In the cold early morning we reach Rat Portage, passing from the state of Ontario into Manitoba. Rat Portage is a wooden village of 1400 inhabitants (this is considered quite a goodly population for this sparsely-peopled country); and has the largest flour mill in Canada. It lies at the outlet of the beautiful Lake of the Woods, which is forty miles long and studded with islands.
A brake has broken and the train is divided, the first half taking on the dining-car. Hungry and impatient, the passengers wait for another to be attached, and stand on the carriage platform ready to rush on board. But, as it passes, a howl of disappointed hunger goes up, for some knowing ones have jumped off the cars, and filled it before it leaves the siding.
We are still travelling through the same rock-bound country, ungainly masses of rock protruding through a scrub growth of dwarf trees. We continually pass beautiful lakes, placid sheets of water hidden away in hollows. This is succeeded by a run through some "muskeg" or black peaty bog land, where flourish rank grasses against a background of bushy poplar trees.
Thirty or forty miles from Winnipeg the country opens out and gradually assumes a prairie character. The land is quite flat now, covered with coarse yellow grasses, and sprinkled with wild flowers. It is a rich feast of colours. There are great patches of gorgeous wild sunflowers, masses of purple and white michaelmas daisies, growing more plenteously here on the open prairie, than when cultivated in our cottage gardens at home; there are bluebells and lupins, blue, pink, and white, marsh mallows, cyclamen, and acres of that weed-like growth, the golden rod. Isolated houses, becoming more frequent, tell us we are nearing Winnipeg. We cross the Red river and are in the station.
Winnipeg is the old Fort Garry settlement of the Hudson Bay Company. Twenty years ago, or in 1871, population was 100, now, in 1891, it is 30,000.
The town is set down in the midst of the prairie. Main street follows the winding of the old Indian trail which takes in the deep bend of the Red river. The City Hall in this street, or "on" as the Canadians would say, is a very handsome new-looking structure. It front of it stands the column erected to the memory of the soldiers who fell in the North-West rebellion of 1870. It is surmounted by a volunteer on guard, wrapped in his fur coat, and with his fur cap on his head. The streets are paved with blocks of wood, but the foot pavements are still boarded; indeed Winnipeg is a strange mixture, with Eastern civilization meeting in this border city, the Western or rough-and-ready methods of the settler. It is only interesting on this account.