on the shoulders of stalwart voyageurs, and finally landed at Red
River, after a rough trip of many weeks' duration. The colony was
founded in 1811, by the Earl of Selkirk, previously to which it had
been a trading-post of the Fur Company. At the time of which we
write, it contained about five thousand souls, and extended upwards
of fifty miles along the Red and Assiniboine rivers, which streams
supplied the settlers with a variety of excellent fish. The banks
were clothed with fine trees; and immediately behind the settlement
lay the great prairies, which extended in undulating waves--almost
entirely devoid of shrub or tree--to the base of the Rocky Mountains.

Although far removed from the civilised world, and containing within
its precincts much that is savage and very little that is refined,
Red River is quite a populous paradise, as compared with the
desolate, solitary establishments of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company.
These lonely dwellings of the trader are scattered far and wide over
the whole continent--north, south, east, and west. Their population
generally amounts to eight or ten men--seldom to thirty. They are
planted in the thick of an uninhabited desert--their next neighbours
being from two to five hundred miles off--their occasional visitors,
bands of wandering Indians--and the sole object of their existence
being to trade the furry hides of foxes, martens, beavers, badgers,
bears, buffaloes, and wolves. It will not, then, be deemed a matter
of wonder that the gentlemen who have charge of these establishments,
and who, perchance, may have spent ten or twenty years in them,
should look upon the colony of Red River as a species of Elysium, a
sort of haven of rest, in which they may lay their weary heads, and
spend the remainder of their days in peaceful felicity, free from the
cares of a residence among wild beasts and wild men. Many of the
retiring traders prefer casting their lot in Canada; but not a few of