enormity of the crimes either perpetrated or instigated by the servants of the North-West Company. So clearly was their guilt established, and so incensed was his Lordship at the outrages that had been committed, that, by authority invested in him as a magistrate, he arrested a number of the leading partners of the Company, and sent them under escort to York for trial. The military expedition spent the winter at Fort William, and in the Spring proceeded to Red River.

It was the end of June before Lord Selkirk himself reached the colony, and for the first time set eyes upon the scene of its troubles. The settlers who had sought refuge at Norway House, on Lake Winnipeg, were again recalled, and the despoiled homesteads once more put in habitable condition. A general muster of the resurrected colony being now made, the Settlement was formally inaugurated and received its designation, of Kildonan. The land, the title of which had been further secured by treaty with the Indians, was now ordered to be fully surveyed, and roads and bridges were commissioned to be built. Under these favourable conditions, the colony took now a new start, and though, in later chapters we shall hear of its chequered career, the future was more auspicious to it than had been the past. Passing southward to the Mississippi, thence eastward to Washington, its founder made a wide detour on his return to Canada. There he was wanted to confound the machinations of his inveterate enemies, the furtraders, and there he desired to bring them to justice.

From chronicling the incidents of this portion of the Selkirk career, the historian may well wish to escape. It is a part of the drama upon which he and any lover of Canada may be excused for dropping the curtain. Justice, at the period, had either departed from the country, or had become afflicted with a serious moral and physical squint. Not in Lower, not in Upper

Canada, could Selkirk receive fair hearing or decent treatment. With subservient juries, a besmirched judiciary, and a partisan government, honour and good faith hid their heads. Men of good standing and large stake in the country, men otherwise humane and reputable, vied with each other to defeat justice and to shield crime. Nor did the clerical office hasten to extend its comfort, or even refrain from persecution. A certain redoubtable Rector of York, whom we otherwise love to recall as one of the sturdy founders of the Province, and whose soul, in later days, we believe was right before God, was among the most noisy of Selkirk's defamers, and the most influential withholder from him of justice. Never was man more persecuted than was Lord Selkirk, during the year of the state trials in Canada, and never in the history of the older provinces has there been so flagrant and prolonged a violation of law. In sadness of spirit the would-be founder of the Selkirk Settlement betook himself from the country, and in broken health returned to the Old World to die.

B

EFORE dealing, in historic order, with the amalgamation of the rival Fur Companies, let us look a little more closely at the events that preceded it, in connection with the chief commerce of the country, the Fur trade of the continent, and at the explorations that followed upon its enterprising pursuit. To this pursuit we chiefly owe the opening up of the vast region embraced in the Dominion of Canada, from the slender thread of settlement on the banks of the St Lawrence westward to the Pacific, and from the shores of Hudson Bay to the 49th parallel, which in 1846 became the international boundary. South of this line, the principal voyages of exploration across the continent, at the beginning of the century, were the American expeditions in 1804-6 of Lewis and Clarke, up the Missouri and down the Columbia rivers, and the later trading operations of John Jacob Astor, who established Astoria, the great western emporium of the Fur-trade. In this trade Astor laid the foundations of his colossal fortune. Closely following on these enterprises, and growing out of them, came

the prolonged international controversy on the Oregon question, which from the year 1818 down to the year 1846 formed a bone of contention between Great Britain and the United States. The treaty of 1846 between the two countries established the Canadian boundary line and settled the vexed question of the national ownership of the northern California coast.

Lewis and Clarke accomplished for the United States what Sir Alexander Mackenzie had accomplished for Canada. They opened up an overland route to the Pacific, and divested the region of much of its terror to the heart of incoming civilisation. Over much of the territory opened up by these explorers, French enterprise had already traversed. Indeed, to the French and the Scotch belong the honors of discovery over most of the continent. The whole country west of the Great Lakes was early made known by Frenchmen. In 1679 La Salle erected Fort Michillimackinac, at the entrance of Lake Michigan, and penetrated by the waters of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. In the same year Du Luth reached the western extremity of Lake Superior, and took possession of the sources of the Mississippi. About the same period Perrot and Le Sueur journeyed over the region and established forts at suitable points by order of the French Governor. In 1742, Verandrye reached the country of the Mandans, in what is now the territory of Dakota, and tracked the upper waters of the Missouri. Later on we find him

roaming over the vast plains of the Saskatchewan, and probing the continent as far west as the Rocky Mountains. In the track of the French traders, a series of posts was established, extending from Sault Ste Marie and the Kaministiquia to the distant Saskatchewan and the hyporborean Athabasca. Later still we have the chain of trading establishments of the North

West Company, that linked the country from New Brunswick Post, at the source of the Moose River, to the distant Fraser, the Thompson, the Peace, and the Mackenzie rivers. Then came the cluster of Hudson Bay posts that figure so prominently in connection with the fur-trade in the NorthWest-Cumberland House, Norway House, Hudson House, Carlton House, Manchester House, and the inumerable trading stations of that great Corporation.

But in this enumeration we by no means exhaust the enterprise, or tell the whole story, of Franco-Canadian and ScottishCanadian trade. Even American historians give the palm to Canada for her labours in opening the continent to commerce. We know how enthusiastically Parkman speaks of French achievement in conducting enterprises of territorial conquest, and in heroically bringing the recesses of the wilderness to the knowledge of the outer world. Now comes a later historian, Mr Hubert Bancroft, who, in one of his many rich historical volumes, gives us this further testimony to the zeal and enterprise of Canadians in prosecuting discovery on the continent. Says Mr. Bancroft, speaking of Lewis and Clarke's expedition up the Missouri:

"In the course of our narrative we shall see that army captains and soldiers were no match for Scotch fur-traders and Canadian voyageurs in forest travel. When Lewis and Clarke set out on their expedition the great Unknown Region, as it was called, equivalent to one thousand miles square and more, between the headwaters of the Missouri and the Pacific Ocean, was, if we except the interior of Alaska and the Stikeen country, further removed from civilisation than any other part of North America. The Hudson Bay Company had explored its borders north. English ships had sailed through many channels in search of Anian Strait and a northern passage, and Ilearne had pursued his grumbling way from Fort Churchill to the mouth of the Copper Mine. The Canadian merchants had taken possession of the Canadian North-West, and had