At that time
there were about 500 head of cattle, 250 horses, and 200 pigs in the
settlement.
After service at the Reverend Mr. Scott's neat little church,
we returned to Mr. Lawrence's, and enjoyed an excellent dinner,
including home-cured ham, fresh eggs, butter and cream. That was
a notable Sunday for us in the wilds, and seldom to be repeated.
Strange to say, we found the true locust here, our old Red River
pest, which had quartered itself on the settlement more than once.
I examined numbers of them, and found the scarlet egg of the
ichneumon fly under many of the shards. No one seemed to know
exactly how they came, whether in flight or otherwise; but there
they were, devouring some barley, but living mainly upon grass,
which they seemed to prefer to grain. They had appeared nine years
before our coming, and disappeared, and then, three years before,
had come again.
We found quarters in a large building at the fort, which was in
charge of Mr. Wilson, whose wife was a daughter of my old friend,
Chief-factor Clarke, of Prince Albert, her brother having charge
of the trading store. The post is a substantial one, and the
store large, well stocked, and evidently the headquarters of an
extensive trade. At such posts, which have generally a fringe
of settlement, the Company's officers and their families, though,
of course, cut off from the outer world, lead, if somewhat
monotonous, by no means irksome lives.
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