company in Her Majesty’s service would be at my disposal, provided I could produce the sum of 11002. Some dozen years previous to the date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process of existence had reached a position among the subalterns of the regiment technically known as first for purchase ; but now, when the moment arrived to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 11002. of regu- lation amount nor the 400/. of over-regulation items (terms
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 7
very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obso- lete) were forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in the race of life. What was to be done? What course lay open? Serve on; let the dull routine of barrack-life grow duller; go from Canada to the Cape, from the Cape to the Mauritius, from Mauritius to Madras, from Madras goodness knows where, and trust to delirium tremens, yellow fever, or cholera morbus for promotion and advancement; or, on the other hand, cut the service, become in the lapse of time governor of a peniten- tiary, secretary to a London club, or adjutant of militia. And yet—here came the rub—when every fibre of one’s existence beat in unison with the true spirit of military ad- venture, when the old feeling which in boyhood had made the study of history a delightful pastime, in late years had grown into a fixed unalterable longing for active service, when the whole current of thought ran in the direction of adventure—no matter in what climate, or under what cir- cumstances—it was hard beyond the measure of words to sever in an instant the link that bound one to a life where such aspirations were still possible of fulfilment ; to separate one’s destiny for ever from that noble profession of arms; to become an outsider, to admit that the twelve best years of life had been a useless dream, and to bury oneself far away in some Western wilderness out of the reach or sight of red coat or sound of bugle—sights and sounds which old asso- ciations would have made unbearable. Surely it could not be done; and so, looking abroad into the future, it was difficult to trace a path which could turn the flank of this formidable barrier flung thus suddenly into the highway of life.
Thus it was that one, at least, in Great Britain watched with anxious gaze this small speck of revolt rising so far
8 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
away in the vast wilderness of the North-West ; and when, about the beginning of the month of April, 1570, news came of the projected despatch of an armed force from Canada against the malcontents of Red River, there was one who beheld in the approaching expedition the chance of a solu- tion to the difficulties which had beset him in his career. That one was myself.
There was little time to be lost, for already, the cable said, the arrangements were in a forward state; the staff of the little force had been organized, the rough outline of the expedition had been sketched, and with the opening of navigation on the northern lakes the first move would be commenced. Going one morning to the nearest telegraph station, I sent the following message under the Atlantic to America :— To , Winnipeg Expedition. Please remember me.” ‘When words cost at the rate of four shil- lings each, conversation and correspondence become of ne- cessity limited. In the present instance I was only allowed the use of ten words to convey address, signature, and substance, and the five words of my message were framed both with a view to economy and politeness, as well as in a manner which by calling for no direct answer still left un- decided the great question of success. Having despatched my message under the ocean, I determined to seek the Horse Guards in a final effort to procure unattached pro- motion in the army. It is almost unnecessary to remark that this attempt failed ; and as I issued from the audience in which I had been informed of the utter hopelessness of my request, I had at least the satisfaction of having reduced my chances of fortune to the narrow limits of a single throw. Pausing atthe gate of the Horse Guards I reviewed in a moment the whole situation ; whatever was to be the result there was no time for delay, and so, hailing a hansom,
ITE GREAT LONE LAND. 9
I told the cabby to drive to the office of the Cunard Steam- ship Company, Old Broad Street, City.
« What steamer sails on Wednesday for America?”
“The ‘Samaria’ for Boston, the ‘Marathon’ for New York.”
“The ‘Samaria’ broke her shaft, didn’t she, last voyage, and was a missing ship for a month??? I asked.
“ Yes, sir,” answered the clerk.
“Then book me a passage in her,” I replied; “she’s not likely to play that prank twice in two voyages.”
10 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
CHAPTER II.
Tue “ Sasarra "—Across tue ATLantic-—Simemates—Tne Desrort or tHE Deck—“Keer wer Nor’-West”—DEMOCRAT VERSUS Repusiuican—A First Giruurrse—Bosron.
PoriticaL economists and newspaper editors for years have dwelt upon the unfortunate fact that Ireland is not a manu- facturing nation, and does not export largely the products of her soil. But persons who have lived in the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail daily from the United Kingdom, must have ar- rived at a conclusion totally at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under the sun which manu- factures the material called man so readily as does that grass-covered island. Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, says the political economist. Indeed, my good sir, you are wholly mistaken. She is not only a manufacturing nation, but she manufactures nations. You do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines, but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me on board this ocean steam- ship “Samaria” and Jook at them. The good ship has run down the channel during the night and now lies at anchor in Queenstown harbour, waiting for mails and passengers. The latter came quickly and thickly enough. No poor, ill-
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 11
fed, miserably dressed crowd, but fresh, and fair, and strong, and well clad, the bone and muscle and rustic beauty of the land; the little steam-tender that plies from the shore to the ship is crowded at every trip, and you can scan them as they come on board in batches of seventy or eighty. Some eyes among the girls are red with crying, but tears dry quickly on young cheeks, and they will be laughing before an hour is over. “Let them go,” says the economist; “we have too many mouths to feed in these little islands of ours; their going will give us more room, more cattle, more chance to keep our acres for the few; let them go.” My friend, that is Just half the picture, and no more; we may get a peep at the other half before you and I part.
It was about five o’clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the “Samaria ” steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and rounding out into Atlantic turned herhead towardsthe western horizon. The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland’s southmost shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off summit of some inland moun- tain; and as evening came down over the still tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through phos- phorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in distance till there lay around only the unbroken circle of the sea.
On Boarp.—A trip across the Atlantic is now-a-days a very ordinary business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage —it isa run, you may almost count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but don’t expect them, and you won’t add a sense of disappoint-
12 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
ment to one of discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that north or south of 35° north and south latitude there exists no such thing as pleasant sailing.
But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life, and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who, nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in ten days. There is the nautical ]andsman who tells you that he has been eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good Hope, and who is gene- rally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this intimacy has been on the de- cline for some days, and, as he has committed the unpar- donable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a subject connected with the general direction and termina- tion of the Gulf Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate. Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port- negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a grateful nation, for three ° youthfal Fusbies, who now serve their country in various parts of the world. She does not suffer from sea-sickness, but occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the administration of the stimulant already
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 13
referred to. It is a singular fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence ofthe early gareer of the major ; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an iceberg has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense suffering undergone by the major during the period of his wound, owing to the seareity of the article ice in tropical countries. Then on deck we have the inevitable old sailor who is perpetually engaged in scraping the vestiges of paint from your favourite seat, and who, having arrived at the completion of his monotonous task after four day’s incessant labour, is found on the morning of the fifth en- gaged in smearing the paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and rug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the Jeer in his eye and the roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a chuckle as you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever wielded suck ower, what czar or kaiser had ever such obedience yielded to their decrees? This man, who on shore is no- thing, is here on his deck a very pope; he is infallible. Canute could not stay the tide, but our sea-king regulates the sun. Charles the Fifth could not make half a dozen clocks go in unison, but Captain Smith can make it twelve o’clock any time he pleases ; nay, more, when the sun has made it twelve o’clock no tongue of bell or sound of clock can proclaim time’s decree until it has been ratified by the fiat of the captain ; and even in his misfortunes what gran- deur, what absence of excuse or crimination of others in the
14 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
honr of his disaster! Who has not heard of that captain who sailed away from Liverpool one day bound for America? He had been hard worked on shore, and it was said that when he songht the seclusion of his own cabin he was not unmindful of that comfort which we are told the first navi- gator of the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The Isle of Man was passed; but unfor- tunately, on the second day out, the good ship struck the shore of the north-cast coast of Ireland and became a total wreck, As the weather was extremely fine, and there ap- peared to he no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade. During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man had been passed at such an hour on such a day, and the circumstance duly reported to the cap- tain, who, it was said, was below. It was also stated that having received the report of the passage of the Calf of Man the captain had ordered the ship to be kept in a north-west course until further orders. About six hours later the vessel went ashore on the coast of Ireland. Such was the evidence of the first officer. The captain was shortly after called and examined,
“Tt appears, sir,” said the president of the court, “ that the passing of the Calf of Man was duly reported to you by the first officer. May Task,sir, what course you ordered. to be steered upon receipt of that information ? ”
“ North-west, sir,” answered the captain ; “I said, ‘ Keep her north-west.’ ”
“ North-west,” repeated the president ; “ a very excellent general course for making the coast of America, but not until you had cleared the channel and were well into the Atlantic. Why, sir, the whole of Ireland lay between you and America on that conrse.”
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 15
“Can’t help that, sir; can’t help that, sir,’ replied the sea-king in a tone of half-contemptuous pity, “ that the whole of Ireland should have been so very unreasonable as to intrude itself in such a position.”
And yet, with all the despotism of the deck, what kindly spirits are these old sea-captains with the freckled hard- knuckled hands and the grim storm-seamed faces! What honest genuine hearts are lying buttoned up beneath those rough pea-jackets! If all despots had been of that kind perhaps we shouldn’t have known quite as much about Parliamentary Institutions as we do.
And now, while we have been talking thus, the “Samaria” has been getting far out into mid Atlantic, and yet we know not one among our fellow-passengers, although they do not number much above a dozen: a merchant from Maryland, a sea-captain from Maine, a young doctor from Pennsylvania, a Massachusetts man, a Rhode Islander, a German geologist going to inspect seams in Colorado, a priest’s sister from Ireland going to look after-some little property left her by her brother, a poor fellow who was always ill, who never appeared at table, and who alluded to the demon sea-sickness that preyed upon him as “it.” “Tt comes on very bad at night. It prevents me touch- ing food. It never leaves me,” he would say ; and in truth this terrible “ it” never did leave him until the harbour of Boston was reached, and even then, I fancy, dwelt in his thoughts during many a day on shore.
The sea-captain from Maine was a violent democrat, the Massachusetts man a rabid republican; and many a fierce battle waged between them on the vexed questions of state rights, negro suffrage, and free trade in liquor. To many Englishmen the terms republican and democrat may seem synonymous; but not between radical and conservative,
16 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
between outmost Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so these units of American political controversy were microscopic representa- tives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words. The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation ; the democrat held opinions not very easy of description, something of a universalist and semi- unitarian tendency ; these opinions became frequently inter- mixed with their political jargon, forming that curious combination of ideas which to unaccustomed ears sounds slightly blasphemous. I recollect a very earnest American once saying that he considered all religious, political, social, and historical teaching should be reduced to three subjects —the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the Chicago Republican Platform of 1860. On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a per- son whose nerves were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to ob- tain an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antago- nist. In fact it was to the weakness of the latter’s nervous system that we were indebted for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been ordered by his’ medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed-us, with the gloomiest forebodings. He hada very powerful presentiment that we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our destruction was to
THE GREAT LONE LAND. . 17
be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he re- peatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really des- tined to take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other- wise, would ever induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him and the person of that bosom’s partner. It was drawing near the end of the voyage when an event occurred which, thcagh in itself of a most trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our little party. The priest’s sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect, announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact, called her his “little duck.” This announcement, which was made generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish “darned old fool.” Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or amorous reve- lations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm and misty fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life itself,.had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of New England. To those whose c
18 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
lives are spent in ceaseless movement over the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island, who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of ocean : small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness of which prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain summit—one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the Cape be St. Ann’s or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland lie scattered many land- scapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and forest, all unseen, 211 unknown to the wanderer who for the first time seeks the American shore ; yet instinctively their presence is felt in that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the ocean ; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these immense inland seas, these mighty rivers whose waters scek their mother ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western horizon of the Atlantic. The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the shores of Massachusetts as the “ Samaria,” under her fullest head of steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 19
was an ohject of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island can make it. If ever that much- talked-of conflict between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destized to quit the realms of fancy for those of fact, Boston, st least, will rest as safe from the destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the landseape. “There, sir, is Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of Bunker’s Hill ;”” and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her lamps, before the “ Samaria,” swinging round in the fast-running tide, Jay, with quict screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New England’s oldest city. ;
“Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker’s Hill,” said the sea-captain from Maine; “just like the ill-mannered republican euss!’? It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the information given me by his political opponent. “Never mind,” he said, “ to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned liquor law in every hotel in their city.”
c 2
20 NITE GREAT LONE LAND.
Boston has a clean, English look about it, pecu- jiar to it alone of all the cities in the United States, Its streets, running in curious curves, as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of prettily- dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty, and piquante; while the western states, by drawing fully balf their male population from New England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a glance. The ladies, thus Jeft at home, have not been idle: their colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man in “ Hudibras,”—
“Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;”
and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regietted that this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston should not have been found capable of association with the duties of domestie life. Without going deeper into topics which are better understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are nevertheless slightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the inculea- tion at ladies’ colleges of. that somewhat rude but forcible home truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned upon the subject of female excellence, should not be forgotten.
There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more likely to notice and complain of the short-comings
WUE GREAT LONE LAND. Q3
of a social habit or system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction ; hut I cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual characteristics of the new place in which he
finds himself: they do not strike him as things to be
objected to, or even wondered at; they are simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning; but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup, and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to do in the hotel—a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill’s definition of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this document—such as not getting up very early—you will not be sent to the penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would imply a necessity for trouble and exer-
tion on the part of the richly-apparelled gentleman who.
does you the honour of receiving your petitions and grossly
22, THE GREAT LUNE LAND.
overcharging you at the office—no, you have simply to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expeetorate profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is upparently the one saving clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine—you, who have never yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction —that this tyranny is confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay moncy in the ordinary travelling ivansactions of life—your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor, your steamboat-clerk—takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a manner which tells you plainly enough that he is conferring a very great favour by so doing. He is in all probability realizing a profit of from three to four hundred per cent. on whatever the transaction may be; but, all the same, although yon are fully aware of this fuet, you are nevertheless almost overwhelmed with the sense of the very deep obligation which you owe to the man who thus deigns to receive your money.
It was about ten o’clock at night when the steamer anchored at the wharf at Boston. Not until midday on the following day were we (the passengers) allowed to leave the vessel. The cause of this delay arose from the fact that the collector of customs of the port of Boston was an in- dividual of great social importance; and as it would have been inconvenient for him to attend at an earlier hour for
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 93
the purpose of being present at the examination of our baggage, we were detained prisoners until the day was far enough advanced to suit his convenience. From a conversation which subsequently I had with this gentle- man. at our hotel, I discovered that he was more obliging in his general capacity of politician and prominent citizen than he was in his particular duties of customs’ col- lector. Like many other instances of the kind in the United States, his was a case of evident unfitness for the post he heid. A socially smaller man would have made a much better customs official. Unfortunately for the comfort of the public, the remuneration attached to appointments in the postal and customs departments is fre- quently very large, and these situations are eagerly sought as prizes in the lottery of political life—prizes, too, which can only be held for the short term of four years. As a consequence, the official who holds his situation by right of political servicé rendered to the chief of the predominant clique or party in his state does not consider that he owes to the public the service of his office. In theory he is a public servant; in reality he becomes the master of the public. This is, however, the fault of the system and not of the individual.
