large supplies for the coming season. These men speak with confidence of
the existence of rich diggings in some portion of the country lying
within the outer range of the mountains. From conversations which I have
held with these men, as well as with others who have partly investigated
the country, I am of opinion that there exists a very strong probability
of the discovery of gold-fields in the Upper Saskatchewan at no distant
period. Should this opinion be well founded, the effect which it will
have upon the whole Western territory will be of the utmost consequence.

Despite the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of such
discoveries, or the plains or passes leading to them, a general influx of
miners will take place into the Saskatchewan, and in their track will
come the waggon or pack-horse of the merchant from the towns of Benton or
Kootenais, or Helena. It is impossible to say what effect such an influx
of strangers would have upon the plain Indians; but of one fact we may
rest assured, namely, that should these tribes exhibit their usual spirit
of robbery and murder they would quickly be exterminated by the miners.

Every where throughout the Pacific States and along the central
territories of America, as well as in our own colony of British Columbia,
a war of extermination has arisen, under such circum stances, between the
miners and the savages, and there is good reason to suppose that similar
results would follow contact with the proverbially hostile tribe of
Blackfeet Indians.

Having in the foregoing remarks reviewed the various elements which
compose the scanty but widely extended population of the Saskatchewan,
outside the circle of the Hudson Bay Company, I have now to refer to that
body, as far as it is connected with the present condition of affairs in
the Saskatchewan.

As a governing body the Hudson Bay Company has ever had to contend
against the evils which are inseparable from monopoly of trade combined
with monopoly of judicial power, but so long as the aboriginal
inhabitants were the only people with whom it came in contact its
authority could be preserved; and as it centred within itself whatever
knowledge and enlightenment existed in the country, its officials were
regarded by the aboriginals as persons of a superior nature, nay, even in
bygone times it was by no means unusual for the Indians to regard the
possession of some of the most ordinary inventions of civilization o