the Crown, as there is a narrow belt of land running to the north of the forty-ninth parallel-the boundary line-which is supposed to be watered by streams which do not find their way into Hudson's Bay, and if so, this was not included in the grant made by the original charter to the Company.

Besides, gold has been discovered in the Saskatchewan region; and in a pamphlet published in America in 1866, and addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the following significant passage occurs :—

Rumours of gulches and ledges in the Saskatchewan district, yielding even greater prizes to the prospector, are already rife, and will soon precipitate 'a strong, active, and enterprising people' into the spacious void. What is called the Americanisation of the Red River Settlement has been slow although sure, since the era of steam navigation, but this Americanisation of Saskatchewan will rush suddenly and soon from the camps of treasure-seekers in Montana.

I will now say a few words on the constitution and government of the Company. In England it consists of a governor -Prince Rupert's chair at present is occupied by Sir Stafford Northcote-and a body of directors, who represent the shareholders. In Rupert's Land there is an acting governor, who is assisted by a council composed of the chief factors, sixteen in number, and sometimes of chief traders, and by a recorder, who was first appointed in 1839. The chief factors are not paid by salaries, but are admitted into a sort of partnership with the Company, on the following principle: the profits are divided into one hundred shares, of which forty are allotted amongst the officers in the territory in certain specified proportions. This forty per cent. is debited to the fur trade, and is, of course, so much deducted from the fund available for dividend to the shareholders. It is, in fact, part of the working expenses of the concern, which must be paid before the net profits can be ascertained. Besides the chief factors, there are twenty-nine chief traders, and the number of servants in permanent employment is about 1,200.

The number of forts or posts in Rupert's Land is sixtysix. At the north end of Lake Winnipeg is the fort called Norway House, which is the central station of the upper country. Here brigades of boats receive annually their supplies for the different posts, and proceed on their winding voyages along rivers and lakes, bringing back furs which are then conveyed to York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, and shipped

to England. At Norway House also there is annually a meeting of the factors who have charge of the different posts, and who there consult together on the interests of the trade.

The currency of the country is the beaver skin, as tobacco used to be in Virginia. It is the unit of value according to which all barter is computed. Thus, ten musk rats go to one beaver, and a beaver is equal to a blanket. Four or five beavers go to a silver fox, and a certain number of silver fox-skins are given for a gun. carried on is this.

The way in which the trade is When an Indian hunter arrives at one of the posts with a bundle of furs, he proceeds to a room, where the superintendent separates the furs into lots, and, after adding up the amount, delivers to him a number of little pieces of wood, which indicate the number of beaver skins to which his furs are equal in value. The Indian then goes to the store-room, which contains the articles he wants, such as blankets, coats, guns, powder-horns, and knives. Each of these has a fixed and known value in beaver-skins, represented by the pieces of wood, and the hunter pays them away just as if they were cash for whatever article he fancies. At Red River, however, the Hudson's Bay Company issue notes to the extent of 9,000l. or 10,000l., which act as a circulating medium in the colony.

When the furs arrive in England they are stored in the Company's warehouses in Lime Street-part of the buildings of the old East India Company-and they are sold in lots by auction, in the spring of the year. There, in the different rooms may be seen vast piles of skins of bears, foxes, wolves, wolverines, martens, minks, otters, and even skunks-which last are used on the Continent (where, I suppose, the olfactory nerves are not so sensitive as ours), for the lining of cloaks. A story is told of the late Prince Gortchakoff, that when he was in England a short time before the Crimean war, he went to see a fox-chase, and as the hounds approached they suddenly made a rush at him and gave tongue loudly. They were with difficulty whipped off by the huntsman, and it turned out that the Prince was wearing a cloak lined with the skins of foxes, so that the dogs naturally attacked him. If they had pulled him down, the Russians might never have

crossed the Pruth, and the world would not have heard of the siege of Sebastopol !

