In the same year that Palliser's expedition was despatched by the British Government to examine the resources and characteristics of Rupert's Land, a party was sent by the Canadian Government with similar ends in view, but more especially to examine the routes and means of access by which the prairies of the North-West might be reached from Lake Superior.
The staff of the party was as follows: George Gladman, director; Professor Henry Youle Hind, geologist; W. H. E. Napier, engineer; S. J. Dawson, surveyor. These, along with several foremen, twelve Caughnawaga Iroquois, from near Lachine, and twelve Ojibway Indians from Fort William, made up a stirring canoe party of forty-four persons.
In July, 1857, the expedition left Toronto, went by land to Collingwood on Lake Huron, embarked there on the steamer Collingwood, and passing by Sault St. Marie, reached on August 1st Fort William at the mouth of the Kaministiquia. Mr. John McIntyre, the officer of the Hudson's Bay Company in charge of Fort William, has given to the writer an account of the arrival of the party there with their great supply canoes, trading outfit, and apparatus, piled up high on the steamer's deck—a great contrast to the scanty but probably more efficient means of transport found on a Hudson's Bay Company trading journey. The party in due time went forward over the usual fur traders' route, which we have so often described, and arrived at Fort Garry early in September.
As the object of the expedition was to spy out the land, the Red River settlement, now grown to considerable size, afforded the explorers an interesting field for study. Simple though the conditions of life were, yet the fact that six or seven thousands of human beings were gaining a livelihood and were possessed of a number of the amenities of life, made its impress on the visitors, and Hind's chapters VI. to X. of his first volume are taken up with a general account of the settlement, the banks of the Red River, statistics of population, administration of justice, trade, occupations of the people, missions, education, and agriculture at Red River.
Having arrived at the settlement, the leaders devised plans for overtaking their work. The approach of winter made it impossible to plan expeditions over the plains to any profit. Mr. Gladman returned by canoe to Lake Superior early in September, Napier and his assistants took up their abode among the better class of English-speaking half-breeds between the upper and lower forts on the banks of the Red River. Mr. Dawson found shelter among his Roman Catholic co-religionists half a mile from Fort Garry. He and his party were to be engaged during the winter between Red River and the Lake of the Woods, along the route afterwards called the Dawson Road, while Hind followed his party up the western bank of Red River to Pembina, and his own account is that there was of them "all told, five gentlemen, five half-breeds, six saddle horses, and five carts, to which were respectively attached four poor horses and one refractory mule."
This party was returning to Canada, going by way of Crow Wing, thence by stage coach to St. Paul, on the Mississippi, then by rail unbroken to Toronto, which was reached after an absence of three and a half months.
The next season Hind was placed in charge of the expedition, and with new assistants went up the lakes in May, leading them by the long-deserted route of Grand Portage instead of by Kaministiquia. The journey from Lake Superior to Fort Garry was made in about twenty-one days. On their arrival at Red River the party found that Mr. Dawson had gone on an exploring tour to the Saskatchewan. Having organized his expedition Hind now went up the Assiniboine to Fort Ellice. The Qu'Appelle Valley was then explored, and the lake reached from which two streamlets flow, one into the Qu'Appelle and thence to the Assiniboine, the other into the Saskatchewan. Descending the Saskatchewan, at the mouth of which the Grand Rapids impressed the party, they made the journey thence up Lake Winnipeg and Red River to the place of departure. The tour was a most interesting one, having occupied all the summer. Hind was a close observer, was most skilful in working with the Hudson's Bay Company and its officers, and he gained an excellent view of the most fertile parts of the country. His estimate of it on the whole has been wonderfully borne out by succeeding years of experience and investigation.
MILTON AND CHEADLE.
The world at large, after Hind's expedition and the publication of his interesting observations, began to know more of the fur traders' land and showed more interest in it. In the years succeeding Hind's expedition a number of enterprising Canadians reached Fort Garry by way of St. Paul, Minn., and took up their abode in the country. A daring band of nearly 200 Canadians, drawn by the gold fever, started in 1862, on an overland journey to Cariboo; but many of them perished by the way. Three other well-known expeditions deserve notice.