clown the east bank of that stream to Fort Ripley, Sauk Ra- 

 pids and St. Anthony, to St. Paul. 



5. The military stage and early Red River steamer route, 

 which connected St. Paul with Fort Garry in 1860. 



6. The Dawson route, which cut off the laborious naviga- 

 tion of the Kaininistiquia Rivei' by a road to Lake Sheban- 

 dawan, using thence the old water route of the North West 

 Co., with dams on several streams, better landings and im- 

 proved portages to the Lake of the Woods and the North West 

 Angle, from which a road had been cut to St. Anne and St. 

 Boniface, thus saving the broken navigation of the W innipeg 

 River, the crossing of the head of Lake Winnipeg, and the 

 ascent of the Red River. 



7. The old Crow Wing Trail, opened in 1844 by a few 

 adventurous spirits under direction of William Hallett, who, 

 having been attacked by the Sioux on their way to St. Paul 

 by Lac Travers and St. Peter, sought safety in returning by 

 this route, many miles of which had to be cut through the 

 woods. 



Of these seven routes of travel I have, Mr. President, 

 ladies and gentlemen, chosen the last-mentioned because, un- 

 like most of the others, it may not be traversed to-day. The 

 ploughshare of the Minnesota settler has obliterated its once 

 deeply marked triple track, and even where, like the old 

 l:)uffalo paths of Southwestern Manitoba, these may in some 

 places be distinguished, the fence of the old and the new 

 settler bars the way. 



Another reason may be found in the fact that over it I 

 made my fiist prairie journey, that from one of its encamp- 

 ments I saw the last herd of buffalo ever seen east of the Red 

 River, and that though I am about to describe it as seen by 

 me in a peaceful journey late in the fall of 1860, I was to 

 traverse it again when comparatively disused during the year 

 of the Sioux massacre in Minnesota, as the only hope of 

 reaching Fort Garry from St. Paul, where I then was, when 

 a camp lire was out of the question, each river-ford and bluff 



