After many disappointments the cry of the Selkirk Colonists for a minister of their own faith reached Scotland, and their case was referred to Dr. Robert Burns, of Toronto, who was further urged to action by Governor Ballenden, of Fort Garry.  In August, 1857, the Rev. John Black, then newly ordained, was sent on by Dr. Burns to Red River.  He was fortunate in becoming attached to a military expedition led by Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, going northwest for nearly four hundred miles, from St. Paul to Pembina.

Leaving the military escort behind, in company with Mr. Bond, who wrote an account of the trip, Mr. Black floated down Red River in a birch canoe, and in a three-days’ journey they reached the Marion’s House in St. Boniface.  It is said that it was from Bond’s description of this voyage that the Poet Whittier obtained the information for the well-known poem.

    The red river voyageur.

Out and in the river is winding
  The banks of its long red chain,
Through belts of dusky pine land
  And gusty leagues of plain.

Only at times a smoky wreath
  With the drifting cloud-rack joins—­
The smoke of the hunting lodges
  Of the wild Assiniboines.

Drearily blows the north wind,
  From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are uneasy,
  And heavy the hands that row.

And with one foot on the water,
  And one upon the shore,
The Angel’s shadow gives warning—­
  That day shall be no more.

Is it the clang of wild geese? 
  Is it the Indians’ yell,
That lends to the voice of the North wind
  The tones of a far-off bell?

The Voyageur smiles as he listens
  To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
  Of the bells of St. Boniface.

The bells of the Roman Mission
  That call from their turrets twain;
To the boatmen on the river,
  To the hunter on the plain.

Even so on our mortal journey
  The bitter north winds blow;
And thus upon Life’s Red River
  Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.

Happy is he who heareth
  The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City—­
  The chimes of Eternal peace.

In the afternoon of the day of their arrival the party crossed from St. Boniface to Fort Garry, and the missionary well known as Rev. Dr. Black, went to the hospitable shelter of Alexander Ross, whose daughter he afterward married.  Three hundred of the Selkirk Colonists and their children immediately gathered around Mr. Black, and though interrupted for a year by the great flood which we have described, erected in the following year, the stone Church of Kildonan, on the highway some five miles from Winnipeg.  With the help of a small grant from the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Selkirk Colonists erected, free from debt, their church which still remains.  Two other churches were erected by the Presbyterians, and beside each a school.  For several years before the old Colony ceased Mr. Black conducted service in the Court House near Fort Garry, and in 1868, with the assistance of Canadian friends, erected the small Knox Church on Portage Avenue, in Winnipeg.  This building, though used, was not completed till after the arrival of the Canadian troops in 1870.