Then the toilsome journey, on steamboat or over muddy roads, with myriads of mosquitoes and inevitable hardships, was past, and the steamer "tied up" at the warehouse, or the prairie caravan crossed the ferry of the Assiniboine and camped by the walls of Fort Garry. The sun seemed to shine all the brighter and the air was all the more exhilarating since the goal had been reached and the land of promise entered on.
At a distance of about half a mile from the fort was now springing up the straggling village of Winnipeg. This nucleus of the present city was a separate place, with different ideals and often divergent aspirations, from old Fort Garry. For years the struggle prevailed as to which should rule, but the increase of population, the influx of men of wider view, and the softening influence of time abolished the rivalries, and the Hudson's Bay Company has in late years entered into all the objects and prospects of the city along with its most enterprising citizens. The picture of that early Winnipeg is a strange contrast to the city of to-day.
Soon after his arrival the family patriarch and his stalwart sons found their way to the land office, inspected the list of vacant lands, ascertained where acquaintances had gone, and after visits and journeys hither and thither, made up their minds where to take up lands from the embarrassing plenty that was offered them. New townships were opening up in all directions where the surveyors had gone, and east and west new settlements sprang up like magic.
The Kildonan people, from their greater intelligence than that of their neighbors, and their long residence in the country, were naturally much consulted as to the best parts of the country and the localities most desirable for settlement. Their habits of life, however, being more pastoral than agricultural, had led them to different views from those taken by the majority of the new-comers who were farmers. The writer remembers very well in 1871 hearing of several Canadian families, who had broken the immemorial custom of settling along the river bank, and had ventured beyond Bird's Hill on the one hand, and Stony Mountain on the other, several miles from the river. These were looked upon by some of the old settlers as simply mad, their failure was prophesied, and the expectation was strongly held that they would be frozen on the plains, or lost in the snow-drifts if they attempted during the winter to find their way to the old settlement. To-day, tens of thousands of Manitoba settlers have their comfortable houses on the open plains.
SOUND THE GOSPEL CLARION.
Wherever the settler goes, there must the herald of the Gospel follow him. Many of the early settlers of Manitoba came from the congested agricultural districts of Bruce, Huron and Lanark counties, in Ontario. As these were strongly Presbyterian localities, a very large proportion of the incoming settlers belonged to the church whose foundation John Black had been for twenty years so industriously and firmly laying. The Presbytery of Manitoba had been formed just in time (1870) to deal with this great influx of people, and applications came to it from almost every new locality to have the Gospel preached. It was a great responsibility. Money and men were scarce, and the source of both these lay in the older provinces, from which so many of the older settlers were coming. The doctrine was laid down that it was the duty of settled pastors, ordained missionaries, college professors, students and also efficient elders, to occupy the new and rising settlements, and the leading members of Presbytery cherished it as an ambition to be the first church to preach the Gospel in each rising settlement. That ambition has been largely fulfilled in the quarter of a century that has elapsed since it was formed. It involved great self-denial to accomplish this. But the spirit prevailed. It has led to the enormous growth that has taken place, as seen in the fact that the nine preaching places of 1870 have increased to the vast number, north and west of Lake Superior, of 839 in 1897.
CHURCH STATESMANSHIP.
Much more, however, than this was necessary. The new province of Manitoba was unknown. People do not send their contributions largely to places of which they know nothing. There were many in the eastern provinces who had no confidence in the future of Manitoba. One of the leaders of the Church denounced it as a frozen Siberia, and declared himself unwilling to spend a dollar of mission money within its hyperborean limits.
It became the duty of John Black and his colleagues to do away with this false notion. They knew well their advantage as belonging to the Presbyterian Church. It is a church which legislates in its highest court—the General Assembly—for the weak as well as for the strong; for the maligned as well as for the popular; for the distant as well as for the central interests. Accordingly the Manitoba men began the work by letter, and full report, and map, and speech, and personal influence, with the purpose of letting the church know the capabilities of the country, and the prospect of a large population coming to cultivate its fertile soil.
And this was not a mere spasmodic effort, but it has continued from that day to this. The Presbytery of Manitoba kept up a constant agitation as to its wants, knowing that the kindly mother in the east but needed to hear the cry of her children and she would relieve them. And so it has been. The outlook of the church has been so widened that to day money flows freely to Manitoba, Assiniboia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia for the wide mission work of the west.