The vigorous action of the united interests soon told upon the trade and discipline of the vast area hunted and traded over. The Indians were brought back to tea and water in place of rum and brandy; and peace was restored, everywhere, between the white man and the red. The epidemics of small pox, which had at times decimated whole tribes of Indians, were got rid of by the introduction of vaccination. Settlement, if only on a small scale, was encouraged by the security of life and property. The enlargement of their action, as issuers of notes and as bankers aided the trade and the colonists; and so good was a Hudson's Bay Company's note that it was taken everywhere over the northern continent, when the "Shin Plasters" of banks in the United States and Canada were refused. When, for a short time, in 1865 and 1866, I held the office of shareholders' auditor of the Hudson's Bay Company, I cancelled many of these notes, which had become defaced, mainly owing to the fingering of Indians and others, who left behind on the thick yellow paper coatings of "Pemmican,"--the pounded flesh and fat of the buffalo, done up in skins like sausages--a food eminently nutritious and lasting long, but fearfully odorous and nasty. Mr. Ellice supplied much of the political energy inside the old Reform party, displayed in the Reform Bill struggle of 1830-1832. He became one of the Secretaries of the Treasury; and, in 1831, had to organize the eventful election of that year. His great powers and never-failing energy, devoted in early life to the fur trade and its conflicts, became of infinite value to the country, in many momentous struggles, at home, for liberty and progress. It amused me much when, by chance, meeting Mr. Ellice, after we had bought and paid for his Hudson's Bay property, to see the kind of astonished stare with which he regarded me. I think the purchase of the Hudson's Bay Company was a mystery to him. I remember meeting him at the Royal Academy a few months before his death. He stopped opposite to me, as if to study my features. He did not speak a word, nor did I. He seemed in a state of abstraction, like that of a man endeavouring to recollect a long history of difficulty, and to realize how strangely it had all ended,--by the negociation I had brought to a head. CHAPTER X. _The Select Committee, on Hudson's Bay Affairs, of_ 1857.