Upon inquiring for the post-office, I was referred to the Postmaster himself, who, in his-capacity of leading citizen, was standing by.  Asking if there were any letters lying at his office for me, I was answered in a very curt negative, the postmaster retiring immediately up the steep bank towards the collection of huts which calls itself Pembina.  The boat soon cast off her moorings and steamed on into British territory.  We were at length within the limits of the Red River Settlement, in the land of M. Louis Riel, President, Dictator, Ogre, Saviour of Society, and New Napoleon; as he was variously named by friends and foes in the little tea-cup of Red River whose tempest had cast him suddenly from dregs to surface.  “I wasn’t so sure that they wouldn’t have searched the boat for you,” said the captain from his wheel-house on the roof-deck, soon after we had passed the Hudson Bay Company’s post, whereat M. Riel’s frontier guard was supposed to hold its head-quarters.  “Now, darn me, if them whelps had stopped the boat, but I’d have just rounded her back to Pembina and tied up under the American post yonder, and claimed protection as an American citizen.”  As the act of tying up under the American post would in no way have forwarded my movements, however consolatory it might have proved to the wounded feelings of the captain, I was glad that we had been permitted to proceed without molestation.  But I had in my possession a document which I looked upon as an “open sesame” in case of obstruction from any of the underlings of the Provisional Government.

This document had been handed to me by an eminent ecclesiastic whom I met on the evening preceding my departure at St. Paul, and who, upon hearing that it was my intention to proceed to the Red River, had handed me, unsolicited, a very useful notification.  So far, then, I had got within the outer circle of this so jealously protected settlement.  The guard, whose presence had so often been the theme of Manitoban journals, the picquet line which extended from Pembina Mountain to Lake of the Woods (150 miles), was nowhere visible, and I. began to think that the whole thing was only a myth, and that the Red River revolt was as unsubstantial as the Spectre of the Brocken.  But just then, as I stood on the high roof of the “International,” from whence a wide view was obtained, I saw across the level prairie outside the huts of Pembina the figures of two horsemen riding at a rapid pace towards the north.  They were on the road to Fort Garry.  The long July day passed slowly away, and evening began to darken over the level land, to find us still steaming down the widening reaches of the Red River.

But the day had shown symptoms sufficient to convince me that there was some reality after all in the stories of detention and resistance, so frequently mentioned; more than once had the figures of the two horsemen been visible from the roof-deck of the steamer, still keeping the Fort Garry trail, and still forcing their horses at a gallop.