Pierre Radisson and the Sieur Groseillers, both among the most daring and heroic explorers the world has known, excited a wave of enthusiasm in England by the reports of the wilderness they carried back with them. For more than a century the Company under the patronage of Prince Rupert continued to carry on a prosperous business, and after this was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, and again after the two rival associations united, a splendid business was developed. But while the rivalry had conduced to enterprise and exploration, the monopoly was as naturally concerned in not making too widely known the rich resources that might thus serve to attract other competitors. [Illustration: Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan] Early in the nineteenth century a large Scotch settlement, under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk, was established in the Red River region. They encountered almost every phase of hardship and trial. Great floods devastated their land and ruined their attempts at agriculture. The severe winters, with their enshrouding snow-drifts, their icy blasts, the imprisoning character of the elements, the remoteness from any vestige of human habitations or contact with civilisation, went far towards annihilating even the most persistent efforts to found a settlement that should withstand these conditions. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the {301} settlements of the great North-West had become so numerous that there began to be requirements for larger means of protection. The Hudson's Bay Company, at this time, held territory to the extent of over two million square miles. All this expanse was admitted into the confederation, to the reassurance and great satisfaction of the settlers scattered over this wide region; but to the alarm and prevailing dissatisfaction of another order of the inhabitants, the French half-breeds, who were themselves a force with which a reckoning had to be made. Their alarm culminated in the Rebellion of 1869, an outbreak suppressed by Colonel (later Lord) Wolseley. Soon after this outbreak was quelled there came the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and from this event there dated a new epoch in the history of this part of the country. The conditions grew worse rather than better. The United States were also a contributing factor to greater discord. The treatment of the Indians by the government of the States had apparently left much to be desired (to put it mildly) and the turbulent warfare that went on almost continually in the western part of that country drove many of the Indian tribes into frenzy. Many of these tribes now crossed the border line into Canada to seek British protection. There were at this time in Canada some seventy thousand Indians to whom the Imperial government had promised protection, and the coming of these fresh tribes from the States, largely, too, {302} in conditions of revolt and resentment at what they felt to be unjust and cruel