"The proposal to substitute a contingent and temporary interest in so much stock of the Company for the 40 per cent. of profits now given to the chief factors and traders, may assist you in placing your unissued shares, in a mode leading to a very large annual saving, to be accompanied by an evident increase of efficiency. For, able as your staff is in general, there are many useless, and even mischievous, persons under pay or profits; and the unfortunate propensities of Sir George Simpson did not lead in his latter years, I fear, to the improvement of the moral tone of your servants. There are cases of favouritism and abuse not at all creditable, such as that of the employment of Sir George's illegitimate son, and the retention of a chief trader notoriously useless and drunken, for many years after the chief factor of his district had reported his demerits to the local governor. But the service is popular, and there can be no difficulty in keeping up a staff fully able to cope with the sharp and energetic men employed by the American traders,--your permanent rivals in business. "It is perhaps unnecessary further to explain the reasons of my not proceeding to Red River. As before stated, I had expected to do so in company with Captains Glyn and Synge, without whom I should have hesitated to undertake the more extended and responsible task at first proposed. I did not in any event expect that Governor Dallas would come to Canada prior to the receipt of your official letter of the 6th July, and for which I had been waiting from the 30th June until the 20th July; and when he arrived, and especially when I found that the purposes of my proposed journey had been in great measure previously fulfilled by him, it became a question of whether it ought not to be postponed. He had already folly advised the Governor and Committee of the 'state of the Red River Settlement,' of its 'suitability for settlement,' and of the general and highly favourable features of the tracts, over which he had travelled for 1,800 miles in various directions. The best route for a telegraph could be, and was, suggested, to you from his own observations, corroborated and added to by the personal experience of Mr. Hopkins and others, who had often traversed the districts, and had resided for years therein. The entire feasibility of constructing a telegraph across the Continent was not only confirmed by these experiences, but by the practical views of persons consulted, who had set up lines through even more difficult and wilder tracts of country. "Therefore the objects you appeared to have before you were realized, if not directly through me, yet through the colleague you had selected for me, your own local governor, of whom I cannot express too high an opinion, having been his almost constant companion for above a month, during which every detail, so far as we could grasp it, was thoroughly discussed.