24 THE GREAT LONE LANG.
CHAPTER ITI.
Bexxer—New York—NiiGara—Toroxto— Sprinc-time ty Que- Bec—A Suswmoxs—A Stanr—Iy coop Compaxy—Srnuirrine & Pree—An Exrepiriox-——-Poor Caxapa—Ax Oxp Grinese aT a New Laxsp—Rivat Rovrrs—Ciayxce or Masters—Tue Rep River Revort—Tue Harr-erreevs—Earty Setrirrs —Buxewuse—* Eaters oF Pemuicay "—M. Louts Riuet—Tus Mcrver or Scort.
Wuen a city or a nation his but one military memory, it clings to it with all the affectionate tenacity of an old maid for her solitary poodle or parrot. Boston— supreme over any city in the Republice—can boast of possessing one military memento: she has the Hill of Bunker. Bunker has long passed into the bygone; but his hill remains, and is likely to remain for many a long day. It is not improbable that the life, character and habits, sayings, even the writings of Bunker—perhaps he couldn’t write !—are familiar to many persons in the United States; but it is in Boston and Massachusetts that Bunker holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker’s chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier’s hat—trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker’s Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated
TUE GREAT LONE LAND. 95
redcoat are not as valuable incentives to correct legislation as that historic “ bauble’ of our own constitution.
Meantime we must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told frequently enough—and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them. The world dees not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose cnor- mous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great heart of the past.
Our course, however, lies west. We will trace the onward. stream “of empire in many portions of its way; we will reach its limits, and pass beyond it into the lone spaces which yet silently await its coming; and farther still, where the solitude knows not of its approach and the Indian still reigns in savage supremacy.
Nuacara.—They have all had their say about Niagara. From Hennipin to Dike, travellers have written much about this famous cataract, and yet, put all together, they have not said much about it ; description depends so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something ‘like. If there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are generally hard up for a comparison.. In the matter of roar, however, comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the Battle of the Nile—a statement not likely to be challenged, as the survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and
26 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
this similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly bring it in would be as much aguinst the stock-book of travel as to omit the duel, the stecple-chase, er the escape from the mad bull in a thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyra- mids are to Egypt—what Vesuvius is to Naples—what the field of Waterloo has been for fifty years to Brussels, so is Niagara to the entire continent of North America.
It was early in the month of September, three years — prior to the time I now write of, when I first visited this famous spot. The Niagara season was at its height: the monster hotels were ringing with song, music, and dance ; tourists were doing the falls, and éouts were doing the tourists. Newly-married couples were conducting them- selves in that demonstrative manner characteristic of such people in the New World. Buffalo girls had apparently responded freely to the invitation contained in their favourite nigger melody. Venders of Indian bead-work ; itinerant philosophers; camera-obscura men; imitation squaws ; free and enlightened negroes; guides to go under the cataract, who should have been sent over it; spiritual- ists, phrenologists, and nigger minstrels had made the place theirown. Shoddy and petroleum were having “a high old time of it,’ spending the dollar as though that “ almighty article had become the thin end of nothing whittled fine :” altogether, Niagara was 2 place to be instinctively shunned.
Just four months after this time the month of January was drawing to aclose. King Frost, holding dominion over Niagara, had worked strange wonders with the scene. Folly and ruffianism had been frozen up, shoddy and petroleum had betaken themselves to other haunts, the bride strongly demonstrative or weakly reciprocal had
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 37
vanished, the monster hotels were silent and deserted, the free and enlightened negro had gone back to Buffalo, and the girls of that thriving city no longer danced, as of yore, “under de light of de moon.” Well, Niagara was worth seeing then—and the less we say about it, perhaps, the better. “Pat,” said an American to a staring Irishman lately landed, “did you ever see such a fall as that in the old country?” “ Begarra! Iniverdid; but look here now, why wouldn’t it fall? what’s to hinder it from filling?”
When I reached the city of Toronto, capital of the pro- vince of Ontario, I found that the Red River Expeditionary Force had already been mustered, previous to its start for the North-West. Making my way to the quarters of the commander of the Expedition, I was greeted every now and again with a “ You should have been here last week ; every soul wants to get on the Expedition, and you hav’n’t achanee. The whole thing is complete; we start to-mor- row.” Thus I encountered those few friends who on such oceasions are as certain to offer their pithy condolences as your neighbour at the dinner-table when you are late is sure to tell you that the soup and fish were delicious. At last I met the commander himself.
“My good fellow, there’s not a vacant berth for you,” he said; “ I got your telegram, but the whole army in Canada wanted to get on the Expedition.”
«J think, sir, there is one berth still vacant,” I answered.
“ What is it?”
“ You will want to know what they are doing in Minne- sota and along the flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you,” I said.
* You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal by first train to-morrow; by to- night’s mail I will write to the general, recommending your
28 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may yet be all right.”
I thanked him, said “ Good-bye,” and in little more than twenty-four hours later found myself in Montreal, the com- mercial capital of Canada.
“Let me see,” said the general next morning, when I presented myself before him, “you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last month, didn’t you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will require a man there, but the thing doesn’t rest with me; it will have to be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your regiment, pending the receipt of an answer.”
So I went back to my regiment to wait.
Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec—that portion of America known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green—the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds of sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are drowsy through the long summer with the scent and the hum of bee and flower! Still the long line of the Canadas admits of a varied spring. When the trees are green at Lake St. Clair, they are . scarcely budding at Kingston, they are leafless at Mon- treal, and Quebec is white with snow. Even ‘between Montreal and Quebec, a short night’s steaming, there exists a difference of ten days in the opening of the summer. But Jate as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its love-
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 29
liest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a Jandscape the eold tyranny of winter. And with what loveliness does the whole face of plain, river, Jake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to look at him—the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness—“ the birch-tree,” as the old Saxon said, “ becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven ”—the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters— far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern, and soft velvet moss, and white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year’s autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again and again in after-time—these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not easy to find. From the Queen’s rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far- stretching river, foaming caseade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its fields of green, the great islein mid-channel, the many shades of colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field—in what other spot on the earth’s broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many of these “ things of beauty ” which the eye loves to feast on and to place in memory as joys for ever ?
30 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
I had been domiciled m Quebce for about a week, when there appeared one morning in General Orders a para- eraph commanding my presence in Montreal to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It was on the evening of the Sth June, exactly two months after the despatch of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the broad curves of the majestic river had shut ont the rugged outline of the citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant thought at the prospect before me. I little knew then the limits of my wanderings—I little thought that for many and many a day my track would lie with almost undeviating precision towards the settmmg sun, that summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and that still: the nightly bivouae would be made a little nearer to that west whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.
But though all this was of course unknown, enough was still visible in the foreground of the future to make even the swift-moving paddles seem laggards as they beat to foam the long reaches of the darkening Cataraqui. “ We must leave matters to yourself, I think,” said the General, when I saw him for the last time in Montreal, “ you will be best judge of how to get on when you know and see the ground. I will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but if you find it feasible, it would be well if you could drop down the Red River and join Wolseley before he gets to the place. You know what I want, but how to do it, I will leave alto- gether to yourself. For the rest, you can draw on us for any
THE GREAT LONE LAND. ol
money you require. Take care of those northern fellows. Good-bye, and. success.”
This was on the 12th June, and on the morning of the 13th I started by the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the West. On that morning the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada was in a high state of excitement. It was about to attempt, for the first time, the despatch of a Lightning Express for Toronto ; and it was to carry from Montreal, on his way to Quebec, one of the Royal Princes of England, whose sojourn in the Canadian capita] was drawing to a close. The Lightning Express was not attended with the glowing success predicted for it by its originators. At some thirty or forty miles from Montreal it came heavily to grief, owing to some misfortune having attended the progress of a preceding train over the rough uneven track. <A delay of two hours having supervened, the Lightning Express got into motion again, and jolted along with tolerable celerity to Kingston. When darkness set in it worked itself up to a high pitch of fury, and rushed along the low shores of Lake Ontario with a velocity which promised disaster. The car in which I travelled was one belonging to the director of the Northern Railroad of Canada, Mr. Cumber- land, and we had in it a minister of fisheries, one of edu- cation, a governor of a province, a speaker of a house of commons, and a colonel of a distinguished rifle regiment. Being the last car of the train, the vibration caused by the unusual rate of speed over the very rough rails was ex- cessive ; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the ear leaving the track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an
32 TE GREAT LONE LAND.
embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disas- trous as is usually supposed, if taken in the society of such pillars of the state as those I have already mentioned. Whether a speaker of a house of commons and a governor of a large province, to say nothing of a minister of fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being “ telescoped through colliding,” I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my distinguished fellow-travellers.
I remained long enough in the city of Toronto to pro- vide myself with a wardrobe suitable to the countries I was about to seek. In one of the principal commercial streets of the flourishing capital of Ontario I found a small tailoring establishment, at the door of which stood an excellent representation of a colonial. The garments be- longing to this figure appeared to have been originally” designed from the world-famous pattern of the American flag, presenting above a combination of stars, and below having a tendency to stripes. The general groundwork of the whole rig appeared to be shoddy of an inferior descrip- tion, and a small card attached to the figure mtimated that the entire fit-out was procurable at the very reasonable sum of ten dollars. It was impossible to resist the fascination of this attire. While the bargain was being transacted the tailor looked askance at the garments worn by his cus- tomer, which, having only a few months before emanated from the establishment of a well-known London cutter, presented a considerable contrast to the new investment ; he even ventured upon some remarks which evidently had for their object the elucidation of the enigma, but a word that such clothes as those worr by me were utterly un- suited to the bush repelled all further questionmg—indeed, so pleased did the voor fellow appear’in a pecuniary point
TUE GREAT LUNE LAND. 33
of view, that he insisted upon presenting me gratis with a neck-tie of green and yellow, fully in keeping with the other articles composing the costume. And now, while I am thus arranging these little preliminary matters so essen- tial to the work I was about to engage in, let us examine for a moment the oljects aud scope of that work, and settle the limits and extent of the first portion of my journey, and sketch the route of the Expedition. It will be recollected that the Expedition destined for the Red River of the North had started some time before for its true base of operations, namely Fort Wilham, on the north-west shore of Lake Superior. The distance intervening between Toronto and Thunder Bay is abont GUU miles, 140 being by railroad conveyance and 500 by water. The island-studded ex- panse of Lake Huron, known as Georgian Bay, receives at the northern extremity the waters of the great Lake Superior, but a difference of level amounting to upwards of thirty feet between the broad bosoms of these two vast expanses of fresh water has rendered necessary the con-_ struction of a canal of considerable magnitude. This canal is situated upon American territory—a fact which gives our friendiy cousins the exclusive possession of the great northern basin, and which enabled them at the very outset of the Red River affair to cause annoyance and delay to the Canadian Expedition. Poor Canada! when one looks at you along the immense length of yout noble river-boundary, how vividly become apparent the evils under which your youth has grown to manhood! Looked at from home by every succeeding colonial minister through the particular whig, or tory spectacles of his party, subject to violent and radival alterations of poliey becanse of some party vote in a Legis- lative Assembly 3000 miles from your nearest coast-line, your own politicians, for years, too timid to grasp the limits D
34 TIE GREAT LONE LAND.
of your possible future, parties every where in your pro- vinces, and of every kind, exeept a national party; no breadth, no depth, no earnest striving to make you great amongst the nations, each one for himself and no one for the country; men fighting for a sect, for a provinee, for a nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this while, close alongside, your great rival grew with giant’s growth, Jooking far into the future before him, eutting his cloth with perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to in after-time, digging his canals and grading his rail- roads, with one eye on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing, annexing, out- maneuvring and flanking those colonial bodies who sat in. solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy pro- clamations and despatches anent boundary-lines, of which they knew next to nothing. Macaulay laughs at poor Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out that Cape Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were other and later Neweastles whose geographical knowledge on matters American were not a whit superior. Poor Canada! they muddled you out of Maine, and the open harbour of Portland, out of Rouse’s Point, and the command of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the Rocky Mountains. It little matters whether it was the treaty of 1783, or 18158, or 721, or 748, or 771, the worst of every bargain, at all times, fell to you.
