in support of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The sagacious face of old Edward Ellice, seamed with the fine graver of thought, and plastic still as in youth, for many a long year fixed men’s eyes with kindly regard; and the _mitis sapientia_ of his counsels, his unrivalled tact, albeit the exquisite touch lay inside a shagreen glove, and his great ability in the conduct of affairs, gave the Company that which Rupert’s charters, Charles’s parchments, or prescriptive rights, never could have secured so long. It was under Sir E. L. Bulwer’s administration of foreign affairs that the most strenuous attempt was made by the Government to adjust the conflicting claims of Canada and Great Britain with those of the Hudson’s Bay Company, by the decision of the Judicial Committee of Privy Council; but the Company, though always willing to enter into an arrangement with the Government for the adjustment of contending interests, uniformly and not unwisely refused to accept any arbitration or judgment involving the question of the validity of their charters. The refusal of Parliament to renew the exclusive right of trading, in 1859, and the assumption of the control of Vancouver’s Island by the Crown on the expiration of the lease in the same year, were heavy blows at the vested interests of the Company, which deprived its _cessio bonorum_ to the English Credit Mobilier, in 1863, of great political importance, though enormous commercial results may still be obtained from the extension of trading and from settling and gold-exploring operations. When the speedy colonisation and rapid rise of British Columbia caused some attention to be directed towards the means of getting there, and of cultivating an acquaintance promising such great advantages, and it was found that from east to west two routes were practicable, it was not surprising if jealousy and alarm were aroused because the Americans, by further representations, unhappily baseless, respecting the energy of the initiative taken by Canada and England, had first started to clear the way to the west, and to open communications with the Red River settlement, _en route_. Fort Garry, in the Selkirk settlement, was first visited by a steamer from the American post of Fort Abercrombie, in 1859. Minnesota was a State which had the advantage of a continental existence on the soil of the Great Republic. “Organised as a territory in 1849, a single decade had brought the population, the resources, and the public recognition of an American State. A railroad system, connecting the lines of the Lake States and Provinces at La Crosse with the international frontier on the Red River at Pembina, was not only projected, but had secured in aid of its construction a grant by the Congress of the United States of three thousand eight hundred and forty acres a mile, and a loan of State credit to the amount of twenty thousand dollars a mile, not exceeding an aggregate of five million dollars.