At The Head Of Most Of These Monuments Stood Wooden Crosses, For
The Population Here Is Principally Roman Catholic, Some Of Them Inscribed
With The Names Of The Dead, Not Always Accurately Spelled.
Not far from the church stands a building, regarded by the half-breeds as
a wonder of architecture, the
Stone house, _la maison de pierre_, as they
call it, a large mansion built of stone by a former agent of the Northwest
or Hudson Bay Company, who lived here in a kind of grand manorial style,
with his servants and horses and hounds, and gave hospitable dinners in
those days when it was the fashion for the host to do his best to drink
his guests under the table. The old splendor of the place has departed,
its gardens are overgrown with grass, the barn has been blown down, the
kitchen in which so many grand dinners were cooked consumed by fire, and
the mansion, with its broken and patched windows, is now occupied by a
Scotch farmer of the name of Wilson.
We climbed a ridge of hills back of the house to the church of the
Episcopal Mission, built a few years ago as a place of worship for the
Chippewas, who have since been removed by the government. It stands remote
from any habitation, with three or four Indian graves near it, and we
found it filled with hay. The view from its door is uncommonly beautiful;
the broad St. Mary lying below, with its bordering villages and woody
valley, its white rapids and its rocky islands, picturesque with the
pointed summits of the fir-tree.
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