I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault St. Marie enabled the Americans to delay the progress of the Red River Expedition. The embargo put upon the Canadian vessels originated, however, in the State, and not the Federal, authorities ; that is to say, the State of Michi- gan issued the prohibition against the passage of the steam- boat, and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally,
JHE GREAT LONE LAND. 35
Washington overruled the decision of Michigan—a feat far more feasible now than it would have been prior to the Southern war—and the steamers were permitted to pass through into the waters of Lake Superior. From thence to Thunder Bay was only the steaming of four-and-twenty hours through a lake whose vast bosom is the favourite playmate of the wild storm-king of the North. But although full half the total distance from Toronto to the Red River had been traversed when the Expedition reached Thunder Bay, not a twentieth of the time nor one hundredth part of the labour and fatigue had been accomplished. For a distance of 600 miles there stretched away to the north- west a vast tract of rock-fringed lake, swamp, and forest; lying spread in primeval savagery, an untravelled wilder- ness; the home of the Ojibbeway, who here, entrenched amongst Nature’s fastnesses, has long called this land his own. Long before Wolfe had scaled the heights of Abra- ham, before even Marlborough, and Engene, and Villers, and Vendome, and Villeroy had commenced to fight their giants’ fights in divers portions of the low countries, some adventurous subjects of the Grand Monarque were forcing their way, for the first time, along the northern shores of Lake Superior, nor stopping there: away to the north-west there dwelt wild tribes to be sought out by two classes of men—by the black robe, who laboured for souls; by the trader, who sought for skins—and a hard race had these two widely different pioneers who sought at that early day these remote and friendless regions, so hard that it would almost seem as though the great powers of good and of evil had both despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain dominion over these distant savages. It was acurious contest : on the one hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the dz
36 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
other, the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary—~a contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain ramble away into its depths; but it must not be, or else the journey I have to travel myself would never even begin. Vast as is the accumulation of fresh water in Lake Superior, the area of the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or “ divide” of the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the royageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson Bay. Here, at an elevation of 1500 feet above the sea level, and of 900 above Lake Superior, he launches his canoe upon water flowing north and west; then he has before him hundreds of miles of quiet-lying lake, of wildly- rushing river, of rock-broken rapid, of foaming cataract, but through it all runs ever towards the north the ocean- secking current. As later on we shall see many and many a mile of this wilderness—living in it, eating in it, sleeping in it—although reaching it from a different direction alto- gether from the one spoken of now, I anticipate, by alluding to it here, only as illustrating the track of the Expedition between Lake Superior and Red River. For myself, my route was to be altogether a different one. I was to follow the lines of railroad which ran out into the frontier territorics of the United States, then, leaving the iron horse, I was to make my way to the settlements on the west shore of Lake Superior, and from thence to work round
THE GREAT LUNE LAND. 37
to the American boundary-line at Pembina on the Red River; so far through American territory, and with distinct and definite instructions; after that, altogether to my own resources, but with this summary of the general’s wishes : “J will not ask you to visit Fort Garry, but however you manage it, try and reach: Wolseley before he gets through from Lake Superior, and let him know what these Red River men are going te do.” Thus the military Expedi- tion under Colonel Wolseley was to work its way across from Lake Superior to Red River, through British terri- tory; I was to pass round by the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of Fenian intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, endeavour to reach Colonel Wolseley beyond Red River, with all tidings as to state of parties and chances of fight. But as the reader has heard only a very brief mention of the state of affairs in Red River, and as he may very naturally be inclined to ask, What is this Expedition going to do—why are these men sent through swamp and wilderness at all? a few explanatory words may not be out of place, serving to make matters now and at a later period much more intelligible. I have said in the opening chapter of this book, that the little com- munity, or rather a portion of the little community, of Red River Settlement had risen in insurrection, protesting vehemently against certain arrangements made between the Governor of Canada and the Hon. Hudson’s Bay Company relative to the cession of territorial rights and governing powers. After forcibly expelling the Governor of the country appointed by Canada, from the frontier station at Pembina, the French malcontents had proceeded to other and. still more questionable proceedings. Assembling in large numbers, they had fortified portions of the road between Pembina and Fort Garry, and had taken armed
38 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
possession of the latter place, in which large stores of pro- visions, clothing, and merchandise oi all descriptions had been stored by the Hudson Bay Company. The oceupa- tion of this fort, which stands close to the confluence of the Red and Assineboine Rivers, nearly midway between the American boundary-line and the southern shore of Lake Winnipeg, gave the French party the virtual command of the entire settlement. The abundant stores of clothing and provisions were not so important as the arms and ammuni- tion which also fell into their hands—a battery of ninc- pound bronze guns, complete in every respect, besides several smaller pieces of ordnance, together with large store of Enfield rifles and old brown-bess smooth bores. The place was, in fuet, abundantly supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this point had characterized all the movements of the originator and mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to sce a thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion, becomes respectable when it is carried out with courage, energy, and decision. And, in truth, up to this point in the little insurrection it is not easy to condemn the wild Metis of the North-west —wild as the bison which he hunted, unreclaimed as the prairies he loved so well, what knew he of State duty or of loyalty? He knew that this land was his, and that strong men were coming to square it into rectangular farms and to push him farther west by the mere pressure of civi- lization. He had heard of England and the English, but it was in a shadowy, vague, unsubstantial sort of way, unaecompanied by any fixed idea of government or law. The Company—not the Hudson Bay Company, but the Company—zepresented for him all law, all power, all govern-
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 39
ment. Protection he did not need—his quick ear, his unerring eye, his untiring horse, his trading gun, gave him that; but « market for his taurreau, for his buffalo robe, for his lynx, fox, and wolf skins, for the produce of his summer hunt and winter trade, he did need, and in the forts of the Company he found it. His wants were few—a capdte of blue eluth, with shining brass buttons; a cap, with beads and tassel ; a blanket; a gun, and ball and powder; a box of matches, and a knife, these were ail he wanted, and at every fort, from the mountain to the banks of his well. loved River Rouge, he found them, too. What were these new people coming to do with him? Who could tell? If they meant him fair, why did they not say so? why did they not come up and tell him what they wanted, and what they were going to do for him, and ask him what he wished for? But, no; they either meant to outwit him, or they held him of so smali account that it mattered little what he thought about it; and, with all the pride of his mother’s race, that idea of his bemg slighted hurt him even more than the idea of his being wronged. Did not every thing point to his disappearance under the new order of things? He had only to look round him to verify the fact; for years before this annexation to Canada had been carried into effect stragglers from the east had occasionally reached Red River. It is true that these new-comers found much to foster the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon settler. They found a few thousand occupants, half-farmers, half-hunters, living under a vast commercial monopoly, which, though it practically rested upon a basis of the most paternal kindness towards its subjects, was theoretically hostile to all oppo- sition. Had these men settled quietly to the usual avoca~ tions of farming, clearing the wooded ridges, fencing the rich expanses of prairie, covering the great swamps and
40 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
plains with herds and flocks, it is probable that all would have gone well between the new-comers and the old pro- prietors. Over that great western thousand miles of prairie there wns room for all. But, no; they came to trade and not to till, and trade on the Red River of the North was conducted upon the most peculiar principles. There was, in fact, but one trade, and that was the fur trade. Now, the fur trade is, for some reason or other, a very curious description of barter. Like some mysterious chemical ‘agency, it pervades and permeates every thing it touches. If a man cuts off legs, cures diseases, draws tecth, sells whiskey, cotton, wool, or any other commodity of civilized or uncivilized life, he will be as sure to do it with a view to furs as any doctor, dentist, or general merchant will be sure to practise his particular calling with a view to the acqui- sition of gold and silver. Thus, then, in the first instance were the new-comers set in antagonism to the Company, und finally to the inhabitants themselves. Let us try and be just to all parties in this little oasis of the Western wilderness. .
The early settlers in a Western country are not by any means persons much given to the study of abstract justice, still less to its practice ; and it is as well, perhaps, that they should not be. They have rough work to do, and they generally do it roughly. The very fact of their coming out so far into the wilderness implies the other fact of their. not being able to dwell quietly and peaceably at home. They are, as it were, the advanced pioneers of civilization who make smooth the way of the coming race. Obstaeles of any kind are their peculiar detestation—if it is a tree, ent it down ; if it is a savage, shoot it down; if it is a half. breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it inust Le said they act up to their convictions.
THE GREAT LUNE LAND. 41
Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the North-west from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but, unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000 persons very naturally ob- jected to have themselves and possessions signed away without one word of consent or one note of'approval. Nay, more than that, these straggling pioncers had on many an occasion ‘taunted the vain half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would dawn upon the benighted country, the half-brecd would seek some western region, the Company would dis- appear, and all the institutions of New World progress would shed prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the new crder of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community, resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns, and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily informing Mr. Governor M‘Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and directing the whole movement, was a young French hali-breed numed Louis Riel—a man possessing
429 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
many of the attributes suited to the leadership of parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of poli- tical disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds—it has occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who surren- dered for 300,0002. their territorial rights? was it the Imperial Government who accepted that surrender ? or was it the Dominion Government to whom the country was in turn retransferred by the Imperial authorities? I answer that the blame of having bungled the whole business belongs collectively to all the great and puissant bodies. - Any ordinary matter-of-fact, sensible man would have managed the whole affair in a few hours; but so many high and potent powers had to consult together, to pen despatches, to speechify, and to lay down the law about it, that the whole affair became hopelessly muddled. Of course, ignorance and carelessness were, as they always are, at the bottom of it all. Nothing would have been easier than to have sent a commissioner from England to Red River, while the negotiations for transfer were pending, who would have ascertained the feelings and wishes of the people of the country relative to the transfer, and would have guaranteed them the exercise of their rights and liberties under any and every new arrangement that might be entered into. Now, it is no excuse for any Government to plead ignorance upon any matter per- taining to the people it governs, or expects to govern, for a Government has no right to be ignorant on any such matter, and its ignorance must be its condemnation; yet this is the plea put forward by the Dominion Government
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 43
of Canada, and yet the Dominion Government and the Imperial Government had ample opportunity of arriving at a correct knowledge of the state of affairs in Red River, if they bad only taken the trouble to do so. Nay, more, it is an undoubted fact that warning had been given to the Dominion Government of the state of feeling amongst the half-breeds, and the phrase, “they are only eaters of pemmican,” so cutting to the Metis, was then first origi- nated by a distinguished Canadian politician.
And now let us see what the “eaters of pemmican” pro- ceeded to do after their forcible occupation of Fort Garry. Well, it must be admitied they behaved in a very indiffe- rent manner, going steadily from bad to worse, and much befriended in their seditious proceedings by continued and oft repeated bungling on the part of their opponents. Early in the month of December, 1869, Mr. M‘Dougall issued. two proclamations from his post at Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the high-sounding title of “ Conservator of the Peace,” “ to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were to be found.” Now, of the first pro- clamation it will be only necessary to remark, that Her Majesty the Queen had not done any thing of the kind imputed to her; and of the second it has probably already occurred to the reader that the title of “Conservator of the Peace” was singularly inappropriate to one vested with such sanguinary and destructive powers as was the holder of this commission, who was to “assault, fire upon, and break into houses,and to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse people,” and
deh THE GREAT LONE LAND.
generally to conduct himself after the manner of Attila, Genshis Khan, the Emperor Theodore, or any other ferocious magnate of ancient or modern times. The oflicer holding this destructive commission thought he could do nothing better than imitate the tactics of his French adversary, accordingly we find him taking possession of the other rectangular building known as the Lower Fort Garry, situated some twenty miles north of the one in which the French had taken post, but unfortunately, or perhaps for- tunately, not finding within its walls the same store of warlike material which had existed in the Fort Garry senior.
The Indians, ever ready to have a band in any fighting which may be “knocking around,” came forward in all the glory of paint, feathers, and pow-wow ; and to the number of fifty were put as garrison into the place. Some hundreds of English and Seotch half-breeds were enlisted, told off into companies under captains improvised for the occasion, and every thing pointed to a very pretty quarrel before many days had run their course. But, in truth, -the hearts of the English and Scotch settlers were not in this business. By nature peaceably disposed, inheriting from their Orkney and Shetland forefathers much of the frugal habits of the Scotchmen, these people only asked to be left in peace. So far the French party had been only fight- ing the battle of every half-breed, whether his father had hailed from the northern isles, the shires of England, or the snows of Lower Canada; so, after a little time, the Scotch and English volunteers began to meli, away, and on the 9th of December the last warrior had disappeared. But the effects of their futile demonstration soon became apparent in the imereasing violence and tyranny of Riel and his followers. The threatened attempt to upset his authority by arraying the Scotch and English half-breeds against him
THR CREAT LONE LAND. 45,
served only to add strength to his party. The number of armed malcontents in Fort Garry became very much increased, clergymen of both parties, neglecting their mani- fest functions, began to take sides in the conflict, and the worst form of religious animosity became apparent in the little community. Emboldened by the presence of some five or six hundred armed followers, Riel determined to strike a blow against the party most obnoxious to him. This was the English-Canadian party, the pioneers of the Western settlement already alluded to as having been previously in antagonism with the people of Red River. Some sixty or seventy of these men, believing in the certain advance of the English foree upon Fort Garry, had taken up a position in the little village of Winnipeg, less than a mile distant from the fort, where they awaited the advance of their adherents pre- vious to making a combined assault upon the French. But Riel proved himself more than a match for his antagonists , marching quickly out of his stronghold, he surrounded the buildings in which they were posted, and, planting a gun in a conspicuously commanding position, summoned them all to surrender in the shortest possible space of time. As is usual on such occasions, and in such circumstances, the whole party did as they were ordered, and marching out—with or without side-arms and military honours his- tory does not relate—were forthwith conducted into close confinement within the walls of Fort Garry. Having by this bold coup got possession not only of the most energetic of his opponents, but also of many valuable American Remington Rifles, fourteen shooters and revolvers, Mr. Riel, with all the vanity of the Indian peeping out, began to imagine himself a very great personage, and as very great personages are sometimes supposed to be believers in the idea that to take a man’s property is qnly to confiscate it,
46 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
and to take his life is merely to execute him, he too commenced to violently sequestrate, annex, and requisition not only divers of his prisoners, but also a considerable share of the goods stored in warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, having particular regard to some hogsheads of old port wine and very potent Jamaica rum. The pro- verl) which has reference to a mendicant suddenly placed in an equestrian position had notable exemplification in the ease of the Provisional Government, and many of his colleagues; going steadily from bad to worse, from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery of a very low type, much supplemented by rum-drunkenness and dictatorial de- bauchery, he and they finally, on the 4th of March, 1879, disregarding some touching appeals for mercy, and with many accessories of needless cruelty, shot to death a helpless Canadian prisoner named Thomas Scott. This act, com- mitted in the coldest of cold blood, bears only one name: the red name of murder—a name which instantly and for ever drew between Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is necdless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the heartless and disgusting cruelty which made the prisoner’s death a foregone conclusion at his mock trial; or of the deeds worse than butchery which characterized the last scene. Still, before quitting the revolting-subject, there is one point that deserves remark, as it seems to illustrate the feeling entertained by the leaders themselves. - On the night of the murder the body was interred in a very deep hole which had been dug within the walls of the
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 47
fort. Two clergymen had asked permission to inter the remains in either of their churches, but this request had been denied. On the annivetsary of the murder, namely, the 4th March, 1871, other powers being then predominant in Fort Garry, a large crowd gathered at the spot where the murdered man had been interred, for the purpose of exhuming the body. After digging for some time they came to an oblong box or coffin in which the remains had been placed, but it was empty, the interment within the walls had been a mock ceremony, and the final resting-place of the body lies hidden in mystery. Now there is one thing very evident from the fact, and that is that Riel and his immediate followers were themselves conscious of the enormity of the deed they had committed, for had they believed that.the taking of this man’s life was really an execution justified upon any grounds of military or political necessity, or a forfeit fairly paid as price for crimes committed, then the hole inside the gateway of Fort Garry would have held its skeleton, and the midnight interment would not have been a senseless lie. The mur- derer and the law both take life—it is only the murderer who hides under the midnight shadows the body of his victim.
48 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
CHAPTER IV.
Cntcaco—* Wiro ts §. B. D.2°—MitwacKre—Tut Great Prsiox— Wiscoxsix—Tue Scevrixne-carn—Tue Trains Bor—Mixxesota— Str. Paco-—I starr ror Lake Screrntor—Tue Foetcere Ciry— ~Best ue“ axp “Goxze ox ”—Tue Exp ov tue Track.
Aas! I have to go a long way back to the city of Toronto, where I had just completed the purchase of a full costume of a Western borderer. On the 10th of June I crossed the Detroit River from Western Canada to the State of Michigan, and travelling by the central railway of that state reached the great city of Chicago on the fol- lowing day. All Americans, but particularly all Western Americans, are very-proud of this big city, which is not yet as old as many of its mhabitants, and they are justly proud of it. It is by very much the largest and the richest of the new cities of the New World. Maps made fifty years ago will be searched in vain for Chicago. Chicago was then a swamp where the skunks, after whom it is called, held undisputed revels. To-day Chicago numbers about 300,000 souls, and it is about “ the livest city in our great Republic, sir.” : Chicago lies almost 1000 miles due west of New York. A traveller leaving the latter city, let us say on Monday morning, finds himself on Tuesday at eight o’clock in the evening in Chicago—one thousand miles in thirty- four hours. In the meantime he will have eaten three
TIE GREAT LONE LAND. 49
meals and slept soundly “on board?’ his palace-car, if he is so minded. For many hundred miles during the latter portion of his journey he will have noticed great tracts of swamp and forest, with towns and cities and settlements interspersed between ; and then, when these tracts of swamp and unreclaimed forest seem to be increasing instead of diminishing, he comes all of a sudden upon a vast, full- grown, bustling city, with tall chimneys sending out much smoke, with heavy horses dragging great drays of bulky freight through thronged and busy streets, and with tall- masted ships and whole fleets of’ steamers lying packed against the crowded quays. He has begun to dream him- self in the West, and lo! there rises up a great city. ‘“ But is not this the West?” will ask the new-comer from the Atlantic states. “ Upon your own showing we are here 1000 miles from New York, by water 1500 miles to Que- bee; surely this must be the West?” No; for in this New World the West is ever on the move. Twenty years ago Chicago was West; ten years ago it was Omaha; then it was Salt Lake City, and now it is San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean.
