The weary journey—­430 miles from York Factory—­was thus over and the worn out, weather beaten, ragged, and foot-sore travellers had come to the lake, whose name, other than that of Red River, was the only inland word they had ever heard of before starting on their journey.

It was the first standing place in the country, which was now to have them as its pioneers.

There is no turning back now.  The Rubicon is crossed.  Thirty-seven portages lie between them and the dissociable sea.  For better or for worse they will now complete their journey, going on to found the Settlement which has become so famous.

The appearance of Norway House with its fine site and evidences of trade cheered the Colonists, and the sight of a body of water like Lake Winnipeg, which can be as boisterous as the ocean, brought back the loud resounding sea by whose swishing waves most of the settlers, for all their lives, had been lulled to sleep.  It is a great stormy and dangerous lake—­Lake Winnipeg.  But for boats to creep along its shore with the liberty of landing on its sloping banks in case of need it is safe enough.  The season was well past, and haste was needed, but in due time the mouth of the river—­the delta of Red River—­was reached.  Now they were within forty or forty-five miles of their destination.  At this time the banks of the Red River were well wooded, though there was open grassy plains lying behind these belts of forest.  There was only one obstruction on their way up the river.  This was the “Deer,” now St. Andrew’s Rapids, but after their experiences this was nothing, for these rapids were easily overcome by tracking, that is, by dragging the boats by a line up the bank.

Up the river they came and rounded what we now call Point Douglas, in the City of Winnipeg, a name afterwards given to mark Lord Selkirk’s family name.  They had completed a journey of seven hundred and twenty-eight miles, from York Factory to the site of Winnipeg—­and they had done this in fifty-five days.  Now they landed.

THE RED LETTER DAY OF THEIR LANDING WAS AUGUST 30TH, 1812.

At York Factory the Colonists had met a Hudson’s Bay Company officer—­Peter Fidler—­on his way to England.  He was the surveyor of the Company and a map of the Colony of which a copy is given by us marks the Colony Gardens, where Governor Miles Macdonell lived.  This spot they chose, and the locality at the foot of Rupert Street is marked in the City of Winnipeg.  A stone’s throw further north along the bank of Red River, Fort Douglas was afterwards built, around which circles much of this Romantic Settlement Story.

This spot was the centre of the First Settlement of Rupert’s Land and to this first party peculiar interest attaches.

There can only be one Columbus among all the navigators who crossed from Europe to America; there can only be one Watt among all the inventors and improvers of the steam engine; only one Newton among those who discuss the great discovery of the basal law of gravitation.