To Fort Garry--Down the Winnipeg--Her Majesty's Royal Mail--Grilling a
Mail-bag--Running a Rapid--Up the Red River-A dreary Bivouac--The
President bolts--The Rebel Chiefs--Departure of the Regular Troops.
I TOOK a very small canoe, manned by three Indians--father and two
sons--and, with provisions for three days, commenced the descent of the
river of rapids. How we shot down the hissing waters in that tiny craft!
How fast we left the wooded shores behind us, and saw the-lonely isles
flit by as the powerful current swept us like a leaf upon its bosom!
It was late of the afternoon of the 15th August when I left for the last
time the Lake of the Woods. Next night our camp was made below the
Eagle's Nest, seventy miles from the Portage-du-Rat. A wild storm burst
upon us at night-fall, and our bivouac was a damp and dreary one. The
Indians lay under the canoe; I sheltered as best I could beneath a huge
pine-tree. My oil-cloth was only four feet in length-a shortcoming on the
part of its feet which caused mine to suffer much discomfort. Besides, I
had Her Majesty's royal mail to keep dry, and, with the limited liability
of my oil-cloth in the matter of length, that became no easy task--two
bags of letters and papers, home letters and papers, too, for the
Expedition. They had been flung into my: canoe when leaving Rat Portage,
and I had spent the first day in-sorting them as we swept along, and now
they were getting wet in spite of every effort to the contrary. I made
one bag into a pillow, but the rain came through the big pine-tree,
splashing down through the branches, putting out my fire and drenching
mail-bags and blankets.
Daylight came at last, but still the rain hissed down, making it no easy
matter to boil our kettle and fry our bit of pork. Then we put out for
the day's work on the river. How bleak and wretched it all was! After a
while we found it was impossible to make head against the storm of wind
and rain which swept the water, and we had to put back to the shelter of
our miserable camp. About seven o'clock the wind fell, and we set out
again. Soon the sun came forth drying and warming us all over. All day we
paddled on, passing in succession the grand Chute-à-Jacquot, the Three
Portages-des-Bois, the Slave Falls, and the dangerous rapids of the
Barrière. The Slave Falls! who that has ever beheld that superb rush of
water will forget it? Glorious, glorious Winnipeg! it may be that with
these eyes of mine I shall never see thee again, for thou liest far out
of the track of life, and man mars not thy beauty with ways of civilized
travel; but I shall often see thee in imagination, and thy rocks and thy
waters shall murmur in memory for life.
That night, the 17th of August, we made our camp on a little island close
to the Otter Falls. It came a night of ceaseless rain, and again the
mail-bags underwent a drenching. The old Indian cleared a space in the
dripping vegetation, and made me a rude shelter with branches woven
together; but the rain beat through, and drenched body, bag, and baggage.
And yet how easy it all was, and how sound one slept! simply because one
had to do it; that one consideration is the greatest expounder of the
possible. I could not speak a word to my Indians, but we got on by signs,
and seldom found the want of speech--"ugh, ugh" and "caween," yes and no,
answered for any difficulty. To make a fire and a camp, to boil a kettle
and fry a bit of meat are the home works of the Indian. His life is one
long picnic, and it matters as little to him whether sun or rain, snow or
biting frost, warm, drench, cover, or freeze him, as it does to the
moose or the reindeer that share his forest life and yield him often his
forest fare. Upon examining the letters in-the morning the interior of
the bags presented such a pulpy and generally deplorable appearance that
I was obliged to stop at one of the Seven Portages for the purpose of
drying Her Majesty's mail. With this object we made a large fire, and
placing cross-sticks above proceeded to toast and grill the dripping
papers. The Indians sat around, turning the letters with little sticks as
if they were baking cakes or frying sturgeon. Under their skilful
treatment the pulpy mats soon attained the consistency, and in many
instances the legibility, of a smoked herring, but as they had before
presented a very fishy appearance that was not of much consequence.