This big city, with its monster hotels and teeming traffic, was no new scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on may social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these pre- judices of ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases of ten you will find him most agreeable, a little inquisitive perhaps to know your peculiar belongings, but equally ready to impart to you
E
50 TNE GREAT LONE LAND.
the details of every item connected with his business— altogether a very jolly every-day companion when met on even basis. If you happen to be a military man, he will call you Colonel or General, and expect similar recognition of rank by virtue of his voluntcer services in the 44th Mlinois, or 55th Missourian. At present, and for many years to come, it is and will be a safe method of beginning any observation to a Western American with “I say, General,” and on no account ever to get below the rank of ficld officer when addressing any body holding a socially smaller position than that of bar-keeper. Indeed major-gencrals were as plentiful in the United States at the termination of the great rebellion as brevet-majors were in the British service at the close of the Crimean campaign. It was at Plymouth, I think, that a grievance was esta- Lhished by a youngster on the score that he really could not spit out of his own window without hitting a brevet- major outside ; and it was in a Western city that the man threw his stick at a dog across the road, “missed that dawg, sir, but hit five major-gencrals on t’other side, and "twasn’t a good day for major-generals either, sir’? Not less necessary than knowledge of social position is know- ledge of the political institutions and characters of the West. Not to know Rufus P. W. Smidge, or Ossian W. Dodge of Minnesota, is simply to argue yourself utterly unknown. My first experience of Chicago fully impressed me with this fact. I had made the acquaintance of an American gentleman “on board” the train, and as we ap- proached the city along the sandy margin of Lake Michigan he kindly pointed out the buildings and public institutions of the neighbourhood.
“There, sir,” he finally said, “there is our new monu- meat to Stephen B. Douglas.”
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 51
I looked in the direction indicated, and beheld some blocks of granite in course of erection into a pedestal. I confess to having been entirely ignorant at the time as to what claim Stephen B. Douglas may have had to this public recognition of his worth, but the tone of my in- formant’s voice was sufficient to warn me that every body knew Stephen B. Douglas, and that ignorance of his carcer might prove hurtful to the feelings of my new acquaintance, so I carefully refrained from showing by word or look the drawback under which I laboured. There was with me, however, a travelling companion who, to an ignorance of Stephen B. D. fully equal to mine own, added a truly British indignation that monumental honours _aiouid be bestowed upon one whose fame was still faint stzees the Atlantic. Locking partly at the monument, pacity 3¢ our American informant, and partly at me, he iustily ejaculated,“ Who the devil was Stephen B. Douglas?”
Alas! the murder was out, and out in its most aggra- vating form. I hastily attempted a reseue. “ Not know who Stephen B. Douglas was?” I exclaimed, in a tone of mingled reproof and surprise. “Is it possible you don’t know who Stephen B. Douglas was ?”
Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my fellow-traveller was not to be done. « All deuced fine,” he went on, “Tl bet you a fiver you don’t know who he was either !”
I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he persisted in his reckless offers of “ laying fivers,” and our, united ignorance stood fatally revealed.
Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as fertile as the luxuriant vege- tation of thousands of years decaying under a semi-tropic
’ £2
52 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
sun could make it. Tllinois is in round numbers 400 miles from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, _ unwaters the south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant fact—5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state! more than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day, thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own produce, north, east, end south, and boasts a population scarcely inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago since William Cobbett . laboured long and earnestly to prove that English emi- grants who pushed on into the “ wilderness of the Illinois went straight to misery and ruin.”
Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100 miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being also some 100 miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by water to New York
THE GREAT LONE LAND. ID
and the Atlantic, Milwaukie carries off no small share of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing states of the American Union. Secan- dinavia, Germany, and Ircland have made this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Missis- sippi. No one stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill the sheds at the depdt; the sight is too common to cause interest now, and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd of men and women and many children, cating all manner of strange food while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunkmaker of Bergen or Upsal can devise—such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or Christian—clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray of mid- Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion ; altogether a homely people, but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast human machine which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth into the same image and likeness of the
f. THE GREAT LONE LAND.
Qe
inevitable Yankee—grinds him too into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling of dread, for it is the question of the well-being of the whole human family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve it ; but one thing is certain—so far the experiment bodes ill for success. Too often the best and noblest attributes of the - people wither and die out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt, Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old distinetions must oecur before the new elements can arise, and that from it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society — “ Sin itself be found, A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun.”
But ai present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American society, there seems little reason to hope for suck a result. The very groundwork of-the whole plan will
v
TUE GREAT LONE LAND. dd
require alteration. The dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that “honesty is the best policy” must once more come into fashion.
Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of Minnesota. About half that distance lies through the State of Wisconsin, and the remaining half is somewhat unequally divided between Iowa and Minnesota. Leaving Milwaukie at eleven o’clock a.m., one reaches the Mississippi at Prairie-du-Chien at ten o’clock same night; here a steamer ferries the broad swift-running stream, and at North Macgregor, on the Iowa shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American institution. Like every other institution, it has its erities, favourable and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being borne violently along over rough and uneven iron when he could select a stationary resting-place. On the other hand, it is a very great saving of time and expense to travel for some eighty vr one hundred consecutive hours, and this can only be effected by means of the sleeping-car. Take this distance, from New York to St. Paul, as an instance. It is about 1450 miles, and it can be accomplished in sixty-four hours. Of course one cannot expect to find oneself as comfor- tably located as in an hotel; but, all things considered, the balance of advantage is very much on the side of the slecping-car. After a night or two one becomes accustomed to the noise and oscillation; the little peculiarities incidental to turmmg-m in rather 2 promiscuous manner with ladies
56 ‘HE GREAT LUNE LAND.
old and young, children in arms and out of arms, vanish before the force of habit; the necessity of making an carly rush to the lavatory appliances in the morning, and there securing a plentiful supply of water and clean towels, becomes quickly apparent, and altogether the sleeping-car ceases to be a thing of nuisance and is accepted as an acecom~ plished fact. The interior arrangements of the car are conducted as follows:—A passage runs down the centre from one door to the other; on either side are placed the berths or “sections” for sleeping; during the day-time these form seats, and are occupied by such as care to take them in the ordinary manner of railroad cars. At night, however, the whole car undergoes a complete transforma- tion. A negro attendant commences to make down the beds. This operation is performed by drawing out, after the manner of telescopes, portions of the car heretofore looked upon as immoveable; from various receptacles thus ren- dered visible he extracts large store of blankets, mattresses, bolsters, pillows, sheets, all which he arranges after the usual method of such articles. His work is done speedily and without noise or bustle, and in a very short time the interior of the car presents the spectacle of a long, dimly- lighted passage, having on either side the striped damask curtains which partly shroud the berths behind them. Into these berths the passengers soon withdraw themselves, and all goes quietly til] morning—unless, indeed, some stray turning bridge bas been left turned over one of the numerous creeks that underlie the track, or the loud whistle of “ brakes down ” is the short prelude to one of the many disasters of American railroad travel. There are many varieties of the sleeping-car, but the principle and mode of procedure are identical in each. Some of those constructed by Messrs. Pullman and Wagner areas gorgeously decorated as gilding,
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 57 plating, velvet, and damask can make them. The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the title of his cars. One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a Pullman) as one takes a Hansom. Pullman and slecping-car have become synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time. Travelling from sunrise to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupa- tion; still it has much to relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel-would be almost insupportable. The fact of easy communication being maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to another during motion a most feasible undertaking. One can visit the various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to obtain informa- tion this is no small boon. Americans are always ready to enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons from all parts of the Union— Down-easters, Southerners, Western men, and Californians —the experiment of “knocking around the cars ” is well worth the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take the weather, just as it comes.
The individual known by the title of “ train-boy ” is also worth some study. He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most precocious boy ; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago, New York, or Philadel- phia, or some other large town, and his aim is to dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily nourish- ment. He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which he serves round in several courses. The first course consists of works of a high moral character—
98 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
. standard English novels in American reprints, and works of travel or biography. These he lays beside cach passenger, stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular excellence of morality or binding. Having distributed a portion through the eur, he passes into the next car, and so through the train. After a few minutes’ delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one. Alter the lapse of a very short time he reappears with the secund course of Jiterature. This usually consists of a much lower standurd of excellence—Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap reprints of popular works, The third course, which soon follows, is, however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of the “Last Sensa- tion,” “The Dime Llustrated,” “New York under Gas- light,” “The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains,” and other similar productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from him no farther effurt; be relinquishes that portion of his labour and devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment, consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly and uninviting description ; these he follows with sugar in various preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance ; one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He gets, he will tell you, a percentage
Mt,
TIE GREAT LONE LAND. 59
on his sales of ten cents in the dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a dollar’s worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents. Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral hitera- ture than present him at once with this ten cents, stipu- luting that on no account is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy, condiment, or look during the remainder of the journey. If you do this you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.
Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which Jead to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive—which, by the way, is very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer, deeper, and reaching toa greater distance—the roll of the train into stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the most northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far within the territories where yet the xed man holds his own. Here, in the south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region, Far boyond the northern limit of the state it © stretches away into latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey into together.
The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota, gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the Mississippi River, about
60 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to the north, 700 miles along the stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a few miles above St. Paul,interrupt all navigation, and the course of the river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north- west; the St. Peter’s or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which lies west of Lake Superior ; but it is not alone to water communication that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken “ straight,” the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a hurry, all tend to eut short the term of man’s life in the New ‘World. Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. “Yes, sir, we live fast here,” said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; “And we die fast too,” echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity of the surrounding prairies, its hotels—and they are many— are crowded with the broken
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 61
wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die. Business connected with the supply of the troops during the coming winter in Red River, detained me for some weeks in Minnesota, and as the letters which I had des- patched upon my arrival, giving the necessary particulars regarding the proposed arrangements, required at least a week to obtain replies to, I determined to visit in the interim the shores of Lake Superior. Here Twould glean what tidings I could of the progress of the Expedition, from whose base at Fort William, I would be only 100) miles distant, as well ag examine the chances of Fenian intervention, so much talked of in the American newspapers, as likely to place in peril the flank of the expeditionary force as it followed the devious track of swamp and forest which has on one side Minnesota, and on the other the Canadian Dominion. Since my departure from Canada the weather had been intensely warm—pleasant in Detroit, warm in Chicago, hot in Milwaukie, and sweltering, blazing in St. Paul, would have aptly described the temperature, although the last- named city is some hundred miles more to the north than the first. But latitude is no criterion of summer heat in America, and the short Arctic summer of the Mackenzie River knows often a fiercer heat than the swamp lands of the Carolinas. So, putting together a very light field-kit, T started early one morning from St. Paul for the new town of Duluth, on the extreme westerly end of Lake Superior. Duluth, I was told, was the very newest of new towns, in fact it only had an existence of eighteen months; as may be inferred, it had no past, but any want in that respect was compensated for in its marvellous future. It was to be the great grain emporium of the North-west ; it was to kill St. Paul, Milwaukie, Chicago, and half-a-dozen other thriving
62 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
towns; its murderous propensities scemed to have no bounds; lots were already selling at fabulous prices, and every body seemed to have Duluth in some shape or other on the brain. To reach this paradise of the future I had to travel 100 miles by the Superior and Mississippi railroad, to a halting-place known as the End of the Track—a name which gave a very accurate idea of its whereabouts and general capabilities. The line was,in fact, in course of formation, and was being rapidly pushed forward from both ends with a view to its being opened through by the Ist day of August. About forty miles north-east of St. Paul we entered the region of pine forest. At intervals of ten or twelve miles the train stopped at places bearing high-sounding titles, such as Rush City, Pine City; but upon examination one looked in vain for any realization of these names, pines and rushes certainly were plentiful enough, bat the city part of the arrangement was nowhere visille. Upon asking a fellow-passenger for some explanation of the phenomena, he answered, “ Guess there was a city hercaway last year, but it’s busted up or gone on.” Travellers unacquainted with the vernacular of America might have conjured up visions of a catastrophe not less terrible than that of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but an earlier acquaintance of Western cities had years before taught me to comprehend such phrases. In the autumn of 1867 I had visited the prairies of Nebraska, along the banks of the Platte River. Buffalo were numerous on the sandy plains which form the hunting-grounds of the Shienne and Arapahoe Indians, and amongst the vast herds the bright October days passed quickly enough. One day, in company with an American officer, we were following, as usual, a herd of Duffalo, when we came upon a town standing silent and de- serted in the middle of the prairie.“ That,” said the Ameri-
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 63
can, “is Kearney City ; it did a good trade in the old waggon times, but it busted up when the railroad went on farther west; the people moved on to North Platte and Julesburg— guess there’s only one man left in it now, and he’s got snakes in his boots the hull season.” Marvelling what manner of man this might be who dwelt alone in the silent city, we rode on. One house showed some traces of occu- pation, and in this house dwelt the man. We had passed through the deserted grass-grown street, and were again on the prairie, when a shot rang out behind us, the bullet cutting up the dustaway to the left. “ By G he’s on the shoot,” cried our friend ; “ride, boys!” and so we rode. Much has been written and said of cities old and new, of Aztec and Peruvian monuments, but I venture to offer to the attention of the future historian of America this sample of the busted- up city of Kearney and its solitary indweller, who had snakes in his boots and was on the shoot.
