n for some nations-making them, amongst other
things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means
follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian.
Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade
has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the
earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks,
and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine,
and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease,
small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears
and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an
institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these
things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no
reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or,
for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the
principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of
men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or
for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a
future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters
and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who
takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy
all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself,
second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get
them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may
take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have
been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of
the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there
has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the
wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.

I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in
costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and
hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of
buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and
immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for
before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that
were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain o