Year: 1859

Strawberri s-One of the Party goes Berrying, and


Loses his way-Searching for a Philosopher.


Editorial Correspondence of the Pioneer and Democrat.


PEMBINA July Is, 1859.


One feels as if he had been dead hundred
years or so, and had woke out of mild
purgatorial probation--half unconditional
torpor, mere negation of all activities, and
half an Inferno of mosquitoes another
existence, in strange, new world, in emerg-
ing from the sleepy days and sleepless nights
of a journey down the Red River valley,
and all its vacant towns and empty spaces,
to find himself alive and talking face to face
with these strange wild picturesque Penn
binese-of whom by and by.


The party arrived here on the 18th,
nearly a week ago, in ten days from Elm
river, or in thirteen days from Abercrom-
bic. There is nothing interesting in the
route, which is constant repetition of the
level surface forms of the valley. The
topography of one days journey is as like
another as so many pancakes, which we
seem to be turning off from the immense
griddle of the horizon, smoking hot from the
fiery oven of the sun. One days experience
is that of every other. We plunge from
shore of wood in the morning to bury our
selves for few hours in a sea of grass, and
to emerge at evening on apparently the
same dark shore again.


Beyond the Elm river, the principal
streams we crossed, on our route, were the
Goose, Turtle, Salt, Clark and Pembina
rivers, all small streams, rod or two only
in width at the crossings, running in nearly
the same general southeasterly direction,
and embracing between these wooded val.
leys naked sketches of prairie from Is to %
miles wide. A dense growth of Ash, Ma
pie, Elm, and Eastwood covers the narrow
bottoms of all these streams, except where
their shores, nearly level with the prairie,
afford no protection against fire.


That portion of the valley over which
our trail guided US, consists of two or three
immense plateaux, the difference Of whose
actual elevation is so slight, as to be scarce
ly sensible in the transition, but which are in
reality great enough to give an imposing ap-
pearance of abruptness iE the illusOry per-
spective of these dead levels-where bunch
of grass little ranker than its neighbOrs
seems grove of wood, and herb, dense
enough to cast shadow, is liable to be
miSta ken for a tree or a buffalo.


The lower of those plateaux, adjacent to
the Red River, extends for twenty or thirty
miles back-a perfectly fiat surface, and
showing immense districts of marsh, indica-
ted by the rank overgrowth of coarse sedges.
The stagnant surface water, concealing the
stinks of Acheron under its superficial
sweetness, spreads for miles over these grassy
flats, which are partially drained here and
there in numerous centres and ravines, in
which, in dry seasons, the water collects in
deep, rush-margined sinks, where it keeps
quite cool and pure-unless you stir it too
deeply, and Acheron salutes you again with
its votive incense.


In rainy seasons the redundant water az
cumulates here in streams, and the centres
become temporary rivers of considerable
depth and velocity. All this level, which
extends, on both sides of the river, along its
whole length, is, in fact, the great Red River
bottom, subject to inundations that at Pc
riods of years turn nearly the whole valley
for hundreds of miles in length, and from
fifty to seventy-6ve or more in breadth, into
an inland sea. The trail generally avoids
this alluvial bottom when it is practicable,
and follows the higher and dryer ground of
the upper plateau, above the functions of
the principal forks, whose gentle undula-
tions, or ranges of dome-like ridges, relieve
the level lines of the horizon, and sloughs
seldom interrupt the progress of carts. All
the aspects of vegetation indicate not only
the better drainage of the surface, but the
change of soil from the dense Nile Lake
clays of the bottom, to lighter and more
silicious mould. The verdure is finer and
sweeter, and spangled with consultations of
fowers-among which the deep scarlet of
the lily, the soft blue of the harebell, the
white and yellow geranium, and several
species of sunhower and native clover are
conspicuous for their rich contrasts of color.
The crossings of all the streams in the
higher levels are excellent, with rocky bot
toms and firm shores, while, on the lower
plateau, the crossings are generally as bad
as the most inextricable Red River mud
can make them. ,ss


In breaking through the ridges these
streams form deep channels under high steep
banks, whose winding gulfs, darkened with