CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT THE STARGAZERS SAW.
The writer remembers meeting in Boston, a good many years ago, a scientific explorer, who along with two companies, one of whom is the greatest astronomer in the United States, as an astronomical party in 1860, made a visit through Red River Settlement, on their way to the North Saskatchewan to observe an eclipse.

The disappointment of the party was very great, for, after travelling three thousand miles, their fate was "to sit in a marsh and view the eclipse through the clouds, so heavy was the rain." The three astronomers have given their account under assumed names in a little book, of which there are few copies in Canada.

Their view of Red River Settlement in 1860 is a vivid picture.
What an extraordinary Settlement! Here is a Colony of about ten thousand souls scattered among plantations for thirty miles along the Red and half as many along the Assiniboine River, almost wholly dependent for intelligence from the outer world on one stern-wheeled steamer.

That breaks down; and before word can be sent of their complete isolation, weeks must pass before the old and painful canoe-route by way of Lake of the Woods can be opened, or the wagon make its tedious journey to the headwaters of the Red and back, improvising on the way its own ferries over the swift and deep streams which feed it.
Finding haste of no avail, and despatching our luggage on carts to the Upper Fort and centre of the Settlement, twenty miles away, we start there on foot the next day to view the land and its inhabitants.

The road, "the King's road," is a mere cart-track in the deep loam, taking its independent course on either side of the houses, all of which front the river in a single wavering line; for the country is given up absolutely to farming, for which the rich mould, said to be three or four feet deep, eminently fits it; and the lots each with a narrow frontage at the bank of the river, extends back two miles into the prairie.