THE EED EIVEK EXPEDITION. 305 



esteemed to be most dangerous, and none but those 

 well skilled in the voyageur's art, and acquainted 

 with this river in particular, will ever attempt to 

 take boats along it. We were very deficient in good 

 steersmen, and had not more than a few guides 

 obtained at Fort Francis who knew the route : so 

 when this party of men, under charge of the Rev. 

 Mr Gardner, an English clergyman, met us at Eat 

 Portage, we realised for the first time that there was 

 really an active party in Manitoba, who had not 

 yet bowed the knee before Baal; that there were 

 men whose loyalty was not of the lip only, but a 

 reality, for which they were prepared to leave their 

 homes, and share the dangers to be encountered by 

 their countrymen who were struggling through a vast 

 wilderness to their assistance, and in order to relieve 

 them from the tyranny to which they had been so 

 long exposed. 



The description given to us by these men of the 

 dangers which were before us of rapids where the 

 least false step would send us over heavy falls into 

 whirlpools of such magnitude that the largest-sized 

 boats are quickly engulfed in them made many of 

 us wince. When shown the boats in which we had 

 made the journey up to that point, and in which we 

 expressed our determination to go on, they shook 

 their heads in mournful astonishment. Here, as 

 throughout the whole of this Expedition, we found a 

 general conviction stamped upon the minds of every 



