THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION. 201 



occupation of these vast prairies. First, the Hudson 

 Bay Company; and secondly, the Eonian Catholic 

 priesthood. 



To have opened them out for colonisation would 

 have been suicidal to a Company enjoying the mono- 

 poly of the Indian trade. It would also have seri- 

 ously affected the supply of fur, as the number of 

 wild animals decreases in a geometrical ratio, whilst 

 population goes on increasing only in an arithmetical 

 one. Its governing body has therefore for years back 

 endeavoured in a quiet way to keep the country as 

 unknown and as much to themselves as possible, and 

 to deter emigrants from going there by depreciating 

 its value in the eyes of the world ; so much so, that 

 many believed it to be a desert, where grasshoppers 

 ruled in summer, and an almost life-destroying cold 

 in winter. 



As for the Roman Catholic priesthood, they were 

 desirous of gradually building up there another 

 French province, where the language, religion, and 

 laws of Lower Canada might be perpetuated, and 

 which in times to come might, in conjunction with 

 it, be some counterpoise to the steadily-increasing, 

 and by them much dreaded, preponderance of On- 

 tario. They hoped to mould the Red River into 

 what they would have described as a peaceable, 

 orderly, and contented people, but which, in the 

 exact and cold-blooded language of Protestantism, 

 meant an ignorant and superstitious peasantry, recog- 



