Beyond Pope we entered Grant County, containing 268,000 acres of land, nearly all open to settlement, and through which the main line of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will be constructed the present year. The population of the entire county probably does not exceed five hundred, who are mostly Swedes and Norwegians. It is on the ridge, or, rather, the gentle undulating prairie, between the waters of the Red River of the North and the Chippewa River, an affluent of the Minnesota. We passed between two small lakes; the waters of one find their way to the Gulf of Mexico, the other to the Arctic Sea.
Our second Sabbath camp was upon the bank of the Red River of the North,—a beautiful stream, winding its peaceful way through a country as fertile as the Delta of the Nile.
For two days we had journeyed over rolling prairie, seeing no inhabitant; but on Saturday afternoon we reached the great thoroughfare leading from the Mississippi to the Red River,—travelled by the Fort Abercrombie stage, and by the Pembina and Fort Garry carts, by government trains and the ox-teams that transport the supplies of the Hudson Bay Company.
Sitting there upon the bank of the Red River amid the tall, rank grasses, and watching the flowing stream, my thoughts went with its tide towards the Northern Sea. It has its rise a hundred miles or more north of us, near Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi, flows southward to this point turns westward here, is joined below by a stream issuing from Lake Traverse, its most southern source, and then flows due north to Lake Winnipeg, a distance altogether of about five hundred miles.
It is the great southern artery of a water-system that lies almost wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.
The Assinniboine joins it just before reaching Lake Winnipeg, and up that stream we may steam due west two hundred and thirty miles to Fort Ellis. From Winnipeg we may pass eastward to the intricate Rainy Lake system towards Superior, or westward into Lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis, which together contain as much water as Lake Erie.
Sailing along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg two hundred miles, we reach the mouth of the Saskatchawan, large enough to be classed as one of the great rivers of the continent.
Professor Hind, of Toronto, who conducted a government exploring-party through the country northwest of Lake Superior, says: "The Saskatchawan, which gathers the waters from a country greater in extent than the vast region drained by the St. Lawrence and all its tributaries, from Lake Superior to the Gulf, is navigable for more than a thousand miles of its course, with the single exception of a few rapids near its confluence with Lake Winnipeg."
Professor Hind travelled from Fort Garry northwest over the prairies towards the Rocky Mountains, and gives the following description of his first view of the stream. He says:—
"The first view, six hundred miles from the lake, filled me with astonishment and admiration,—nearly half a mile broad, flowing with a swift current, and still I was three hundred and fifty miles from the mountains."