OF THE RED INDIAN RACE. 449 



trappere are equally esteemed in the Hudson's Bay territory ; and 

 beyond their remotest forts, Dr. Kane reported as his experience 

 within the Ai'ctic circle, that " the Half-bi-eeds of the coast rival 

 the Esquimaux in their powers of endurance." 



Mr. Charles Horetskey, in his "Canada on the Pacific," after 

 remarking on the well-known fact that Japanese junks have been 

 known to drift on to the Pacific Coast of America, and so contribute 

 new elements of Mongolian character to the native population : thus 

 proceeds to notice another element of hybridity. " There is," he 

 says, " another mixture in the blood on the west coast of Vancouver 

 Island, and a very marked one — ^the Spanish, owing to the Spaniards 

 having long had a settlement at Nootka. Strangely enough, the 

 Spanish cast of countenance does not show in the women, who have 

 the same flat features as their sisters to the eastward. Nor is it so 

 noticeable among the young men, many of whom, however, have 

 beards — a most unusual appeiidage among American Indians, and 

 of course traceable to the cause referred to. The features are more 

 observable among the older men, many of whom, with their long, 

 narrow, pointed faces and beards, would, if washed, present very fair 

 models for Don Quixote." 



No strict census of the Indian population of British Columbia has 

 yet been attempted, but it is estimated in the most recent Report of 

 the Superintendent of Indian Afiairs, at 28,520. There, as elsewhere 

 in British America, the Government is exerting itself for the pro- 

 tection of the native population, but under greatly less favourable 

 circumstances than in the early settlements of Upper and Lower 

 Canada. There indeed the strangest collision and intermixture of 

 races is in progress ; for the earliest settlements were the result of 

 an abrupt inroad of emigrants, chiefly from the Western and Paciflc 

 States, bvit including the same miscellaneous band of adventurers 

 which is eveiywhere drawn together by the repiited discovery 

 of gold. 



The observations of all recent travellers in the North-west have 

 confirmed the fact that a Half-breed population ali-eady existed in the 

 neighbourhood of each Hudson's Bay Fort which, notwithstanding 

 its small numbers as compared with that of the native tribes, had 

 been perpetuated long enough to effect in some material degree the 

 native population; but in 1860, the first influx of settlers was 

 attracted by the reported wealth of the gold diggings, and ia that 



