136 The Winning of the West 



were partly civil officials, partly army officers. Of 

 the former, some represented the provincial gov 

 ernment, and others acted for the fur companies. 

 They had much to do both in governing the French 

 townsfolk and countryfolk, in keeping the Indians 

 friendly, and in furthering the peculiar commerce 

 on which the settlements subsisted. But the im 

 portant people were the army officers. These were 

 imperious, able, resolute men, well drilled, and with 

 a high military standard of honor. They upheld 

 with jealous pride the reputation of an army which 

 in that century proved again and again that on 

 stricken fields no soldiery of continental Europe 

 could stand against it. They wore a uniform which 

 for the last two hundred years has been better 

 known than any other wherever the pioneers of 

 civilization tread the world's waste spaces or fight 

 their way to the overlordship of barbarous empires ; 

 a uniform known to the southern and the northern 

 hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, 

 and all the islands of the sea. Subalterns wearing 

 this uniform have fronted dangers and responsi 

 bilities such as in most other services only gray- 

 headed generals are called upon to face; and at the 

 head of handfuls of troops have won for the British 

 crown realms as large, and often as populous, as 

 European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who 

 served the monarchy of Great Britain have con 

 quered many a barbarous people in all the ends of 

 the earth, and hold for their sovereign the lands 

 of Moslem and Hindoo, of Tartar and Arab and 



