Its
vastness, dreariness, and loneliness is appalling. Very little is
under cultivation between this and St. Paul, so that only a house
here and there breaks the line of horizon. There are a few cotton
and aspen trees along the Red River Valley, but with that
exception the landscape for the last fifteen hours' travelling has
been like the sea on a very smooth day, without a beginning or an
end.
We were met at the station here by one of A - - 's friends, who
drove us out about a mile and a half from the town across the
Assiniboine over a suspension bridge built exactly opposite the
old Fort Garry, and somewhere close to the spot where our first
English pioneers must have landed from the river steamer some
twelve years ago to a very comfortable house belonging to another
mutual friend, a dear kind old gentleman whose wife and daughter
being away has placed the whole house at our disposal until we can
get out to the farm, which we find is sixteen miles off.
It will be very difficult to describe everything to you. To begin
with, the depot or station presented a curious appearance, such
crowds of men loafing about with apparently no other object but to
watch the new arrivals; so different to English stations where
everyone seems in a hurry either coming or going. And then the
roads we had to drive along defy description. The inches (no other
word) of mud, and the holes which nearly capsize one at every
turn. Even down Main Street the roads are not stoned or paved in
any way. We bumped a good deal in our carriage, and for
consolation at any worse bumping than usual were told, "This is
nothing, wait until you get stuck in a mud-hole out west." Then
our route, thanks to the floods which have been very bad this year
and are still out enormously - the upper floors of two-storied
houses only being visible in many places, - was most intricate. We
had to be pioneered over a ditch into a wood, supposed to be
cleared, with the stumps of trees left sticking about six inches
out of the ground for your wheels to pass over, on to a track, and
then through a potato garden to the house.
We were quite ready for our supper, it being about 8 o'clock when
we got here; and the food at Glyndon, where we stopped twenty
minutes in the middle of the day to "put away" the contents of
sixteen dishes of some various mess or another, had not been of
the most inviting of meals; and though the chops here were the
size of a small leg of mutton and had the longest bones I ever
saw, hunger was the best of appetisers, and we did credit to our
meal, which had been cooked by our host.
This morning we were awoke by the same kind person depositing a
can of water at our door for our baths.
