des set
out for the interior on the 21st of June, 1812.

Up Hayes River, up the whole length of Winnipeg Lake, then in August the
flatboats are ascending the muddy current of Red River, through what is
now Manitoba, and for the first time the people see their Promised Land.
High banks fringed with maple and oak line the river at what is now
Selkirk. Then the cliffs lower, and through the woods are broken gleams
{386} of the rolling prairie intersected by ravines, stretching far as
eye can see, where sky and earth meet. From the lateness of the season
one can guess that the river was low at the bowlder reach known as St.
Andrew's Rapids, and that while the boats were tracked upstream the
people would disembark and walk along the Indian trails of the west bank.
There was no Fort Garry near the rapids, as a few years later.
Buffalo-skin tepees alone broke the endless sweep of russet prairie and
sky, clear swimming blue as the purest lake. Then the people are back
aboard, laboring hard at the oar now, for they know they are nearing the
end of their long pilgrimage. The river banks rise higher. Then they
drop gradually to the flats now known as Point Douglas. Another bend in
the sinuous red current, looping and curving and circling fantastically
through the prairie, and the Selkirk settlers are in full view of the old
Cree graveyard,--bodies swathed in skins on scaffolding,--down at the
junction of the Assiniboine. Hard by they see the towered bastions of
the Northwest Company's post, Fort Gibraltar. Somewhere between what are
known to-day as Broadway Bridge and Point Douglas, the Selkirk settlers
land on the west side. Chief Peguis and his Cree warriors ride
wonderingly among the white-faced newcomers, marveling at men who have
crossed the Great Waters "to dig gardens and work land." The barracks
knocked up hastily is known after Selkirk's family name as Fort Douglas;
but the store of deer meat has been exhausted, and the colonists are on
the verge of a second winter. They at once join the Plain Rangers, or
Bois Brules (Burnt Wood Runners), half-breed descendants of French and
Nor'west fur traders, who have become retainers of the Montreal Company.
With them the Selkirk settlers proceed south to Pembina and the Boundary
to hunt buffalo. No instructions had yet come to Red River of the
Northwest Company's hostility to the colony, and the lonely Scotch clerks
of Fort Gibraltar were glad to welcome men who spoke the