Lake Winnipeg was reached.

The weary journey--430 miles from York Factory--was thus over and the
worn out, weather beaten, ragged, and foot-sore travellers had come to
the lake, whose name, other than that of Red River, was the only inland
word they had ever heard of before starting on their journey.

It was the first standing place in the country, which was now to have
them as its pioneers.

There is no turning back now. The Rubicon is crossed. Thirty-seven
portages lie between them and the dissociable sea. For better or for
worse they will now complete their journey, going on to found the
Settlement which has become so famous.

The appearance of Norway House with its fine site and evidences of trade
cheered the Colonists, and the sight of a body of water like Lake
Winnipeg, which can be as boisterous as the ocean, brought back the loud
resounding sea by whose swishing waves most of the settlers, for all
their lives, had been lulled to sleep. It is a great stormy and
dangerous lake--Lake Winnipeg. But for boats to creep along its shore
with the liberty of landing on its sloping banks in case of need it is
safe enough. The season was well past, and haste was needed, but in due
time the mouth of the river--the delta of Red River--was reached. Now
they were within forty or forty-five miles of their destination. At this
time the banks of the Red River were well wooded, though there was open
grassy plains lying behind these belts of forest. There was only one
obstruction on their way up the river. This was the "Deer," now St.
Andrew's Rapids, but after their experiences this was nothing, for these
rapids were easily overcome by tracking, that is, by dragging the boats
by a line up the bank.

Up the river they came and rounded what we now call Point Douglas, in
the City of Winnipeg, a name afterwards given to mark Lord Selkirk's
family name. They had completed a journey of seven hundred and
twenty-eight miles, from York Factory to the site of Winnipeg--and they
had done this in fifty-five days. Now they landed.

THE RED LETTER DAY OF THEIR LANDING WAS AUGUST 30TH, 1812.

At York Factory the Colonists had met a Hudson's Bay Company
officer--Peter Fidler--on his way to England. He was the surveyor of the
Company and a map of the Colony of which a copy is given by us marks the
Colony Gardens, where Governor Miles Macdonell lived. This spot they
chose, and the locality at the foot of Rupert Street is marked in the
Cit