This day was bright and fine. Notwithstanding the delay caused by drying
the mails, as well as distributing them to the several brigades which we
overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less
than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is
very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would
stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and
the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning
but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected
with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian war. Thus the great
Slave Fall tells by its name the fate of two Sioux captives taken in some
foray by the Ojibbeway; lashed together in a canoe, they were the only
men who ever ran the Great Chute. The rocks around were black with the
figures of the Ojibbeways, whose wild triumphant yells were hushed by the
roar of the cataract; but the torture was a short one; the mighty rush,
the wild leap, and the happy hunting-ground, where even Ojibbeways cease
from troubling and Sioux warriors are at rest, had been reached. In
Mackenzie's journal the fall called Galet-du-Bonnet is said to have been
named by the Canadian voyageurs, from the fact that the Indians were in
the habit of crowning the highest rock above the portage with wreaths of
flowers and branches of trees. The Grand Portage, which is three quarters
of a mile in length, is the great test of the strength of the Indian and
half-breed; but, if Mackenzie speaks correctly, the voyageur has much
degenerated since the early days of the fur trade, for he writes that
seven pieces, weighing each ninety pounds, were carried over the Grand
Portage by an Indian in one trip, 630 pounds borne three quarters of a mile
by one man--the loads look big enough still, but 250 pounds is considered
excessive now. These loads are carried in a manner which allows the whole
strength of the body to be put into the work. A broad leather strap is
placed round the forehead, the ends of the strap passing back over the
shoulders support the pieces which, thus carried, lie along-the spine
from the small of the back to the crown of the head. When fully loaded,
the voyageur stands with his body bent forward, and with one hand
steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.
In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a
backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and
again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off
some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her
steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a
thousand horses: for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no
mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and
"wave-worn precipice" there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine
itself pours forth. The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the
most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they
appear to the stranger. Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the
midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape
seems impossible. The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can
save it--there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself
provides it. Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that
rock. There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides
than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away
with redoubled speed. No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool
and twisting billow.
On the night of the 20th of August the whole of the regular troops of the
Expedition and the general commanding it and his staff had reached Fort
Alexander, at the mouth of the Winnipeg River. Some accidents had
occurred, and many had been the "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no
life had been lost; and from the 600 miles of wilderness there emerged
400 soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous
toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and
whose appearance and physique--browned, tanned, and powerful told: of the
glorious climate of these Northern solitudes, It was near sunset when the
large canoe touched the wooden pier opposite the Fort Alexander and the
commander of the Expedition stepped on shore to meet his men, assembled
for the first time together since Lake Superior's distant sea had been
left behind. It-was a meeting not devoid of those associations which make
such things memorable, and the cheer which went up from the soldiers who
lined the steep bank to bid him welcome had in it a note of that sympathy
which binds men together by the inward consciousness of difficulties
shared in common and dangers--successfully overcome together. Next day
the united fleet put out into Lake Winnipeg; and steered for the lonely
shores of the Island of Elks, the solitary island of the southern portion
of the lake. In a broad, curving, sandy bay the boats found that night a
shelter; a hundred fires threw their lights far into the lake, and
bugle-calls startled echoes that assuredly had never been rouse before by
notes so strange. Sailing in a wide scattered mass before a favouring
breeze, the fleet reached about noon the following day the mouth of the
Red River, the river whose name was the name of the Expedition, and whose
shores had so long been looked forward to as a haven of rest from portage
and oar labour. There it was at last, seeking through its many mouths the
waters of the lake. And now our course lay up along the reed fringed
river and sluggish current to where the tree-tops began to rise over the
low marsh-land-up to where my old friends the Indians had pitched their
camp and given me the parting salute on the morning of my departure just
one month before. It was dusk when we reached the Indian Settlement and
made a camp upon the opposite shore, and darkness had quite set in when I
reached the mission-house, some three miles higher up. My old friend the
Archdeacon was glad indeed to welcome me back. News from the settlement
there was none--news from the outside world there was plenty. "A great
battle had been fought near the Rhine," the old man said, "and the French
had been disastrously defeated."
Another day of rowing, poling, tracking, and sailing, and evening closed
over the Expedition, camped within six miles of Fort Garry; but all
through the day the river banks were enlivened with people shouting
welcome to the soldiers, and church bells rang out peals of gladness as
the boats passed by. This was through the English and Scotch Settlement,
the people of which had long grown weary of the tyranny of the Dictator
Riel. Riel--why, we have almost forgotten him altogether during these
weeks on the Winnipeg! Nevertheless, he-had still held his own within the
walls of Fort Garry, and still played to a constantly decreasing audience
the part of the Little Napoleon.
