In this condition the population of all the frontier settlements exists; if, as new settlers come in, the mixed element disappears, it does so purely by absorption. “Nor are such traces confined to the frontier settlements. I have recognised the semi-Indian features in the gay assemblies at a Canadian Governor-General’s receptions, in the halls of the Legislature, among the undergraduates of Canadian universities, and mingling in the selectest social circles. And this is what has been going on in every new American settlement for upwards of three centuries, under every diversity of circumstance.” This is a far more agreeable idea than that the Indians are being everywhere _starved_ out of existence by the encroachments of the European. But that portion of the mixed offspring which adhered to the Indian tribe, and became Indian in its habits, affords a still more interesting subject of speculation. On the Red River there is a settlement of half-breeds, numbering about six thousand. A marked difference, we are told, “is observable, according to their white paternity. The French half-breeds are more lively and frank in their bearing, but also less prone to settle down to drudgery of farming, or other routine duties of civilised life, than those chiefly of Scottish descent.” If in both cases the half-breed has been entirely educated by its Indian parent, this would be a good instance of the influence of _race_ as separable from the influence of education. These half-breeds are generally superior in physical as well as mental qualities, and have greater powers of endurance than any of the native tribes exhibit. Mr Wilson assures us “that the last traces of the Red blood will disappear, not by the extinction of the Indian tribes, but by the absorption of the half-breed minority into the new generations of the predominant race.” Of the warlike tribes of native Indians some have been induced to settle down as agriculturists. Some are Roman Catholics, some Protestants. But we believe it may be stated that all signal amendments or progressive changes have been accompanied by a mixture of European blood. To this very day the full-blooded Indian despises the civilisation of the white man, or at least thinks it something that may be good for the white man, but by no means good for him. The fierce tribes that constituted the famous confederacy of the Iroquois, and who have settled in Canada, have been all more or less tamed, but they have all lost the purity of their race; and when we hear of the hunter of the prairies taking upon himself the mode of life of European colonists, we may be sure that this change has been facilitated by an intermixture of the two races. Some of these tribes have forgotten their own language, and speak only a French _patois_.