son Bay Company are now in charge of the half-breed children of the earlier chief traders and chief factors, and the name halfbreed, if it ever was so, has ceased to be a term of reproach. One old officer of the Company, who died last year, was a descendant of one of the oldest and best families in Montreal. He entered the service of the Company about fifty years ago, married or cohabited with an Indian woman when he was young, and had a son by her who is now in charge of one of the Company's posts. The father died, leaving a property valued at twenty-five thousand pounds, and about a dozen half-breed children.

An intelligent half-breed thus descended is the best man that can be found for the charge of the interior posts. He has the intelligence of the white man, with the Indian sagacity. He can live on the coarsest food, can endure the greatest hardships, can bear to be isolated from the world year after No one better understands the Inyear. dian character, or can deal to greater advantage with the race. There are two large classes of the half-breeds-the English and French. The former appear to take more after the white and less after the Indian, while the latter, on the contrary, seem to descend more to the Indian level. This is shown in various ways. They care less than the English half-breeds for cultivating the soil, are satisfied with coarser and plainer food, are more improvident, and evince greater fondness for buffalo hunting and its gipsy life. From the earliest history of the settlement, it has been the custom to go out to summer and winter buffalo hunts. These parties are made up almost exclusively of French half-breeds. They rendezvous at a certain point in the settlement, with their ox-carts, buffalo-runners, and their whole families-in some years having been known to number as many as fifteen hundred carts. After quitting the settlement, they agree amongst themselves upon a captain, chosen for his boldness, experience and success in

the hunting field. He is to say when they shall start in the morning, how long they shall travel, and when they shall camp at night. All disputes are referred to him. When they approach the buffalo, they mount their runners, as their trained horses are called, and pursue the herd. On bringing down a buffalo, the hunter who shoots it drops a glove or something by way of token. The women, following with the carts, take the carcases belonging to their lords, and commence converting them into pemmican.

The half-breeds, with their long hair and dark complexions, when dressed in their usual style, with fur cap, capote or carriboo shirt, leggings and moccasins to match, carrying flint-lock guns, and mounted on roving little Indian ponies, caparisoned with a gorgeously worked beaded saddle-cloth and beaded saddle, with long lassoes of buffalo hide trailing on the ground yards behind them, present really a picturesque appearance. The horses always walk or gallop. You might ride about the settlement for days together and never see a horseman trotting.

The half-breeds are uncommonly fond of horse-racing. It is a very ordinary occurrence in Winnipeg, to see a horse-race between half-breeds up and down the street. There are impromptu matches made for small stakes. Often a couple of half-breeds may be seen tearing down the street on horseback with their hair flying and arms working, amid the applause of the bystanders. They all ride uncommonly well, being used to it from their infancy, and almost living in their saddles. They dash up the street in small troops at full gallop, stop suddenly at an hotel, throw themselves off their horses, which, if wild, are cobbled with their las soes, enter the hotel, spend their money most freely, and after drinking a good deal come out, and dash off again in the same wild, reckless, devil-may-care style. They are rather given to gambling, and are a very intemperate race, particularly the

French. They can frequently be seen coming out of the Hudson Bay Company's store with small bottles filled with rum, which they proceed to empty before leaving the yard. A day never passes but some are seen returning home intoxicated on foot, or reeling about on their horses. They are naturally quiet and inoffensive if unprovoked, fond of a joke, and laugh a good deal, but, when under the influence of liquor, their worse nature shows itself, and their Indian passions appear for the time to predominate. In a fight they would probably be cowardly, and take an unfair advantage of an adversary where it was possible. They are passionately fond of dancing and of the fiddle. In nearly every family, one can be found who plays that instrument. After the snow falls they have numberless gatherings for dancing. They do not, as we do, assemble at 10 p.m. and break up at 1 or 2 in the morning-that would be considered utterly absurd-they meet at the reasonable hour of 6 in the evening, dance all that night until about eight the following morning, breakfast in the house by daylight, and then return home, often driving as many as twenty miles. After weddings these dances have been known to be kept up (we have it on the very best authority) for two and even three days, until the guests have eaten up every thing in the house. The dances are always crowded, as the Red River cottage usually contains but two or three rooms. The principal dance, in fact their only one, is called a Red River jig, which somewhat resembles a hornpipe, male and female participating in it; every little while some new couple cutting out those dancing; so that it can go on for hours together, till the fiddlers and their reliefs are all exhausted. As a dance for females it is most ungraceful.

