Is it the clang of wild geese?
Is it the Indians' yell,
That lends to the voice of the North wind
The tones of a far-off bell?
The Voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission
That call from their turrets twain;
To the boatmen on the river,
To the hunter on the plain.
Even so on our mortal journey
The bitter north winds blow;
And thus upon Life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City--
The chimes of Eternal peace.
In the afternoon of the day of their arrival the party crossed from St.
Boniface to Fort Garry, and the missionary well known as Rev. Dr.
Black, went to the hospitable shelter of Alexander Ross, whose daughter
he afterward married. Three hundred of the Selkirk Colonists and their
children immediately gathered around Mr. Black, and though interrupted
for a year by the great flood which we have described, erected in the
following year, the stone Church of Kildonan, on the highway some five
miles from Winnipeg. With the help of a small grant from the Hudson's
Bay Company, the Selkirk Colonists erected, free from debt, their church
which still remains.
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