defence. They accordingly enrolled themselves
under the name of the North-west
Company, dividing their interest in future
undertakings into twenty shares or parts, but
without laying down any money capital. They
were content to make proportionate contributions
of goods, according to the interest
held by each ; and, while the different
shareholders undertook each their own part in the
carrying on of the up-country traffic, four of
the most influential proprietors were named
managers, of whom two remained at Montreal,
whilst the other two undertook the
direction-in-chief of the country trade ; each
of these managers was paid a commission on
the business transacted.

The operations of this new Company —
unprotected by any charter, but stimulated by
their own individual interests — extended
rapidly on all sides, despite the violent
opposition of the Chartered Trappers. In a few
years their shipments of furs to Europe
exceeded those of the Hudson's Bay Company,
whilst their various establishments gave
employment to more than double the number
of those attached to their rivals' factories. It
was these enterprising traders who were the
first great pioneers through the interior, across
the Rocky Mountains, as far as the banks of
the Columbia river to the westward of that
vast range. The example had been set them,
on a small scale, by the early French settlers
in Canada; but, until the formation of the
North-west Company, nothing of any extent
had been attempted in the way of opening
up the country.

With a view to cutting off the supplies of
this new and formidable rival, the Hudson's
Bay Company made a grant of sixteen thousand
square miles of territory, situated on
the banks of the Red River, to Lord Selkirk,
one of their most influential directors, and
immediately in the track of the North-
westers, as they were called. This his lordship
undertook to colonise, with the ostensible
object of introducing civilisation amongst the
neighbouring tribes of Indians; but in reality,
as the sequel fully proved, to harass their
opponents in their fur trade. It was not long
after this colony of half-castes and raw
Orkneymen had been formed, that the servants
of the two Companies came to open and
deadly blows. Robbery, assaults, murder in
cold blood, were resorted to by either party,
to the heavy loss of both and to the gain of
neither.

At length, after some fifty years of the
most bitter opposition, the two Companies
were amalgamated; and, in the year eighteen
hundred and twenty-one, the whole trade
once more merged into the hands of the
Hudson's Bay factors. The capital of each
Company was at that period made up to a
nominal amount of two hundred thousand
pounds, so that four hundred thousand
pounds is the imaginary capital said to be
invested in the trade of three millions of
square miles, about one-third of that sum
being really the total of subscribed capital
employed. From that time forward there
has been no change whatever in the mode or
extent of the Company's dealings.

If there has been no alteration in the status
of the Company, the same at least cannot be
said of the thousands of Indians who are
still left the sole sad representatives of once
powerful nations; rude and barbarous it is
true, but, in their ages of primitive darkness,
less degraded, less brutal, less lost to
every human quality of goodness than are
their modern types — the consumers and the
consumed of the white men's fire-water. It
is sad to read the tales of destruction told
concerning these children of the prairie: how
disease and starvation have swept fertile
valleys and populous districts, until single
families and sometimes single Indians remain
the sole remnants of the warlike tribes that
once thronged the great hunting-grounds of
the North.

The decrease arises from small pox,
drunkenness, and starvation. Indians in their
aboriginal state of simplicity supported
themselves by the chase and fishing, in which
they were remarkable adepts with the rudest
weapons. Trappers came amongst them
and taught them the use of firearms, with
which they soon became as skilful as their
teachers. They discovered at the same time,
that, instead of hunting buffaloes and deer, it
was better to shoot or trap beavers, martens,
wolverines, bears, and such animals as yielded
furs, with which they could purchase
ammunition, clothing, finery, and a variety of things
they soon acquired a taste for. In this way
they shot, and traded, and lived on, until at
length the furred animals of their district
became scant, or until many of their best
men became old and no longer able to use
the fowling-piece. Then, when the usual
number of skins were no longer forthcoming,
the supply of ammunition was refused. The
Indians having long since forgotten their
ancestors' cunning with the spear, and the
arrow, and the trap, found themselves suddenly
deprived of their sole means of support. Their
lives may now be said to be held in the hands
of the Company's factors, who may thus at
any time virtually order the destruction of
thousands of their fellow-creatures by
withholding from them the means of subsistence.

Amidst the crying evils of slavery in
its worst form, in its worst days, there
was one evil which the Legrees and the
Haleys had not entailed upon the captive
negro. Toil as these poor slaves might
through the noon-day of their darkened
lives, there was one small consolation never
denied them by their hardest task-masters.
In their old age, when infirmities crept over
them, they were still housed, and fed, and
clothed, although scarce able to make the
slightest return in labour. But in Rupert's
Land, where, by a curious old-world fiction,