Volume 1

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40 LAKE WINNIPEG—MOUTH OF RED RIVER.
next spring, there being no wood of that kind on Red river
another party had been raising wattap for the same purpose.
We found an abundance of sand-cherries \Prumis pumila\
We accordingly proceeded along a
which were of an excellent flavor. At twelve o'clock we
embarked, but there being still some wind, we thought prudent
to coast the bay.
fine sandy beach to Catfish river, when our course changed
to the W."'
This river rises out of some large swamps and
We
small lakes on Cypress hills, which bear about S. S. E.
proceeded along a low strip of land with shoal water, which
kept us some distance from shore. At three o'clock we arrived
at the entrance of Red river."^ This river empties into
Lake Winipic by three large channels ; the middle one is
that by which we generally pass, as there is a tolerably
good camp at its mouth ; the land is low, and may be said to
consist of one continued marais; what little dry land is to
be found is covered with low willows and high grass and
reeds. Wild fowl are very numerous. We found some Indians,
who had many sturgeon and various kinds of small
** The bay which Henry coasts to his Catfish r, is the general angular indentation
at the head of which is the place called Balsam Bay, about the center of
Tp. 17, R. vii, E. of the princ. merid. A winter road goes hence N. E. across
the base of the peninsula to Fort Alexander. Catfish r. is now called Brokenhead
r. , and has a place of the same name on it ; it arises in the Provencher district
of Manitoba, where the Dawson road crosses it not very far from its sources,
flows on the whole little W. of N. through Selkirk district, in which it is
crossed by the Canadian Pacific Ry. at Beausejour, and falls into Pruden's bay
through the present Indian resei-ve, in Tp. 16, R. vi.
** For a contemporary account of the Red River of the North, up which
Henry now goes to establish his post for the winter of 1800-01, see John
McDonnell's Some Account of the Red River, about 1797, with Extracts from
his Journals, 1793-95, in Masson's Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-
Ouest, 1st ser., 1889, pp. 265-95. John McDonnell was a brother of Miles
McDonnell, the first governor of Lord Selkirk's Red River colony. John became
a partner of the N. W. Co. about 1796, and remained in the country until
1815 ;
sold out, and settled at Pointe Fortune, in the township of Hawkesbury,
where he kept a store, ran boats to Montreal, died, leaving several children who
died without issue, and was buried in the Catholic cemetery of Rigaud. W. J.
McDonnell, vice consul of France at Toronto in 1886, was his nephew. Red r.
has an extensive marshy delta with several small channels besides the three main
openings through the middle one of which Henry enters Pruden's bay.