RED RIVER AND SASKATCHEWAN. 31 



of St. Paul's. It is said that all the grains of the cool temper- 

 ate latitudes can be produced abundantly. It is the great resort 

 of the buffalo herds, the presence of which in vast numbers 

 sufficiently attests the plentiful supply of grass on the plains 

 at all seasons. Those who take perhaps a sanguine view of the 

 subject, assert that there is a country here four times the size 

 of the British Islands, with a fertile soil, navigable rivers, and 

 abundance of coal, now almost wholly unoccupied, which is 

 perfectly adapted to settlement. They compare the state of 

 this unnoticed territory to that of Europe at the period of the 

 earliest Eoman expansion, when Gaul, Scandinavia, and Brit- 

 ain were regarded as inhospitable regions fit only for barba- 

 rians, and anticipate an early rush of colonists from the old 

 country to seize upon its natural advantages. 



The evidence is sufficiently strong to show that this vast 

 region ought no longer to be left unknown and unexamined. 

 An exploring party is said to have already visited the sources 

 of the south Saskatchewan, and there must be abundance 

 of information regarding the whole territory in the possession 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company. The descendants of the first 

 colony, planted by Lord Selkirk in 1812, still maintain their 

 ground on the Ked Kiver, but the vicissitudes they have ex- 

 perienced tend to modify the sanguine expectations, entertain- 

 ed by some, of the future progress of this country. Passing 

 over their early years of contention with the North West Com- 

 pany, we find them in 1818 visited by a plague of grasshoppers, 

 which nearly destroyed their crops. In the following year the 

 destruction was complete. An eye-witness says that these in- 

 sects were produced in masses, two, three, or four inches in 

 depth. The water was infected with them. Along the river 

 they were to be found in heaps like sea-weed, and might be 

 shovelled with a spade. Every vegetable substance was either 

 eaten up or stripped to the stalk. The colonists supported 



