Believing that farming was the thing needing cultivation in a country with so rich a soil, the Colonizers began the Hayfield farm on the north bank of the Assiniboine River, near what is now the outskirts of the City of Winnipeg, a little above the present Agricultural College buildings. Beginning with an expensive salary for Manager Laidlaw, the promoters erected ample farm buildings, barns, yards and stables. Importations were made of well-bred cattle and horses. Several years of mismanagement and helplessness resulted from this trial of a model farm, and it was given up at a total loss to the proprietors of £3,500. The Assiniboine Wool Company was next started, but failed before the first payment of stock took place, without damage to anyone, so that, as was remarked, there was "much cry and little wool." The Flax and Hemp Company was the next unfortunate enterprise. This failed on account of there being no market, so that farmers never reaped the successful crops which they had grown. An expedition was made to Missouri, under Messrs. Burke and Campbell, to introduce sheep into the settlement. As the fifteen hundred sheep purchased had to be driven 1,500 miles to their destination on Red River, only two hundred and fifty of the whole flock survived. Failure after failure taking place did not prevent the formation of a Tallow Company, which resulted in the loss of £600 to £1,000, and a considerable sum was spent also in an abortive attempt to open up a road to Hudson's Bay, a scheme which Lord Selkirk's letters show, he had in view from the very beginning of the life of the Colony. The courage and generosity of the executors of Lord Selkirk shown to all these enterprises reflects the greatest credit upon them. True, the concession of so wide an area of fertile land was worth it, and the pledges made to the Selkirk settlers demanded it, but as in hundreds of other enterprises undertaken by British capitalists on the American continent, the choice of men foreign to the country and its conditions, the lack of conscience and economy on the part of the agents sent out, the dissension and jealousy aroused by every such attempt, as well as the absence of the means of transport by land and sea through the methods supplied by science to-day, resulted in a series of dismal failures, which placed an undeserved stigma upon the character of the soil, climate, and resources of Assiniboia. It took more than fifty years of subsequent effort to remove this impression.
These experiences took place under those governors who succeeded Alexander Macdonell—the Grasshopper Governor. The first of them was Captain Bulger, an unfortunate martinet, though a man of good conscience and high ideals. He had a most uncompromising manner. He quarreled with the Hudson's Bay Company officer at Fort Garry on the one hand, and with old Indian Chief Peguis on the other. A whole crop of suggestions made by the Captain on the improvement of the Colony remain in his "Red River Papers." Bulger's successor was Governor Pelly, a relative of the celebrated Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. The new Governor lacked nerve and decision, and was quite unfitted for his position. His method of dealing with an Indian murderer was long repeated on Red River as a subject for humor, when he instructed the interpreter to announce to the criminal: "that he had manifested a disposition subversive of all order, and if he should not be punished in this world, he would be sure to be punished in the next." The hopelessness of carrying on the affairs of the Colony apart from those of the general affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company, was now seen, and on the suggestion of Governor Simpson, the management was placed in the hands of governors immediately responsible to the company. This change led to the appointment as Governor of Donald McKenzie. This old trader had taken part in the formation of the Astor Fur Company, and was in charge of one of the famous parties, which in 1811 crossed the continent, as described by Washington Irving. Ross Cox says of this beleaguered party: "Their concave cheeks, protuberant bones, and tattered garments indicated the dreadful extent of their privations. The old trader thus case-hardened faced bravely for eight years the worries of the Colony.
CHAPTER XV.
AND THE FLOOD CAME.
With fire and flood some of the greatest catastrophies of the world have been closely connected. The tradition of the Noachian deluge has been found among almost all peoples. Horace speaks of the mild little Tiber becoming so unruly that the fishes swam among the tops of the trees upon its banks. Tidal waves devastated the shores of England and France on several occasions. It is most natural that prairie rivers should exceed their banks and spread over wide areas of the land. Old Trader Nolin, one of the first on the prairies, states that a worse flood than that seen by the Selkirk Settlers took place fifty years before, and there were two other floods between these two. Each year, according to the tale of the old settlers, the rivers of the prairies have been becoming wider by denudation, so that each flood tends to be less. Several conditions seem to be necessary for a flood upon these prairie rivers. These are a very heavy snowfall during the prairie winter, a late spring in which the river ice retains its hold, and a sudden period in the springtime of very hot weather, these being modified as the years go on by the ever-widening river channel.
The winter of 1825-6 was one of the most terrific ever known in the history of the Selkirk Settlement. Just before Christmas the first woe occurred. The snow drove the herds of buffaloes far out upon the prairies from the river encampments and the wooded shelter. The horses in bands were scattered and lost, dying as they floundered in the deep snows. Even the hunters were cut off from one another, the hunters' families were driven hither and thither, and in many cases separated on the wide snowy plains. Sheriff Ross, who was a visitor from the Settlement to Pembina in the dreary winter there, describes the scene of horror. "Families here and families there despairing of life, huddled themselves together for warmth, and in too many cases, their shelter proved their grave. At first, the heat of their bodies melted the snow; they became wet, and being without food or fuel, the cold soon penetrated, and in several instances froze the whole into a body of solid ice. Some again, were found in a state of wild delirium, frantic, mad; while others were picked up, one here, and one there, overcome in their fruitless attempts to reach Pembina—some half-way, some more, some less; one woman was found with an infant on her back, within a quarter of a mile of Pembina. This poor creature must have travelled, at least, one hundred and twenty-five miles, in three days and nights, till she sunk at last in the too unequal struggle for life." Such scenes might be expected in the valleys of the Highlands of Scotland, or amid the heavy snows of New Brunswick or Quebec, but they were a surprise upon the open prairie. Some of the settlers had devoured their dogs, raw hides, leather and their very shoes. The loss of thirty-three lives cast a gloom over the whole settlement.
Anxiety had been aroused throughout the whole Colony. The St. Lawrence often overflows its banks at Montreal, the Grand River at Brantford and the Fraser at its delta, but the rarity of the Red River overflows led the people, after their winter disaster, to hope that they would escape a flood.
This was not to be.
As the Red River flows northward, the first thaw of spring is usually south of the American International Boundary line at the head waters of the river which divides Minnesota and Dakota. In these States the floods are always, in consequence, greater than they are in Manitoba. In this year the ice held very firm up to the end of April. On the second of May, the waters from above rose and lifted the ice which still held in a mass together some nine feet above the level of the day before. Indians and whites alike were alarmed. The water overflowed its banks, and still continued to rise at Fort Garry. The Governor and his family were driven to the upper story of their residence in the fort, with the water ten feet deep below that.