During this day, the 23rd August, vague rumours reached us of terrible
things to be done by the warlike President. He would suddenly appear with
his guns from the woods? he would blow up the fort when the troops had
taken possession--he would die in the ruins. These and many other
schemes of a similar description were to be enacted by the Dictator in
the last extremity of his despair. I had spent the day in the saddle,
scouring the woods on the right bank of the river in advance of the
fleet, while on the left shore a company of the 60th, partly mounted,
moved on also in advance of the leading boats. But neither Riel nor his
followers appeared to dispute-the upward passage of the flotilla, and the
woods through which I rode were silent and deserted. Early in the morning
a horse had been lent to me by an individual rejoicing in the classical
name of Tacitus Struthers. Tacitus had also assisted me to swim the steed
across the Red River in order to gain the right shore, and, having done
so, took leave of me with oft-repeated injunctions to preserve from harm
the horse and his accoutrements, "For," said Tacitus, "that horse is a
racer." Well, I suppose it must have been that fact that made the horse
race all day through the thickets and oak woods of the right shore, but I
rather fancy my spurs had something to say to it too.
When night again fell, the whole force had reached a spot six-miles from
the rebel fort, and camp was formed for the last time on the west bank
of the river. And what a night and storm then broke upon the Red River
Expedition! till the tents flapped and fell and the drenched soldiers
shiv'ered shelterless, waiting for the dawn. The occupants of tents which
stood the pelting of the pitiless storm were no better off than those
outside; the surface of the ground became ankle-deep in mud and water,
and the men lay in pools during the last hours of the night. At length a
dismal daylight dawned over the dreary scene, and the upward course was
resumed. Still the rain came down in torrents, and, with water above,
below, and around, the Expedition neared its destination. If the steed of
Tacitus had had a hard day, the night had been less severe upon him than
upon his rider. I had procured him an excellent stable at the other side
of the river, and upon recrossing again in the morning I found him as
ready to race as his owner could desire. Poor beast, he was a most
miserable-looking animal, though belying his attenuated appearance by his
performance. The only race which his generally forlorn aspect justified
one in believing him capable of running was a race, and a hard one, for
existence; but for all that he went well, and Tacitus himself might have
envied the classical outline of his Roman nose.
About two miles north of Fort Garry the Red River makes a sharp bend to
the east and, again turning round to the west, forms a projecting point
or neck of land known as Point Douglas. This spot is famous in Red River
history as the scene of the battle, before referred to in these pages,
where the voyageurs and French half-breeds of the North west Fur Company
attacked the retainers of the Hudson Bay, some time in 1813, and
succeeded in putting to death by various methods of half-Indian warfare
the governor of the rival company and about a score of his followers. At
this point, where the usually abrupt bank of the Red River was less
steep, the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance
upon Fort Garry. The preliminary arrangements were soon completed, and
the little army, with its two brass guns trundling along behind Red River
carts, commenced its march across the mud-soaked prairie. How unspeakably
dreary it all looked! the bridge, the wretched village, the crumbling
fort, the vast level prairie, water soaked, draped in mist, and pressed
down by low-lying clouds. To me the ground was not new--the bridge was
the spot where only a month before I had passed the half reed sentry in
my midnight march to the Lower Fort. Other things had changed since then
besides the weather.
Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force
drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the
flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed
through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible
about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary
one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the
skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west
face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps
of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his
horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals
and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who
seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson
Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave
men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long
polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in
advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with
unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the
members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the
American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision
the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and
their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered
hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of
retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the
bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On
the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and
from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns
told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the
grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the
highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously
expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be
too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed
to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted
that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red
River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our
European ideas of that virtue.
That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by
his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine
on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth
much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps
an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to
depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear
to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W.
B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the
Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred.
Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the
more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance,
he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and
indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property
and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at
once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save
America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for
which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel
council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much.
He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his
virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the
rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members
of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the
approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound
of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the
troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by
the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory
language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel
government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government
House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt
of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea.
A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed
the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village
produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in
the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors
were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as
though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had
been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any
kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but
the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost
to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water
sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it
was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system,
that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched
upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I
regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the
general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from
the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to
their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden
revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power,
would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or
two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of
the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to
rights.
Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long
return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had
arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what
work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly
intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was
a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at
the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept
quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of
that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his
chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken
Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling
in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely
back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run
a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques
Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person
of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude,
peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At
length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of
September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the
torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander
also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River
Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the
United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was
mistaken, for it was only about to begin.