of modern progress in British North America.  In 1868 successful negotiations took place between a Canadian delegation—­Sir George Cartier and the Hon. William Macdougall—­and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s representatives for the surrender of their imperial domain.  Canada agreed to pay L300,000 sterling, and to reserve certain lands for the company.  The terms were approved by the Canadian parliament in 1869, and an act was passed for the temporary government of Rupert’s Land and the North-west territory when regularly transferred to Canada.  In the summer of that year, surveyors were sent under Colonel Dennis to make surveys of townships in Assiniboia; and early in the autumn Mr. Macdougall was appointed lieutenant-governor of the territories, with the understanding that he should not act in an official capacity until he was authoritatively informed from Ottawa of the legal transfer of the country to the Canadian government.  Mr. Macdougall left for Fort Garry in September, but he was unable to reach Red River on account of a rising of the half-breeds.  The cause of the troubles is to be traced not simply to the apathy of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s officials, who took no steps to prepare the settlers for the change of government, nor to the fact that the Canadian authorities neglected to consult the wishes of the inhabitants, but chiefly to the belief that prevailed among the ignorant French half-breeds that it was proposed to take their lands from them.  Sir John Macdonald admitted, at a later time, that much of the trouble arose “from the lack of conciliation, tact and prudence shown by the surveyors during the summer of 1869.”  Mr. Macdougall also appears to have disobeyed his instructions, for he attempted to set up his government by a coup-de-main on the 1st December, though he had no official information of the transfer of the country to Canada, and was not legally entitled to perform a single official act.

The rebellious half-breeds of the Red River settlement formed a provisional government, in which one Louis Riel was the controlling spirit from the beginning until the end of the revolt.  He was a French Canadian half-breed, who had been educated in one of the French Canadian colleges, and always exercised much influence over his ignorant, impulsive, easily-deluded countrymen.  The total population living in the settlements of Assiniboia at that time was about twelve thousand, of whom nearly one-half were Metis or half-breeds, mostly the descendants of the coureurs-de-bois and voyageurs of early times.  So long as the buffalo ranged the prairies in large numbers, they were hunters, and cared nothing for the relatively tame pursuit of agriculture.  Their small farms generally presented a neglected, impoverished appearance.  The great majority had adopted the habits of their Indian lineage, and would neglect their farms for weeks to follow the scarce buffalo to their distant feeding grounds.  The Scotch half-breed, the offspring