Fort Maurepas (in the region of the modern Alexander) lay on a tongue of sand extending into the lake a few miles beyond the entrance of Red River. Tamarack and poplar fringe the shore; and in windy weather the lake is lashed into a roughness that resembles the flux of ocean tides. I remember once going on a steamer towards the site of Maurepas. The ship drew lightest of draft. While we were anchored the breeze fell, and the ship was stranded as if by ebb tide for twenty-four hours. The action of the wind explained the Indian tales of an ocean tide, which had misled La Vérendrye into expecting to find the Western Sea at this point. He found a magnificent body of fresh water, but not the ocean. The fort was the usual pioneer fur post—a barracks of unbarked logs, chinked up with frozen clay and moss, roofed with branches and snow, occupying the centre of a courtyard, palisaded by slabs of pine logs. M. de la Vérendrye was now in the true realm of the explorer—in territory where no other white man had trod. With a shout his motley forces emerged from the snowy tamaracks, and with a shout from Pierre de la Vérendrye and his tawny followers the explorer was welcomed through the gateway of little Fort Maurepas.
[Illustration: Traders' Boats running the Rapids of the Athabasca River.]
Pierre de la Vérendrye had heard of a region to the south much frequented by the Assiniboine Indians, who had conducted Radisson to the Sea of the North fifty years before—the Forks where the Assiniboine River joins the Red, and the city of Winnipeg stands to-day. It was reported that game was plentiful here. Two hundred tepees of Assiniboines were awaiting the explorer. His forces were worn with their marching, but in a few weeks the glaze of ice above the fathomless drifts of snow would be too rotten for travel, and not until June would the riverways be clear for canoes. But such a scant supply of goods had his partners sent up that poor De la Vérendrye had nothing to trade with the waiting Assiniboines. Sending his sons forward to reconnoitre the Forks of the Assiniboine,—the modern Winnipeg,—he set out for Montreal as soon as navigation opened, taking with him fourteen great canoes of precious furs.
The fourteen canoe loads proved his salvation. As long as there were furs and prospects of furs, his partners would back the enterprise of finding the Western Sea. The winter of 1738 was spent as the guest of the governor at Château St. Louis. The partners were satisfied, and plucked up hope of their venture. They would advance provisions in proportion to earnings. By September he was back at Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, pushing for the undiscovered bourne of the Western Sea. Leaving orders for trade with the chief clerk at Maurepas, De la Vérendrye picked out his most intrepid men; and in September of 1738, for the first time in history, white men glided up the ochre-colored, muddy current of the Red for the Forks of the Assiniboine. Ten Cree wigwams and two war chiefs awaited De la Vérendrye on the low flats of what are now known as South Winnipeg. Not the fabled Western Sea, but an illimitable ocean of rolling prairie—the long russet grass rising and falling to the wind like waves to the run of invisible feet—stretched out before the eager eyes of the explorer. Northward lay the autumn-tinged brushwood of Red River. South, shimmering in the purple mists of Indian summer, was Red River Valley. Westward the sun hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean. Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired voyageurs turned longingly westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest run on—on—on—endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. But what lay just beyond this Assiniboine Valley? An old Cree chief warned the boatmen that the Assiniboine River was very low and would wreck the canoes; but he also told vague yarns of "great waters beyond the mountains of the setting sun," where white men dwelt, and the waves came in a tide, and the waters were salt. The Western Sea where the Spaniards dwelt had long been known. It was a Western Sea to the north, that would connect Louisiana and Canada, that De la Vérendrye sought. The Indian fables, without doubt, referred to a sea beyond the Assiniboine River, and thither would De la Vérendrye go at any cost. Some sort of barracks or shelter was knocked up on the south side of the Assiniboine opposite the flats. It was subsequently known as Fort Rouge, after the color of the adjacent river, and was the foundation of Winnipeg. Leaving men to trade at Fort Rouge, De la Vérendrye set out on September 26, 1738, for the height of land that must lie beyond the sources of the Assiniboine. De la Vérendrye was now like a man hounded by his own Frankenstein. A thousand leagues—every one marked by disaster and failure and sinking hopes—lay behind him. A thousand leagues of wilderness lay before him. He had only a handful of men. The Assiniboine Indians were of dubious friendliness. The white men were scarce of food. In a few weeks they would be exposed to the terrible rigors of Northern winter. Yet they set their faces toward the west, types of the pioneers who have carved empire out of wilderness.
