With fire and flood some of the greatest catastrophies of the world have been closely connected.  The tradition of the Noachian deluge has been found among almost all peoples.  Horace speaks of the mild little Tiber becoming so unruly that the fishes swam among the tops of the trees upon its banks.  Tidal waves devastated the shores of England and France on several occasions.  It is most natural that prairie rivers should exceed their banks and spread over wide areas of the land.  Old Trader Nolin, one of the first on the prairies, states that a worse flood than that seen by the Selkirk Settlers took place fifty years before, and there were two other floods between these two.  Each year, according to the tale of the old settlers, the rivers of the prairies have been becoming wider by denudation, so that each flood tends to be less.  Several conditions seem to be necessary for a flood upon these prairie rivers.  These are a very heavy snowfall during the prairie winter, a late spring in which the river ice retains its hold, and a sudden period in the springtime of very hot weather, these being modified as the years go on by the ever-widening river channel.

The winter of 1825-6 was one of the most terrific ever known in the history of the Selkirk Settlement.  Just before Christmas the first woe occurred.  The snow drove the herds of buffaloes far out upon the prairies from the river encampments and the wooded shelter.  The horses in bands were scattered and lost, dying as they floundered in the deep snows.  Even the hunters were cut off from one another, the hunters’ families were driven hither and thither, and in many cases separated on the wide snowy plains.  Sheriff Ross, who was a visitor from the Settlement to Pembina in the dreary winter there, describes the scene of horror.  “Families here and families there despairing of life, huddled themselves together for warmth, and in too many cases, their shelter proved their grave.  At first, the heat of their bodies melted the snow; they became wet, and being without food or fuel, the cold soon penetrated, and in several instances froze the whole into a body of solid ice.  Some again, were found in a state of wild delirium, frantic, mad; while others were picked up, one here, and one there, overcome in their fruitless attempts to reach Pembina—­some half-way, some more, some less; one woman was found with an infant on her back, within a quarter of a mile of Pembina.  This poor creature must have travelled, at least, one hundred and twenty-five miles, in three days and nights, till she sunk at last in the too unequal struggle for life.”  Such scenes might be expected in the valleys of the Highlands of Scotland, or amid the heavy snows of New Brunswick or Quebec, but they were a surprise upon the open prairie.  Some of the settlers had devoured their dogs, raw hides, leather and their very shoes.  The loss of thirty-three lives cast a gloom over the whole settlement.

Anxiety had been aroused throughout the whole Colony.  The St. Lawrence often overflows its banks at Montreal, the Grand River at Brantford and the Fraser at its delta, but the rarity of the Red River overflows led the people, after their winter disaster, to hope that they would escape a flood.