THE EED KIVEK EXPEDITION. 271 



When told of the description of boats we were 

 taking with us, some pitied us as poor deluded 

 people, totally ignorant of what was before us ; 

 whilst all these wiseacres seemed to consider us as 

 men whom the gods having doomed to destruction 

 had first be crazed. 



Sensible men who had but recently returned via 

 the United States from Manitoba said that our 

 force ought at least to be three times stronger than 

 it was : that Kiel was on the look-out for our ad- 

 vance, and intended to defend step by step and 

 mile by mile the difficult country we should have 

 to pass through, where a few good huntsmen, ac- 

 customed to the woods, could annihilate an army; 

 in fact, that General Braddock's fate was in store 

 for us, &c., &c. Clever did any expedition have 

 more lugubrious prophecies made concerning it. 



From time to time the soldiers were, however, 

 encouraged by intelligence received from Eed Eiver 

 announcing Kiel's determination to show fight. The 

 work on the Kaministiquia Eiver had been so very 

 severe, and that of road-making always distasteful 

 to soldiers so very wearisome, that all looked for- 

 ward to the embarkation at Shebandowan Lake as 

 a relief from toil, or at least regarded it as a new 

 phase in the undertaking whose novelty alone would 

 compensate for any drawbacks attendant upon it. 

 From the 1st June to the 16th July (when this first 

 detachment started) it had rained upon twenty-three 



