EAELY HISTORY OF WHEAT-GROWING 29 



the plains during the winter by the laborious and expensive 

 means of horse and ox sledges. There were 260 miles of 

 journeying from St. Paul to Fort Abercrombie, and then 

 another 250 miles from Fort Abercrombie to the head- 

 quarters of the Settlement on the Red River. The trans- 

 portation of the flour, however, was successfully accom- 

 plished, and the settlers, as they ate their bread in the 

 winter of 1868-69, were cheered with the thought of the 

 warm sympathy which their needs had awakened in the 

 great world without. ^^ 



XIX. State of the Settlement in 1870 



After the Hudson's Bay Company altered its route for 

 the importation of the goods intended for its trade from 

 the old one of the Hudson Bay to that of St. Paul, a very 

 considerable traffic by means of Red River carts grew up 

 between St. Paul and the Red River Settlement. Accord- 

 ing to Hargrave, who wrote in 1871, some 1,500 carts made 

 the journey yearly and 500 carts twice a year. They 

 carried furs to the south and brought back manufactured 

 articles on the return journey. Three hundred carts also 

 plied between the Settlement and the district of Saskatche- 

 wan.^''' This contact with other civilized communities 

 graduallv became more intimate and the Settlement corre- 

 spondingly less isolated. 



In 1870 the total population, including white settlers, 



56 Ihid., pp. 446-449. In one item Hargrave is in error, for he 

 states that the Canadian contribution to the relief of the Settlement 

 was $3,600. This figure is too small. Chester Martin, who has had 

 access to the accounts, says that " Canadian cities and private indi- 

 viduals contributed more than $12,000." Vide C. Martin, The Red 

 River Settlement, in Canada and Its Provinces, Toronto, 1914, Vol. 

 XIX, p. 68. Minnesota's contribution, according to Martin, was 

 $5,000. 



5T Ibid., pp. 167-168. 



