trading posts. Manitoba was under the
oversight of a regularly constituted Government and Legislature. But out
in the vast north-west hinterland it was a sort of interregnum time, in
view of the fact that the Hudson's Bay Company, which had controlled the
country for two centuries, had given up its charter and authority to the
Dominion of Canada which had legally but not yet visibly taken
possession. Or, to change the figure, the period was, governmentally
speaking, a sort of "No man's land" with one party technically out of
possession and the other not yet recognized by the traders or Indians as
being in control. Such a situation gave a great deal of opportunity for
lawlessness by warring tribes, horse-thieves, whisky peddlers,
boot-leggers and all the rest of that ilk. And the proximity to the
American boundary line making escape easy was an additional temptation
to the lawlessly inclined. That this class did not allow the opportunity
to go by unused soon became apparent to men who were upon the ground.
Mr. Lawrence Clark, a noted Hudson's Bay officer, whom I remember in his
later years, handsome, eager, alert and well-informed, said that both
traders and Indians were learning the dangerous lesson that the Queen's
orders could be disregarded with impunity.

And it is now pretty well known that our good Queen and her advisers who
had been shocked by the Riel outbreak in 1869 were concerned for the
good government of the vast domain that had been recently handed over by
the Imperial Government to Canada. It was not the British way to allow
things to get out of hand, nor to permit wards of the nation, like the
Indians, to become the victims of the lawless in trade and in morality.
Hence the Governor-General of Canada received for himself and his
responsible advisers more than one dispatch from the Headquarters of the
Empire admonishing that steps should be taken to preserve peace in the
vast new domain and to give all who would immigrate thither the proper
British safeguards as to life and liberty and the pursuit of their
lawful avocations. And, of course, the Canadian authorities, chagrined
over the Riel outbreak and having some knowledge of the immense
responsibilities they had assumed by taking over the North-West, were
anxious to prevent anything that would make the new country unattractive
to the people who were desirous of coming with their families to settle
within its borders.

As a result of all this, Governor