Up to this time no intimation had reached the Lower Fort of pursuit by the myrmidons of M. Riel.  But soon there came intelligence.  A farmer carrying corn to the mill in the fort had been stopped by a party of men some seven miles away, and questioned as to his having seen a stranger; others had also seen the mounted scouts.  And so while I slept the sleep of the tired my worthy host was receiving all manner of information regarding the movements of the marauders who were in quest of his sleeping guest.

I may have been asleep some two hours, when I became aware of a hand laid on my shoulder and a voice whispering something into my ear.  Rousing myself from a very deep sleep, I beheld the Hudson Bay officer in charge of the fort standing by the bed repeating words which failed at first to carry any meaning along with them.

“The French are after you,” he reiterated.

“The French"-where was I, in France?

I had been so sound asleep, that it took some seconds to gather up-the different threads of thought where I had left them off a few hours before, and “the French” was at that time altogether a new name in my ears for the Red River natives.  “The French are after you!” altogether it was not an agreeable prospect to open my eyes upon, tired, exhausted, and sleepy as I was.  But, under the circumstances, breakfast seemed the best preparation for the siege, assault, and general battery which, according to all the rules of war, ought to have followed the announcement of the Gallic Nationality being in full pursuit of me.

Seated at breakfast, and doing full justice to a very excellent mutton chop and cup of Hudson Bay Company Souchong (and where does there exist such tea; out of China?), I heard a digest of the pursuit from the lips of my host.  The French had visited him in his fort once before with evil intentions, and they might come again, so he proposed that we should drive down to the Indian Settlement, where the ever-faithful Ojibbeways would, if necessary, roll back the tide of Gallic pursuit, giving the pursuers a reception in which Pahaouza-tau-ka, or “The Great Scalp-taker,” would play a prominent part.

Breakfast over, a drive of eight miles brought us to the mission of the Indian Settlement presided over by Archdeacon Cowley.

Here, along the last few miles of the Red River ere it seeks, through many channels, the waters of Lake Winnipeg, dwell the remnants of the tribes whose fathers in times gone by claimed the broad lands of the Red River; now clothing themselves, after the fashion of the white man, in garments and in religion, and learning a few of his ways and dealings, but still with many wistful hankerings towards the older era of the paint and feathers, of the medicine bag and the dream omen.

Poor red man of the great North-west, I am at last in your land!  Long as I have been hearing of you and your wild doings, it is only here that I have reached you on the confines of the far-stretching Winnipeg.  It is no easy task to find you now, for one has to travel far into the lone spaces of the Continent before the smoke of your wigwam or of your tepie blurs the evening air.