208 



RED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



The congregations at Eed Eiver consist of resident and 

 retired officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, some mer- 

 chants, farmers, and the natives or half-breeds of the 

 respective parishes. The services are conducted in strict 

 accordance with customary forms, and the demeanour 

 of the congregations is very attentive and decorous. A 

 fair proportion of the congregations come to and go from 

 church in neat carriages, or on horseback, and the exter- 

 nal appearance of the assemblages, taken as a whole, in 

 relation to dress, is superior to what we are accustomed 

 to see in Canada, or in the country parishes of Great 

 Britain. The young men wear handsome blue cloth frock 

 coats, with brass buttons, and round their waist a long 

 scarlet woollen sash ; the young women are neatly dressed 

 like the country girls at home, but in place of a bonnet 

 they wear the far more becoming shawl or coloured 

 handkerchief thrown over or tied round the head ; some- 

 times they allow their long black hair to serve the 

 purpose of a covering and ornament for which, from 

 its profusion, it is admirably fitted. In this particular 

 many of the half-breed girls follow the custom of their 

 Indian ancestry,, who, as a general rule, never cover the 

 head. 



There is a distinct and well-preserved difference in faith 

 between the populations of the different parishes into which 

 the settlement is divided. Some are almost exclusively 

 Protestant, others equally Eoman Catholic. In the parish 

 of St. Norbert there is not one Protestant family, but 101 

 Eoman Catholic families. In the parish of St. Boniface 

 there are 178 Eoman Catholic families and five Pro- 

 testant ; so also in the parish of St. Francois Xavier, on 

 the Assinniboine, there are 175 Eoman Catholics to three 

 Protestant families. On the other hand, in the parish of 



