| Summary: | 36 THE LONG AGO, the river at its ordinary stage is 943 feet above sea-level; the altitude of Lake Winnipeg is 710 feet, hence the fall of what has here been alluded to as the navigable part of the river amounts to 233 feet. For twelve miles as the river runs, next below the mouth of the Goose, the stream crosses a morainic belt of bowlder clay and its bed is obstructed with bowlders, forming the Goose rapids. The fall in this.'part of the river is twelve feet in as many miles. ■ In the earlier days of steamboat navigation on the river these slight rapids were a hinderance to the passage of boats during any season of low water. Below Winnipeg an outcrop of limestone caused a lower set of rapids. The rise of the river during the highest spring floods is as follows at the different places named: Wahpeton. 15 feet; Fargo. 32 fret; Belmont, 50 feet; Grand Forks, 44 feet; Pembina, 40 feet, and at Winnipeg 39 feet. These figures indicate what is called the range between extreme low and high water. The maximum point of extreme high water is at Belmont on account of the narrowed channel of the river between high banks of compact bowlder clay; the next point of extreme high water level at Grand. Forks is connected with'the entrance into the Red at that place of the Red Lake river./-''The years' in which extraordinary floods have occurred on Red river, and been recorded, are for those of 1826, 1852, 1860, 1861, 1882 and 1897^ Down to 1890, congressional appropriations for improving the river in the interests of navigation, amounted to $128,000. The first'of these appropriations was made in 1876. In the spring of-the year ,1859, an attempt -»'as made to transfer a steamboat from the Minnesota into the Red river through lakes Big Stone and Traverse. These lanes are about five miles apart, but the low bottom land between ■ them is occasionally sufficiently flooded in the spring so that they are connected together. It was known that on a few occasions laden canoes had made the passage trom Pembina to St Paul. A'small steamboat called the Freighter was then running on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers with Capt. C. B. Thiemmens as master. The boat was owned by Capt, John B. Davis, of St. Paul, and is stated to have been a flat bottomed, square bowed affair about 125 feet in length. Its owner seems to have conceived the idea of taking it into Red river in the manner above mentioned. It was accordinrly run up the Minnesota river during the spring rise, but the water subsiding, the boat grounded in the stream and was left stranded below the outlet of Big Stone lake. It was then deserted by its crew, and afterward pillaged by the Indians. The machinery being removed by the next winter, the redskins finally burned the hull, but the timbers of its bottom were still to be seen twenty years later.- Warren Upham, who saw the remains of the boat in 1879. states that the. point where it was stranded is near the east, line of section 33, Odessa township.; in-Big Stone county, Minn., and nine miles below Big Stone lake. Capt. Davis stated that if he had started ihe, Freighter off from St Paul twenty Or thirty days earlier, he would have gotten the Doat through with but little trouble. .At a-later period no repetition of this experiment was practicable on account of mill dams on the upper Minnesota; and ultimately numerous bridges over the upper portion of both streams. The attempt to take the Freighter into Red river i; said to have been an incident of a gold'excitemefit, which about the year 1858 had broken out on the Saskatchawan. '" '■ '• : ' May, 1857, the English House of Commons took the initial steps toward opening the British Possessions in Nbrth America, then in the control of the Hudson Bay company to civilization and unrestricted commerce. The committee having the matter in charge reported in favor of terminating the control Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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