ry. They result from the thought and experience of many long
days of travel through a large portion of the region to which they
have reference. If I were asked from what point of view I have
looked upon this question, I would answer--From that point which
sees a vast country lying, as it were, silently awaiting the
approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls unceasingly
from Europe to America. Far off as lie the regions of the
Saskatchewan from the Atlantic seaboard, on which that wave is
thrown, remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern
slopes of the Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is
destined to reach those beautiful solitudes, and to convert the
wild luxuriance of their now useless vegetation into all the
requirements of civilized existence. And if it be matter of desire
that across this immense continent, resting on the two greatest
oceans of the world, a powerful nation should arise with the
strength and the manhood which race and climate and tradition would
assign to it--a nation which would look with no evil eye upon the
old motherland from whence it sprung; a nation which, having no
bitter memories to recall, would have no idle prejudices to
perpetuate--then surely it is worthy of all toil of hand and brain,
on the part of those who to-day rule, that this great link in the
chain of such a future nationality should no longer remain
undeveloped, a prey to the conflict of savage races, at once the
garden and the wilderness of the central continent."

These great words were written nearly half a century ago. What has taken
place in Western History within that time shows how this remarkable man
"had his ear to the ground," as the Indians used to express it and that
he was in effect saying, with Whittier:

"I hear the tread of nations,
Of Empires yet to be;
The dull low wash of waves where yet
Shall roll a human sea."

CHAPTER II

ENTER THE MOUNTED POLICE

Great bodies are proverbially slow in their movements, and in this
regard all governments seem to be great bodies. It may be that a healthy
difference of opinion within a cabinet tends to cautious procedure, but
that type of caution is rather trying on people whose nerves tingle for
action.

The first Government of Canada under that astute and tactful statesman,
John A. Macdo