Meantime, my preparations for departure, aided by my friends at the
mission, had gone on apace. I had got a canoe and five stout English
half-breeds, blankets, pemmican, tea, flour, and biscuit. All were being
made ready, and the Indian Settlement was alive with excitement on the
subject of the coming man--now no longer a myth--in relation to a general
millennium of unlimited pemmican and tobacco.
But just when all preparations had been made complete an unexpected event
occurred which postponed for a time the date of my departure; this was
the arrival of a very urgent message from the Upper Fort, with an
invitation to visit that place before quitting the settlement. There had
been an error in the proceedings on the night of my arrival, I was told,
and, acting under a mistake, pursuit had been organized. Great excitement
existed amongst the French half breeds, who were in reality most loyally
disposed; it was quite a mistake to imagine that there was any thing
approaching to treason in the designs of the Provisional Government and
much more to the same effect. It is needless now to enter into the
question of how much all this was worth: at that time so much conflicting
testimony was not easily reduced into proper limits.
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