tion, that most potent inducement to toil,
seems powerless to promote habits of industry and agriculture. During
the winter season they frequently undergo periods of great privation,
but, like he Indian, they refuse to credit the gradual extinction of the
buffalo, and persist in still depending on that animal for their food.
Were I to sum up the general character of the Saskatchewan half-breed
population, I would say: They are gay, idle, dissipated, unreliable, and
ungrateful, in a measure brave, hasty to form conclusions and quick to
act upon them, possessing extra ordinary power-of endurance, and capable
of undergoing immense fatigue, yet scarcely-ever to be depended on in
critical moments, superstitious and ignorant, having a very deep-rooted
distaste to any fixed employment, opposed to the Indian, yet widely
separated from the white man--altogether a race presenting, I fear, a
hopeless prospect to those who would attempt to frame, from such
materials, a future nationality. In the appendix will be found a
statement showing the population and extent of the half-breed settlements
in the West. I will here merely remark that the principal settlements are
to be found in the Upper Saskatchewan, in the vicinity of Edmonton House,
at which post their trade is chiefly carried on.

Among the French half-breed population there exists the same political
feeling which is to be found among their brethren in Manitoba, and the
same sentiments which produced the outbreak of 1869-70 are undoubtedly
existing in the small communities of the Saskatchewan. It is no easy
matter to understand how the feeling of distrust towards Canada, and a
certain hesitation to accept the Dominion Government, first entered into
the mind of the half-breed, but undoubtedly such distrust and hesitation
have made themselves apparent in the Upper Saskatchewan, as in Red River,
though in a much less formidable degree; in fact, I may fairly close this
notice of the half-breed population by observing that an exact
counterpart of French political feeling in Manitoba may be found in the
territory of the Saskatchewan, but kept in abeyance both by the isolation
of the various settlements, as well as by a certain dread of Indian
attack which presses equally upon all classes.

The next element of which I would speak is that composed of the white
settler, European and American,` not being servants of the Hudson Bay
Company. At the present time this class is numerically