which the
women saved and carried home in their aprons. There was no help for it
but to retire to Pembina, although there was less fear than formerly for
as a writer of the day says: "The settlers had now become good hunters;
they could kill the buffalo; walk on snowshoes; had trains of dogs
trimmed with ribbons, bells and feathers, in true Indian style; and in
other respects were making rapid steps in the arts of a savage life."

The complete loss of their crops left the settlers even without the
seed-wheat necessary to sow their fields. The nearest point of supply of
this necessity was an agricultural settlement in the State of Minnesota,
upwards of five hundred miles away. Here was a mighty task--to undertake
to cross the plains in winter and to bring back in time for the seeding
time in spring the wheat which was necessary. But the Highlander is not
to be deterred by rocky crag or dashing river, or heavy snow in his own
land and he was ready to face this and more in the new world. And so a
daring party went off on snowshoes, and taking three months for their
trip, reached the land of plenty and secured some hundred bushels at the
price of ten shillings a bushel.

The question now was how to transport the wheat through a trackless
wilderness. Up the Mississippi River for hundreds of miles the flat
boats constructed for the purpose were painfully propelled, and passing
through the branch known as the Minnesota River the Stony Lake was
reached. This lake is the source of the Minnesota and Red rivers, and
being at high water in the spring it was possible to go through the
narrow lake from one river to the other with the rough boats
constructed. The Red River was reached by the fearless adventurers who
brought the "corn out of Egypt." They did not, however, reach the Red
River with their treasure till about the end of June, 1820, and while
the wheat grew well it was sown too late to ripen well, although it gave
the settlers grain enough to sow the fields of the coming year. This
expedition cost Lord Selkirk upwards of a thousand pounds sterling. In
the following year the grasshoppers again visited the Red River fields,
but by a sudden movement which, by some of the good Colonists was
interpreted to be a direct interference of Providence on their behalf,
the swarms of intruders passed away never to appear again in the Red
River for half a century.

The presence of the grasshoppers upon the Canadian prairies is one of
i