Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1875 — A Might on the Plains. [ARTICLE]

A Might on the Plains.

A few days ago a party of five or six left Winnipeg for their respective abodes in an outlying settlement to the northwest of the city. They had three pairs of oxen, hitched to as many'sleighs, in which were deposited about a score of sheep. Thus, with oxen, sheep, etc., they wended their weary way across the snow-clad plain. When night cast her mantle of gloom o’er the landscape they were traveling they knew not thither, having lost the road. With reckonings dead, And spirits low, See how they tread The untrodden snow. At length they struck a new beaten track, and with renewed energy pushed forward, momentarily expecting to espy some haven of rest which still evaded their anxious gaze. Some began to feel weary, hut the night was bitterly cold, and riding was not to be thought of. The track, which at first was but poorly beaten, was getting much better. As they proceeded, one of the party, who had dropped to the rear, on looking behind, saw, as he supposed, another party coming up, for which he waited; hut what was his amazement when he discovered that it was his own brigade, which he could have sworn was in advance of him! An investigation took place, which revealed the melancholy fact that for two mortal hours they had been wasting their already over-taxed energies in revolving round a circle of iheir own making. What to do, or whither to go, no one knew. Instinctively they left the enchanted spot, and fortunately stumbled upon a small dry bluff which afforded a bare allowance of fuel for the night. Some of them say they could not have held out an hour longer; and when we are told that almost the last lucifer, held by benumbed fingers, was broken or dropped in the snow before they got a fire, it can be easily imagined how nar row was their escape. But where were they all this time? Some thought they were in Grassmere, some said Woodlands, while others knew they were in Victoria; and not until the aurora of the morn with purple streaks bedecked the eastern sky did they learn that they were a little south of Big Stoney Mountain; but that eminence not being properly on end yet, they had failed to see it. —Manitoba Free Press.