Another curious custom of Red River is that at any chance meeting on New Year's day, whether at one of their dances, or in calling, or elsewhere, the men and women iss each other. It used to be indulged in

on all hands, from the highest to the Indian, the women taking their kiss as a matter of course, sometimes from entire strangers. It is now dying out, since the advent of strangers and the opening up of the settlement. Red River has changed greatly in the last two or three years before, it was fifty years behind the rest of the world. It was exceedingly difficult of access, being bounded on the west by a thousand miles of uninhabited prairie, and many hundreds of miles of mountainous and broken country; on the north it had access to the Atlantic ocean by way of a most dangerous river and the Hudson's Bay, only open on an average about six weeks of the year; on the east a canoe voyage of about fifteen hundred miles was required to reach Toronto; so that the settlers remained cut off from the world until they gave up the old routes to the north and east, and adopted that to the south. This was an overland journey, by the vast trackless prairie, of between five and six hundred miles, to St. Paul's, one of the earliest settlements in that quarter, and from St. Paul's to Chicago. The length of the journey deterred visitors, and the settlers were contented to remain as they were, seldom hearing from the outside world, and taking little or no interest in it.

As a rule the half-breed, like the Indian, eats inordinately. If he has fasted for a time his cravings seem never to be satisfied. The writer recollects seeing an Indian and a half-breed sit down to a pot filled with a fish that must have weighed, before it was cooked, close upon twenty-five pounds, and finish it before they stopped, leaving only the head and bones untouched; after which they swallowed a quantity of pemmican. Even then they looked as hungry as ever, and as if it would be dangerous to leave any edible within their reach.

At a citizens' ball in the village of Winnipeg, a stout half-breed happened to place himself beside the writer at the supper table. Taking up a fork he deliberately transferred

of eight or ten carts to a string of a hundred or more. They are often heard before they are seen; the wheels, through want of greasing, emit a sound anything but agreeable to the ear. A good-sized train can easily be heard a mile off.

As winter sets in this traffic is stopped, and many then go for the winter buffalo hunting. Those left devote themselves to pleasure, drive about in their little carioles, or in small sleighs with racks, their own handiwork, and appear to enjoy life as well as the best of us. After the snow falls all long journeys into the interior are made with dog trains, consisting of three or more dogs harnessed in tandem fashion, with Dutch collars, to small carioles, or, as we should call them, toboggans, a half-breed driver with a whip completing the turnout. The "huskies,"or Esquimaux dogs, from the north, are considered the best for this purpose. They are only fed once a day, that is in the evening, the meal consisting of fish or about a pound of pemmican. This keeps them in good condition. In camp, with the dogs about, unless they are very well fed, nearly everything has to be hung up out of their reach, even moccasins and snow shoes. The cariole itself (on account of the deer thongs about it,) has also to be hung up, otherwise it would be destroyed. In the

dog cariole the passenger can sit or lie down with the greatest comfort and warmth; it being low, little wind is caught. The driver by practice can run all day, making from forty to sixty miles, and only occasionally jumping on the rear of the cariole, which projects beyond the place where the occupant sits, or where the load is placed.

The inhabitants of Red River, Scotch or half-breed, invariably wear moccasins made of moose or buffalo skin, called by them shoes. Winter or summer, cold or warm, dry or muddy, they always wear their moccasins-in summer generally without socks or stockings. When it is muddy their feet of course are always wet or damp; they are accustomed to this, and it does not appear to injure their health in the least. During the cold weather they wear inside the shoes pieces of warm cloth like blanket, technically termed "duffel."

They are the fortunate possessors of a splendid country. As regards soil, it is one of the gardens of the earth. It is impossible to travel over those countless acres of waving grass, without meditating on the great future which awaits Canada when they shall have been converted into thriving farms by our industrious and loyal fellowsubjects.