The partners were satisfied, and
plucked up hope of their venture. They would advance provisions in
proportion to earnings. By September he was back at Fort Maurepas on
Lake Winnipeg, pushing for the undiscovered bourne of the Western Sea.
Leaving orders for trade with the chief clerk at Maurepas, De la
Verendrye picked out his most intrepid men; and in September of 1738,
for the first time in history, white men glided up the ochre-colored,
muddy current of the Red for the Forks of the Assiniboine. Ten Cree
wigwams and two war chiefs awaited De la Verendrye on the low flats of
what are now known as South Winnipeg. Not the fabled Western Sea, but
an illimitable ocean of rolling prairie--the long russet grass rising
and falling to the wind like waves to the run of invisible
feet--stretched out before the eager eyes of the explorer. Northward
lay the autumn-tinged brushwood of Red River. South, shimmering in the
purple mists of Indian summer, was Red River Valley. Westward the sun
hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of
prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean.
Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired _voyageurs_ turned longingly
westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the
horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest
run on--on--on--endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red
into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay.
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