174 BED KIVEE EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



was again destroyed, the settlers dispersed, and some of 

 them banished, by the half-breeds, to Norway House. 



At the time when these disastrous occurrences were 

 taking place, Lord Selkirk was on his way to the Eed 

 Eiver with about 100 disbanded soldiers of the De Meu- 

 ron regiment, composed chiefly of Germans, French, and 

 Swiss. After Lord Selkirk's arrival order was restored, 

 the Scottish emigrants recalled, the De Meuron soldiers 

 rewarded with grants of land on German Creek, a town 

 was laid out on Point Douglas, and such arrangements 

 completed for the government of the colony as the posi- 

 tion of the Hudson's Bay Company and the interests of the 

 fur trade would admit of. The social condition of Eupert's 

 Land at this period may be gathered from the following 

 brief description by Governor Semple, who was killed in 

 the unfortunate conflict just referred to : — "I have 

 trodden the burnt ruins of houses, barns, a mill, a fort, 

 and sharpened stockades, but none of a place of worship, 

 even on the smallest scale. I blush to say that, through- 

 out the whole extent of the Hudson's Bay territories, no 

 such building exists."* 



On the 16th July, 1818, several French-Canadian fami- 

 lies, under the guidance of two priests, Messrs. Provencher 

 and Dumoulin, arrived in the colony, and in the same 

 year, and almost at the same period, innumerable hosts 

 of grasshoppers came from the south-western prairies, and 

 in a few hours destroyed every green thing, threatening 

 the young colony with famine. In 1820 the foundation 

 of a Eoman Catholic church was laid near the site of the 

 present Cathedral of St. Boniface ; and in the fall of that 

 year Mr. West, a minister of the Church of England, 

 visited the colony as chaplain to the Hudson's Bay Com- 



* Governor Semple. Quoted by Tucker, in the "Rainbow of the 

 North." 



