expression a profound sense of mingled rest and
progression, I reached at eight o'clock on the morning of the-20th of
July the frontier post of Pembina.
And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red
River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my
readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into earlier
times. For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the
latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of
Assineboine without any preliminary-acquaintance with its history or its
inhabitants.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Retrospective--The North-west Passage--The Bay of Hudson--Rival
Claims--The Old French Fur Trade--The North-west Company--How the
Half-breeds came--The Highlanders defeated-Progress--Old Feuds.
WE who have seen in our times the solution of the long-hidden secret
worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the
excitement which for nigh 400 years vexed the minds of European kings and
peoples--how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild
realms of Cathay and Hindostan--how from every port, from the Adriatic to
the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest of this ocean strait, to find
in succession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the
human race.
Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly
entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger
than canal-boats. And how long and how tenaciously did they hold that
some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached! Not a
creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to
the Pacific.
Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought
they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the
path of their discovery! Hudson had long perished in the ocean which
bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac. Two hundred years
had passed away from the time of Columbus ere his dream of an open sea to
the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers. This immense
inlet of Hudson Bay must lead to the Western Ocean. So, at least, thought
a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into
the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island,
which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never
think or care about again. Nor were these a
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