FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 5, 1907. 
I 2 
as they run at present. At the back of the fort 
stood the Governor’s house, where once a year 
for three or four days the factors of the various 
Hudson’s Bay Posts who could get to Ft. Garry 
assembled to report to the Governor. During 
this -meeting a great celebration was held and 
food and drink were free; rum for the common 
herd, but champagne for the factors. . 
Up and down the Red River from time im¬ 
memorial had passed the trail where the Crees 
and the allied Assinaboines, and later the 
Saulteaux, had traveled on the way to and from 
their hunting grounds along that stream and 
its tributaries. Here at the Grandes Fourches, 
where Red River and the Assinaboine meet to 
form the large stream, Alexander Henry, the 
younger, found them more than 100 years ago. 
Near the same Grande Fourches the old Sioux 
trail running east and west crossed the path 
used by its enemies. One may imagine how 
party after party of men, women and children, 
traveling by canoes or with dog travois, jour¬ 
neyed by this point; and in mental picture may 
view their camo life, their hunting adventures, 
their panics, and their battles. And here to-day, 
through a great city, soon to become greater, 
the main street .of Winnipeg follows the course 
of the old Cree trail, and hurrying white men, 
animated by the same emotions of love and 
hate and anxiety and fear, pass over the course 
traversed by the savage' of long ago. 
It were to be wished that in some way the 
name of the modern highway commemorated 
its similar use by those ancient travelers. Were 
it only called Trail Street, or Cree Avenue, it 
would be a reminder of old-time conditions. 
Above Fort Garry on the Assinaboine River 
once stood old Fort Gibraltar. Henry the 
younger speaks of riding out on the prairie 
from the fort and killing some cow buffalo at 
the Stony Mountain, a rocky ridge a. few miles 
out from Winnipeg. John MacDonald, its 
builder, was then in command at Fort Gibraltar; 
the same John MacDonald who later was in the 
sloop Raccoon when it took possession of Mr. 
Astor’s post at Astoria, at the time of its sur¬ 
render to the British during the war of 1812. 
It was up and down the Red River that Henry 
passed during the years of his trading at Fort 
Pambian, and it was Mr. C. N. Bell, we be¬ 
lieve, who, in papers read before the Historical 
Society of Manitoba, first brought to notice the 
extraordinarily interesting Henry Journal, which 
was later elaborated by Dr. Coues. 
Here was a land which at certain seasons was 
run over by the buffalo in such numbers that 
the grass was worn off it, the willows and the 
underbrush trampled to powder, and the trees 
worn smooth and polished by the rubbing of the 
great brutes. A tributary of the Red River was 
called Scratching River. On these streams as 
on others in the west there was always whole¬ 
sale destruction of the buffalo in the spring 
when the ice went out. As Henry says, “It 
really is astonishing what quantities must have 
perished, as they formed one continued line in 
the middle of the river for the part of two days 
and nights. One of my men found an entire 
herd of buffalo that had fallen through the ice 
in Park River and all drowned. They were 
still sticking in the ice.” A month later he 
writes: “Buffalo still drifting down stream. It 
is most intolerable the stench arising from the 
vast amount of drowned buffalo that lay along 
the banks of the river in every direction, above 
and below, and of which we can see no end. 
They tell me it passes all imagination the great 
numbers of buffalo that are lying along the 
beach, and on the banks above. I am informed 
that almost every _ spring it is the same, but 
not always in such immense numbers as this.” 
When I had last visited Winnipeg a good many 
years ago. yet after the railroad had reached it, 
it was a little village of a few houses far away 
from the track, now it is a great city of 100,000 
people. 
In its time this Red River settlement was a 
great place. In 1734 La Verandyre established 
a trading post there, but it was not until 60 
years later that the English merchants with the 
Hudson’s Bay Co. established their permanent 
forts on the Red and the Assinaboine Rivers. 
Early in the last century (1811) the Hudson’s 
Bay Co. granted to Lord Selkirk, its largest 
stockholder, a great tract of land which he pur¬ 
posed to use as homes for the Highland peas¬ 
antry who were then being evicted through the 
settling up of their old territory in Scotland. 
A number of the stockholders of the Hudson’s 
Bay Co. were opposed to making this grant, 
yet a number of colonists were sent out. Mean¬ 
time the Northwest Co. had been formed and 
was fighting the Hudson’s Bay Co. and began 
also to fight Lord Selkirk. The story is a long 
one and is told at length in Mr. Charles N. Bell’s 
interesting paper on “The Selkirk Settlement 
and the Settlers.” It is also given in Alexander 
Ross’ “Red River Settlement,” and, in fact, there 
is a large literature on the subject. 
No one who was familiar with the old north¬ 
west twenty or twenty-five years ago conceived 
of the change that was to take place within a gen¬ 
eration. 
The old forts have disappeared and on the 
ruins of many of them have risen modern build¬ 
ings. The old people who inhabited them, the 
old Indians who used to bring furs to trade, the 
very animals whose skins were traded have 
vanished from off the land. To-day domestic 
animals, modern machinery and a people wholly 
ignorant of the history of the country that they 
inhabit fill the land. The change is astonishing. 
From Winnipeg trains bore us swiftly east¬ 
ward to a dense population and to regions yet 
more commonplace, and a little later we were 
again at home. Yo. 
Calling Up a Moose. 
My friend, Billy Johnson, guide, moose 
caller and philosopher, had invited me to 
accompany him on a week’s hunting in the 
State of Maine, and I had accepted. Billy 
had promised to notify me when the condi¬ 
tions became favorable, and on the afternoon 
of Oct. 10 I received a letter directing me to 
come at once. 
