ow the writer
of these pages through such vicissitudes as he may encounter will have
to live awhile amongst these people of the Red River of the North, it
will be necessary to examine this little cloud of insurrection which the
last days of 1869 pushed above the political horizon. Bookmark About the
time when Napoleon was carrying half a million of men through the snows
of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the
idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the
vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that
entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in
earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the
imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century,
had planted on the coast of the Carolinas and along the Gulf of Mexico
the first germs of colonization in the New World. But in one respect Lord
Selkirk's experiment was wholly different from those that had preceded
it. The earlier adventurers had sought the coast-line of the Atlantic
upon which to fix their infant colonies. He boldly penetrated into the
very centre of the continent and reached a fertile spot which to this day
is most difficult of access. But at that time what an oasis in the vast
wilderness of America was this Red River of the North! For 1400 miles
between it and the Atlantic lay the solitudes that now teem with the
cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Indeed,
so distant appeared the nearest outpost of civilization towards the
Atlantic that all means of communication in that direction was utterly
unthought of. The settlers had entered into the new land by the
ice-locked bay of Hudson, and all communication with the outside world
should be maintained through the same outlet. No easy task! 300 miles of
lake and 400 miles of river, wildly foaming over rocky ledges in its
descent of 700 feet, lay between them and the ocean, and then only to
reach the stormy waters of the great Bay of Hudson, whose ice-bound
outlet to the Atlantic is fast locked save during two short months of
latest summer. No wonder that the infant colony had hard times in store
for it-hard times, if left to fight its way against winter rigour and
summer: inundation, but doubly hard when the hand of a powerful enemy was
raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more
before we part. Enough for us now to k