ntrast to the new settlements of the United
States. In the new Western States the religious movements fell behind
the Western march of the immigrant. In the Canadian West from the very
day that old Verandrye took his priest with him, from the time when the
first Colonists brought a devout layman as their religious teacher with
them, from the hour when the stalwart Provencher came, from the era when
the self-denying West visited the Indian camps and Settlers' camp alike,
from the time when the saintly Black came as the natural leader of the
Selkirk Colonists, and during the forty years of the development of
Manitoba, the foundations have been laid in that righteousness which
exalteth a nation.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXX.

How strange and wonderful is the web of destiny, which is being woven in
our national, provincial and family life, which we poor mortals are
simply the individual strands.

How marvellous it is to look into the seeds of time--yes, and these may
be small as mustard seeds--which are the smallest of all seeds--and see
the bursting of the husks, the peering out of the plumule, the feeding
of the sprout, the struggle through the clods, the fight with frost and
hail and broiling sun, and canker worm and blight, the growth of the
strengthening stem, and then the leaf and blossoms and fruit! We say it
has survived, it becomes a great tree under whose leaves and under whose
branches the fowls of Heaven find shelter. How passing strange it was to
see the seed-thought rise in the mind of Lord Selkirk, that suffering
humanity transplanted to another environment might grow out of poverty,
into happiness and content. See his sorrow as he meets with undeserved
opposition from rival traders, from slanderous agents, from bitter
articles in the press, from Government officials and even police
officers who strive to break up his immigrant parties. Recall the
troubles of the Nelson Encampment as they reach him in letters and
reports. Think of the misery of knowing thousands of miles away that his
Colonists were starving, were being imprisoned, banished, seduced from
their allegiance, and in one notable case that men of honor, education
and standing to the number of twenty, were massacred, while he, in St.
Mary's Isle, in Montreal, or in Fort William, fretted his soul because
he could not reach them with deliverance.

[Illustration: MARBLE BUST OF EARL OF SELKIRK, THE FOUNDER
By Chantrey, obtained by author