I have already mentioned the tortuous course which the Red River has wound for itself through these level northern prairies.  The windings of the river more than double the length of its general direction, and the turns are so sharp that after steaming a mile the traveller will often arrive at a spot not one hundred yards distant from where he started.

Steaming thus for one day and one night down the Red River of the North, enjoying no variation of scene or change of prospect, but nevertheless enjoying beyond expression a profound sense of mingled rest and progression, I reached at eight o’clock on the morning of the-20th of July the frontier post of Pembina.

And here, at the verge of my destination, on the boundary of the Red River Settlement, although making but short delay myself, I must ask my readers to pause awhile and to go back through long years into earlier times.  For it would ill suit the purpose of writer or of reader if the latter were to be thus hastily introduced to the isolated colony of Assineboine without any preliminary-acquaintance with its history or its inhabitants.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Retrospective—­The North-west Passage—­The Bay of Hudson—­Rival Claims—­The Old French Fur Trade—­The North-west Company—­How the Half-breeds came—­The Highlanders defeated-Progress—­Old Feuds.

We who have seen in our times the solution of the long-hidden secret worked out amidst the icy solitudes of the Polar Seas cannot realize the excitement which for nigh 400 years vexed the minds of European kings and peoples—­how they thought and toiled over this northern passage to wild realms of Cathay and Hindostan—­how from every port, from the Adriatic to the Baltic, ships had sailed out in quest of this ocean strait, to find in succession portions of the great world which Columbus had given to the human race.

Adventurous spirits were these early navigators who thus fearlessly entered the great unknown oceans of the North in craft scarce larger than canal-boats.  And how long and how tenaciously did they hold that some passage must exist by which the Indies could be reached!  Not a creek, not a bay, but seemed to promise the long-sought-for opening to the Pacific.

Hudson and Frobisher, Fox, Baffin, Davis, and James, how little thought they of that vast continent whose presence was but an obstacle in the path of their discovery!  Hudson had long perished in the ocean which bears his name before it was known to be a cul-de-sac.  Two hundred years had passed away from the time of Columbus ere his dream of an open sea to the city of Quinsay in Cathay had ceased to find believers.  This immense inlet of Hudson Bay must lead to the Western Ocean.  So, at least, thought a host of bold navigators who steered their way through fog and ice into the great Sea of Hudson, giving those names to strait and bay and island, which we read in our school-days upon great wall-hung maps and never think or care about again.  Nor were these anticipations of reaching the East held only by the sailors.