The vast clouds of grasshoppers sailing northward from the great Utah desert in the United States, alighted late in the afternoon of one day and in the morning fields of grain, gardens with their promise, and every herb in the Settlement were gone, and a waste like a blasted hearth remained behind.

The event was more than a loss of their crops, it seemed a heaven-struck blow upon their community, and it is said they lifted up their eyes to heaven, weeping and despairing.

The sole return of their labors for the season was a few ears of half-ripened barley which the women saved and carried home in their aprons.

There was no help for it but to retire to Pembina, although there was less fear than formerly for as a writer of the day says: "The settlers had now become good hunters; they could kill the buffalo; walk on snowshoes; had trains of dogs trimmed with ribbons, bells and feathers, in true Indian style; and in other respects were making rapid steps in the arts of a savage life." The complete loss of their crops left the settlers even without the seed-wheat necessary to sow their fields.

The nearest point of supply of this necessity was an agricultural settlement in the State of Minnesota, upwards of five hundred miles away.