A group of threescore young men from different parts of Canada, from
Kingston, Niagara, and Montreal, having noticed advertisements of an
easy stage-route from St Paul, set out for the gold-diggings in May
1862. Tickets could be purchased in London, England, as well as in
Canada, for when these young Canadians reached St Paul, they found
eighteen young men from England, like themselves, diligently searching
the whereabouts of the stage-route. That was their first inkling that
fraudulent practices were being carried on and that they had been
deceived, that there was, in fact, no stage-route from St Paul to
Cariboo. A few of them turned back, but the majority, by ox-cart and
rickety stagecoach, pushed on to the Red River and went up to a point
near the boundary of modern Manitoba, where lay the first steamboat to
navigate that river, about to start on her maiden trip. On this
steamboat, the little _International_, afterwards famous for running
into sand-banks and mud-bars, the troops of Overlanders took passage,
and stowed themselves away wherever they could, some in the cook's
galley and some among the cordwood piled in the engine-room.