Returning to the Red River of the North, and spanning the interval in time to the close of the eighteenth century, we find another party of white men making their way up its muddy waters. This "brigade" of fur-traders, as it was called, was in charge of a famous Nor’-Wester known as Alexander Henry, whose voluminous journals were resurrected from the archives of the Library of Parliament at Ottawa some years ago. Henry gives us an admirably full picture of the Red River country and its human and other inhabitants, as they were in his day. One can see the long string of heavily laden canoes as they forced their way slowly up the current of the Red River, paddles dipping rhythmically to the light-hearted chorus of some old Canadian _chanson_. At night the camp is pitched on some comparatively high ground, fires are lighted, kettles hung, and the evening meal despatched. Then the men gather about the camp-fires, fill their pipes, and an hour is spent in song and story. They turn in early, however, for the day’s paddling has been long and heavy, and they must be off again before daylight on the morrow. So the story runs from day to day. They reach the mouth of the Assiniboine, and Henry notes the ruins of La Vérendrye’s old Fort Rouge. Old residents of Winnipeg will appreciate his feeling references to the clinging character of the soil about the mouth of the Assiniboine: "The last rain had turned it into a kind of mortar that adheres to the foot like tar, so that at every step we raise several pounds of it." These were the days when the buffalo roamed in vast herds throughout the great western plains. One gets from Henry’s narrative some idea of their almost inconceivable numbers. As he ascended the Red River, the country seemed alive with them. The "beach, once a soft black mud into which a man would sink knee-deep, is now made hard as pavement by the numerous herds coming to drink. The willows are entirely trampled and torn to pieces; even the bark of the smaller trees is rubbed off in places. The grass on the first bank of the river is entirely worn away." As the brigade nears the point where the international boundary crosses the Red River, an immense herd is seen, "commencing about half a mile from the camp, whence the plain was covered on the west side of the river as far as the eye could reach. They were moving southward slowly, and the meadow seemed as if in motion." One further glimpse from Henry’s Journal will serve to give some idea of life on the banks of the Red River at the beginning of the last century. Henry is describing the "bustle and noise which attended the transportation of _five_ pieces of trading goods" from his own fort to one of the branch establishments.