Peace--Rumours of War-Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant
Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West
IT was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a
shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was
not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, a
Burmese, or any other of the many "eses" or "eas" forming the great
colonial empire of Britain who seemed capable of kicking up the semblance
of a row. Newspapers had never been so dull; illustrated journals had to
content themselves with pictorial representations of prize pigs,
foundation stones, and provincial civic magnates. Some of the great
powers were bent upon disarming; several influential persons of both
sexes had decided, at a meeting held for the suppression of vice, to
abolish standing armies. But, to be more precise as to the date of this
epoch, it will be necessary to state that the time was the close of the
year 1869, just twenty-two months ago. Looking back at this most-piping
period of peace from the stand-point of today, it is not at all
improbable that even at that tranquil moment a great power, now, very
much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the
dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at
each other's throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more
unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the
part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known
Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power
that possessed a deeper insight into the future than did its neighbours.
It is hardly to be gainsaid that there was, about that period, another
great power popularly supposed to dwell amidst darkness-a power which is
said also to possess the faculty of making Scriptural quotations to his
own advantage. It is not at all unlikely that amidst this scene of
universal quietude he too was watching certain little snow-wrapt hamlets,
scenes of straw-yard and deep thatched byre in which cattle munched their
winter provender-watching them with the perspective scent of death and
destruction in his nostrils; gloating over them with the knowledge of
what was to be their fate before another snow time had come round. It
could not be supposed that amidst such an era of tranquillity the army of
England should have been allowed to remain in a very formidable position.
When other powers were talking of disarming, was it not necessary that
Great Britain should actually disarm? of course there was a slight
difference existing between the respective cases, inasmuch as Great
Britain had never armed; but that distinction was not taken into account,
or was not deemed of sufficient importance to be noticed, except by a few
of the opposition journals; and is not every one aware that when a
country is governed on the principle of parties, the party which iscalled
the opposition must be in the wrong? So it was decreed about this time
that the fighting force of the British nation should be reduced. It was
useless to speak of the chances of war, said the British tax-payer,
speak-ing through the mouths of innumerable members of the British
Legislature. Had not the late Prince Consort and the late Mr. Cobden
come to the same conclusion from the widely different points of great
exhibitions and free trade, that war could never be? And if; in the face
of great exhibitions and universal free trade-even if war did become
possible, had we not ambassadors, and legations, and consulates all over
the world; had we not military attaches at every great court of Europe;
and would we not know all about it long before it commenced? No, no, said
the tax-payer, speaking through the same medium as before, reduce the
army, put the ships of war out of commission, take your largest and most
powerful transport steamships, fill them full with your best and most
experienced skilled military and naval artisans and labourers, send them
across the Atlantic to forge guns, anchors, and material of war in the
navy-yards of Norfolk and the arsenals of Springfield and Rock Island;
and let us hear no more of war or its alarms. It is true, there were some
persons who thought otherwise upon this subject, but many of them were
men whose views had become warped and deranged in such out-of-the-way
places as Southern Russia, Eastern China, Central Hindoostan, Southern
Africa, and Northern America military men, who, in fact, could not be
expected to understand questions of grave political economy, astute
matters of place.-and party, upon which the very existence of the
parliamentary system depended; and who, from the ignorance of these nice
distinctions of liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal, had
imagined that the strength and power of the empire was not of secondary
importance to the strength and power of a party. But the year 1869 did
not pass altogether into the bygone without giving a faint echo of
disturbance in one far-away region of the earth. It is true, that not the
smallest breathing of that strife which was to make: the succeeding year
crimson through the centuries had yet sounded on the continent of Europe.
No; all was as quiet there as befits the mighty hush which precedes
colossal conflicts. But far away in the very farthest West, so far that
not one man in fifty could tell its whereabouts, up somewhere between the
Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Superior, along a river called the
Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who or what
they were, had risen in insurrection. Well-informed persons said these
insurgents were only Indians; others, who had relations in America,
averreed that they were Scotchmen, and one journal, well-known for its
clearness upon all subjects connected with the American Continent,
asserted that they were Frenchmen. Amongst so much conflicting testimony,
it was only natural that the average Englishman should possess no very
decided opinions upon the matter; in fact, it came to pass that the
average Englishman, having heard that somebody was rebelling against him
somewhere or other, looked to his atlas and his journal for information
on the subject, and having failed in obtaining any from either source,
naturally concluded that the whole thing was something which no fellow
could be expected to understand. As, however, they who follow the writer
of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it
will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the
last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon. Bookmark About the
time when Napoleon was carrying half a million of men through the snows
of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the
idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the
vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that
entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in
earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the
imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century,
had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico
the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord
Selkirk's experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded
it. The earlier adventurers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic
upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the
very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day
is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast
wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles
between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the
cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Indeed,
so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the
Atlantic that all means of communication in that direction was utterly
unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the
ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world
should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of
lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its
descent of 700 feet, lay between them and the ocean, and then only to
reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice-bound
outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in
spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were
married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the
outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years
after its formation, it rose in insurrection.
