The earth was still black. Even crows and blackbirds contributed to the prevailing tint. As they drew near to the end of the trek, an occasional white tent could be seen far across the plain, looking for all the world like a small sailing boat on a vast blue sea. The colonists were going on to their land.
Seven weeks to the very day on which the Lake Manitoba had left Liverpool, they arrived at the point where an imaginary railway bisected an imaginary meridian of longitude, and chosen by a visionary leader as the site for the Colony's Headquarters. Having the sky above them, the Rocky Mountains not many hundred miles off, and a good big slough full of frogs close by to drink out of, everything was now all right.
Although weary, travel-worn, sick to death of baking-powder bread, surfeited with tent life, thoroughly disillusioned regarding "rarnching" and all the rest of the cock-and-bull theories born on the Lake Manitoba, yet no one was faint-hearted. They pitched their tents among the dozens of others whilst the rain, to keep them cheerful, fell down in sheets.
At least one thousand indomitable souls survived the trek. On the land which they had travelled five thousand miles to see, they were now as completely isolated from the world as a caravan in the middle of the Sahara.
The nearest settlements were an Indian Reservation forty miles to the north; Edmonton, two hundred miles west; Battleford, one hundred miles east; and southwards, the main line of the Canadian Pacific, more than one hundred and fifty miles away. Not a fence, not a road, scarcely a wagon track marked this huge, unbroken monotony. All round the Barr Colonists' reservation was a huge tract of country thousands of square miles larger in extent than the area of England, with hardly anybody in it.
The Colony was named Britannia. Whether this title was given to it because some exasperated lady had threatened Barr with a three-tined pitchfork, or whether it was on account of Britishers being so fond of water, is not accurately known; anyhow, the name, seeing that the settlement was a purely British one, was very fitting.
Pretty soon, at Headquarters Camp, with the intention of introducing a little variety into things, a number of the more discontented and disillusioned colonists called a meeting to decide whether to tar and feather, or lynch, the Rev. Isaac M. Barr. It is one of the peculiarities of history-making, that leaders always have to run these slight risks. So it was with Barr. Things were in a dreadful muddle. Flour was almost non-existent and expensive. The plainest necessities were either scarce or unobtainable. But there was a superabundance of 3-inch nails, and door-latches, which naturally helped things considerably.
Barr's genius for organization and money-making had long since deserted him. His fingers, which previously had grasped the reins of leadership, now much too frequently caressed the hard, smooth neck of a whiskey bottle. His brief day was over. Pestered to death by desperate colonists who desired some sort of settlement; absolutely cornered by others; despised by all; he feinted and dissembled to the last—then one night disappeared.
But there are several things Barr must be given credit for. Undoubtedly his original intentions were honest. He was quite entitled to make money out of the scheme. People who work for nothing are not so plentiful. Then he chose a fine stretch of fertile country for his Colony. Finally, no Barr Colonist, who is worth taking any notice of at all, ever said he regretted joining the movement, with its unforgettable experiences of humour and pluck. As a corollary, it may be mentioned that no man living could have been a perfect success as the leader of such a crowd as the Barr Colonists were at the start—not unless he could have enforced a sort of army discipline, with King's Regulations and sergeant-majors, and all the rest of the charming enactments devised for making rational men do what they don't wish to do.
Luckily, neither Trailey nor Bert had subscribed much money to Barr's schemes for founding a new Jerusalem in the great North-West. A few stray guineas handed over towards the founding of a community hospital comprised their total speculation. Nearly everyone bought shares in this particular venture, for the thought of being stricken by illness out in that vast loneliness was a very disquieting one. But these were the days before halitosis, and pyorrhea, and appendicitis had begun to ravage humanity; so, except for a little dandruff and falling hair, caused by the mental strain of contriving to get something to eat, the colonists were almost free from disease. Trailey and Bert wrote off their trifling losses, leaving to the men whom Barr was less clear with, the task of bringing him to justice, and deciding what kind of lingering torture would be most acceptable to him.