's Land,
was approaching, so that their situation began to be desperate.

Governor Macdonell's chief care was for the safety and comfort during
the winter of his helpless Colonists.

Sixty miles up the Red River from the Forks was a settlement of native
people--chiefly French half-breeds--and to this place called Pembina
came in the buffaloes, or if not they were easily reached from this
settlement. But the poor Scottish settlers had no means of transport,
and the way seemed long and desolate to them to venture upon,
unaccompanied and unhelped. Governor Macdonell did his best for them,
and succeeded in inducing the Saulteaux Indians, who seemed friendly, to
guide and protect them as they sought Pembina for winter quarters.

The Indians had a few ponies and mounted on these they undertook to
conduct the settlers to their destination. The caravan was grotesquely
comical as it departed southward. The Indians upon their "Shaganappi
ponies," as they are called, like mounted guards protecting the men,
women and children of the Colony who trudged wearily on foot. The
Indians were kind to their charge, but the Redman loves a joke, and
often indulges in "horse-play." The demure Highlander looked unmoved
upon the Indian pranks. The Indians also hold everything they possess on
a loose tenure. The Highlander who was forced to surrender the gun,
which his father had carried at the battle of Culloden, failed to see
the humour of the affair, and the Highland woman who was compelled to
give up her gold marriage ring, because some prairie brave wanted it,
was unable to see the ethics of the Saulteaux guide who robbed her. The
women became very weary of their journey, but their mounted guardians
only laughed, because they were in the habit on their long marches of
treating their own squaws in the same manner.

To Pembina at length they came--worn out, dusty and despondent. Here
they erected tents or built huts. The settlers reached Pembina on the
11th of September, and Macdonell and an escort of three men, all on
horseback, arrived on the 12th. Arrived at Pembina Macdonell examined
the ground carefully, and selected the point on the south side of the
Pembina River at its juncture with the Red River as a site for a fort.
His men immediately camped here. Great quantities of buffalo meat were
brought in by the French Canadians and Indians. Some of this was sent
down to the Forks to the party which had remained to built a hut at that
poi