a westerly direction, on the borders of the Dakota territory, where he altered his course to due north, and quickly reached the small group of lakes from which issues the mighty Red River of the North, and which may be said to be set in an ever-shifting framework of swamps and flooded streams. Here are interlocked the head-waters of the northern tributaries of the Mississippi, of the St. Lawrence, and of many a minor stream; and—strange phenomenon even in this land of physical wonders—no lofty ridge marks the watershed behind them. The heads of all the rivers are connected by canals, and canoes can shoot from one great artery to another with no change of level to mark the transition.
After a good deal of intercourse with our old friends the Sioux, the explorers launched their canoes on the Red River, and ascended it to the great Lake Winnipeg, or the Lake of the Assiniboins, connected by a number of small lakes and rivers with Hudson's Bay, and considered the largest, though scarcely the most important of the inland seas belonging to British North America.
From Lake Winnipeg the explorers descended the river of the same name, passing through scenery wilder and grander than any yet visited by them, and going through many a peril among the constant succession of cascades and cataracts, but arriving in safety at the Lake of the Woods, that small sheet of water destined to become so famous in the controversy relating to the boundary between the United States and the Hudson's Bay territories.
The Lake of the Woods, then surrounded by a deserted wilderness of rock and forest, was carefully examined, and from it the party made their way in a north-easterly direction to Lake Superior, the whole route consisting of little more than a series of lakes, streams, and swamps, broken by an occasional portage or bar of land, over which the canoes had to be dragged. All difficulties were, however, successfully overcome; the existence of more than one continuous water-passage from west to east was proved beyond a doubt, and little more in the way of actual discovery was left to be done by future expeditions.
In 1830, however, it was found desirable to send an expedition to the North-west, with a view to restoring peace between the Chippeways and Sioux; and the leader selected—the Schoolcraft who had been mainly instrumental in organizing the trip made a few years previously by Cass—received instructions to combine with his negotiations an exhaustive survey of the upper waters of the Mississippi. He reached Lake Superior in safety
