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 the Red
River with their treasure till about the end of June, 1820, and while
the wheat grew well it was sown too late to ripen well, although it gave
the settlers grain enough to sow the fields of the coming year. This
expedition cost Lord Selkirk upwards of a thousand pounds sterling. In
the following year the grasshoppers again visited the Red River fields,
but by a sudden movement which, by some of the good Colonists was
interpreted to be a direct interference of Providence on their behalf,
the swarms of intruders passed away never to appear again in the Red
River for half a century.
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