After that explanation of a “lusted-up” and “ gone-on * city, I was of course sufficiently well “ posted” not to require further explanation as to the fate of Pine and Rush Cities; but had T entertained any doubts upon the subject, the final stop- page of the train at Moose Lake, or City, would have effee- tually dispelled them. ‘For there stood the portions of Rush and Pine Cities which had not “bust up,” but had simply gone on.” Two shanties, with a few outlying sheds, stood on either side of the track, which here crossed a clear running forest stream. Passenger communication ended at this point; the rails were laid down for a distance of cight miles farther, but only the “ construction train,” with supplies, men, &c., proceeded to that point. Track-laying was going on at the rate of three miles a day, I was informed, and the line would soon be opened to the Dalles of the St. Louis River, near the head of Lake Superior. The heat all day
o+ THE GREAT LONE LAND.
had been very great, and it was refreshing to get out of the dusty car, even though the shanties, in which cating, drinking, and sleeping were supposed to be carried on, were of the very lowest description. I had made the acquaint- ance of the express agent, a gentleman connected with the baggage department of the ‘{rain, and during the journey he had taken me somewhat into his confidence on the matter of the lodging and entertainment which were to be found in the shanties. ‘ The food ain’t bad,”’ he said, © but that there shanty of Tom’s licks creation for bugs.” This terse and forcibly expressed opinion made me select the interior of a waggon, and some fresh hay, as a place of rest, where, in spite of vast numbers of mosquitoes, I slept the sleep of the weary.
The construction train started from Moose City at six o’clock a.m., and as the stage, which was supposed to connect with the passenger train and carry forward its human freight to Superior City was filled to overflowing, I determined to take advantage of the construction train, and travel on it as far as it would take me. A very motley group of lumberers, navvies, and speculators assembied for breakfast a five o’clock a.m. at Tom’s table, and although I cannot quite confirm the favourable opinion of my friend the express agent as to the quality of the viands which graced it, I can at least testify to the vigour with which the “ guests” disposed of the pork and beans, the molasses and dried apples which Tom, with foul fingers, had set before them. Seated on the floor of aw: ¢eon in the construction train, in the midst of navvies of all countries and ages, I reached the end of the track while the morning sun was yet lowin the east. [had struck up akind of partnership for the journey with a pedlar Jew and a Ohio man, both going to Duluth, and as we had a march of eighteen miles to get through between the end of the track and the town of Fond-
Me
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 65
du-Lae, it became necessary to push on before the sun had reached his midday level; so, shouldering our baggage, we lett the busy scene of track-laying and struck out along the graded Jine for the Dalles of the St. Louis. Up to this point the line had been fully levelled, and the walking was easy enough, but when the much-talked of Dalles were reached a complete change took plece, and the toil became excessive. The St. Louis River, which in reality forms the headwater of the great St. Lawrence, has its source in the dividing ridge between Minnesota and the British territory. From these rugged Laurentian ridges it foams down in an impetuons torrent through wild pine- clad steeps of rock and towering preeipice, apparently to force an outlet into the valley of the Mississippi, but at the Dalles it seems to have suddenly preferred to seek the cold waters of the Atlantic, and, bending its course abruptly to the east, it pours its foaming torrent into the great Lake Superior below the old French trading-post of Fond-du-Laec. The load which IJ carried was not of itself a heavy one, but its weight became intolerable under the rapidly increasing heat of the sun and from the toilsome nature of the road. The deep narrow gorges over which the railway was to be carried were yet unbridged, and we had to let ourselves down the steep yielding embankment to a depth of over 100 feet, and then clamber up the other side almost upon hands and knees—this under a sun that beat down between the hills with terrible intensity on the yellow sand of the railway cuttings! The Ohio man earried no baggage, but the Jew was heavily laden, and soon fell behind. For atime I kept pace with my light companion; but soon I too was obliged to lag, and about midday found myself alone in the solttudes of the Dalles. At last there came a gorge deeper and steeper than r
66 TUE GREAT LONE LAND.
any thing that had preceded it, and I was forced to rest long before attempting its almost perpendicular ascent. When I did reach the top, it was to find myself thoroughly done up—the sun came down on the side of the embank- ment as though it would bum the sandy soil into ashes, not a breath of air moved through the silent hills, not a leaf stirred’in the forest. My load was more than I could bear, and again I had to lie down to avoid falling down. Only once before had I experienced a similar sensation of choking, and that was in toiling through a Burmese swamp, snipe-shooting under a midday sun. How near that was to sun-stroke, I can’t say; but I don’t think it could be very far. Aftera little time, I saw, some distance down below, smoke rising from a shanty. J made my way with no small difficulty to the door, and found the place full of some twenty or more rough-bearded looking men sitting down to dinner.
“ About played out, I guess?” said one. “ Wall, that sun is h—; any how, come in and have a bit. Have a drink of tea—or some vinegar and water.”
They filled me out a literal dish of tea, black and boil- ing ; and I drained the tin with a feeling of relief such as one seldom knows. The place was lined round with bunks like the forecastle of a ship. After a time I rose to depart and asked the man who acted as cook how much there was to pay-
“Not a cent, stranger ;” and so I left my rough hospi- table friends, and, gaining the railroad, lay down to yest until the fiery“sun had got lower in the west. The remainder of the road was thronged with gangs of men at work along it, bridging, blasting, building, and levelling — strong able-bodied fellows fit for any thing. Each gang
>
THE GREAT LUNE LAND. 67
was under the superintendence of a railroad “ boss,” and all seemed to be working well. But then two dollars a head per diem will make men work well even under such a
sun.
ir 94 *)
68 THE GREAT TONE LAND.
CHAPTER V.
Lake Surertor—Tue Dattes or tue St, Lovis—Tue Nori Paciric Raitroap—Foxp-pe-Lac—DuLuti—Screrior Crrr— Tue Great Lake—A Phan tro pry cre Niagara—Stace Drrv- tic—Tom’s Suanty aGsiv—Sr. Pact axp rts Neionsournoon.
Ausost in the centre of the Dalles I passed the spot where the Northern Pacific Railroad had on that day turned its first sod, commencing its long course across the continent. This North Pacific Railroad is destined to play a great part in the future history of the United States ; it is the second great link which is to bind together the Atlantic and Pacifie States (before twenty years there will be many others). From Puget Sound on the Pacific to Duluth on Lake Superior is about 2200 miles, and across this distance the North Pacific Railroad is to run. The im- mense plains of Dakota, the grassy uplands of Montana and Washington, and the centre of the State of Minne- sota will behold ere long this iron road of the North Pacific Company piercing their lonely wilds. “ Red Cloud ” and “ Black Eagle” and “ Standing Buffalo” may gather their braves beyond the Coteau te battle against this steam-horse which scares their bison from his favourite breeding grounds on the scant pastures of the great Missouri plateau ; but all their efforts will be in vain, the dollar will beat them out. Poor Red Cloud! in spite of thy towering form and mighty strength, the dollar is mightier still, and the fiat has gone forth before which thou and thy braves
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 69
must pass away from the land! Very tired and covered deep with the dust of railroad cuttings, I reached the col- lection of scattered houses which bears the name of Fond-du- Lae. Upon inquiring at the first house which I came to as to the whereabouts of the hotel, I was informed by a sour- visaged old female, that if I wanted to drink and get drunk, I must go farther on ; but that if I wished to behave in a quiet and respectable manner, and could live without liquor, I could stay in her house, which was at once post- office, Temperance Hotel, and very respectable. Being weary and footsore, I did not feel disposed to seek farther, for the place looked clean, the rivér was close at hand, and the whole aspect of the scene was suggestive of rest. In the evening hours myriads of mosquitoes and flying things of minutest size came forth from the wooded hills and did their best towards making life a misery; so bad were they that I weleomed a passing navvy who dropped in as a real godsend.
“ You’re come up to look after work on this North Pacific Railroad, I guess?” he commenced—he was a Southern Irish~ man, but “guessed” all the same—* well, now, look here, the North Pacifie Railroad will never be like the U.P. (Union Pacifie)—I worked there, and I know what it was ; it was bully, I can tell you. A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and hit the boss on the head with his shovel if the boss gave him any d chat. No, sirree, the North Pacific will never be like that.”
J could not help thinking that it was perhaps quite as well for the North Pacific Railroad Company and the boss if they never were destined to rival the Union Pacific Company as pictured by my companion; but I did not attempt to say so, as it might have come under the heading
70 JIE GREAT LONE LAND.
of * d. chat,” worthy only of being replied to by that convincing argument, the shovel.
A good night’s sleep and a swim in the St. Louis river banished all trace of toil. I left Fond-du-Lace early in the afternoon, and, descending by a small steamer the many- winding St. Louis River, soon came in sight of the town of Duluth. The heat had become excessive ; the Bay of St. Louis, shut in on all sides by lofty hills, Jay under a mingled mass of thunder-cloud and sunshine; far out in Lake Superior vivid lightnings flashed over the ¢loomy water and long rolls of thunder shook the hills around. On board our little steamboat the atmosphere was stifling, and could not have been short of 100° in the coolest place (it was 93° at six o’clock same evening in the hotel at Duluth); there was nothing for it but to lie quietly on a wooden bench and listen to the loud talking of some fellow-passengers. Three of the hardest of hard cases were engaged in the mental recreation of “swapping lies;” their respective exchanges consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing ; the experiences of one I recollect in particular. He had stolen an axe from a man on the North Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article. This piece of knavery was reecived as the aeme of ’cutencss; and i well recollect the language in which the brute wound up his sel{-laudations—“ If any chap ean steal faster than me, let him.”
As we emerged from the last bend of the river and stood across the Bay of St. Louis, Duluth, in all its barrenness, stood before us. The future capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of J2zpan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorviest spectacle of city that eye ef man could lovk
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 71
upon—wooden houses scattered at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out ofa reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and Jumber standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs and passable only by crazy- looking: planks of tilting proclivities—over all, a sun fit for a, Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever. Still, in spite of rock and swamp and icy winter, Yankee energy will triumph here as it has triumphed else- where over kindred difficulties.
“There’s got to be a Boss City hereaway on this end of the lake,” said the captain of the little boat; and though he spoke with much labour of imprecation, both needless then and now, taking what might be termed a cursory view of the situation, he summed up the pro- spects of Duluth conclusively and clearly enough.
I cannot say I enjoyed a stay of two days in Duluth. Several new saloons (name for dram-shops, gaming-houses, and generally questionable places) were being opened for the first time to the public, and free drinks were conse- quently the rule. Now “free drinks” have generally a demoralizing tendency upon a community, but taken in connexion with a temperature of 98° in the shade, they quickly develope into free revolvers and freer bowie-knives. Besides, the spirit of speculation was rampant in the hotel, and so many men had corner lots, dock locations, pine forests, and pre-empted lands to sell me, that nothing but flight prevented my becoming a large holder of all manner of Dulath securities upon terms that, upon the clearest showing, would have been ridiculously favourable to me. The principal chject of my visit to Duluth was to discover
72, THE GREAT LUNE LAND.
if any settlument existed at the Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles to the north and not far from the track of the Expedition, a place which had been named to the military authorities in Canada as likely to form a base of attack for any filibusters who would be adventurous cnough to make a dash at the communication of the expeditionary foree. A report of the discovery of gold and silver mines around the Vermilion Lakes had induced a rush of miners there during the previous year; but the mines had all “ bust up,” and the miners had been blown away to other regions, leaving the plant and fixtures of quartz-crushing machinery standing drearily in the wilderness. These facts I ascertained from the engineer, who had constructed a forest track from Duluth to the mines, and into whese office I penctrated in quest of information. Le, too, looked upon me as a specu- lator.
* Don’t mind them mines,” he said, after I had ques- sioned him on all points of distance and road; “ don’t couch them mines; they’re clean gone up. The gold in them mines don’t umount to a row of pines, and there’s not 2 man there now.”
That evening there came a violent thunder-storm, which cleared and cvoled the atmosphere ; between ten o’clock in the morning and three in the afternoon the thermometer fell 30°. Lake Superior had asserted its icy influence over the sun. Glad to get away from Duluth, I crossed the bay to Superior City, situated on the opposite, or Wisconsin shore oF the lake. A curious formation of sand and shingle runs out irom the shore of Duldth, forming a long narrow spit of land projecting far inte Lake Superior. It bears the name of Minnesota Point, and’ has evidently been formed by the opposing influence of the east wind over the greut expanse of the luke, and the current of the St. Louis River
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 73
from the West. It has a length of seven miles, and is only a few yards in width. Close to the Wisconsin shore a break occurs in this long narrow spit, and inside this open- ing lies the harbour and city of Superior—incomparably a better situation for a city and lake-port, level, sheltered, capacious; but, nevertheless, Superior City is doomed to delay, while cight miles off its young rival is rapidly rush- ing to wealth. This anomaly is easily explained. Duluth is pushed forward by the capital of the State of Minnesota, while the legislature of Wisconsin looks with jealous cye upon the formation of a second lake-port city which might draw off to itself the trade of Milwaukie.
In course of time, however, Superior City must rise, In spite of all hostility, to the very vrominent position to which its natural advantages entitle it. I had not been many minutes in the hotel at Superior City before the trying and unsought character of land speculator was again thrust upon me. -
** Now, stranger,” said a long-legged Yankee, who, with hisboots on the stove—the day had got raw and cold—and his knees considerably higher than his head, was gazing: intently at me, “I guess Pve fixed you.” I was taken aback by the sudden ideutification of my business, when he continued, “ Yus, I’ve just fixed you. You air a Kanady speculator, ain’t ye?” Not deeming it altogether wise to deny the correct- ness of his fixing, I replied I had lived in Kanady for some time, but that I was not going to begin speculation until I had knocked round a little. An invitation to liquor soon followed. The disagreeable consequence resulting from this admission soon became apparent. JI was much pestered towards evening by offers of investment in things varying from asand-hill toa city-square, or what would infallibly in course of time develope inte a city: square. A gentleman
4 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
rejoicing in the name of Vose Palmer insisted upon inter- viewing me until a protracted hour of the night, with a view towards my investing in straight drinks for him at the bar and in an extensive pine forest for myself some- where on the north shore of Lake Superior. I have no doubt the pine forest is still in the market ; and should any enterprising capitalist in this country fecl disposed to enter into partnership on a basis of bearing all expenses himself, giving only the profits to his partner, he will find “ Vose Palmer, Superior City, Wisconsin, United States,” ever ready to attend to him.
Before turning our steps westward from this inland- - ocean of Superior, i¢ will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its bosom. It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal. Four hundred English miles in length, 150 miles across it, 600 feet above Atlantic level, 900 fect in depth—one vast spring of purest crystal water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself, and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in faney the outpourings uf thi$ wonderful basin ; seck its fature course in Huron, Eric, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes Niagara famous through ihe world. Scek it farther still, in the quict loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar Rapids ; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, duwn where the lone Laurentian Hills come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest beginnings they cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close to the sounding billows of the Atlantic, 2000 miles from Superior, these hills—the only ones that ever last—guard
THE GREAT LONE LAND. (x)
the great gate by which the St. Lawrence seeks the sea.
There are rivers whose current, running red with the silt and mud of their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the oecan the record of their muddy progress; Lut this glorious river system, through its many lakes and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from the foun- tain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steamships cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not the beauty of the water-—no more than the fleets of the world mark the waves of the ocean. Any person looking at the maps of the region bounding the great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron from the south; in fact, the drainage of the states bordering these lakes on the south is altogether carried off by the valley of the Missis- sippi—it follows that this valley of Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface of the lakes. These Jakes, con- taining an area of some 73,000 square miles, are therefi re an immense reservoir held high over the level of the great Mississippi valley, from which they are separated by a barrier of slight elevation and extent.
