of every door hung on the outside, and all who called were welcome to the best the larder contained, and when leaving were asked to come again. Sectarianism was unknown among them, there being only one church, the Episcopal. Though the Scotch were mostly Presbyterians, yet when Dalton Black settled among them and an Episcopal church was built for them, there was no ill feeling shown on either side. Their houses were all built of logs and built for comfort, convenience, and warmth. Many of them are yet occupied, but the changes caused by Canadian immigration have had a large influence in changing their manner of life. However, they are today the same good people and live up to their religion.

The half-breeds of the Selkirk settlement, speaking English, are not nomads like those of French extraction, but take to the ways of their fathers and are workers and tillers of the soil. Nearly all have homes and lands of their own, educate their children, and have something laid by for a rainy day; while the French half-breeds, who are mostly of the Roman Catholic faith, believe that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

As the harvest of that season (1851) was nearly finished and the barnyards were filled with large and bountiful stacks of wheat and barley, and a stack or two of oats and peas, it was a rich sight, and there was no fear of starvation for two or more years, even should the crops fail. The land system, which gave a strip of land six chains wide fronting the Red River and extending back two miles, gave the settlement the appearance of a long, straggling village along the road from Fort Garry to the Lower Fort; and as the dwellings, barns and stock were in close view all the way, the picture was a most beautiful and interesting one, such as is nowhere seen in the States and rarely even in old Europe.

The Selkirkers generally had large families and old and young worked together on the homesteads. While like other farmers they suffered from drouth, grasshoppers, and frosts, yet they usually secured good crops, and saved a reserve for two or three years, an amount for seed, and sold the surplus to the Hudson Bay Company. Occasionally they would have poor crops and perhaps be compelled to use their reserve, or even to borrow from the Hudson Bay Company for seed and food. The company, whose interest it was to be liberal, as they depended upon these

farmers for their supplies of wheat for their support, loaned willingly, but required the payment from the succeeding crop. A government never existed, in the opinion of Mr. Cavalier, that got on better with settlers than the much abused Hudson Bay Company.

EARLY FLOURING MILLS; GRASSHOPPERS.

At that time, as before noted, all grain was cut with sickles and bound with willow withes by the women and children. Wheat, barley, and oats, were threshed on a barn floor with a flail during the winter season, and were winnowed with a large wind scoop resting on the breast; and it was remarkable how fast, with a good wind, the grain could be cleaned. The wheat was ground in large windmills, bolted fine and clean, and made excellent bread. The flour was not like the flour of these days, and modern cooks would probably turn up their noses at it, but it was to the taste as good as our best.

Mr. Cavalier in his rambles on that trip counted fifteen windmills, all grinding out flour at a lively rate, which at that time sold for eight or ten shillings per hundred weight.

The old settlers told of a grasshopper scourge at a date forgotten by them, that made a clean sweep of every growing thing, and that grasshoppers were piled up by the winds and waves four feet deep on the shores of lake Manitoba and Shoal lake. They stated that after the grasshoppers had done all the damage they could, as every thing was eaten, the Catholic clergy got up a procession and said prayers, and on the next day the hoppers quit hopping, took to their wings, and flew away to the northward and were seen no more.

Mr. Cavalier says the first time he saw grasshoppers was in 1854. He was in camp one night on White Bear lake, now lake Whipple, and took an early start toward St. Cloud. It had rained during the night and all were wet, so at nine o'clock they turned out on the bank of Long lake and spread their clothes and other things to dry. They made a fire to cook breakfast. Mr. Cavalier, on looking around for his blankets, etc., saw nothing but a squirming mass of grasshoppers, all as busy as if they had struck a bonanza. They were not able to get out of that mass of grass

hoppers until they had traveled about twenty miles. On the return they struck them at St. Cloud, and they had cleaned the country quite thoroughly on their flight east. On crossing the Red river and between that and the Wild Rice river they struck the forerunners of another cloud of grasshoppers, and did not get clear of them until they arrived home at St. Joseph, now Walhalla. For gluttony the hopper takes the cake, Mr. Cavalier says, and relates that they ate the seat of his saddle and the tops of his boots. He threw a plug of tobacco to them, and within an hour they had eaten that.

In 1870 another visitation of grasshoppers appeared, and in that year and the year following their ravages were disastrous. In 1874 they came again and stayed three years, eating everything in the Red River valley, and the settlers were obliged to haul their flour from St. Cloud. Minneapolis and St. Paul sent relief to carry the poor through, which saved many from actual starvation.

