Red River of the North

“ For months the cold waters are bound up in an icy embrace. The earth is covered with thick snow, over which rise the needle-leafed coniferae—the pines, the cedars, the spruce, and the hemlock. Very unlike each other are the countries watered by the two streams, the Red River of the South and its namesake of the North.
But whither go our Boy Hunters in their birch-bark canoe? The river upon which they are voyaging runs due northward into the great Lake Winnipeg. They are floating with its current, and consequently increasing the distance from their home. ”

“ The Red River settlement extends beyond Fort Garry for about twenty miles to the northward along the banks of Red River, and about fifty to the westward along its tributary, the Assiniboine. The wealthier inhabitants live in large, well-built wooden houses, and the poorer half-breeds in rough log huts, or even Indian “lodges.” There are several Protestant churches, a Romish cathedral and nunnery, and schools of various denominations. The neighbouring country is principally open, level prairie, the timber being confined, with a few exceptions, to the banks of the streams. ”

“ The ground was covered with snow, and the weather most winterly, when we embarked in our open boats to cross the lake for the Red River. Its length, from north to south, is about three hundred miles; and it abounds with sunken rocks, which are very dangerous to boats sailing in a fresh breeze. It is usual to run along shore, for the sake of an encampment at night, and of getting into a creek for shelter, in ease of storms and tempestuous weather. ”

“ What the Irish Sea, the Channel, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean are to the Atlantic, so are these various outlying regions of plain to the vast rigid ocean of the central continent. It is50 true that on the Red River, or the Qu’Appelle, or along the line I have lately passed, one may frequently “get out of sight of land;” there are spaces where no tree or bush breaks the long monotony of the sky-line; but all these expanses are as nothing compared to the true prairie. ”

“ The sky is generally clear, and the snow lies about fifteen, or at the utmost eighteen inches deep. As the climate of a country is not known by merely measuring its distance from the equator, but is affected differently in the same parallel of latitude by its locality, and a variety of circumstances, we find that of Red River, though situated in the same parallel, far different from, and intensely more cold than, that of England. The thermometer is frequently at 30°#176 ”

“ Idle rumours prevail that the Sioux Indians will attack the Settlement; which unhappily unsettle the minds, and interrupt the industry of the colonists. But none of these things move me, in carrying on my plans, and making arrangements to erect a substantial building, sixty feet by twenty. The Red River appears to me, a most desirable spot for a Missionary establishment, and the formation of schools; from whence Christianity may arise, and be propagated among the numerous tribes of the north. ”

“ Once again we set out: debouching from the forest we entered a large marsh. Soon a lake, with low-lying shores, spread before us. Another marsh, another frozen river, and at last, a vast lake opened out upon our gaze. Islands, rocky, and clothed with pine-trees, rose from the snowy surface. To the east, nothing136 but a vast expanse of ice-covered sea, with a blue, cold sky-line; to the north, a shore of rocks and hills, wind-swept, and part covered with dwarf firs, and on the rising shore, the clustered buildings of a large fort, with a red flag flying above them in the cold north blast. ”

“ On the Red River farms they seldom or never hear of one, and the injury they can do us is but slight.”
This was the commencement of a long line of farms which extends, with few breaks, the whole distance to the Red River, into which the Assiniboine falls. Often the old hunter was silent, considering the unexpected scenes which met his sight, though he occasionally indulged in quiet remarks on them ”

“ It has had its forts within the Arctic Circle; it has successfully exploited a country larger than the United States. The Red River Valley, the Saskatchewan Valley, and British Columbia, are now belted by a great railway, and given to the plough; but in the far north life is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. ”

“ RED RIVER—SOILS—CLIMATE—PRODUCTIONS—SETTLEMENT OF RED RIVER, THROUGH LORD SELKIRK, BY HIGHLANDERS—COLLISION BETWEEN THE NORTH-WEST AND HUDSON'S BAY COMPANIES—INUNDATION—ITS EFFECTS—FRENCH HALF-BREEDS—BUFFALO-HUNTING—ENGLISH HALF-BREEDS—INDIANS—CHURCHES—SCHOOLS—STORES—MARKET FOR PRODUCE—COMMUNICATION BY LAKES.
Red River rises in swamps and small lakes in the distant plains of the south ”

