handsome daughters. The Swiss
families on arrival were placed under tents nearby Fort Douglas. As soon
as possible many of the Swiss settlers were placed alongside the De
Meurons on German Creek. Good Mr. West, who had just been sent out as
chaplain by the Hudson's Bay Company, in place of the minister of their
own faith promised to the Scottish settlers, did a great stroke of work
in marrying the young Swiss girls to the De Meuron bachelors of German
Creek. The description of the way in which the De Meurons invited
families having young women in them to the wifeless cabins is ludicrous.
A modern "Sabine raid" was made upon the young damsels, who were
actually carried away to the De Meuron homesteads. The Swiss families
which had the misfortune to have no daughters in them were left to
languish in their comfortless tents. The afflictions of the earlier
Selkirk settlers were increased by the arrival of these settlers. With
the Selkirk settlers in their first decade the first consideration was
always food. Till that question is settled no Colony can advance.
Probably the most alarming and hopeless feature of their new colonial
life was the appearance of vast flights of locusts or grasshoppers,
which devoured every blade of wheat and grass in the country. To those
who have never seen this plague it is inconceivable. Some thirty-five
years ago in Manitoba the writer witnessed the utter devastation of the
country by these pests. Some thirteen years before the coming of the
first Colonists this plague prevailed. About the end of July, 1818,
these riders of the air made their attack. In this year the Selkirk
Colonists were greatly discouraged by the capture and removal to Canada,
by the Nor'-Westers, of Mr. James Sutherland, their spiritual guide. But
their labors now seem likely to be rewarded by a good harvest. The oats
and barley were in ear, when suddenly the invasion came. The vast clouds
of grasshoppers sailing northward from the great Utah desert in the
United States, alighted late in the afternoon of one day and in the
morning fields of grain, gardens with their promise, and every herb in
the Settlement were gone, and a waste like a blasted hearth remained
behind. The event was more than a loss of their crops, it seemed a
heaven-struck blow upon their community, and it is said they lifted up
their eyes to heaven, weeping and despairing. The sole return of their
labors for the season was a few ears of half-ripened barley