Ladys Life on a Farm in Manitoba | Page 7

water goes
down in a slant. We were most fascinated by the sight, and watched the
torrent from various points of view.
Minneopolis is much like other Western towns we have seen, semi-
detached houses standing in their own grounds, the grass in many
instances well kept, but utterly destitute of flowers, which one misses
so much. This place, St. Paul's, is beautifully situated, built on both
sides of the river, the banks of which are very steep. Good-night; in
twenty-four hours more we hope to be at our destination in the far
North-west. But we are not to go out immediately to the farm, as we are
arriving rather earlier than A---- expected, and the men who have been
living with him all the winter cannot turn out before Friday to make
room for us; so we are to stay in Winnipeg for a day or two.
* * * * *
WINNIPEG, May 18th.
Here we are, and we do feel ourselves really landed in the far North,

after a most prosperous journey the whole way. We arrived "quite on
time" last night, rather an unusual thing with these trains, particularly
since the floods, when the passengers were dependent on the steamer,
we saw yesterday as we passed high and dry on the prairie, which had
to convey them from one train to another across the floods close to St.
Vincent.
O the prairie! I cannot describe to you our first impression. Its vastness,
dreariness, and loneliness is appalling. Very little is under cultivation
between this and St. Paul, so that only a house here and there breaks the
line of horizon. There are a few cotton and aspen trees along the Red
River Valley, but with that exception the landscape for the last fifteen
hours' travelling has been like the sea on a very smooth day, without a
beginning or an end.
We were met at the station here by one of A----'s friends, who drove us
out about a mile and a half from the town across the Assiniboine over a
suspension bridge built exactly opposite the old Fort Garry, and
somewhere close to the spot where our first English pioneers must have
landed from the river steamer some twelve years ago to a very
comfortable house belonging to another mutual friend, a dear kind old
gentleman whose wife and daughter being away has placed the whole
house at our disposal until we can get out to the farm, which we find is
sixteen miles off.
It will be very difficult to describe everything to you. To begin with,
the depot or station presented a curious appearance, such crowds of
men loafing about with apparently no other object but to watch the new
arrivals; so different to English stations where everyone seems in a
hurry either coming or going. And then the roads we had to drive along
defy description. The inches (no other word) of mud, and the holes
which nearly capsize one at every turn. Even down Main Street the
roads are not stoned or paved in any way. We bumped a good deal in
our carriage, and for consolation at any worse bumping than usual were
told, "This is nothing, wait until you get stuck in a mud-hole out west."
Then our route, thanks to the floods which have been very bad this year
and are still out enormously--the upper floors of two-storied houses
only being visible in many places,--was most intricate. We had to be
pioneered over a ditch into a wood, supposed to be cleared, with the
stumps of trees left sticking about six inches out of the ground for your

wheels to pass over, on to a track, and then through a potato garden to
the house.
We were quite ready for our supper, it being about 8 o'clock when we
got here; and the food at Glyndon, where we stopped twenty minutes in
the middle of the day to "put away" the contents of sixteen dishes of
some various mess or another, had not been of the most inviting of
meals; and though the chops here were the size of a small leg of mutton
and had the longest bones I ever saw, hunger was the best of appetisers,
and we did credit to our meal, which had been cooked by our host.
This morning we were awoke by the same kind person depositing a can
of water at our door for our baths. He gets up very early, as he has to
fetch the water, milk the cow, feed the calf, etc., all before breakfast
and starting off for his office.
There is a man-servant here who gets 5 to 6 pounds a month,
apparently to do nothing, as he is the only one on the premises who can
afford