At that time the Duke of Sutherland was in process of removing small farmers from his estates in Sutherlandshire, in order that he might give effect to modern ideas on the subject of sheep-farming. Lord Selkirk collected a band of these dispossessed Highlanders, and settled them in the solitudes of the Winnipeg valley. The point which he selected was near the confluence of the Red River and the Assiniboine, and forty miles from the lake into which these rivers fall. It was many hundred miles from a human habitation; this lonely colony was the only seat of population on all the northern portion of a vast continent. But the soil possessed remarkable fertility; and the Scotchmen were robust and industrious. Gradually they were joined by other adventurers to whom the severity of the climate was without terrors. Ejected Highland crofters, soldiers disbanded after Waterloo, sought in little groups this remote and dimly-known region. The retired servants of the Company came to spend the evening of their days in the settlement. A line of block houses and of cultivated farms stretched for many miles up the valleys of the Assiniboine and Red River. A cluster of wooden huts received the name of Winnipeg, and started upon its career as a prairie town at a rate of progress so leisurely that in 1871 it held no more than four hundred inhabitants. Fort Garry, the chief seat of the Company’s authority, added to the dignity of the colony, which soon became the recognized metropolis of all the north-western region. Its growth has not been rapid, but it has been steady; and the population, if we accept the mean of very diverse estimates, is probably now about fifteen thousand souls. These are largely Scotch; but there are also French and Indians, and there has been a copious admixture of the European and native races. There are Scotch half-breeds and French half-breeds, in whom the aspect and the qualities of both races are combined, and many of whom are not inferior in intelligence and education to their European parentage.