CHAPTER I.

THE EARLIER PEOPLE.

A PATRIARCH'S STORY.


This is the City of Winnipeg. Its growth has been wonderful. It is the
highwater mark of Canadian enterprise. Its chief thoroughfare, with
asphalt pavement, as it runs southward and approaches the Assiniboine
River, has a broad street diverging at right angles from it to the West.
This is Broadway, a most commodious avenue with four boulevards neatly
kept, and four lines of fine young Elm trees. It represents to us "Unter
den Linden" of Berlin, the German Capital.

The wide business thoroughfare Main Street, where it reaches the
Assiniboine River, looks out upon a stream, so called from the wild
Assiniboine tribe whose northern limit it was, and whose name implies
the "Sioux" of the Stony Lake. The Assiniboine River is as large as the
Tiber at Rome, and the color of the water justifies its being compared
with the "Yellow Tiber."

The Assiniboine falls into the Red River, a larger stream, also with
tawny-colored water. The point of union of these two rivers was long ago
called by the French voyageurs "Les Fourches," which we have translated
into "The Forks."