16 INTKODUOTION 



were set afoot to explore the country; one in charge of 

 Captain Palliser,* equipped by the Imperial Government, 

 and the other, under Professor Hind, at the expense of the 

 Government of Canada. An influential body of Red liiver 

 settlers, too, at this time petitioned the Canadian Parliament 

 to extend to the North- West its government and protection; 

 and in the same year the late Chief Justice Draper was 'sent 

 to England to challenge the validity of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company's charter, and to urge the opening up of the country 

 for settlement. But, above all, a committee of the British 

 House of Commons took evidence that year upon all sorts of 

 questions concerning the North-West, and particularly its 

 suitability for settlement, much of which was valueless owing 

 to its untruth. Nevertheless, the Imperial Committee, after 

 weighing all the evidence, reported that the Territories were 

 fit for settlement, and that it was desirable that Canada 

 should annex them, and hoped that the Government would be 

 enabled to bring in a bill to that end at the next session of 

 Parliament. Pive years later, the Duke of Newcastle, who 

 became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1859, and 

 accompanied the Prince of Wales to Canada as official 

 adviser in 1860, having in his possession the petition of the 

 Eed River settlers, as printed by order of the Canadian 

 Legislature, brought the matter up in a vigorous speech in 

 the House of Lords, in which he expressed his belief that 

 the Hudson's Bay Company's charter was invalid, though, 

 he added, " it would be a serious blow to the rights of pro- 

 perty to meddle with a charter two hundred years old. But it 

 might happen," he continued, " in the inevitable course of 



*Strange to say, Captain Palliser reported that he considered a 

 line of communication entirely through British territory, connect- 

 ing the Eastern Provinces and British Columbia, out of the question, 

 as the Astronomical Boundary adopted isolated the prairie country 

 from Canada. Professor Hind, on the other hand, in the same year, 

 standing on an eminence on the Qu'Appelle, heheld in imagination 

 the smoke of the locomotive ascending from the train speeding over 

 the prairies on its way through Canada from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific. 



