rm well-wisher of the
administration, affirm it. It is true that in many and
many a case, in a greater number of instances than even
opponents of the administration suppose, a half-breed
who has toiled for a number of years upon a lot, effecting
improvements and taking pride in his property, has been
dispossessed by an incomer because he could not show a
patent from the Interior Department.

But almost as fruitful a source of dissatisfaction as
these heartless and dishonest displacements has been the
difficulty which the unfortunate squatter has experienced
in obtaining his patent. The mills of the gods in the
Interior Department grind very slowly. The obtaining of
a patent by a deserving squatter as a general rule is
about as difficult, and as worthy of applause when
achieved, as is the task which lies before a farmer's
boy who has decided to become a member of parliament, by
first earning money enough to go to school to prepare
for a third class teachership, by then teaching school
till he has a sufficient competency to study medicine,
and by then practising his profession till he finds
himself able to capture the riding. Of course there is
some excuse, and we must not forget to produce it, for
the Department of the Interior. It would be undignified
if it were to move with any degree of rapidity. According
to etiquette, and the rule is very proper, when the
application of the half-breed comes to the office, it
must remain for at least four weeks in the drawer set
apart for "correspondence to be read." After it has been
read it receives one or two marks with a red-lead pencil,
after which it is deposited in pigeon-hole No. 1. Now
no document ever lodges for a shorter time than a month
in pigeon-hole No. 1; and if at the end of that period
it should happen to be removed, the clerk lays by his
novel or tooth-pick, as the case may be, and puts one or
two blue marks upon the back of it. When we consider that
there are all the way from six to twenty pigeon-holes,
by a simple process of arithmetic we can get approximately
near the period which it takes the poor half-breed's
prayer to get from pigeon-hole Alpha to pigeon-hole Omega.
But during the process the back of the squatter's
application has become a work of art. It is simply
delightful to look upon. It not alone contains memoranda
and hieroglyphics made in red and blue pen-pencil but it
is also beautified by marks made upon it in carmine ink,
in ink "la brilla