s trading posts. I may as well go upon
the authority of the same writer. [Footnote: Captain G.
L. Huyshe.] The transfer was dated for the 1st of December,
1869; but the Dominion Cabinet, eager to secure the rich
prize, appointed its Minister of Public Works, the Honourable
William McDougall, C.B., to be Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-West Territories, and sent him off in the month
of September, with instructions to proceed to Fort Garry
"with all convenient speed" there to assist in the formal
transfer of the Territories, and to "be ready to assume
the Government" as soon as the transfer was completed.
So far so well, but let us pause just here.

There is something to be said even on the side of revolt
and murder, and let us see what it is. Since the foundation
of the colony the people had lived under the government
according to the laws propounded by the Hudson Bay Company.
The people had established a civilization of their own,
and had customs and rules which were always observed with
great reverence. When tidings reached them that they were
to be transferred to the Dominion of Canada, they began
to have some misgivings as to how they should fare under
the new order. Of late years, too, there had come into
prominence among them a man whom early in these pages we
saw bid good-bye to his father upon the plains on his
way to school in the East. The fire seen in young Riel
at the school, and when he turned his face again for the
prairies that he loved, had now reached full flame. He
had never ceased to impress upon the people that the
Hudson Bay Company was a heartless, soulless corporation,
and that the treatment accorded to the Metis was no better
than might have been given to the dogs upon the plains.
There never was public peace after the tongue of this
man had begun to make noise in the settlement.

When, therefore, it became known that the Canadian
Government had determined upon taking the colony to
itself, an ambitious scheme of the highest daring entered
into the brain of Louis Riel. He lost no time in beginning
to sow seeds of discontent.

"Canada," he said, "will absorb your colony, and as a
people you will virtually be blotted out of existence.
White officials will come here and lord it over you; the
tax-gatherer will plunder the land for funds to build
mighty docks, and canals, and bridges, and costly buildings,
and numerous railroads in the East. The poor half-breed
will be looked upon with contem