It is not many years ago since an enterprising Yankee proposed to annihilate Canada, dry up Magara, and “ fix British creation” generally, by diverting the current of Lake Erie, through a deep canal; into the Ohio River ; but should nature, in one of her freaks of earthquake, ever -eause a disruptiun to this iImtervening barrier on_ the southern shores of the great northern Jakes, the drying ‘up of Niagara, the annihilation of Canada, and the divers disasters tu British power, will in all probability be followed
76 THE GREAT LUNE LAND.
by the submersion of half of the Mississippi states under the waters of these inland seas.
On the 26th June I quitted the shores of Lake Superior and made my way back to Moose Lake. Without any excep- tion, the road thither was the very worst I had ever travelled over—four horses essayed to drag a stage-waggon over, or rather, I should say, through, a track of mud and ruts im- possible to picture. The stage fare amounted to $6, or Jd, 4s. for 34 miles. An extra dollar reserved the box-seat and gave me the double advantage of knowing what was eoming in the rut line and taking another lesson in the idiom of the American stage-driver. This idiom consists of the smallest possible amount of dictionary words, a few Scriptural names rather irreverently used, a very large intermixture of “ git-ups” and ejaculatory “hi’s,’ and a general tendency to blasphemy all round. We reached Tom’s shanty at dusk. As before, it was crowded to excess, and the memory of the express man’s warning was still sufficiently strong to make me prefer the forest to “ bunk- ing in” with the motley assemblage; a couple of Eastern Americans shared with me the little camp. We made a fire, laid some boards on the ground, spread a blanket upon them, pulled the “ mosquito bars” over our heads, and lay down to attempt to sleep. It was a vain effort; mosquitoes came out in myriads, little atoms of gnats penetrated through the netting of the “bars,” and rendered rest or sleep impossible. At last, when the gnats seemed. disposed to retire, two Germans came along, and, seeing our fire, commenced stumbling about our boards. To be roused at two o’clock a.m., when one is just sinking into oblivious- ness after four hours of useless struggle with unseen enemies, is provoking enough, but to be roused under such circumstances by Germans is simply unbearable.
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At last daylight came. A bathe in the creck, despite the clouds of mosquitoes, freshened one up a little and made Tom’s terrible table seein less repulsive. Then came a long hot day in the dusty cars, until at length St. Paul was reached.
I remained at St. Paul some twelve days, detained there from day to day awaiting the arrival of letters from Canada relative to the future supply of the Expedition. This delay was at the time most irksome, as I too frequently pictured the troops pushing on towards Fort Garry while I was detained inactive in Minnesota; but one morning the American papers came out with news that the expedi- tionary forces had met with much delay in their first move from Thunder Bay; the road over which it was necessary for them to transport their boats, munitions, and. supplies for a distance of forty-four miles—from Superior to Lake Shebandowan —was utterly impracticable, portions of it, . indeed, had still to be made, bridges to be built, swamps to be corduroyed, and thus at the very outset of the Expedition a long delay became necessary. Of course, the American press held high jubilee over this check, which was repre- sented as only the beginning of the end of a series of disasters. The British Expedition was never destined to reach Red River ——swamps would entrap it, rapids would engulf it; and if, in spite of these obstacles, some few men did succeed in piercing the rugged wilderness, the trusty rifle of the Metis would soon annihilate the presumptive intruders. Such was the news and such were the comments I had to read day after day, as I anxiously scanned the columns of the newspapers for intelligence. Nor were these comments on the Expedition confined te prophecy of its failure from the swamps and rapids of the route: Fenian aid was largely spoken of by one portion of
78 TIE GREAT LONE LAND.
the press. Arms and ammunition, and hands to use them, were being pushed towards St. Cloud and the Red River, to aid the free sons of the North-west to follow out their manifest destiny, which, of course, was annexation to the United States. But although these items made reading a matter of no pleasant deseription, there were other things to be done in the good city of St. Paul not without their special interest. The Falls of the Mississippi at St. Anthony, and the lovely little Fall of Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy threads of silk-like wavelets, seem to Jaugh over the rocky edge; so light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly disfigured by the various saw- . mills that surround them.
The hotel in which I lodged at St. Panl was a very favourable specimen of the American hostelry; its pro- prietor was, of course, a colonel, so it may be presumed that he kept his company in excellent order. I had but few acquaintances in St. Paul, and had little to do besides study Ameriean character as displayed in dining-room, lounging- hall, and verandah, during the hot fine days; but when the hour of sunset came it was my wont to ascend to the roof of the building to look at the glorious panorama spread out before me—for sunset in America is of itself a sight of rare beauty, and the valley of the Mississippi never ap- peared to better advantage than when the rich hues of
the western sun were gilding the steep ridges that over- hang it.
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CHAPTER VI.
Ovr Coustys—Dorxe Anerica—Iwo Lessoxs—St. Crocp—-Sick Rariws—“ Stes Popprxe or Pesexry Pir? *“—~Trormye unt ovt —Away For THE Rep River.
Ene.isaxen who visit America take away with them two widely different sets of opinions. In most instances they have rushed through the land, note-book in hand, recording impressions and eliciting information. The visit is too frequently a first and a last one; the thirty-seven states are run over in thirty-seven days; then out comes the book, and the great question of America, socially and politically considered, is sealed for evermore. Now, if these gentlemén would only recollect that impressions, &c., which are thus hastily collected must of necessity share the imperfection of all things done in a hurry, they would not record these hurriedly gleaned facts with such an ap- pearance of infallibility, or, rather, they might be induced to try a second rush across the Atlantic before attempting that first rush into print. Let them remember that even the genius of Dickens was not proof against such error, and that a subsequent visit to the States caused no small amount of alteration in his impressions of America. This second visit should be a rule with every man who wishes to read aright, for his own benefit, or for that of others, the great book which America holds open to the traveller. Above all, the English traveller who enters the United States with a portfolio filled with letters of introduction will
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generally prove the most untrustworthy guide to those who follow him for information. He will travel from city to city, finding every where lavish hospitality and bound- less kindness; at every hotel he will be introduced to several of “our leading citizens; newspapers will report his progress, general-superintendents of railroads will pester him with free passes over half the lines in the Union; and he will take his departare from New York after a dinner at Delmonico’s, the eartes of which will cost a dollar each. The chances are extremely probable that his book will be about as fair a representation of American social and political institutions as his dinner at Del- monico’s would justly represent the ordinary cwisive throughout the Western States.
Having been féted and free-passed through the Union, he of course comes away delighted with every thing. If he is what is called a Liberal in polities, his political bias still further strengthens his favourable impressions of democracy and Delmonico; if he is a rigid Conservative, democracy loses half its terrors when it is seen across the Atlantic—just as widow-burning or Juggernaut are institutions much better suited to Bengal than they would be to Berkshire. Of course Canada and things Canadian are utterly beneath the notice of our traveller. He may, however, introduce them casually with reference to Niagara, which has a Canadian shore, or Quebec, which possesses a fine view; for the rest, America, past, present, and to come, is to be studied in New York, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and half a dozen other big places, and, with Niagara, Salt Lake City and San Francisco thrown in for scenic effect, the whole thing is complete. Salt Lake City is peculiarly valuable to the traveller, as it affords him much subject-matter for question- able writing. It might be well to recollect, however, that
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there really exists no necessity for crossing the Atlantic and travelling as far west as Utah in order to compose questionable books upon unquestionable subjects; similar materials in vast quantities exist much nearer home, and Pimlico and St. John’s Wood will be found quite as prolific in “ Spiritual Wives” and “Gothic” affinities as any ereek or lake in the Western wilderness. Neither is it to be wondered at that so many travellers carry away with them a fixed idea that our cousins are cousins in heart as well as in re- lationship—the friendship is of the Delmonico type too. Those speeches made to the departing guest, those pledges of brotherhood over the champagne glass, this “old lang syne” with hands held in Scotch fashion, all these are not worth much in the markets of brotherhood. You will be told that the hostility of the inhabitants of the United States towards England is confined to one class, and that elass, though numerically large, is politically insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant: the hostility to England is universal; it is more deep rooted than any other feeling; it is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whosegrip was around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that English-speaking cousin of yours over the Atlantic— whose language is your language, whose literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your digests of law—would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat over your agony, would keep the ring while you were, being knocked out of all semblance of nation and power, and would not be very far distant when the moment came G
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to hold a feast of eagles over your vast disjointed limbs. Make no mistake in this matter, and be not blinded by ties of kindred or belief. You imagine that because he is your cousin—sometimes even your very son—that he cannot hate you, and you nurse yourself in the belief that in a moment of peril the stars and stripes would fiy alongside the old red cross. Listen one moment; one cannot go five miles through any State in the American Union without coming upon a square substantial building in which children are being taught one wniversal lesson—the history of how, through long years of blood and strife, their country came forth a nation from the bungling tyranny of Britain. Until five short years ago that was the one bit of history that went home to the heart of Young America, that was the lesson your cousin learned, and still learns, in spite of later conflicts. Let us see what was the lesson your son had laid to heart. Well, your son Jearned his lesson, not from books, for too often he could not read, but he Jearned it in a manner which perhaps stamps it deeper into the mind than even letter-press or schoolmaster. He left you because you would not keep him, because you preferred grouse-moors and deer-forests in Scotland, or meadows and sheep-walks in Ireland to him or his. He did not leave you as one or two from a house- hold—as one who would go away and establish a branch connexion across the ocean; he went away by families, by clans, by kith and kin, for ever and for aye— and he went away with hate in his heart and dark thoughts towards you who should have been his mother. It matters little that he has bettered himself and grown rich in the new land ; ¢Xat is his affair; so far as you were concerned, it was about even betting whether he went to the - bottom of the Atlantic or to the top of the social tree— so, I say, to close this subject, that son and cousin owe you,
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and give you, scant and feeblest love. You will find them the firm friend of the Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your enemy in Herat, in Cabool, in Kashgar, or in Constantinople; you will find him the ally ofthe Prussian whznever Kaiser William, after the fashion. of his tribe, orders his legions to obliterate the line between Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you spent so many millions to turn from your throat in the days of the first Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin’s friend, for the simple reason that he is your enemy.
But a study of American habits and opinions, however interesting in itself, was not calculated to facilitate in any way the solving of the problem which now beset me, namely, the further progress of my journey to the North- west. The accounts which I daily received were not en- couraging. Sometimes there came news that M. Riel had grown. tired of his pre-eminence and was anxious to lay down his authority; at other times I heard of preparation made and making to oppose the Expedition by force, and of strict watch being maintained along the Pembina fron- tier to arrest and turn back all persons except such as were friendly to the Provisional Government. .
Nor was my own position in St. Paul at all a pleasant one. The inquiries I had to make on subjects connected with the supply of the troops in Red River had made so many persons acquainted with my identity, that it soon became known that there was a British officer in the place— a knowledge which did not tendin any manner to make the days pleasant in themselves nor hopeful in the anticipation of a successful proseention of my journey in the time to
G 2
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come. About the first week in July I left St. Paul for St. Cloud, seventy miles higher up on the Mississippi, having devided to wait no longer for instructions, but to trust to chance for further progress towards the North-west. “© ¥ou will meet with no obstacle at this side of the line,” said an American gentleman who was acquainted with the object of my journey, “but I won’t answer for the other side ;” and so, not knowing exactly how I was to get through to join the Expedition, but determined to try it some way or other, I set out for Sauk Rapids and St. Cloud. Sauk Rapids, on the Mississippi River, is a city which has neither burst up nor gone on. It has thought fit to remain, without monument of any kind, where it originally located itself{—on the left bank of the Mississippi, opposite the con- finence of the Sauk River with the “ Father of Waters.” It takes its name partly from the Sauk River and partly from the rapids of the Mississippi which lie abreast of the-town. Like many other cities, it had nourished feelings of the most deadly enmity: against its neighbours, and was to “kill creation” on every side; but these ideas of animosity have decreased considerably in lapse of time. Of course it possessed a newspaper—lI believe it also possessed a church, but I did not see that edifice; the paper, however, I did see, and was much struck by the fact that the greater portion of the first page—the paper had only two—was taken up with a pictorial delineation of what Sauk Rapids would attain to in the future, when it had sufficiently developed its immense water-power. In the mean time— previous to the development of said water-power—Sauk Rapids was not a bad sort of place: a bath at an hotel in St. Pani was a more expensive luxury than a dinner; but the Mississippi flowing by the door of the hotel at Sauk Rapids permitted free bathing in its waters. Any traveller
ind
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in the United States will fully appreciate this condescension on the part of the great river. Ifa man wishes to be clean, he has to pay highly for the luxury. The baths which . exist in the hotels are evidently meant for very rare and important occasions.
“I would like,” said an American gentleman to a friend of mine travelling by railway,—*I would like to show you round our city, and will call for you at the hotel.”
“Thank you,” replied my friend; “I have only to take a bath, and will be ready in half an hour.”
«Take a bath!’? answered the American; “why, you ain’t sick, air you ?”
There are not many commandments strictly adhered to im the United States; but had there ever existed a “ Thou
' shalt not tub,” the implicit obedience rendered to it would have been delightful, but perhaps, in that case, every American would have been a Diogenes.
The Russell House at Sauk Rapids was presided over by a Dr. Chase. According to his card, Dr. Chase conferred more benefactions upon the human race for the very smallest remuneration than any man living. His hotel was situated in the loveliest portion of Minnesota, com- manding the magnificent rapids of the Mississippi; his board and lodging were of the choicest description ; horses and buggies were free, gratis, and medical attendance was also uncharged for. Finally, the card intimated that, upon turning over, still more astonishing revelations would meet the eye of the reader. Prepared for some terrible instance of humane abnegation on the part of Dr. Chase, I proceeded to do as directed, and, turning over the card, read, “ Pre- sent of a $500 greenback”!!! The gift of the green- back was attended with some little drawback, inasmuch as it was conditional upon paying to Dr. Chase the sum of
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$20,000 for the goodwill, &c., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more ob- servable than in this Doctor’s establishment ; whether it was from the fact that each guest suffered under a painful knowledge of the superhuman efforts which the Doctor was making for his or her benefit, I cannot say; but I never witnessed the proverbially frightened appearance of the American people at meals to such a degree as at the dinner-table of the Sauk Hotel. When the damsels be- fore alluded to commenced their peregrinations round the table, giving in terribly terse language the choice of meats, the solemnity of the proceeding could not have been ex- eceded. “Porkorhbeef?” Pork,” would answer the trem- bling feeder ; “ Beef or pork?” “ Beef,” would again reply the guest, grasping eagerly at the first name which struck upon his ear. But when the second course came round the damsels presented us with a choice of a very mysterious nature indeed. I dimly heard two names being uttered into the ears of my fellow-eaters, and I just had time to notice the paralyzing effect which the communication appeared to have npen them, when presently over my own shoulder I heard. the mystic sound—lI regret to say that at first these sounds entirely failed to present to my mind any idea of food or sustenance of known description, I therefore begged for a repetition of the words; this time there was no mistake about it, “Steam-pudding or pumpkin-pie?” echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most
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eutting tones; “ Both!” I ejaculated, with equal distinct- ness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to recl beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her expe- rience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder of the meal.
