nt for stores. At Pembina a storehouse was built immediately, and
having given directions to erect several other buildings, the Governor
returned by boat to the Forks. On the 27th of October Owen Keveny, in
charge of the second detachment of Colonists, arrived with his party,
largely of Irishmen. These men were taken on to Pembina. After great
activity the buildings were ready by the 21st of November to house the
whole of the two parties now united in one band of Colonists. The
Governor and officers' quarters were finished on December 27th.
Macdonell reports to Lord Selkirk that "as soon as the place at Pembina
took some form and a decent flagstaff was erected on it, it was called
Fort Daer." It is said that in most years the buffaloes were very
numerous and so tame that they came to the Trader's Fort and rubbed
their backs upon its stockaded enclosure. There was this year plenty of
buffalo meat and the Scotch women soon learned to cook it into
"Rubaboo," or "Rowschow," after the manner of the French half-breeds.
Toward spring food was scarcer.

[Illustration: HON. DONALD GUNN Schoolmaster, Naturalist and Legislator.
York Factory, 1813; Red River, 1823; Died at Little Britain. 1878.]

In May the winterers of Pembina returned to their settlement at the
Colony. They sought to begin the cultivation of their farms, but they
were helpless. The tough prairie sod had to be broken up and worked
over, but the only implement which the Colonist had to use was a simple
hoe, the one harrow being incomplete. The crofters were poor farmers,
for they were rather fishermen. But the fish in Red River were scarce in
this year, so that even the fisher's art which they knew was of little
avail to them. The summer of 1813 was thus what the old settlers would
call an "Off-Year," for even the small fruits on the plains were far
from abundant. These being scarce, the chief food of the settlers for
all that summer through was the "Prairie turnip." This is a variety of
the pea family, known as the Astragalus esculenta, which with its large
taproot grows quite abundantly on the dry plains. An old-time trader,
who was lost for forty days and only able to get the Prairie turnip,
practically subsisted in this way. Along with this the settlers gathered
quantities of a very succulent weed known as "fat-hen," and so were kept
alive. The Colonists knowing now what the soil could produce obtained
small quantities of grain and even with their defective mea