Billy met me at the station, and a short 
drive landed us at his home, where I spent 
the night. We were astir before daylight 
the next morning, and after breakfast, set 
out on a twenty-mile drive into the wilder¬ 
ness, reaching Billy’s river cabin at 4 o’clock. 
It was dark and cold and a mist lay over 
the river when we rose next morning. We 
dressed warmly at breakfast, and taking our 
rifles and oilskin jackets, swiftly dropped 
down stream to the big rock on the edge of 
the river, where we disembarked, drawing the 
canoe into the thick hardhacks, which grew 
over the whole bog two or thre feet high 
and were dripping with moisture. 
It was about six o’clock, and dawn was 
just breaking, when I took my place with my 
back to the rock, and Billy ascended it, bare¬ 
headed in spite of the bitter cold, and carry¬ 
ing his bark call. This was a simple horn of 
thick, birch bark about fifteen inches long and 
five inches wide at the mouth. It was held 
together by rings of bark. Billy raised the 
horn to his lips and sent the sonorous, long- 
drawn out call of the cow moose. Beginning in 
a high key, it sinks through two octaves and 
ends in a grunt— po-wcvw-ow-ahe! repeated 
twice wholly, and again in part. 
We stood like statues, one minute, two min¬ 
utes, our watches and our heart-beats seem¬ 
ing so loud that they must frighten away all 
the game within a mile. For another eight 
or ten minutes I stood shivering and listen¬ 
ing, before Billy again raised the horn to his 
lips, and repeated the yearning, sonorous call. 
Again I listened, while th.e bright spot on the 
eastern horizon grew gradually into a disc 
of molten gold from which yellow shafts of 
light shot out through the thick white mist. 
There came a call from the southeast, to¬ 
ward a high ridge across the river. Billy 
involuntarily bent forward, looking intently 
at the woods on the opposite bank. I watched 
him with bated breath; but we were behind 
the rock, and heard nothing: 
We had been standing motionless for a 
half hour in the bitter cold and were all 
atremble. Billy once again sent forth the wild 
wail, ending in a yearning moan. Oh! What 
was that? Away off on the ridge a peculiar 
sound like the far-off explosion of a rocket 
“He’s coming. I hear him,” whispered 
Billy. 
The next ten minutes were exciting 
enough. Stalking cannot compare with it. 
Nearer • and nearer came the great beast 
That last hoarse “Wah” could not be a thou¬ 
sand yards away, and then it came again 
nearer still. Billy called low and pleading, 
and across the river we heard the leaves shake 
and the dry underbrush crack. Another sec¬ 
ond and the great black bull moose parted 
the birches with his gigantic antlers and 
stepped out on the bog. What a height. 
How clean and yellow his horns! 
For a second he stood motionless, scanning 
the river bank, and then slowly moved to¬ 
ward us with lowered head, smelling for the 
scent of his mate. 
“Now,” whispered Billy. It was a scant 
200 yards and a good light. Now for the 
trial of the rifle and the nerves of the man 
behind it. Steadying myself against the rock, 
I drew a bead on the bull’s neck where the 
shoulder met it, while a great calm game 
over me, and I felt that I could not miss. A 
couple of seconds only and the rifle spoke. 
Almost at the sound the bull threw up his 
head, emitted a half roar and plunged down 
into the hardhacks. “Come,” shouted Billy. 
“He’s down, all right,” and we fairly jerked 
the canoe out of the hardhacks and raced 
across the river. I was ready, rifle in hand, to 
shoot again if the moose should rise and at¬ 
tempt to escape; but there was little need of 
the precaution. The bullet had struck him 
in the neck, passed diagonally through his 
body, breaking the spinal cord and coming 
out at his side. He never knew what hit him. 
As we stood there over the magnificent 
animal I felt no wild sense of elation such as 
successful hunters often feel, but an inner 
feeling of what one might almost call artis¬ 
tic satisfaction in the completion of the work 
that had been perfect from inception to ac¬ 
complishment. I think Billy, who wore one 
of those adhesive smiles, felt more real ela¬ 
tion than I did, and good right he had to de 
so, for he had called up a beautiful bull the 
very first time he tried, and showed him to 
me at a distance at which only incompetency 
or a bad case of buck fever could have caused 
a miss. Imagine an immense bull moose, 
weighing close to fourteen hundred pounds, 
with antlers spreading fifty-four inches, palms 
nearly seventeen inches wide, with thirty-four 
points, standing across the river looking at 
you, and you will admit it was a sight worth 
going miles to see. 
The enjoyment that one finds on a trip of 
this kind is really not in the kill itself, but 
in that indescribable something which comes 
with the peace of the fireside pipe, the flick¬ 
ering of the camp-fire in the haze, the sun- 
• shine and the storm. A little life in the woods 
is good for us all. J. P. F. 
Gloversvilie, N. Y. 
Death of G. L. Henderson. 
Mr. G. L. Henderson, brother of ex-Speaker 
David B. Henderson, died in California about 
the first of December. 
Mr. Henderson was for a short time assistant 
superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park, 
a position from which he was relieved in the 
summer of 1885. He was best known as the 
builder and owner of the Cottage Hotel at the 
Mammoth Hot Springs, which for some time he 
ran in competition with the Yellowstone National 
Park Association hotels. 
Mr. Henderson was very much devoted to the 
National Park and extremely well informed about 
it. It is believed that he first reached that re¬ 
gion about 1875. 
CAMP SUPPLIES. 
The camp suplies to be complete, should include 
Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, Peerless Brand 
Evaporated Milk and Borden’s Malted Milk, all of which 
contain substantial nourishment in compact form, and 
supply every milk or cream requirement.— Adv. 
