training led him to a minute study 

 of the Bible, even in the original 

 tongues. As sliowing his bent toward 

 figures, tiie writer remembers Judge 

 Tliom saying that he never got into 

 a London omnibus— many of vsuose fig- 

 ures run up into the thousands— \?< ith- 

 out resolving the numbur into its fac- 

 tors, and combining them in every 

 possible manner. Nothing delighted 

 iiim so much as to get an appreciative 

 listener and to refer for an uour at a 

 time to the marvellous events of his- 

 tory and to show that they were not 

 isolated, but \\ ere part of a great sys- 

 tem of development. 



His reverence and his mathematical 

 bias at last settled on an idea which 

 completely mastered him and made 

 him in his later years a perfect arith- 

 metical enthusiast. There is lying 

 l)efore the society his large octavo 

 work of 300 pages printed by Reming- 

 ton & Co., .London, and Avhich con- 

 tains his elaborate theory. This work 

 has his essay, which he calls "P^mman- 

 uel,'' in a "pentagiot miniature," i. e., 

 in English, French, German, Italian 

 and Spanish. 



An investigation of the work shows 

 that his idea is that 33 and 34, which 

 he in some way regards as the alter- 

 Txative numbers representing the length 

 of our Baviour's life on earth, are nor- 

 mal units of all the great events of 

 history. Of course, though he so 

 thoroughly believed in his theory and 

 in its very great value, yet it may 

 easily be seecn that it is only a seiries 

 of arbitrary groupings and fanciful 

 identifications. The wonder is that a 

 mind of such strength could have 

 wasted itself, on a path so fruitless 

 ond so extravagant. 



TOaE ELDER RLEL, 

 The Fiery Leader. 

 The moving spirit in these troubles 

 of 1849 was the elder Riel, or as he 

 is better known among the French 

 "Louis Riel, pere." He was as fam- 

 ous in the events of his generation as 

 his son afterwards was in those of 

 our time. Old Louis Riel was born 

 at Isle a la Crosse in the far North- 

 west, on the 7th of June, 1817. His 

 father was a French Canadian and 

 his mother a French half-breed. At 

 the age of five years he was taken to 

 Lower Canada, where he remained till 

 his twenty-first year, learning in the 

 meantime the trade of a virool-carder. 

 After a short service in the Hudson's 

 Bay company, the young tradesman 

 determined to enter the church and 

 spent two years with the Oblate 

 brotherhood Unsettled in mind the 

 young novice took to the plains as a 



hunter and did not stop short of "go- 

 ing to the sea," a>5 making the trip to 

 Hudson's Bay was called. 



In the year 1843 Riel married one 

 of tlie family of Lagimodiere, a wo- 

 man of pure French Canadian blood 

 though l>orn on tthe Red River. 

 Thwarted for a time in his ambition 

 of establishing a woolen mill, he en- 

 gaged in farming on the banks of the 

 Seine river His restless mind could 

 not be satisfied until lie had begun a 

 mill for carding wool a few miles east 

 of St. Boniface, on a tributary of the 

 Seine. This mill did good work for 

 the people of Red River, and their ad- 

 miration was continually expressed 

 for its originator, who was sometimes 

 known as the "Miller of the Seine." 



We have already spoken of the 

 troubles of 1849. Riel was the very 

 man for such a matter. Excitable 

 and full of imagination, he saw repeat- 

 ed in the action of the company the 

 tyrannies of old France before the 

 Revolution, and of Lower Canada in 

 the period of the rebellion of 1837. The 

 hardships of the trader and mission- 

 ary under the restriction of not being 

 able to trade a single muskrat skin to 

 supply their w ants afforded him an un- 

 failing text. Joseph Tasse, to whom 

 again we are indebted for much infor- 

 mation, says of this tribune of the peo- 

 ple : "For a long time the French 

 hialfbreeds saw in Riel a man of in- 

 genious mind, of energy, and of elo- 

 quence. Though poorly educated he 

 had the gift of communicating his 

 sentiments very powerfully to his 

 audience. His words flowed with the 

 abundance and brightness of a clear 

 spring, when they did not run like a 

 torrent. Louis Riel had all the gifts 

 of a popular orator and the French 

 half breeds greeted with loud applause 

 his burning words." 



These are words of high commenda- 

 tion. We can now see the meaning 

 of the strange scene already described 

 in the rescutj of Sayer in the troublous 

 times of 1849. To those having our 

 British ideas it seems 9, great crime 

 to interfere wifch the interests of jus- 

 tice and to resist to violence in the 

 very presence of the august forms of 

 law. At this time as in the earlier 

 day of the 'Seven Oaks' affair, and 

 afterwards in the two rebellions of 

 the younger Riel, the Metis of the 

 plains, who called themselves the 

 'gens libres," must be declared to have 

 had loose and irresponsible notions as 

 to the claims of law. Riel continued 

 to be full of projects for the manufac- 

 ture of wooleens in tlie Northwest, and 

 even had the sympathy of Grovernor 

 Simpson, but witli all his inventive- 

 ness and energy there was a lack of 



