136 RED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



on the Assinniboine, about sixty-five miles west of Fort 

 Garry, with Mr. Napier and a Cree half-breed named 

 John Halle t. Our conveyance, which resembled a very 

 shaky old fashioned light cart, was furnished by Mr. 

 M'Dermott, the most enterprising and wealthy merchant 

 and freighter in the settlements. Mr. M'Dermott became 

 a kind of purveyor-general to the Expedition, and supplied 

 us with whatever was to be procured for money in this 

 remote region. Hallet provided two horses, one of which 

 he declared to be an excellent buffalo runner, but not to 

 be trusted in shafts, as we found to our cost. In the 

 following general description of the Assinniboine, a few 

 facts are incorporated which were acquired during the 

 exploration of the following year. 



The Assinniboine rises in latitude 51° 40', and pursues 

 a south-easterly course for a distance of about 260 miles 

 parallel to the basins of the Great Lakes on the east of the 

 Biding and Duck Mountains. Within eighteen miles south 

 of the 50th parallel it takes a sudden bend to the east, 

 which general direction is preserved until it falls into 

 Bed Biver, a distance of about 240 miles from the great 

 bend. At Lane's Post, twenty-two miles from Fort Garry, 

 the Assinniboine is 120 feet broad (June 28th, 1858), 

 with a mean sectional depth of six feet. Its greatest depth 

 here is seven and a half feet, and the rate of its current is 

 one and a half mile an hour. Near Prairie Portage, 

 sixty-seven miles from Fort Garry, the speed of the cur- 

 rent is two miles an hour, and its fall, as ascertained by 

 levelling, is 1*18 feet in a mile. At its junction with the 

 Little Souris, an affluent which it receives 140 miles from 

 its mouth, the breadth of the river is 230 feet, its great- 

 est depth twelve feet, and its mean sectional depth 8*6, 

 the speed of its current being one and a quarter mile 

 an hour ; this river is apparently considerably larger 140 