“ To understand clearly the nature of the country, let us suppose ourselves standing on the banks of the Red River, looking west. In front we have the fertile belt stretching out before, us, consisting chiefly of rich level prairie land, ascending gradually towards the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ Those dour and doughty pioneers of peoples had planted on the Red River their homes upon their little "strip" farms—a rampart of civilization against the wide, wild prairie, the home of the buffalo, and camp ground of the hunters of the plain. ”

“ Nor, looking at this annual havoc, and seeing still in spite of all the dusky herds yet roaming over the treeless waste, can we marvel that the Red man should ascribe to agencies other than mortal the seemingly endless numbers of his favourite animal?
South-west from the Eagle Hills, far out in the prairie, there lies a lake whose waters never rest; day and night a ceaseless murmur breaks the silence of the spot. ”

“ The Arctic Red River, a stream which has its source on the east side of the Rocky Mountains and flows in a series of rapids and treacherous falls into the Mackenzie, has tempted many a band of adventurous spirits to brave its difficulties in the hope of finding that elusive "mother-lode" which every miner is convinced exists to supply the rich alluvial deposits that have made the fame of the Klondike fields. ”

“ These rovers of the wilderness were buoyant of heart, and they lightened the weary hours of their six weeks' journey with blithe songs of love and the river. When the snow fell and ice closed the river, they would tie their 'husky' dogs to sledges and travel over the desolate wastes, carrying furs and provisions. ”

“ The willows are entirely trampled and torn to pieces; even the bark of the smaller trees is rubbed off in many places. The grass on the first bank of the river is entirely worn away. Numerous paths, some of which are a foot deep in the hard turf, come from the plains to the brink of the river, and vast quantities of dung gives this place the appearance of a cattle yard. We have reached the commencement of the great plains of Red River, where the eye is lost in one continuous level westward. Not a tree or a rising ground interrupts the view. ”

“ The river to the north, called Russian, nourishes vast cañons of redwood forest. The soil is ever moist where the heaven-searching redwood grows. Let rafts be made to ferry the animals to the shore of Contra Costa. ”

“ After a journey of thirteen hundred miles to the west he found the Coppermine River and the Great Slave Lake, and he traced the river to its mouth and emerged on the northern shore, being the first known white man to see the Arctic Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering Strait. ”

“ Westward are countries of still milder climate, now scarcely inhabited, but of incalculable value in the future. Eastward are the small settlements, yet distant from the other abodes of civilisation, enjoying the rich lands and pleasant climate of the Red River.” It may well surprise the inhabitants of these isles, who have not got 100 miles of natural navigable rivers in the three kingdoms, to learn that this same Red River is capable of steamboat navigation for 400 miles. ”

“ Through 300 miles of mountain the Peace River takes its course, countless creeks and rivers seek its waters; 200 miles from its source it cleaves the main Rocky Mountain chain through a chasm whose straight, steep cliffs frown down on the black water through 6000 feet of dizzy verge. Then it curves into the old ocean bed, of which we have already spoken, and for 500 miles it flows in a deep, narrow valley, from 700 to 800 feet below the level of the surrounding plateau. ”

“ Red Island is small, rocky, and of no great elevation; its colour is a very dark red; the sides are precipitous, and in its centre is a clump of trees which cannot be seen until you have run by the island, as it falls gradually from the south-west to the north-east, so that the north-east side is the least elevated. We sounded when about seven miles to the north-west of it, and found bottom at twenty-five fathoms, of green sandy mud. ”