Upon the day of my arrival at Sauk Rapids I had let it be known pretty widely that I was ready to become the purchaser . of a saddle-horse, if any person had such an animal to dispose of. In the three following days the amount of saddle-horses produced in the neighbourhood was perfectly astonishing ; indeed the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required
animal; even a Germana “ Dutchman” came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh, sandcracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of $100. Two livery- stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of the animals brought up for inspec- tion, I found there was little chance of being able to get over the 400 miles which lay between St. Cloud and Fort Garry. It was now the 12th of July; I had reached the farthest limit of railroad communication, and before me lay 200 miles of partly settled country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River. It is true that a four- horse stage ran from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie on Red River, but that would only have conveyed me to a point 300 miles distant from Fort Garry, and over that last 300 miles I could see no prospect of travelling. I had there. fore determined upon proevrizg a horse and riding the entire way, and it was with this object that I had entered into these inspections of horseflesh already mentioned. Matters
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were in this unsatisfactory state on the 12th of July, when I was informed that the solitary steamboat which plied upon the waters of the Red River was about to make a descent to Fort Garry, and that a week would elapse before she would start from her moorings below Georgetown, a station of the Hudson Bay Company situated 250 miles from St. Cloud. This was indeed the best of good news to me; I saw in it the long-looked-for chance of bridging this great stretch of 400 miles and reaching at last the Red River Settlement. I saw in it still more the prospect of joining at no very distant time the expeditionary foree itself, after I had run the gauntlet of M. Riel and his associates, and although many obstacles yet remained to be overeome, and distances vast and wild had to be covered before that hope could be realized, still the prospect of ‘ms mediate movement overcame every perspective difficulty ; and glad indeed I was when from the top of a weil-horsed stage I saw the wooden houses of St. Cloud disappear beneath the prairie behind me, and I bade good-bye for many a day to the valley of the Mississippi.
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CHAPTER VII.
Norti Mixxesora—A. Beavrievt Laxp—Rivat Savaces—Aper- CROMBIE—NEWS FROM THE Nortu—Piaxs—A Lonery Suaxty— Tue Rep River—Prarmmes—Scuxser—Mosoquitoes—Goixne Norrit —A Mosqurro Nicnr—A Trexpen-storn—aA Prosstan—Dakorta —I noe ror 1—Tse Steamer “INTERNATIONAL "-—PEMBINA.
Tur stage-coach takes three days to run from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie, about 180 miles. The road was tole- rably good, and many portions of the country were very beautiful to look at. On the second day one reaches“the height of land between the Mississippi and Red Rivers, a region abounding in clear erystal lakes of every size and shape, the old home of the great Sioux nation, the true Minnesota of their dreams. Minnesota (‘ sky-coloured water”), how aptly did it deseribe that home which was no longer theirs! They have left it for ever ; the Norwegian. and the Swede now call it theirs, and nothing remains of the red man save these sounding names of lake and river which long years ago he gave them. Along the margins of these lakes many comfortable dwellings nestle amongst oak openings and glades, and hill and valley are golden in summer with fields of wheat and corn, and little towns are springing up where twenty years ago the Sioux lodge-poles were the only signs of habitation; but one cannot look on this transformation without feeling, with Longfellow, the terrible surge of the white man, “whose breath, like the blast of the east wind, drifts evermore to the west the scanty
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smoke of the wigwams.”” What savages, too, are they, the successors of the old-race savages! not less barbarous be- cause they do not scalp, or war-dance, or go out to meet the Ojibbeway in the woods or the Assineboine in the plains.
We had passed a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Osakis, and reached another Jake not less lovely, the name of which I did not know.
* What is the name of this place?” I asked the driver who had stopped to water his horses.
J don’t know,” he answered, lifting a bucket of water to his thirsty steeds; “some God-dam Italian name, I guess,”
This high rolling Jand which divides the waters flow- ing into the Gulf of Mexico from those of Hudson Bay lies at an elevation of 1600 fect above the sea level. It is rich in every thing that can make a country prosperous ; and that portion of the “down-trodden millions,” who “starve in the garrets of Europe,” and have made their homes along that height of land, have no reason to regret their choice.
On the evening of the second day we stopped for the night at the old stockaded post of Pomme-de-Terre, not far from the Ottertail River. The place was foul beyond the power of words to paint it, but a “shake down” amidst the hay in a cow-house was far preferable to the society of man close by.
At eleven o’clock on the following morning we reached and crossed the Ottertail River, the main branch of the Red River, and I beheld with joy the stream upon whose banks, still many hundred miles distant, stood Fort Garry. Later in the day, having passed the great level expanse known as the Breckenridge Flats, the stage drew up at Fort Abercrombie,
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and I saw for the first time the yellow, muddy waters of the Red River of the North. Mr. Nolan, express agent, stage agent, and hotel keeper in the town of McAulyville, put me up for that night, and although the room which I occupied was shared by no less than five other individuals, he nevertheless most kindly provided me with a bed to myself. I can’t say that I enjoyed the diggings very much. A person lately returned from Fort Garry detailed his experiences of that place and his interview with the Presi- dent at some length. A large band of the Sioux Indians was ready to support the Dictator against all comers, and a vigilant watch was maintained upon the Pembina frontier for the purpose of excluding strangers who might attempt to enter from the United States; and altogether M. Riel was as securely established in Fort Garry as if there had not existed ared-coat in the universe. As for the Expedition, its failure was looked upon as a foregone conclusion; nothing had. been heard of it excepting a single rumour, and that was one of disaster. An Indian coming from beyond Fort Francis, somewhere in the wilderness north of Lake Supe- rior, had brought tidings to the Lake of the Woods, that forty Canadian soldiers had already been lost in one of the boiling rapids of the route. “‘ Nota man will get through!” was the general verdict of society, as that body was repre- sented at Mr. Nolan’s hotel, and, trath to say, society seemed elated at its verdict. All this, told to a roomful of Americans, had no very exhilarating effect upon meas I sat, unknown and unnoticed, on my portmanteau, a stranger to every one. When our luck seems at its lowest there is only one thing to be done, and that is to go on and try again. Things certainly looked badly, obstacles grew bigger as I got nearer to them—but that is a way they have, and they never grow smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my
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plans for rapid movement. There was no horse or convey- ance of any kind te be had from Abercrombie; but I dis- covered in the course of questions that the captain of the “ International ”’ steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a week before, and was expected to return to Aber- crombie by the next stage, two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart for his steam- boat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul. Now the boat “International ” was lying at a part of the Red River known as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of this horse and cart of the captain’s, it became a question of the “-yery greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that a Red River cart is a very limited convey- ance, and a Red River horse, as we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of impossibilities. To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it by the stage back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud. This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Aber- crombie, which for many reasons was a matter for congra- tulation, and put me in a position to intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie. So on the 13th of July I left Nolan’s hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary . house which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler’s log-hut which stood out upon
THE GREAT LONE LAND. 93
the level sea of grass and was visible miles and miles before one reached it. Here had rested one of those unquiet birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude nest of such material as the oak-wooded “bays” of the Red River afforded, and multiplying in spite of much opposition to the contrary. His eldest had been struck dead in his house only a few months before by the thunderbolt, which so frequently hurls destruction upon the valley of the Red River. The settler had seen many lands since his old home in Cavan had been left behind, and but for his name it would have been difficult to tell his Irish nationality. He had wandered up to Red River Settlement and wandered back again, had squatted in Jowa, and finally, like some bird which long wheels in circles ere it settles upon the earth, had pitched his tent on the Red River.
The Red River—let us trace it while we wait the coming captain who is to navigate us down its tortuous channel. Close to the Lake Ithaska, in which the great river Missis- sippi takes its rise, there is a small sheet of water known as Elbow Lake. Here, at an elevation of 1689 feet above the sea level, nine fect higher than the, source of the Mississippi, the Red River has its birth. It is curious that the primary direction of both rivers should be in courses diametrically opposite to their after-lines; the Mississippi first running to the north, and the Red River first bending towards the south ; in fact, it is only when it gets down here, near the Breckenridge Prairies, that it finally determines to seck a northern outlet to the ocean. Meeting the current of the Bois-des-Sioux, which has its source in Lae Travers, In which the Minnesota River, a tributary of the Mississippi, also takes its rise, the Red River hurries on into the level prairie and soon commences its immense windings. This Lac Travers discharges in
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wet seasons north and south, and is the only sheet of water on the Continent which sheds its waters into the tropics of the Gulf of Mexico and into the polar ocean of the Hudson Bay. In former times the whole system of rivers bore the name of the great Dakota nation—the Sioux River and the title of Red River was only borne by that portion of the stream which flows from Red Lake to the forks of the Assineboine. Now, however, the whole stream, from its source in Elbow Lake to its estuary in Lake Winnipeg fully 900 miles by water, is called the Red River: people say that the name is derived from a bloody Indian battle which once took place upon its banks, tinging the waters with crimson dye. It certainly cannot be called red from the hue of the water, which is of a dirty-white colour. Flowing towards the north with innumerable twists and sudden turnings, the Red River divides the State of Minne- sota, which it has upon its right, from the great territory of Dakota, receiving from each side many tributary streams which take their source in the Leaf Hills of Minnesota and im the Coteau of the Missouri. Its tributaries from the east flow through dense forests, those from the west wind through the vast sandy wastes of the Dakota Prairie, where trees are almost unknown. The plain through which Red River flows is fertile beyond description. Ata little distance it looks one vast level plain through which the windings of the river are marked by a dark line of woods fringing the whole length of the stream—each tributary has also its line of forest—a line visible many miles away over the great sea of grass. As one travels on, there first rise above the prairie the summits of the trees; these gradually grow larger, until finally, after many hours, the rivcr is reached. Nothing else breaks the uniform level. Stand- ing upon the ground the eye ranges over many miles of
‘THE GREAT LONE LAND. 95
grass, standing on a waggon, one doubles the area of vision, and to look over the plains from an elevation of twelve feet above the earth is to survey at a glance a space so vast that distance alone seems to bound its limits. The effect of sunset over these oceans of verdure is very beautiful ; a thousand hues spread themselves upon the grassy plains ; a thousand tints of gold are east along the heavens, and the two oceans of the sky and of the earth in- termingle in one great blaze of glory at the very gates of the setting sun. But to speak of sunsets now is only to anticipate. Here at the Red River we are only at the threshold of the sunset, its true home yet lies many days’ journey to the west: there, where the long shadows of the vast herds of bison trail slowly over the immense plains, huge and dark against the golden west ; there, where the red man still sees in the glory of the setting sun the realization of his dream of heaven.
Shooting the prairie plover, which were numerous around the solitary shanty, gossipping with Mr. Connelly on Western life and Red River experiences—I passed the long July day until evening came to a close. Then came the time of the mosquito; he swarmed around the shanty, he came out from blade of grass and up from river sedge, from the wooded bay and the dusky prairie, in clouds and clouds, until the air bummed with his presence. My host “made a smoke,” and the cattle came close around and stood into the very fire itself, scorching their hides in attempting to escape the stings of their ruthless tormentors. My friend’s house was not a large one, but he managed to make me a shake-down on the loft overhead, and to it he led the way. ‘To live in a country infested by mosquitoes ought to insure to a person the possession of health, wisdom, and riches, for assuredly I know of nothing so conducive to
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early turning in and early turning out as that most pitiless pest. On the present occasion I had not long turned in betore I became aware of the presence of at least two other persons within the limits of the little loft, for only a few feet distant soft whispers became faintly audible. Listen- ing attentively, I gathered the following dialogue :—
“ Do you think he has got it about him?”
“ Maybe he has,” replied the first speaker, with the voice of a woman. _
“ Are you shure he has it at all at all ?”
* Didn’t T see it in his own hand?”
Here was a fearful position! The dark loft, the lonely shanty miles away from any other habitation, the myste- rious allusions to the possession of property, all naturally combined to raise the most dreadful suspicions in the mind of the solitary traveller. Strange to say, this conversation had not the terrible effect upon me which might be supposed. It was evident that my old friends, father and mother of Mrs. C——,, occupied the loft in company with me, and the mention of that most suggestive word, “ crathure,” was sufficient to neutralize all suspicions connected with the lonely surroundings of the place. It was, in fact, a drop of that much-desired “ crathure” that the old couple were so anxious to obtain.
About three o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday the 17th July I left the house of Mr. Connelly, and journeyed back to Abercrombie in the stage waggon from St. Cloud. I had as a fellow-passenger the captain of the “International” steamboat, whose acquaintance was quickly made. He had received my letter at Pomme-de-Terre, and most kindly offered his pony and cart for our joint conveyance to George- town that evening ; so, having waited only long enough at Abercrombie to satisfy hunger and get, ready the Red River
THE GREAT LUNE LAND. 97
cart, we left Mr. Nolan’s door some little time before sun- set, and turning north along the river held our way towards Georgetown. The evening was beautifully fine and clear ; the plug trotted steadily on, and darkness soon wrapped its mantle around the prairie. My new acquaintance had many questions to ask and much information to impart, and al- though a Red River cart is not the casiest mode of convey- anee to one who sits amidships between the wheels, still when I looked to the northern skies and saw the old pointers marking our course almost due north, and thought that at last I was launched fair on a road whose termination was the goal for which I had longed so earnestly, I little recked the rough jolting of the wheels whose revolutions brought me closer tomy journcy’s end. Shortly after leaving Aber- crombie we passed a small creek in whose leaves and stag- nant waters mosquitoes were numerous.
“Tf the mosquitoes let us travel,” said my companion, as we emerged upon the prairie again, “we should reach Georgetown to breakfast.”
“ If the mosquitoes Jet us travel ?” thought I. “Surely he must be joking !”
