l provinces. Free
intercourse, ties of trade, knowledge which would sweep away prejudice,
could not come until a railway had spanned this wilderness. In the
fifties plans had been made for a main trunk line to run from Halifax
to the Detroit River. This ambitious scheme proved too great for the
resources of the separate provinces, but sections of the road were
built in each province. As a condition of Confederation, the Dominion
Government undertook to fill in the long gaps. Surveys were begun
immediately; and by 1876, under the direction of Sandford Fleming, an
engineer of eminence, the Intercolonial Railway was completed. It never
succeeded in making ends meet financially, but it did make ends meet
politically. In great measure it achieved the purpose of national
solidification for which it was mainly designed.

Meanwhile the bounds of the Dominion were being pushed westward to the
Pacific. The old province of Canada, as the heir of New France, had
vague claims to the western plains, but the Hudson's Bay Company was in
possession. The Dominion decided to buy out its rights and agreed, in
1869, to pay the Company 300,000 pounds for the transfer of its lands
and exclusive privileges, the Company to retain its trading posts and
two sections in every township. So far all went well. But the Canadian
Government, new to the tasks of empire and not as efficient in
administration as it should have been, overlooked the necessity of
consulting the wishes and the prejudices of the men on the spot. It was
not merely land and buffalo herds which were being transferred but also
sovereignty over a people.

In the valley of the Red River there were some twelve thousand metis,
or half-breeds, descendants of Indian mothers and French or Scottish
fathers. The Dominion authorities intended to give them a large share in
their own government but neglected to arrange for a formal conference.
The metis were left to gather their impression of the character and
intentions of the new rulers from indiscreet and sometimes overbearing
surveyors and land seekers. In 1869, under the leadership of Louis
Riel, the one man of education in the settlement, able but vain and
unbalanced, and with the Hudson's Bay officials looking on unconcerned,
the metis decided to oppose being made "the colony of a colony." The
Governor sent out from Ottawa was refused entrance, and a provisional
Government under Riel assumed control. The Ottawa authorities first
tried