There had been heavy rains that spring on the prairie, and trees came jouncing down the muddy flood of the Red River. The little _International_, like a panicky bicycle rider, steered straight for every tree, and hit one with such impact that her smokestack came toppling down. At another place she pushed {56} her nose so deep in the soft mud of the riverbank that it required all the crew and most of the passengers to shove her off. But everybody was jubilant. This was the first navigation of the Red River by steam. The Queen's Birthday, the 24th of May, was celebrated on board the vessel pottle-deep to the tune of the bagpipes played by the governor's Scottish piper. But the governor's wife was heard to lament to Bishop Tache that the _International's_ menu consisted only of pork and beans alternated with beans and pork, that the service was on tin plates, and that the dining-room chairs were backless benches. The arrival of the steamer at Fort Garry (Winnipeg) was celebrated with great rejoicing. Indians ran along the river-bank firing off rifles in welcome, and opposite the flats where the fort gate opened, on what is now Main Street, the company's men came out and fired a royal salute. The people bound for Cariboo camped on the flats outside Fort Garry. Here was a strange world indeed. Two-wheeled ox-carts, made wholly of wood, without iron or bolt, wound up to the fort from St Paul in processions a mile long, with fat squaws and whole Indian families sitting squat inside the crib-like structure of the cart. Men and boys {57} loped ahead and abreast on sinewy ponies, riding bareback or on home-made saddles. Only a few stores stood along what is now Main Street, which ran northward towards the Selkirk Settlement. With the Indians, who were camped everywhere in the woods along the Assiniboine, the Overlanders began to barter for carts, oxen, ponies, and dried deer-meat or pemmican. An ox and cart cost from forty to fifty dollars. Ponies sold at twenty-five dollars. Pemmican cost sixteen cents a pound, and a pair of duffel Hudson's Bay blankets cost eight or ten dollars. Instead of blankets, many of the travellers bought the cheaper buffalo robes. These sold as low as a dollar each.