It seems paradoxical that the highest prices in proportion to their value should be given for the inferior furs. But the reason is this. If the Company were to pay for the finer furs at the same rate as they pay for the less valuable ones, the Indians would hunt up the animals that bear the best furs and destroy the race, as has, in fact, been the case along the southern frontier. The silver fox and the beaver would soon disappear, and only musk rats, and raccoons, and martens be left. Since the beginning of the present century, the collection of furs has much increased, but the Company pay the Indians more for them, and thus there is a larger trade in them than ever, but with less profit. The valuable trade is in the remote and colder districts, where, there being no interference by the efforts of civilisation, the animals are preserved like game in England, and the Indians are encouraged to kill them only when the fur is in season, and to spare the females when they are breeding. But if the trade were thrown open, it is obvious that wanton destruction would ensue, and the supply of furs would soon cease to exist, for it would be the interest of every trader to secure as much in as short a time as possible, and, to use a homely phrase, the goose would be killed to get the egg.

I have now endeavoured to give an account of the constitution and history of the last of the great proprietary companies of England, to whom a kind of delegated sovereignty was granted by the Crown. It was by some of these that distant colonies were founded, and one, the most powerful of them all, established our empire in the East, and held the sceptre of the Great Mogul. But they have passed

away

fuit Ilium et ingens

Gloria Teucrorum

and the Hudson's Bay Company will be no exception to the rule. It may continue to exist as a Trading Company, but as a Territorial Power it must make up its mind to fold its (buffalo) robes around it, and die with dignity.

A VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR OF NIJNI NOVOGOROD.

I LEFT London, with my brother Douglas, on the 8th of August, 1864, to visit Russia, intending to make Nijni Novogorod, on the banks of the Volga, the limit of our journey.

We travelled by way of Calais, Cologne, Hanover, and Magdeburg, to Berlin. Here we stayed one day, and left it at night by the railway for Warsaw.

As the day dawned, we found ourselves in a really pretty country-flat of course-but agreeably diversified with wood, consisting chiefly of fir and birch trees, extending as far as the eye could reach on both sides. But there was little monotony, as the forests through which we rapidly passed were every now and then broken by large patches of pasture or arable land; and in default of these there were far-stretching glades, reminding one of an English park on a colossal scale.

I was impatient to find myself veritably in Russia, and was speculating as to the kind of frontier town we should see, with visions before my mind's eye of bastions and walls bristling with cannon, when, soon after entering a fir forest, the train began to slacken its speed, and, gliding into an enclosure of about two acres in extent, which was surrounded by a strong wooden palisade, we stopped at a very rusticlooking station called Ocloczyn; and a guard of Russian soldiers, drawn up in stiff array on the platform, told us unmistakably that we were at last in the land of the Czar. Here, of course, we had to get out of our carriage to have our luggage overhauled and passports examined. Nothing could be more civil than the conduct of the officials. I had had sundry misgivings as to the nature of the ordeal through which we should have to pass-owing, perhaps, in part to what a

Russian nobleman had told me, before I left London, as to what had once happened to himself on his return from England to Russia. His valet had wrapped the boots of his master in some old numbers of 'The Times'; and to prevent the surreptitious introduction in this fashion of such a revolutionary journal into Russia, the boots were carefully stripped of their coverings, and the obnoxious paper was confiscated.

While we were waiting for our turn to have our passports examined, a smart-looking Russian officer in uniform came up to me, and said, 'Votre nom, Monsieur, s'il vous plait?? I told him, and he then said in French, I have expected you for several days. You are rather late.' Indeed!' I answered; 'do you know me?' 'Oh, no!' he replied, 'but I have had a letter about you.' 'From London?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'from Warsaw.' I found his only object was to be of use to us; and I certainly felt much indebted to the person, whoever he was, who was kind enough to inform this most courteous officer of our intended visit. He took care that we should have no trouble with the examination of our portmanteaus, which was only formal, and we got our passports handed to us almost immediately. Two of our travelling companions were not so fortunate, for on stepping out of their carriage they were immediately arrested and marched off by the guard. The officer who effected the arrest was a youth of eighteen, who spoke English tolerably well, having learnt it, as he told us, from his sister's governess, although, we were, I believe, the first English travellers with whom he had had the opportunity of conversing. I asked him the reason of the arrests, but he said he knew no more than that he had received a telegram and obeyed its orders. He afterwards travelled with us for a short distance, and told us that the Emperor was expected soon at one of his summer palaces, which we saw as we passed, when he was to receive his commission as an ensign (he was then only in the gendarmerie) for a little exploit he had just performed. This consisted in surprising a party of insurgent Poles at a country house in the neighbourhood, who took to flight, but were fired upon by the Russians under the boy's command, and several of them were killed.

We had to wait nearly two hours at this forest station, but