XLVI ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
decade of western government. It was a great experiment, in striking 
contrast to the policy of the United States in dealing with its Terri- 
tories. A thousand men—each with the drill and uniform of a soldier, 
and yet merely a civil officer, the mounted policeman is the startling 
figure who meets the new immigrant from Montana or Idaho and con- 
vinces him that Brito-Canadian law is a reality. 
A recent writer, Miss Agnes Deans Cameron, gives her hearty 
tribute to the efficiency of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, seen 
to the very mouth of the Mackenzie river and, we may add, found as a 
protecting force in the turbulent Yukon and among the scattered 
Muskegons of Hudson Bay. ‘Captain, afterwards General Butler, a 
British officer and Canadian Commissioner, author of the “Great Lone 
Land” end “Wild North Land,” wrote in 1871 “Law and order are 
wholly unknown in the region of the Saskatchewan.” Five years after- 
ward an intelligent Indian trader—himself an Indian—said “ Before 
the Queen’s government came we were never safe,” and now, he con- 
tinued, “I can sleep in my tent anywhere, and have no fear. I can go to 
the Blackfoot and Cree camps and they trust me as a friend.” 
And the men of western Canada have iron in their blood still, and 
will support the law and do any needful work for King and country. 
Western Canada was born amid the throes of military conflict. In the 
first year of its history it rose to throw back the Indian intruder; when 
the Empire needed them it sent its voyageurs to ascend the Nile at 
Lord Wolseley’s request; in the Saskatchewan Valley, without distinc- 
tion of class or creed, it rose to crush the rebellion; to South Africa it 
sent the Strathcona Horse, and its sons sleep under the veldt of the 
Transvaal. Its regiments, whether dressed in the garb of old Gaul, as 
English Grenadiers, or as mounted scouts or cavalry, are ready whenever 
Canada herself or the Motherland may call. 
THe NATIONAL HIGHWAY. 
Another important element in the western development is our 
National Highway. The writer first saw the rocky shores of Lake 
Superior in the special steamer “ Aleoma,”’ which took a Press Excursion 
in 1868 to Fort William and Port Arthur—or, as the latter was first 
called, Prince Arthur’s Landing. There was then a small canal on the 
American side of Sault Ste. Marie, connecting Lake Superior with 
Georgian Bay. Fort William was about four hundred and fifty miles 
from Fort Garry and between them was a constant succession of forest, 
muskeg, rock and rapid. The loneliness, the difficult transit and the 
complete stoppage of communication in winter filled a Canadian with 
the sense of hopelessness of ever being able to transport men or material 
