Having had various altercations with the Indians, the party reached Red River, bringing about 900 lbs. of buffalo meat in each cart, making more than one million pounds in all. The Hudson's Bay Company took a considerable amount of this, and the remainder went to supply the wants of the Red River Settlement for another year. CHAPTER XXII. WHAT THE STARGAZERS SAW. The writer remembers meeting in Boston, a good many years ago, a scientific explorer, who along with two companies, one of whom is the greatest astronomer in the United States, as an astronomical party in 1860, made a visit through Red River Settlement, on their way to the North Saskatchewan to observe an eclipse. The disappointment of the party was very great, for, after travelling three thousand miles, their fate was "to sit in a marsh and view the eclipse through the clouds, so heavy was the rain." The three astronomers have given their account under assumed names in a little book, of which there are few copies in Canada. Their view of Red River Settlement in 1860 is a vivid picture. What an extraordinary Settlement! Here is a Colony of about ten thousand souls scattered among plantations for thirty miles along the Red and half as many along the Assiniboine River, almost wholly dependent for intelligence from the outer world on one stern-wheeled steamer. That breaks down; and before word can be sent of their complete isolation, weeks must pass before the old and painful canoe-route by way of Lake of the Woods can be opened, or the wagon make its tedious journey to the headwaters of the Red and back, improvising on the way its own ferries over the swift and deep streams which feed it.