American boundary, and skirting it to nearly
the head of Lake Superior. This outline would
give them a tract nearly equal to the whole
of our Australian colonies, and would include
all the wooded and prairie-land, shutting out
only the barren and desert tracts incapable of
being colonised. The Company, not intending
colonisation, nor mining, but bent only
on fur-trading, look upon those great
northern wilds as the true source of their
wealth, and consequently lay claim to the
whole country east of the Rocky Mountains,
as far as the Arctic regions; and, with
enlarged views, went so far as to claim all to the
westward of this rocky range. To make assurance
doubly sure, the Company, in the year
eighteen hundred and twenty-one, and again
in eighteen hundred and thirty-eight,
obtained a royal license, which extended their
American preserves—until the year eighteen
hundred and fifty-nine—over the whole
of the territories to the West of the
Rocky Mountains, as far north as Russian
America. Until the latter period, therefore,
the great No Thoroughfare notice will be
maintained.

However lightly the second Charles may
have made over this enormous slice of a
continent to a trading board of directors, he was
not unmindful of the cause of science, nor of
the welfare of the state; hence we find him
stipulating that the Company shall use their
endeavours to discover the north-west passage,
and declaring that he made the grant with a
view to the pirblic good. Whether it was
that the Directors were prophetically
endowed with a foreknowledge of the practical
inutility of the north-west passage, or were
moved by the suffering that must be entailed
by prosecuting it, not less than in opening up
any of their frosty territories, is not clear, but
their policy has ever been to keep away
Englishmen, and to send home furs.

The entire surface of this country, with the
exception of the mountains, lakes, and rivers,
may be classed under three distinct heads—
the woody, the prairie, and the desert country.
The former stretches around the vicinity
of Hudson's Bay to a greater or less
depth, and contains vast forests of useful
trees, many of them of enormous size.
These forests cover tracts greater in extent
than the United Kingdom; some parts
of them are situated in uninhabitable
regions, but others are far more favourably
located.

The prairie, or open country, extends from
the head of Lake Superior, in a westerly
direction, past Lake Winnipeg, as far as one
hundred and ten west longitude; thence
north to the Deer Lake, and eastwards and
south past the head of Lake Winnipeg and
the Lake of the Woods—comprising half-a-million
of square miles of land as fertile as in
any part of the world, watered by a net-work
of lakes and rivers, and, although cold during
the winter, sufficiently warm in spring and
summer to bring forth most abundant crops
of almost every species of European grain,
vegetable, and fruit. Enough food might be
there raised to serve the entire population of
Great Britain and the whole of her dependencies;
and were it not for the No Thoroughfare
policy of the Company, we might,
at this present moment of scarcity and dearness,
be drawing large supplies of cheap corn
from this very country.

Of the beauty and fertility of this part of
Rupert's Land all who have seen it speak
in glowing terms. One writes thus of the
neighbourhood of Lake Winnipeg:—"There
is not, perhaps, a finer country in the world,
for the residence of uncivilised man, than
that which occupies the space between Red
River and Lake Superior. Fish, venison,
fowl, and wild rice are in great plenty; the
fruits are strawberries, plums, cherries, hazle-nuts,
gooseberries, currants, raspberries,
pears, &c." Surely a country which produces
all these in such variety is fit for more than
uncivilised man. Other eyes than those of
the savage might revel in the scenery which
is there to be met with. Broad rivers winding
their way through ample valleys, stretching
for miles in grassy slopes, crowned by
beetling forests of ash, poplar, and oak, and
affording shelter and food to numberless
herds of elk and buffalo. Extensive lakes
in the midst of fertile plains, fringed with
natural plantations of roses and sweet-briars,
lend an enchantment to this wild
country which has struck every traveller.
Sir George Simpson, the late governor of
the Hudson's Bay territories, made a tour
through this same country, and speaks of
travelling by the Kanimistaquoix, one of
the numerous rivers which fertilize and
beautify the neighbourhood. He penetrated
forests of elm, oak, pine, birch, &c., and
passed many isles not less fertile and lovely
than the banks, reminding him of the
rich and quiet scenery of England. The
shores were spangled with violets, roses, and
many other wildflowers, while fruits of all
kinds were equally abundant. The governor,
carried away by his admiration of this beautiful
scenery, and forgetful, for the time, of
the Stop the Way policy of his masters, the
Directors at home, was led incautiously to
declare that it is impossible to pass through
this fair valley, without feeling that it is
destined sooner or later to become the happy
home of civilised men, with their bleating
flocks and their lowing herds, with their
schools and their churches, with their full
garners and their social hearths.

Something of this has actually come to
pass on the banks of the Red River, a little
farther to the west, where a tract of country
has been located by Highlanders, Canadians,
and half-breeds. Nearly midway between
the American boundary and Lake Winnipeg,
the Red River Settlement, although of nearly
forty years standing, does not contain above