The Great Lone Land / A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

by Sir William Francis Butler

Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the flag-staff, no men upon the 4 walls; the muzzles of one or two guns showed through the bastions, but no sign of defence or resistance was visible about the place. The gate facing the north was closed, but the ordinary one, looking South upon the Assineboine River, was found open. As the skirmish line neared the northside two mounted men rode round the west face and entered at a gallop through the open gateway. On the top steps of the Government House stood a tall, majestic-looking man, who, with his horse beside him; alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals and enounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who seemed to cower beneath his reproaches. This was an officer of the Hudson Bay Company, ell known as one of the most intrepid amongst the many brave men who had sought for the lost Franklin in the darkness of the long polar night. He had been the first to enter the fort, some minutes in advance of the Expedition, and his triumphant imprecations, bestowed with unsparing vigour, had tended to accelerate the flight of M. Riel and the members of his government, who sought in rapid retreat the safety of the American frontier. How had the mighty fallen! With insult and derision the President and his colleagues fled from the scene of their triumph and their crimes. An officer in the service of the Company they had plundered hooted them as they went, but perhaps there was a still harder note of retribution in the "still small voice" which must have sounded from the bastion wherein the murdered Scott had been so brutally done to death. On the bare flag-staff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns told to settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted that he possessed a fair share of courage too--courage not of the Red River type, which is a very peculiar one, but more in accordance with our European ideas of that virtue.

That he meditated opposition cannot be doubted. The muskets cast away by his guard were found loaded; ammunition had been served from the magazine on the morning of the flight. But muskets and ammunition are not worth much without hands and hearts to use them, and twenty hands with perhaps an aggregate of two and a half hearts among them were all he had to depend on at the last moment. The other members of his government appear to have been utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. The Hon. W. B. O'Donoghue was one of those miserable beings who seem to inherit the Vices of every calling and nationality to which they can claim a kindred. Educated for some semi-clerical profession which he abandoned for the more congenial trade of treason rendered apparently secure by distance, he remained in garb the cleric, while he plundered his prisoners and indulged in the fashionable pastime of gambling with purloined property and racing with confiscated horses--a man whose revolting countenance at once suggested the hulks and prison garb, and who, in any other land save America, would probably long since have reached the convict level for which nature destined him. Of the other active member of the rebel council--Adjutant-General the Hon. Lepine--it is unnecessary to say much. He seems to have possessed all the vices of the Metis without any of his virtues or noble traits. A strange ignorance, quite in keeping with the rest of the Red River rebellion, seems to have existed among the members of the Provisional Government to the last moment with regard to the approach of the Expedition. It is said that it was only the bugle-sound of the skirmishers that finally convinced M. Riel of the proximity of the troops, and this note, utterly unknown in Red River, followed quickly by the arrival in hot haste of the Hudson Bay official, whose deprecatory language has been already alluded to, completed the terror of the rebel government, inducing a retreat so hasty, that the breakfast of Government House was found untouched. Thus that tempest in the tea-cup, the revolt of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the President's untasted tea. A wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery amongst the voyageurs followed the arrival of the troops in Winnipeg'. The miserable-looking village produced, as if by magic, more saloons than any city of twice its size in the States could boast of. The vilest compounds of intoxicating liquors were sold indiscriminately to every one, and for a time it seemed as though the place had become a very Pandemonium. No civil authority had been given to the commander of the Expedition, and no civil power of any kind existed in the settlement. The troops alone were under control, but the populace were free to work what mischief they pleased. It is almost to be considered a matter of congratulation, that the terrible fire-water sold by the people of the village should have been of the nature that it was, for so deadly were its effects upon the brain and nervous system, that under its influence men became perfectly helpless, lying stretched upon the prairie for hours, as though they were bereft of life itself. I regret to say that Samuel Henderson was by no means an exception to the general demoralization that ensued. Men who had been forced to fly from the settlement during the reign of the rebel government now returned to their homes, and for some time it seemed probable that the sudden revulsion of feeling, unrestrained by the presence of a civil power, would lead to excesses against the late ruling faction; but, with one or two exceptions, things began to quiet down again, and soon the arrival of the civil governor, the Hon. Mr. Archibald, set matters completely to rights.

Before ten days had elapsed the regular troops had commenced their long return march to Canada, and the two regiments of Canadian militia had arrived to remain stationed for some time in the settlement. But what work it was to get the voyageurs away! The Iroquois were terribly intoxicated, and for a long time refused to get into the boats. There was a bear (a trophy from Fort Garry), and a terrible nuisance he proved at the embarkation; for a long-time previous to the start he had been kept quiet with un limited sugar, but at last he seemed to have had enough of that condiment, and, with a violent tug, he succeeded in snapping his chain and getting away up the bank. What a business it was! drunken Iroquois stumbling about, and the bear, with 100 men after him, scuttling in every direction. Then when the bear would be captured and put safely back into his boat, half a dozen of the Iroquois would get out and run a-muck through every thing. Louis (the pilot) would fall foul of Jacques Sitsoli, and commence to inflict severe bodily punishment upon the person of the unoffending Jacques, until, by the interference of the multitude, peace would be restored and both would be reconducted to their boats. At length they all got away down the river. Thus, during the first week of September, the whole of the regulars departed once more to try the torrents of the Winnipeg, and on the 10th of the month the commander also took his leave. I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River Expedition was over, and I had to find my way once more through the United States to Canada. My long journey seemed finished, but I was mistaken, for it was only about to begin.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Westward--News from the Outside World--I retrace my Steps--An Offer--The West--The Kissaskatchewan--The Inland Ocean--Preparations-- Departure--A Terrible Plague--A lonely Grave-Digressive--The Assineboine River--Rossette.

One night, it was the 19th of September, I was lying out in the long prairie grass near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, in the marshes of which I had been hunting wild fowl for some days. It was apparently my last night in Red River, for the period of my stay there had drawn to its close. I had much to think about-that night, for only a few hours before a French half-breed named La Ronde had brought news to the lonely shores of Lake Manitoba--news such as men can hear but once in their lives: the whole of the French army and the Emperor had surrendered themselves prisoners at Sedan, and the Republic had been proclaimed in Paris.

So dreaming and thinking over these stupendous facts, I-lay-under the quiet stars, while around me my fellow travellers slept. The prospects of my own career seemed gloomy enough too. I was about to go back to old associations and life-rusting routine, and here was a nation, whose every feeling my heart had so long echoed a response to, beaten down and trampled under the heel of the German whose legions must already be gathering around the walls of Paris. Why not offer to France in the moment of her bitter adversity the sword and service of even one sympathizing friend--not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind, running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea: I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely excited; sleep seemed banished altogether. I arose from the ground, and walked away into the stillness of the night. Oh, for a sign, for some guiding light in this uncertain hour of my life! I looked towards the north as this thought entered my brain. The aurora was burning faint in the horizon; Arcturus lay like a diamond above the ring of the dusky prairie. As I looked, a bright globe of light flashed from beneath the star and passed slowly along towards the west, leaving in its train a long track of rose-coloured light; in the uttermost bounds of the west it died slowly away. Was my wish answered? and did my path lie to the west, not east after all? or was it merely that thing which men call chance, and dreamers destiny?

A few days from this time I found myself at the frontier post of Pembina, whither the troublesome doings of the escaped Provisional leaders had induced the new governor Mr. Archibald to send me. On the last day of September I again reached, by the steamer "International," the Well-remembered Point of Frogs. I had left Red River for good. When the boat reached the landing-place a gentleman came on board, a well-known member of the Canadian bench.

"Where are you going?" he inquired of me.