“ There were many English and French steamers plowing this narrow passageway, liners going from Suez to Bombay, Calcutta, Melbourne, Réunion Island, and Mauritius; far too much traffic for the Nautilus to make an appearance on the surface. So it wisely stayed in midwater.
Finally, at noon, we were plowing the waves of the Red Sea.
The Red Sea: that great lake so famous in biblical traditions, seldom replenished by rains, fed by no important rivers, continually drained by a high rate of evaporation, its water level dropping a meter and a half every year! ”

“ To one who first flies over the Arctic wastes of the far Northwest, the landscape seems as unmarked as the sweeping blue of a landless sea. No cities, no villages, no roads, no railways, no farmhouses, not so much as a cabin is there to guide him in his skyway wanderings. As time passes, as he flies the same route again and again, that which lies beneath him becomes familiar. There is the river. Here it forms as an S. There it winds like a serpent. Here it is thickly bordered by trees, there lined only by low-growing willows. ”

“ There is a river of North America—not like the Danube, Rhine, or Rhone, whose banks are covered with towns, plantations, and time-worn castles: whose sources and tributaries are magnificent streams, the waters of which, confined in a narrow bed, rush onwards as if impatient to lose themselves in the ocean—but deep and silent, wide as an arm of the sea, calm and severe in its grandeur, it pours majestically onwards, its waters augmented by innumerable streams, and lazily bathes the banks of a thousand isles, which it has formed of its own sediment. ”

“ At this point, and again at an inconsiderable distance below, a soft green slaty sandstone forms the bed of the river, and occasions a succession of rapids. At noon an observation by the meridian altitude of the sun's lower limb gave us 35° 30′, as an approximation to our latitude. This was much greater than we had anticipated from the position assigned to Red river on the maps, and tending to confirm the unpleasant fears we had entertained of having mistaken some tributary of the Arkansa for the Red river. ”

“ As we go on, the sharp ridge of Red Mountain comes into view, guarded on the east by a monster hill, which none of our ingenious explorers, so generous in giving names, have condescended to dignify with a title. Its broad base washed by the rushing torrent, its sides clothed in a mantle of living green away up to the sharp line which marks the limit of the timber growth, and yet on and up the eye glances over the granite, with its azure background, until the vast pile is diademed with a fleecy cloud. ”

“ Winding into view from out of its coverts of smoke, and under its shadowing heights, comes the great river which in its westward course here opens up into the dimensions of a firth; and beyond it the fertile plains and valleys, the busy towns and villages, and the bare enclosing hills of Renfrew, are spread out like a map. The deep-water channel of the Clyde is marked not alone by the line of red buoys and beacons, but by the craft of all nations and all sizes, from the dredger to the huge floating palace of the ocean-going passenger steamer, that are continually plying up or down on it. ”

“ After this expedition I thought of nothing but proceeding on my journey, and with that design I let the Red-men return home, and joined myself to those who inhabited more westward on the coast, with whom I travelled along the shore of the Great Water, which bends directly betwixt the north and the sun-setting. When I arrived at the villages of my fellow-travellers, where I found the days very long, and the nights very short, I was advised by the old men to give over all thoughts of continuing my journey. ”

“ They are mighty rivers. They have one branch far East in the Alleghanies, and the other far West in the Rocky Mountains; but they flow together at last into one great stream, and run down together into the sea. In like manner, the red man dwells in the West, and the white man in the East, by the great waters ”

“ There were long streaks of silver on the broad river; slowly the fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was moist and fragrant; the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines was in it. A delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before or since have I seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one more beautiful.
And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching fish. No wonder the fish—fish is always salmon here—like this great -wide river. ”

“ I drew rein a moment on the ridge, and looked wistfully back along the forest trail.
Before me spread civilization and the waters of the Pacific; behind me, vague and vast,337 lay a hundred memories of the Wild North Land.
* * * * *
For many reasons it is fitting to end this story here. Between the ridge on the west shore of the Frazer and those scattered wooden houses on the east, lies a gulf wider than a score of valleys. On one side man—on the other the wilderness; on one side noise of steam and hammer—on the other voice of wild things and the silence of the solitude. ”