"Re-Embarking In Our Canoes, We Continued Descending The River For Some Fifteen Miles Further, Through The French Portion Of

The settlement, lining mainly the west or left bank of the river, until we arrived about the centre of the

Colony, at the mouth of the Assinniboin tributary of Red River, where we landed and remained a few days, viewing the colony and its improvements. I was at that time, and am even now, when I look back upon it, lost in wonder at the phenomena which that settlement exhibits to the world, considering its location in an almost polar region of the North. Imagine a river flowing sluggishly northward through a flat alluvial plain, and the west side of it lined continuously for over thirty miles with cultivated farms, each presenting those appearances of thrift around them which I mentioned as surrounding the first farms seen by us; but each farm with a narrow frontage on the river of only twenty-four rods in width, but extending back for one or two miles, and each of these narrow farms having their dwellings and the farm out-buildings spread only along the river front, with lawns sloping to the water's edge, and shrubbery and vines liberally trained around them, and trees intermingled the whole presenting the appearance of a long suburban village such as you might see near our eastern sea-board, or such as you find exhibited in pictures of English country villages, with the resemblance rendered more striking by the spires of several large churches peeping above the foliage of the trees in the distance, whitewashed school-houses glistening here and there amidst sunlight and green; gentlemen's houses of pretentious dimensions and grassy lawns and elaborate fencing, the seats of retired officers of the Hudson's Bay Company occasionally interspersed; here an English bishop's parsonage, with a boarding or high school near by; and over there a Catholic bishop's massive cathedral, with a convent of Sisters of Charity attached; whilst the two large stone forts, at which reside the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, or of the colony once called Upper Fort Garry, and situated at the mouth of the Assinniboin, and the other termini the Lower Fort Garry, which is twenty miles farther down the river, helped to give additional picturesqueness to the scene.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 92 of 188
Words from 24335 to 24721 of 50597