from St. Mary's Isle, Lord Selkirk's
seat.]

The world looked coldly on and said, "A visionary Scottish nobleman! a
dreamer a hundred years before his time! Is it worth while?" while he
himself saw a dream of sunshine when he visited his Colonists on Red
River, when he made allocations for their separate homes for them, when
he pledged his honor and estate that the settlers might in time be
independent, and when he made religious provision for both his
Protestant and Catholic settlers, yet think of the unexampled ferocity
with which he was attacked upon his return to Upper Canada, in law
suits, and illegal processes, so that his estates became heavily
encumbered, so that he went to France to pine away and die. The world
failed to see any glamour in him, and carelessly said, what does it
profit? Folly has its reward.

Yet the answer. Here is Manitoba to-day, it is the fruitage of all that
bitter sowing time. Next year Manitoba will be in the fortieth year of
its history. Its people have seen pain, strife and defeat, they have
gone through excitement and anxiety and patient waiting, and at times
have almost given up the strife. But the province and its great city,
Winnipeg, are the meeting place of the East and West, the pivotal point
of the Dominion. The national life of Canada throbs here with a steadier
beat and a more normal pulse than it does in any other part of Canada,
its dominating Canadian spirit is so hearty and so sprightly, that, it
is taking possession of the scores of different nations coming to us and
they feel that we are their friends and brothers. This, while it may not
be the noisy and blatant type of loyalty is a practical patriotism which
is making a united, sane and abiding type of national character.

Again we answer: Three years from now will be the hundredth year since
the landing on the banks of Red River of the first band of Selkirk
Colonists. It was as we have seen a struggle of an extraordinarily
bitter type. To us it seems that no other American Colony ever had such
a continuous distressing and terrific struggle for existence as had
these Scottish Settlers, but we say it was worth while, judging by the
loss to Canada of the northern portions of the tier of states of
Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Washington, which a line from Fond
du Lac (Duluth) to the mouth of the Columbia would have given to us, and
which should have been ours. We say that had it not been for the Selkirk
Colonist