up the river-bank, a band of horsemen swept
over the horizon, and the travellers found themselves surrounded by
Sioux warriors. The old plainsman who acted as guide bethought him of
a ruse: he hoisted a flag of the Hudson's Bay Company and waved it in
the face of the Sioux without speaking. The painted warriors drew
together and conferred. The oxen stood complacently chewing the cud.
Indians never molested British fur-traders. Presently the raiders went
off over the horizon as swiftly as they had come, and the gold-seekers
drove on, little realizing the fate from which they had been delivered.

There had been heavy rains that spring on the prairie, and trees came
jouncing down the muddy flood of the Red River. The little
_International_, like a panicky bicycle rider, steered straight for
every tree, and hit one with such impact that her smokestack came
toppling down. At another place she pushed {56} her nose so deep in
the soft mud of the riverbank that it required all the crew and most of
the passengers to shove her off. But everybody was jubilant. This was
the first navigation of the Red River by steam. The Queen's Birthday,
the 24th of May, was celebrated on board the vessel pottle-deep to the
tune of the bagpipes played by the governor's Scottish piper. But the
governor's wife was heard to lament to Bishop Tache that the
_International's_ menu consisted only of pork and beans alternated with
beans and pork, that the service was on tin plates, and that the
dining-room chairs were backless benches.

The arrival of the steamer at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) was celebrated with
great rejoicing. Indians ran along the river-bank firing off rifles in
welcome, and opposite the flats where the fort gate opened, on what is
now Main Street, the company's men came out and fired a royal salute.
The people bound for Cariboo camped on the flats outside Fort Garry.
Here was a strange world indeed. Two-wheeled ox-carts, made wholly of
wood, without iron or bolt, wound up to the fort from St Paul in
processions a mile long, with fat squaws and whole Indian families
sitting squat inside the crib-like structure of the cart. Men and boys
{57} loped ahead and abreast on sinewy ponies, riding bareback or on
home-made saddles. Only a few stores stood along what is now Main
Street, which ran northward towards the Selkirk Settlement. With the
Indians, who were camped everywhere in the woods along the Assiniboine,
the Overlanders b