I little kmew then the significance of the captain’s words. I thought that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps, to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the possibility of any thing, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about ten o’clock at night when there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud scarcely visible above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the north-east ; so when my attention had been called
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to the speck of cloud by my companion I naturally con- eluded that it couldin no way concern us, but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time the little cloud grew bigger, the wind died away altogether, and the stars began to look mistily from a sky no longer blue. Every now and again my companion looked towards this increasing cloud, and each time his opinion seemed to be Jess favourable. But another change also occurred of a character altogether different. There came upon us, brought apparently by the cloud, dense swarms of mosquitoes, hum- ming and buzzing along with us as we journeyed on, and covering our faces and heads with their sharp stinging bites. They seemed to come with us, after us, and against us, from above and from below, in volumes that ever in- creased. It soon began to dawn upon me that this might mean something akin to the “mosquitoes allowing us to travel,” of which my friend had spoken some three hours earlier. Meantime the cloud had increased to large propor- tions ; it was no longer in the south-west; it ocenpied the whole west, and was moving on towards the north. Pre- sently, from out of the dark heavens, streamed liquid fire, and long peals of thunder rolled far away over the gloomy praixies. So sudden appeared the change that one could scarce realize that only a little while before the stars had been shining so brightly upon the ocean of grass. At length the bright flashes came nearer and nearer, the thun- der rolled louder and louder, and the mosquitoes seemed to have made up their minds that to achieve the maximum of torture in the minimum of time was the sole end and aim of their existence. The captain’s pony showed many signs of agony; my dog howled with pain, and rolled himself amongst the baggage in useless writhings.
“JT thought it would come to this,” said the captain. “We must unhitch and lie down.”
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It was now midnight. To loose the horse from the shafts, to put the oil-cloth over the cart, and to creep un- derneath the wheels did not take my friend long. I fol- lowed his movements, crept in and drew a blanket over my head. Then came the crash ; the fire seemed to pour out of the clouds. It was impossible to keep the blanket on, so raising it every now and again I looked out from between the spokes of the wheel. During three hours the lightning seemed to run like a river of flame out of the clouds. Some- times a stream would descend, then, dividing into two branches, would pour down on the prairie two distinct channels of fire. The thunder rang sharply, as though the metallie clash of steel was about it, and the rain descended in torrents upon the level prairies. At about three o’clock in the morning the storm seemed to lull a little. Mycom- panion crept out from underneath the cart; I followed. The plug, who had managed to improve the occasion by stuffing himself with grass, was soon in the shafts again, and just as dawn began to streak the dense low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion. Still fora couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten flat by the rain-torrent. What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low upon the dank prairie.
Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty for food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed. Herr Probsfeld appeared to he
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a man who reerctted that men in general should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrange- ments of limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfeldsin particular. While the Herr was thus engaged in illaminating our minds, the Frau was much more agree- ably employed in preparing something for our bodily com- fort. I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satis- factorily. Many youthful Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future. It is more than probable that had Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just at that moment, when the?sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind—it is most probable, I say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no-ways lessened.
Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night- storm on the prairie, and it was midday on the 1Sth when we reached the Hudson Bay Company Post which stood at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red Rivers. Food and fresh horses were all we required, and after these requisites had been obtained the journey was prosecuted with renewed vigour. Forty miles had yet to be traversed before the point at which the steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran on the left or Dakota side of the Red River. As we journeyed along the Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it a scene
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of magical beauty. The sun resting on the rim of the prairie cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light. On the east lay the darker green of the trees of the Red River. The whole western sky was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of sunlight shot upward in great trembling shafts of glory. Being on horseback and alone, for my companion had trotted on in his waggon, I.had time to watch and note this brilliant spectacle; but as soon as the sun had dipped beneath the sea of verdure an ominous sound caused me to gallop on with increasing haste. The pony seemed to know the significance of that sound much better than its rider. He no longer lagged, nor needed the spur or whip to urge him to faster exertion, for darker and denser than on the previous night there rose around us vast numbers of mosquitoes—choking masses of biting insects, no mere cloud thicker and denser in one place than in another, but one huge wall of never-ending insects filling nostrils, ears, and eyes. Where they came from I cannot tell ; the prairie seemed too small to hold them ; the air too limited to yield them space. I had seen many vast accumulations of insect life in Jands old and new, but never any thing that approached to this mountain of mosquitoes on the prairies of Dakota. To say that they covered the coat of the horse I rode would be to give but a faint idea of their numbers; they were literally six or eight deep upon his skin, and with a single sweep of the hand one could crush myriads from his neck. Their bum seemed to be in all things around. To ride for it was the sole resource. Darkness came quickly down, but the track knew no turn, and for seven miles I kept the pony at 2 gallop; my face, neck, and hands cut and bleeding.
At last in the gloom I saw, down in what appeared to be the bottom of a valley, a long white wooden building,
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with lights showing out through the windows, Riding quickly down this valley we reached, followed by hosts of winged pursuers, the edge of some water lying amidst tree- covered. banks—the water was the Red River, and the white wooden building the steamboat “ International.”
Now one word about mosquitoes in the valley of the Red River. People will be inclined to say, “ We know well what a mosquito is—very troublesome and annoying, no doubt, but you needn’t make so much of what every one understands.” People reading what I have written about this insect will probably say this. I would have said so myself before the oceurrences of the last two nights, but I will never say so again, nor perhaps will my readers when they have read the following :-—
It is no unusual event during a wet summer in that por- tion of Minnesota and Dakota to which I refer for oxen and horses to perish from the bites of mosquitoes. An exposure of a very few hours’ duration is sufficient to cause death to these animals. It is said, too, that not many years ago the Sioux were in the habit of sometimes killing their captives by exposing them at night to the attacks of the mosquitoes; and any person who has experienced the full intensity of a mosquito night along the American portion of the Red River will not have any difficulty in realizing how short a period would be necessary to cause death.
Our arrival at the “ International” was the cause of no smal] amount of discomfort to the persons already on board that vessel. It took us but little time to rush over the gangway and seck safety from our pursuers within the pre- cinets of the steamboat: but they were not to be baffled easily ; they came in after us in millions; like Bishop Haddo’s rats, they came “ in at the windows and in at the doors,” until in a very short space of time the interior of the
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boat became perfectly black with insects. Attracted by the light they flocked into the saloon, covering walls and ceil- ing in one dark mass. We attempted supper, but had to giveitup. They got into the coffee, they stuck fast in the soft, melting butter, until at length, feverish, bitten, bleed- ing, and hungry, I sought refuge bencath the gauze eur- tuins in my cabin, and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. And in truth there was reason enough for sleep indepen- dently of mosquitoes’ bites. By dint of hard travel we had accomplished 104 miles in twenty-seven hours. The mid- night storm had lost us three hours and added in no small de- gree to discomfort. Mosquitoes had certainly caused but little thoughtto be bestowed upon fatigue during the lasttwo hours; but I much doubt if the spur-goaded horse, when he stretches himself at night to rest his weary limbs, feels the less tired beeause the miles flew behind him all unheeded under the influence of the spur-rowel. When morning broke we were in motion. The air was fresh and cool; not a mosquito was visible. ~The green banks of Red River looked pleasant to the eye as the “International” puffed along between them, rolling the tranquil water before her in a great muddy wave, which broke amidst the red and grey willows on the shore. Now and then the eye caught glimpses of the praizies through the skirting of oakwoods on the left, but to the right there Jay an unbroken line of forest fringing deeply the Minnesota shore. The “International ” was a * curious craft; she measured about 130 feet in length, drew only two feet of water, and was propelled by an enormous wheel placed over her stern. Eight summers of varied success and as many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the Winnipeg winter left its trace ov bows and hull. Her engines were a perfect marvel of
n)
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patchwork—pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and spirts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on fire seemed to be very great; each gust of wind sent showers of sparks from the furnaces flying along the lower deck, the charred beams of which attested the frequency of the occurrence. Alarmed at the prospect of seeing my conveyance wrapped in flames, I shouted vigorously for assistance, and will long remember the look of surprise and pity with which the native regarded me as he leisurely approached with the water-bucket and cast its contents along the smoking deck.
I have already mentioned the tortuous course which the Red River has wound for itself through these level northern prairies. The windings of the river more than double the length of its general direction, and the turns are so sharp that after steaming a mile the traveller will often arrive at a spot not one hundred yards distant from where he started.
Steaming thus for one day and one night down the Red River of the North, enjoying no variation of scene or change of prospect, but nevertheless enjoying beyond expression a profound sense “of mingled rest and progression, I reached at eight o’clock on the morning of the 20th of July the frontier post of Pembina.
And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into’ earlier times. For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of Assincboine without any preliminary acquaintance with its history or its inhabitants.
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CHAPTER VII.
Rerrosrective—Tue Norri-wesr Passace—Tue Bar or Hupson —Rwat Crauts—Tue Oro Frency Fer Trape—Tus Nontu- west Compaysy—How tue Harr-preeps came—Tue Hicu- LANDERS DEFEATED—PRoGRESS—OLD Frtns.
We who have seen in our times the solution of the long- hidden secret. worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the excitement which for nigh 4.00 years vexed the minds of Europesn kings and peoples— how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild realms 6f Cathay and Hindostan—how from every port, from the Adriatic to the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest ‘of this ocean strait, to find in suceession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the human race.
Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger than canal-boats. And how long and hoi tenaciously did they hold that some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached! Nota creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to the Pacific.
Hudson and Forbisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which bears his name before it was known to be a ewl-de-sac. Two hun- dred years had passed away from the time of Columbus ere
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his dream of an open sea to the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers. This immense inlet of Hud- son Bay must lead to the Western Ocean. So, at least, thought a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island, which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never think or care about again. Nor were these antivipations of reaching the East held only by the sailors,
La Salle, when he fitted out his expeditions from the Island of Montreal for the West, named his point of depar- ture ua Chine, so certain was he that his canoes would eventually reach Cathay. And La Chine still exists to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent, reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of arduous toil through swamp and forest, he stood at last on the low shores of the Mississippi and beheld in thought the enormous space which lay between him and the spot where such a river had its birth.
The East—it was always the East. Columbus had said the world was not go large as the common herd believed it, and yet when he had inereased it by a continent he tried to make it smaller than it really was. So fixed were men’s minds upon the East, that it was long before they would
‘ think of turning to account the discoveries of those carly navigators. But in time there came to the markets of
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Europe the products of the New World. The gold and the silver of Mexico and the rich sables of the frozen North found their way into the marts of Western Europe. And while Drake plundered galleons from the Spanish Main, England and France commenced their career of rivalry for the possession of that trade in furs and peltries which had its sources round the icy shores of the Bay of Hudson. It was reserved however for the fiery Prince Rupert to carry into effect the idea of opening up the North-west through the ocean of Hudson Bay.
Somewhere about 200 years ago a ship sailed away from England bearing in it a company of adventurers seut out to form 2 colony upon the southern shores of James’s Bay. These men named the new land after the Prince who sent them forth, and were the pioneers of that “ Hon. Company of Adventurers from England trading into Hudson Bay.”
More than forty years previous to the date of the charter by which Charles II. conferred the territory of Rupert’s Land upon the London company, a similar grant had been made by the French monarch, Louis XTIL., to “ La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France.” Thus there had arisen rival claims to the possession of this sterile region, and although treaties had at various times attempted to rectify boundaries or to rearrange watersheds, the question of the right of Canada or of the Company to hold a portion of the vast territory draining into Hudson Bay had never been legully solved.
For some eighty years after this settlement on James’s Bay, the Company held a precarious tenure of their forts and fac- tories. Wild-lookingmen, more Indian than French, marched from Canada overthe height of Jand and raided upon the posts of Moose and Albany, burning the stockades and carrying off the little brass howitzers mounted thereon. The same
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wild-looking men, pushing on into the interior from Lake Superior, made their way into Lake Winnipeg, up the great Saskatchewan River, and across to the valley of the Red River; building their forts for war and trade by distant lake-shore and confiuence of river current, and drawing off the valued trade in furs to France; until all of a sudden there came the great blow struck by Wolfe under the walls of Quebee, and every little far-away post and distant fort throughout the vast interior continent felt the echoes of the guns of Abraham. It might have been imagined that now, when the power of France was crushed in the Canadas, the trade which she had carried on with the Indian tribes of the Far West would lapse to the English company trading into Hudson Bay; but such was not the case.
Immediately upon the capitulation of Montreal, fur traders from the English cities of Boston and Albany appeared in Montreal and Quebec, and pushed their way along the old French route to Lake Winnipeg and into the valley of the Saskatchewan. There they, in turn, erected their little posts and trading-stations, laid out their beads and blankets, their strouds and eottons, and ex- changed their long-carried goods for the beaver and marten and fisher skins of the Nadow, Sioux, Kinistineau, and Osinipoilles. Old maps of the North-west still mark spots along the shores of Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan with names of Henry’s House, Finlay’s House, and Mackay’s House. These “ houses” were the trading- posts of the first English free-traders, whose combination in 1783 gave rise to the great North-west Fur Company, so long the fierce rival of the Hudson Bay. To pieture here the jealous rivalry which during forty years raged throughout these immense territories would be to fill a volume with tales of adventure and discovery.
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The zeal with which the North-west Company pursued the trade in furs quickly led to the exploration of the entire country. A Mackenzie penetrated to the Arctic Ocean down the immense river which bears his name—a Frazer anda Thompson pierced the tremendous masses of the Rocky Mountains and beheld the Pacific rolling its waters against the rocks of New Caledonia. Based upon a system which rewarded the efforts of its employés by giving them a share in the profits of the trade, making them partners as well as servants, the North-west Company soon put to sore straits the older organization of the Hudson Bay. While the heads of both companies were of the same nation, the working men and toyageurs were of totally different races, the Hudson Bay employing Highlanders and Orkney men
..from Scotland, and the North-west Company drawing its recruits from the hardy French aditans of Lower Canada. This difference of nationality deepened the strife between them, and many a deed of cruelty and bloodshed lies buried amidst the oblivion of that time in those distant regions. The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solifudes of inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow limits of civilization. Besides, he had taken to himself an Indian wife, and although the ceremony by which that was effected was frequently wanting in those accessories of bell, book, and candle so essential to its proper well-being, nevertheless the coyageur and his squaw got on pretty well together, and little ones, who jabbered the smallest amount of English or French, and a great deal of
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Ojibbeway, or Cree, or Assineboine, began to multiply around them.
Matters were in this state when, in 1812, as we have already seen in an earlier chapter, the Earl of Selkirk, a large proprietor of the Hudson Bay Company, conceived the idea of planting a colony of Highlanders on the banks of the Red River near the lake called Winnipeg. .
Some great magnate was intent on making a deer forest in Scotland about the period that this country was holding its own with diffieulty against Napoleon. So, leaving their native parish of Kildonan in Sutherlandshire, these people established another Kildonan in the very heart of North America, in the midst of an immense and apparently boundless prairie. Poor people! they had a hard time of it—inundation and North-west Company hostility nearly sweeping them off their prairie lands. Before long mat- ters reached a climax. The North-west Canadians and half-breeds sallied forth one day and attacked the settlers; the settlers had a small guard in whose prowess they placed much credence; the guard turned out after the usual manner of soldiers, the half-breeds and Indians lay in the long grass after the method of savages. For once the Indian tacties prevailed. The Governor of the Hudson Bay Company and the guard were shot down, the fort at Point Douglas on the Red River was taken, and the Scotch settlers driven out to the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
To keep the peace between the rival companies and the two nationalities was no easy matter, but at Jast Lord Sel- kirk came to