254 RED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



Eiver and the Lake of the Woods, write reports on the 

 route from Lake Superior, and collect information re- 

 specting the resources of the country and the condition 

 of its inhabitants. 



On the 9th I overtook my party about six miles from 

 Fort Garry. All told, we were five gentlemen, five half- 

 breeds, six saddle-horses, and five carts, to which were 

 respectively attached four poor horses and one refractory 

 mule. During the afternoon we met the Bishop of 

 Eupert's Land and Miss Anderson, who were returning 

 to Eed Eiver from England. 



On the 11th we camped at Pembina, near the mouth 

 of the river of the same name. Mr. Murray, the gentle- 

 man in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company's post, two 

 miles north of the boundary line, gave us an excellent 

 dinner, thus maintaining to the last the reputation for 

 hospitality which the officers in charge of the posts of the 

 company have justly earned. Whatever may have been 

 the former condition of the village of Pembina, it is now 

 only a small and scattered collection of log-houses, situated 

 on the right bank of the Eed Eiver, in the new territory 

 of Dakotah. The ruins of several good houses, formerly 

 occupied by the Eoman Catholic mission, are still to be 

 seen, but in all other respects the town and port of Pem- 

 bina exist only on paper. The few log-houses which 

 have given it a name and a certain reputation, derived 

 probably from its being formerly a frontier post of far 

 more pretensions than at the present time, still serve for 

 an excuse to attract public attention to the fancied pro- 

 gress of the Americans in this part of the Eed Eiver 

 valley. In the late returns for the election of officers in 

 the new state of Minnesota (October, 1857), the names of 

 many resident voters are recorded, but it would be a matter 

 of great difficulty to discover their abode now. The pre- 



