and the mails were few
and far apart. Though, on the other hand, that condition of things
should have made all parties more tolerant and cautious.

Strange that the two Louis Riels, father and son, should lead in
agitations that were somewhat contradictory. The elder Riel was a
famous antagonist of the Hudson's Bay Company regime with its apparent
or alleged monopoly in trade, and the younger Riel, while no lover of
the Company, opposed the Canadian Government which was to replace it.
The truth seems that they were both temperamentally against authority
and that they were both afflicted with a megalomania which led each to
imagine that he was some great one.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD. Who, while Premier, founded the
Mounted Police. (_Photo, Pittaway Studios, Ottawa._)]

[Illustration: HON. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. Who, while Premier, organized
the Mounted Police. (_Photo, Pittaway Studios, Ottawa._)]

[Illustration: HUDSON BAY: R.N.W.M. POLICE WITH DOGS.]

The younger Riel had the "bad eminence" of leading two rebellions in
Western history before winding up his tragic career on the scaffold at
Regina. He it was who opposed the entrance of Governor McDougall to the
Red River in 1869. He it was who, after having stopped the Governor,
rode down and captured Fort Garry in which he and his men fared
sumptuously all that winter out of the Hudson's Bay Company store. He it
was who imprisoned those who opposed him and ordered the shooting of
Thomas Scott, a young Canadian prisoner--an act which estranged from the
rebel chief the sympathy of many who believed that he had some grounds
for protest against the incoming of authority without any guarantee of
the settler's rights.

But the reign of the rebel was not long. The Imperial authorities who
have never forgotten the teaching of history in the loss of the American
colonies, have more than once called the governments in free colonies to
a sense of their duty and have followed up their advice with military
backing if necessary. And both were forthcoming in this case. The hand
of the good Queen Victoria is seen in the following dispatch from Earl
Granville to Sir John Young, Governor-General of Canada:

"The Queen has heard with surprise and regret that certain
misguided persons have banded together to oppose by force the entry
of our future Lieutenant-Governor into our territory in Red River.
Her Majesty does not distrust the loyalty of her su