ns with their rulers were of
such primitive character as to make the Government in every sense
paternal; the petty tax on imports attending its administration one
practically unfelt!

A people whose land was dotted with schools and churches, to whose
maintenance their contributions were so slight as to be unworthy of
mention. The three separate religious denominations, holding widely
different tenets--elsewhere the cause of bitter sectarian feeling,--was
with them so unthought of as to give where all topics were eagerly
sought--no room for even fireside discussion. Side by side, "upon the
voyage,"--as they termed their lake or inland trips--the Catholic and
the Protestant knelt and offered up their devotions--following the ways
of their fathers,--no more to be made a subject of dispute than a
difference in color or height.

The cursings and obscenities that taint the air and brutalize life
elsewhere, were in this quaint old settlement unknown. Sweet thought,
pure speech, went hand in hand, clad in nervous, pithy old English, or a
"patois" of the French, mellowed and enlarged by their constant use of
the liquid Indian tongues, flowing like soft-sounding waters about them,
their daily talk came ever welcome to the ear.

AN ARCADIA.

Where locks for doors were unknown, or, known, unused, where a man's
word, even in the transfer of land, was held as his bond--honesty became
a necessity. Lawyers were none. Law was held to be a danger. Still the
importance attached by simple minds to an appearance in public, the
amusing belief cherished by some, that, if permitted to plead his own
case, exert his unsuspected powers, there could be but one result,
brought some honest souls to the Red River forum, with matter of much
moment, "the like never heard before." None can read the quaint,
minutely-detailed record of these "causes celebres" that shook the
little households as with a great wind, without a smile, or resist the
conviction that no scheme of an English Utopia can safely be pronounced
perfect without some such modest tribunal to afford vent for that
ever-germinating desire for battle inherent in the race.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER ROSS Sheriff and Author. Came to Red River
Settlement in 1825 from British Columbia. Died in 1856.]

Their manners were natural, cordial, and full of a lightsome heartness
that robed accost with sunshine,--a quietude withal--that rare quality
--that irked them not at all--one gathered from