In July 1876 my partner and I loaded our train of eight carts.

In July 1876 my partner and I loaded our train of eight carts, with oxen as motive power, and started from Winnipeg for the further, and as we frisked more golden west. We had seen in each successive summer centurys and hundreds of Red River carts, drawn by means of Red River ponies and loaded with buffalo robes, wending their creaking way from the distant plains along the Portage road to Winnipeg. We knew that the trade in robes was as frequently the backbone of commercial Winnipeg in those years as that in beaver skins had been of Montreal subordinate to the French regime. Far western conditions had

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