Archibald, of Manitoba, within a few
weeks after his arrival in Fort Garry, took steps to secure a report on
conditions on "The Saskatchewan," outside the Province where he was the
representative of the Crown. The fact that he did this so soon after
assuming office and when matters in his own Province required special
attention, indicates strongly the pressure that had been brought to bear
upon the Canadian authorities by headquarters. And when a man was
required for the special mission out over the far North-West he was
there on the spot in the person of Lieutenant W. F. Butler of the 69th
Regiment, afterwards famous as Sir William Butler, of South Africa. On
account of his splendid powers of endurance, his great faculty for
observation and his remarkable literary genius, he was a man with unique
qualifications for the task--the difficult and delicate task--to which
Governor Archibald called him. A person has to be sadly destitute in the
religious sense to believe that Butler was on hand by accident. It is
exceedingly interesting to find that another man, who afterwards became
noted in South Africa, namely the bluff and valiant fighter, Redvers
Buller, was in the Red River expedition with Wolseley and had been
mentioned in connection with the mission to the North-West hinterland.
Years afterwards in the Boer War time this same Redvers Buller, then
commanding the British forces on the veld, said to Colonel Sam B.
Steele, of Strathcona's Horse, who also had served under Wolseley: "I
know Lord Strathcona very well: when I was at Fort Garry on the Red
River Expedition he spoke to me about going out over the plains to
investigate conditions, but I was recalled to my regiment and Governor
Archibald sent Butler out instead, a good thing too; for he wrote a very
good book on his journey which I could not have done." And this
big-hearted, manly, generous reference by Buller properly indicated that
he not only recognized his own limitations, but was glad to pay tribute
to the literary genius who wrote that Classic _The Great Lone Land_ and
the noble biography of General Gordon of Khartoum.

But Butler had more than literary gifts. He had, as already stated,
great powers of observation and that remarkable faculty for forecasting,
which was exemplified, then, on Canadian prairies as it was later on the
South African veld.

In the book _The Great Lone Land_, to which allusion has been made,
Butler tells us with manly frankness th