x its long-pent-up waters with Lake
Winnipeg. Boats are seen rowing about upon its waters, as the settlers
travel from place to place; and wooden canoes, made of the hollowed-out
trunks of large trees, shoot across from shore to shore--these canoes
being a substitute for bridges, of which there are none, although the
settlement lies on both sides of the river. Birds have now entered upon
the scene, their wild cries and ceaseless flight adding to it a cheerful
activity. Ground squirrels pop up out of their holes to bask their
round, fat, beautifully-striped little bodies in the sun, or to gaze in
admiration at the farmer, as he urges a pair of _very_ slow-going oxen,
that drag the plough at a pace which induces one to believe that the
wide field _may_ possibly be ploughed up by the end of next year. Frogs
whistle in the marshy ground so loudly that men new to the country
believe they are being regaled by the songs of millions of birds. There
is no mistake about their _whistle_. It is not merely _like_ a whistle,
but it _is_ a whistle, shrill and continuous; and as the swamps swarm
with these creatures, the song never ceases for a moment, although each
individual frog creates only one little gush of music, composed of half
a dozen trills, and then stops a moment for breath before commencing the
second bar. Bull-frogs, too, though not so numerous, help to vary the
sound by croaking vociferously, as if they understood the value of bass,
and were glad of having an opportunity to join in the universal hum of
life and joy which rises everywhere, from the river and the swamp, the
forest and the prairie, to welcome back the spring.

Such was the state of things in Red River one beautiful morning in
April, when a band of voyageurs lounged in scattered groups about the
front gate of Fort Garry. They were as fine a set of picturesque, manly
fellows as one could desire to see. Their mode of life rendered them
healthy, hardy, and good-humoured, with a strong dash of recklessness--
perhaps too much of it--in some of the younger men. Being descended,
generally, from French-Canadian sires and Indian mothers, they united
some of the good and not a few of the bad qualities of both, mentally as
well as physically--combining the light, gay-hearted spirit and full,
muscular frame of the Canadian with the fierce passions and active
habits of the Indian. And this wildness of disposition was not a little
fostered by the nature of thei