And now, my reader, gentle or cruel, whichsoever you may be, the
positions we have hitherto occupied in these few preliminary pages must
undergo some slight variation. You, if you be gentle, will I trust remain
so until the end; if you be cruel, you will perhaps relent; but for me,
it will be necessary to come forth in the full glory of the individual
"I," and to retain it until we part.
It was about the end of the year 1869 that I became conscious of having
experienced a decided check in life. One day I received from a
distinguished military functionary an intimation to the effect that a
company in Her Majesty's service would be at my disposal, provided I
could produce the sum of 1100 pounds. Some dozen years previous to the
date of this letter I entered the British army, and by the slow process
of existence had reached-a position among the subalterns of the regiment
technically known as first for purchase; but now, when the moment arrived
to turn that position to account, I found that neither the 1100 pounds of
regulation amount nor the 400 pounds of over-regulation items (terms
very familiar now, but soon, I trust, to be for ever obsolete) were
forthcoming, and so it came about that younger hands began to pass me in
the race of life. What was to be done? What course lay open? Serve on;
let the dull routine of barrack-life grow duller; go from Canada to the
Cape, from the Cape to the Mauritius, from Mauritius to Madras, from
Madras goodness knows where, and trust to delirium tremens, yellow fever,
or: cholera morbus for promotion and advancement; or, on the other hand,
cut the service, become in the lapse of time governor of a penitentiary,
secretary to a London club, or adjutant of militia. And yet-here came the
rub-when every fibre of one's existence beat in unison with the true
spirit of military adventure, when the old feeling which in boyhood had
made the study of history a delightful pastime, in late years had grown
into a fixed unalterable longing for active service, when the whole
current of thought ran in the direction of adventure-no matter in what
climate, or under what circumstances-it was hard beyond the measure of
words to sever in an instant the link that bound one to a life where such
aspirations were still possible of fulfilment; to separate one's destiny
for ever from that noble profession of arms; to become an outsider, to
admit that the twelve best years of life had been a useless dream, and
to bury oneself far away in some Western wilderness out of the reach or
sight of red coat or sound of bugle-sights and sounds which old
associations would have made unbearable. Surely it could not be done; and
so, looking abroad into the future, it was difficult to trace a path
Which could turn the flank of this formidable barrier flung thus suddenly
into the highway of life.
Thus it was that one, at least, in Great Britain watched with anxious
gaze this small speck of revolt rising so far away in the vast wilderness
of the North-West; and when, about the beginning of the month of April,
1870, news came of the projected despatch of an armed force from Canada
against the malcontents of Red River, there was one who beheld in the
approaching expedition the chance of a solution to the difficulties which
had beset him in his career. That one was myself.
There was little time to be lost, for already; the cable said, the
arrangements were in a forward state; the staff of the little force had
been organized, the rough outline of the expedition had been sketched,
and with the opening of navigation on the northern lakes the first move
would be commenced. Going one morning to the nearest telegraph station, I
sent the following message under the Atlantic to America:--"To: Winnipeg
Expedition. Please remember me." When words cost at the rate of four
shillings each, conversation and correspondence become of necessity
limited. In the present instance I was only allowed the use of ten words
to convey address, signature, and substance, and the five words of my
message were framed both with a view to economy and politeness, as well
as in a manner which by calling for no direct answer still left undecided
the great question of success. Having despatched my message under the
ocean, I determined to seek the Horse Guards in a final effort to procure
unattached promotion in the army. It is almost unnecessary to remark that
this attempt failed; and as I issued from the audience in which I had
been informed of the utter hopelessness of my request, I had at least the
satisfaction of having reduced my chances of fortune to the narrow limits
of a single throw. Pausing at the gate of the Horse Guards I reviewed in
a moment the whole situation; whatever was to be the result there was no
time for delay and so, hailing a hansom, I told the cabby to drive to the
office of the Cunard Steamship Company, Old Broad Street, City.
"What steamer sails on Wednesday for America?"
"The 'Samaria for Boston, the 'Marathon for New York."
"The 'Samaria broke her shaft, didn't she, last voyage, and was a
missing ship for a month?" I asked.
"Yes, sir," answered the clerk.
"Then book me a passage in her," I replied; "she's not likely to play
that prank twice in two voyages."