two thousand inhabitants. They appear to
have everything in abundance which is
needed to support life. Wild fowl and fish
are to be had for the seeking. The neighbouring
forests yield them plentifully of
every variety of useful timber, whilst the
vast tracts of open country about them
afford a never failing pasturage for their
flocks and herds.

The soil of this land is a rich black alluvium
of great depth, which, when first tilled,
produces extraordinary crops, as much on
some occasions as forty-fold of wheat; even
after twenty successive years of cultivation,
without the aid of manure or of green crops,
it still yields from fifteen to twenty-five
bushels the acre of fine heavy corn.

Farms have sprung up in all directions;
cattle are heard lowing; the bleating of the
sheep tell of the progress of industry, and
wool and corn, hides and tallow, are amongst
the leading productions of these thriving colonists.
For seven months out of the year
cattle are able to be pastured on the wide
savannahs of the Red River, for the remainder
of the twelve months they are fed
in their stalls on straw, hay, &c. It might
reasonably have been expected that this germ
of colonisation would have spread into many
other channels; that pioneers would have
gone forth from it in all-directions, to realise
the anticipations of Sir George Simpson, and
that those people on the Red River would
have risen to opulence by the abundant produce
raised on their lands.

All this might have been and would have
been long before the present time, but for
the steel-trap and spring-gun policy of the
Company, who, having resolved that nothing
should be encouraged which might in the
most remote way interfere with the integrity
of beaver-skins or martens'-tails, effectually
checked the onward progress of these rising
colonists, and hedged them and their
industry in by an impassable Stop the Way
barrier. How this was accomplished may be
seen by one instance—that of a gentleman
who had assumed flie character of merchant
in a small way, and having imported some
few goods from England in the Company's
ships by way of Hudson's Bay, and found
them pay well, determined to try a shipment
of tallow home, of which there was abundance
to be had at a trifling cost. He did so.
The venture succeeded to the utmost, and
was followed by one of much greater value. By
this time the Directors were alarmed at the
prospect of having a tallow trade springing up,
and throwing their cherished martens'-tails
into the shade, and otherwise unsettling the
minds of the natives; accordingly, as none but
the Company's ships are permitted to ruffle
the waters of Hudson's Bay with their keels,
the Directors had but to give orders that no
more of this dangerous tallow should be
taken on board, and the affair was settled, as
the presumptuous merchant found to his cost.
His tallow remained spoiling on the
Company's wharf at York Factory for two entire
years, at the end of which time he abandoned
the affair in disgust.

This, however, was not all. The merchant
was far too enterprising and energetic for
the Directors' fancy. Who, could say what
he might not attempt next? Perhaps explore
some of the copper and lead mines of the
north, or open a coal seam along the banks of
the Saskatchewan! It was, in short, resolved
that he should be "put down;" and accordingly
he was put down, there being no power
on that private continent to prevent the
thing. The following brief but expressive
note was received by the obnoxious trader,
in the latter part of eighteen hundred
and forty-five; it was dated from the Factory
of the Red River Settlement, and ran thus:—
"Sir, I beg to state that in a private letter
from Mr. Secretary Smith, dated the eighteenth
of April last, I am requested to acquaint you
that no goods will be shipped in your name
on board the Hudson's Bay Company's ship
for York Factory this season. I remain, &c."
A strange fulfilment this, in the nineteenth
century, of the injunction laid upon the
Company in a comparatively benighted age,
by the sovereign who gave them their charter,
and who was thus liberal to them from a desire
to promote the public good of his people.

That this immense tract of country
contains within it much mineral wealth there
is ample evidence to show, despite the
steady perseverance of the Company to throw
discredit upon every such statement. Lead,
quicksilver, and cinnabar are known to exist
in the region of Hudson's Bay. Many natives
have been seen wearing bright shining pieces
of copper ore round their necks by way of
ornament, evidently removed from the surface
of the soil; and so common was the practice
near Fort Churchill, in the north, that
the tribe thus decorating themselves were
known as the Copper Indians. The Company's
servants, however, true to their employers'
creed of the unproductiveness of the
country, declare that those pieces of bright
metallic substance are neither more nor less
than the broken fragments of brass cannon
picked up from some foreign vessels that
had been wrecked on the shore.

The existence of most extensive seams of
coal along the banks of the Saskatchewan
flowing from the Rocky Mountains to Lake
Winnipeg, is more difficult of denial than
the ores to the northwards. It has been
examined and burnt by more than one intelligent
traveller; nay, the Company's own
governor, before alluded to, notices it in his
journal as beyond all doubt, and not as found
in any particular tract of country, but along
many hundreds of miles. It has, likewise, been
found of good quality and in great abundance
in Vancouver's Island, situated at the
southern extremity of the west coast of this
private continent.