to be read.”  After it has been read it receives one or two marks with a red-lead pencil, after which it is deposited in pigeon-hole No. 1.  Now no document ever lodges for a shorter time than a month in pigeon-hole No. 1; and if at the end of that period it should happen to be removed, the clerk lays by his novel or tooth-pick, as the case may be, and puts one or two blue marks upon the back of it.  When we consider that there are all the way from six to twenty pigeon-holes, by a simple process of arithmetic we can get approximately near the period which it takes the poor half-breed’s prayer to get from pigeon-hole Alpha to pigeon-hole Omega.  But during the process the back of the squatter’s application has become a work of art.  It is simply delightful to look upon.  It not alone contains memoranda and hieroglyphics made in red and blue pen-pencil but it is also beautified by marks made upon it in carmine ink, in ink “la brillanza,” an azure blue ink, in myrtle green ink, in violette noire; but never, it must be said to the credit of the department, in common black.  But all these colours are worthless indeed, viewed from any point of view, compared with its other acquisitions.  Solomon himself in all his glory was never decked out more gorgeously than this poor half-breed’s greasy sheet of foolscap is at the end of its journey through the pigeon-holes.  The prime minister of the Crown in all his pomp of imperial orders has not so many ribbons as this poor vagabond’s claim.  Sometimes it is swathed in crimson tyings, sometimes in scarlet, now and again in magenta; and I am very happy to be able to say that pink and two very exquisite shades of blue known as birds-egg and cobalt have lately been introduced.

Of course the half-breed complains when the weeks have swelled into months, and the months have got out of their teens, that he has heard no answer to his prayer; but the rascal should try to consider that his document has to make its voyage through the pigeon holes.

In this way there has been much heartburning, and many curses against officialdom and red-tape.  While the back of the application is being turned out a christmas card, a stray immigrant comes along, and the squatter half-breed has once more to go back for a new camping-ground.

But there is something to be said—­this time I am serious—­for the Department in the matter, though not a very great deal.  A number of the half-breeds, though a small, a very, very small proportion of the whole, are restless vagabonds, who squat upon lands with no intention of remaining permanently, but only with the object of speculation by selling their scrip, leaving the neighbourhood, taking up another lot, and receiving in like manner disposable scrip again.  But the officers of the North-West must know that the half-breed people, in general, are constant-working, and are desirous of achieving comfort, and of affluence.  Yet because of the acts of a few unprincipled, lazy wanderers, some will seek to convey the impression that the conduct of the small few is a type of the methods of all.