their
privations." The old trader thus case-hardened faced bravely for eight
years the worries of the Colony.

CHAPTER XV.

AND THE FLOOD CAME.

With fire and flood some of the greatest catastrophies of the world have
been closely connected. The tradition of the Noachian deluge has been
found among almost all peoples. Horace speaks of the mild little Tiber
becoming so unruly that the fishes swam among the tops of the trees upon
its banks. Tidal waves devastated the shores of England and France on
several occasions. It is most natural that prairie rivers should exceed
their banks and spread over wide areas of the land. Old Trader Nolin,
one of the first on the prairies, states that a worse flood than that
seen by the Selkirk Settlers took place fifty years before, and there
were two other floods between these two. Each year, according to the
tale of the old settlers, the rivers of the prairies have been becoming
wider by denudation, so that each flood tends to be less. Several
conditions seem to be necessary for a flood upon these prairie rivers.
These are a very heavy snowfall during the prairie winter, a late spring
in which the river ice retains its hold, and a sudden period in the
springtime of very hot weather, these being modified as the years go on
by the ever-widening river channel.

The winter of 1825-6 was one of the most terrific ever known in the
history of the Selkirk Settlement. Just before Christmas the first woe
occurred. The snow drove the herds of buffaloes far out upon the
prairies from the river encampments and the wooded shelter. The horses
in bands were scattered and lost, dying as they floundered in the deep
snows. Even the hunters were cut off from one another, the hunters'
families were driven hither and thither, and in many cases separated on
the wide snowy plains. Sheriff Ross, who was a visitor from the
Settlement to Pembina in the dreary winter there, describes the scene of
horror. "Families here and families there despairing of life, huddled
themselves together for warmth, and in too many cases, their shelter
proved their grave. At first, the heat of their bodies melted the snow;
they became wet, and being without food or fuel, the cold soon
penetrated, and in several instances froze the whole into a body of
solid ice. Some again, were found in a state of wild delirium, frantic,
mad; while others were picked up, one here, and one there, overcome in
their fruitless attempts to re