have never seen this plague it is inconceivable.  Some thirty-five years ago in Manitoba the writer witnessed the utter devastation of the country by these pests.  Some thirteen years before the coming of the first Colonists this plague prevailed.  About the end of July, 1818, these riders of the air made their attack.  In this year the Selkirk Colonists were greatly discouraged by the capture and removal to Canada, by the Nor’-Westers, of Mr. James Sutherland, their spiritual guide.  But their labors now seem likely to be rewarded by a good harvest.  The oats and barley were in ear, when suddenly the invasion came.  The vast clouds of grasshoppers sailing northward from the great Utah desert in the United States, alighted late in the afternoon of one day and in the morning fields of grain, gardens with their promise, and every herb in the Settlement were gone, and a waste like a blasted hearth remained behind.  The event was more than a loss of their crops, it seemed a heaven-struck blow upon their community, and it is said they lifted up their eyes to heaven, weeping and despairing.  The sole return of their labors for the season was a few ears of half-ripened barley which the women saved and carried home in their aprons.  There was no help for it but to retire to Pembina, although there was less fear than formerly for as a writer of the day says:  “The settlers had now become good hunters; they could kill the buffalo; walk on snowshoes; had trains of dogs trimmed with ribbons, bells and feathers, in true Indian style; and in other respects were making rapid steps in the arts of a savage life.”

The complete loss of their crops left the settlers even without the seed-wheat necessary to sow their fields.  The nearest point of supply of this necessity was an agricultural settlement in the State of Minnesota, upwards of five hundred miles away.  Here was a mighty task—­to undertake to cross the plains in winter and to bring back in time for the seeding time in spring the wheat which was necessary.  But the Highlander is not to be deterred by rocky crag or dashing river, or heavy snow in his own land and he was ready to face this and more in the new world.  And so a daring party went off on snowshoes, and taking three months for their trip, reached the land of plenty and secured some hundred bushels at the price of ten shillings a bushel.

The question now was how to transport the wheat through a trackless wilderness.  Up the Mississippi River for hundreds of miles the flat boats constructed for the purpose were painfully propelled, and passing through the branch known as the Minnesota River the Stony Lake was reached.  This lake is the source of the Minnesota and Red rivers, and being at high water in the spring it was possible to go through the narrow lake from one river to the other with the rough boats constructed.  The Red River was reached by the fearless adventurers who brought the “corn out of Egypt.”  They did not, however, reach