The Red River settlement, of which we heard so often during the quarrels between Lord Selkirk and the Company, will yet be a great colony; the soil is very fertile (one of the most important elements of colonisation,) its early tillage producing forty returns of wheat; and, even after twenty years of tillage, without manure, fallow, or green crop, yielding from fifteen to twenty-five bushels an acre. The wheat is plump and heavy, and, besides, there are large quantities of other grain, with beef, mutton, pork, butter, cheese, and wool in abundance. This would be the true country for emigration from our impoverished islands, and will, of course, be crowded when conveyances shall become more manageable. A railroad across Canada must still be a rather Utopian conception, but it might be well worth the expense of making by government, even though it produced nothing for the next half-dozen years, for the multitudes whom it would carry through the heart of this superb country in the half-dozen years after, and for the wealth which they would pour into England in every year to come.
The settlement, however, meets, in its turn, the common chances of an American climate. In winter the cold is intense. The summer is short, and the rivers sometimes overflow and drown the crops. Still what are these things to the population, where food is plenty, the air healthy, and the ground cheap, fertile and untaxed. In fact, the difficulties, in such instances, are scarcely more than incitements to the ingenuity of man, to provide resources against them. The season of snow is a time of cheerfulness in every land of the north. In Denmark, Russia, and Canada, when the rivers close up, business is laid by for the next six months; and the time of dancing, driving, and feasting begins. Food is the great requisite; when that is found, every thing follows.
In addition to agriculture, or in place of it, the settlers, more particularly those of mixed origin, devote the summer, the autumn, and sometimes the winter also, to the hunting of the buffalo, bringing home vast quantities of pemmican, dried meat, grease, tongues, &c. for which the Company and voyaging business affords the best market.
The party now proceeded, still with their faces turned to the west, and marched for some days over an immense prairie, which seemed to them to have been once the bottom of a huge lake. A rather striking circumstance is, that nearly every height in this region has its romance of savage life. We give one of murder, for the benefit of the modern school of novelists.
Many summers ago, a party of Assinabaians fell on a party of Crees in the neighbourhood of the Beatte a Carcajar, a conspicuous knoll in this neighbourhood, and nearly destroyed them all. Among the assailants was the former wife of one of the Crees, who had been carried off from him, in an earlier foray, by her present lord and master. From whatever motive of domestic memory, this Amazon rushed into the thickest of the fight, for the evident purpose of killing the original husband. He, however, escaped; and while the victors were scalping his unfortunate companions, creeping stealthily along for a whole day under cover of the woods, he laid down at night in a hollow at the top of the Knoll. But his wife had never lost sight of him, and no sooner had he, in the exhaustion of hunger and fatigue, sunk into a sound sleep, than she sent an arrow into his brain. She then possessed herself of his scalp, and exhibited it as her prize to the victors. The title of the slain savage was the Wolverine, and the spot is still called the Wolverine's Knoll.
The Indians assert that the ghosts of the murderess and her victim are often to be seen struggling on the height.
Human nature, left to itself, is a fierce and frightful thing; and the stories of savage life are nearly all of the same calibre, and all exhibit a dreadful love of revenge. About twenty years ago, a large encampment of Black-feet and others, had been formed in those prairies for the purpose of hunting. The warriors, however, growing tired of their peaceful occupation, resolved to make an incursion into the lands of the Assinabaians. They left behind them the old men with the women and children. After a successful campaign, they turned their steps homewards, loaded with scalps and other spoils, and on reaching the top of the ridge that overlooked their camp, they gave note of their approach by the usual shouts of victory. But no shout answered, and on descending to their huts, they found the whole of the inmates slaughtered. The Assinabaians had been there to take their revenge.
On beholding the dismal scene, the triumphant warriors cast away their spoils, arms, and clothing, and then putting on robes of leather, and smearing their heads with mud, they betook themselves to the hills for three days and nights, to howl and moan, and cut their flesh. It is observed, that this mode of expressing public grief, bears a striking resemblance to the customs of the Jews. The track towards Fort Vancouver exhibited a country, which may yet make a great figure in the American world,—immense valleys sheltered by mountain ridges, and containing beautiful lakes. In one instance, their tents were pitched in a valley of about five hundred acres enclosed by mountains on three sides, and a lake on the fourth. From the edge of the waters there arose a gentle descent of six or eight hundred feet covered with vines, and composed of the accumulated fragments of the heights above; and on the upper border of this slope there stood perpendicular walls of granite of three or four thousand feet high, while among those dizzy altitudes, the goats and sheep bounded in playful security. This defile had been the scene of an exploit. One of the Crees, whom they had met a few days before, had been tracked into the valley along with his wife and family by five warriors of a hostile tribe. On perceiving the odds against him, the man gave himself up for lost, observing to the woman, that as they could die but once, they had better die without resistance. The wife, however, said, that "as they had but one life to lose, they had the more reason to defend it," and, suiting the action to the word, the heroic wife brought the foremost of the enemy down to the ground by a bullet, while the husband disposed of two others by two arrows. The fourth warrior was rushing on the woman with uplifted tomahawk, when he stumbled and fell. She darted forward, and buried her knife in his heart. The sole surviving assailant now turned and fled, discharging, however, a bullet which wounded the man in the arm.
They had now reached that rocky range from which the eastern and western rivers of those mighty provinces take their common departure. Here they estimated the height of the pass to be seven or eight thousand feet above sea-level, while the peaks seemed to be nearly half that height above their heads.
Of course, the party often felt the torture of mosquitoes, but one valley was so pre-eminently infested with those tormentors, that man and beast alike preferred being nearly choked with smoke, in which they plunged, for the sake of escaping their stings. But we advert to this common plague of all forest travel, only for its legendary honours.
"The Canadians vented their curses against the old maid, who had the credit of having brought the scourge upon earth, by praying for something to fill up the leisure of her single blessedness." And if, as the author observes, "the tormentors would confine themselves to nunneries and monasteries, the world might see something more of the fitness of things in the matter."
At the close of August, the party reached Fort Vancouver, having crossed the Continent, by a route of five thousand miles, in twelve weeks' travelling.
They now made a visit to the Russian-American Company's Establishment of New Archangel. This exhibited considerable signs of commerce. In the harbour were five sailing vessels from 250 to 350 tons; besides a large bark in the offing in tow of a steamer, which brought advices from St Petersburgh down to the end of April. An officer came off conveying Governor Etholine's compliments and welcome. The party landed, and were received in the residence situated on the top of a rock. The Governor's dwelling consisted of a suite of apartments communicating, according to the Russian fashion, with each other, all the public, rooms being handsomely decorated and richly furnished. It commanded a view of the whole establishment, which was, in fact, a little village. About half way down the rock, two batteries frowned respectively over the land and the water. Behind the Bay arise stupendous piles of conical mountains with summits of everlasting snow. To seaward, Mount Edgecumbe, also in the form of a cone, rears its trunk-headed peak, still remembered as the source of smoke and flame, lava