Thus the Selkirkers, with the simplest and rudest of agricultural implements, were always prosperous, and want was unknown among them. Through them we learned that the Dakota lands were not the barren wastes and howling desert of dry, drifting sand that our school books had taught us, and that the Red River valley contained a mine of wealth greater than any discovered mine of silver and gold. This we were slow to realize, but have at length made the Red River valley the most bountiful granary of the world. The windmills of that famous pioneer settlement have done their last grinding; most of the old hand labor implements have been laid aside; and the new and improved forms of farm machinery, so efficient and so exact as to give almost the appearance of having human intelligence, have taken their place. These are run or propelled by horse and steam power, and the labor of one man has become as that of many. Mr. Cavalier reminiscently says: "I was here for years living by the proceeds of the chase, never dreaming that this mode of livelihood would ever cease, or that the millions of buffaloes that roamed the prairies, would ever be exhausted, and that we old settlers would soon be seeking other means of support."

The settlers south of the line had to depend upon the Selkirk settlement for their bread and butter. Old Father Belcourt, of

St. Joseph, near the Pembina mountain, a Catholic priest, and a rustler in all things for himself first and for his people next, built a bull mill at his mission at St. Joseph and ran it a few years with oxen, and ground what little wheat the half-breeds raised. With no bolt to take the bran out of the flour, it had to be run through sieves or eaten husks and all. The half-breeds did not furnish wheat enough to make the mill pay, and they could not be induced to greater industry, so that the good old man had to give the mill up. The result was that the half-breeds returned to the coffee-mill or ate the grain raw or roasted. That mill was the first. George Emerling and John Mayn built the next, and that mill is now one of the paying concerns of Pembina county at Walhalla, having all the new improvements in merchant mills.

FIRST MAIL ROUTE.

The first public business tending to civilization was the establishing of a monthly mail between Pembina and Fort Abercrombie. It was a kind of go-as-you-please, sometimes on foot, with the mail bag on the man's back, sometimes by horse and cart, and by courier, any way so that the mail was carried, and in those days it was never behind time. At least the contractor never was docked or fined. From Pembina the mail was taken to Fort Garry, and that office had to use Uncle Sam's stamps. From Fort Garry the route was to Fort Abercrombie and run by dog trains, horse and cart, and one year by ox cart, as all the horses from St. Cloud to Fort Garry died or were rendered useless by an epidemic. Sometime in the sixties, Capt. Blakeley and Carpenter secured the contract to carry the mail from St. Cloud to Georgetown on the Red river, and afterward had it extended to Fort Garry, Selkirk settlement.

The following is a list of the stations. Beginning at Pembina and going up or south, the first station was Frank La Rose's, at Twelve Mile Point; next were Bowesmont and Long Point, near Drayton, Hugh Biggiotoff; and Kelly Point, now Acton. Kelly was an old driver and gave it up. Gerard was station agent as long after as the route was in existence. Beyond were, Turtle River, Jo Caloskey; Grand Forks, John Stewart first, and several others afterward; Buffalo Coulie, unknown; Frog Point, un

known; Goose Prairie, A. Sargent; Elm River, Johnson; Georgetown, Hudson Bay Company; Oak Point, unknown; Twentyfour Mile Point, McCauleyville, and Breckenridge. At none of the above stations was a handful of grain raised. The contractors hauled all their oats from St. Cloud. The above named points were all the settled points, and there was not a settler elsewhere on the river from Breckenridge to Pembina.

STEAMBOATS ON THE RED RIVER.

In 1858, Anson Northup got the steamboat Pioneer in successful operation. Mr. Cavalier says he was then living at St. Boniface, Selkirk settlement, and with his wife made a trip on her to Lower Fort Garry, and he says that the settlers on the bank of the river were as much surprised as were the Indians in their villages on the Minnesota river at the first boat when she steamed up to Mankato. It was a perfect circus all the way down.

The International made her appearance within three or four years afterward as a freight boat for the Hudson Bay Company, ostensibly owned by Commodore N. W. Kittson, and was used as long as there was need of a boat on the river. She was all the time under the command of Capt. Frank Aymond, a St. Louis. Frenchman from Ville Roche, and he was an excellent captain. Since leaving the river he has been living on his farm some four miles above Neche on the Pembina river, where he expects to pass the remainder of his days to a happy old age.

The Selkirk came next. She was built by James J. Hill; and other boats were built to supply the increased demand. Then followed the combination known as the Red River Transportation Company, which did business under that head until the railroads. successfully shut off river navigation.

The amount of business that these boats accomplished was astonishing, and yet they did but little, perceptibly, toward settling the country, as there were only three or four points on the river that showed a beginning of what was to come. From Fargo and Moorhead to Grand Forks there were only a few settlers; and from Grand Forks to Drayton a few had settled to stay. Bowesmont was a steamboat landing, but never has amounted to much. Then Joliette commenced to grow and is now quite a