The French half-breeds were, as we have seen, chiefly given to hunting.
In theory, the Hudson's Bay Company possessed _all hunting rights under
their charter_. A French-Canadian, Larant, and another half-breed also,
had the furs, which they had hunted for, forcibly taken from them by
legal authority, while in a third case an offender against the game laws
had been actually deported to York Factory. Alarm was now general among
the French half-breeds. Hitherto the English half-breeds had been loyal
to the Company. Alexander Ross gives an incident worth repeating as to
how even the English half-breeds became rebellious. He says: "One of the
Company's officers, residing at a distance, had placed two of his
daughters at the boarding-school in the Settlement. An English
half-breed, a comely well-behaved young man, of respectable connections,
was paying his addresses to one of these young ladies, and had asked her
in marriage. The young lady had another suitor in the person of a Scotch
lad, but her affections were in favor of the former, while her guardian,
the chief officer in Red River, preferred the latter. In his zeal to
succeed in the choice he had made for the young lady, this gentleman
sent for the half-breed and reprimanded him for aspiring to the hand of
a lady, accustomed, as he expressed it, to the first society. The young
man, without saying a word, put on his hat and walked out of the room;
but being the leading man among his countrymen, the whole community took
fire at the insult. 'This is the way,' said they, 'that we half-breeds
are despised and treated.' From that time they clubbed together in high
dudgeon and joined the French Malcontents against their rulers. The
French half-breeds made a flag for use on the plains called 'The
Papineau Standard.' It is plain that rightly or wrongly, Recorder Thom
has a thorny path to tread."

CHAPTER XIX.

A HALF-BREED PATRIOT.

Canada looks with patriotic delight not only on her sons who remain at
home to work out the problems of her developing life, but follows with
keenest interest those Canadians who have gone abroad and made a name
for themselves, and their country in other parts of the Empire or the
world. Some of these are Judge Haliburton, Satirist; Roberts and Bliss
Carman, Poets; Gilbert Parker, Grant Allen and Barr, Novelists; Romanes
and Newcombe, Scientists; Girouard, Kennedy and Scott in the Army, and
many others who have won laurels in the several w