The daughters, alas, were not at the rendezvous, and after a long heart-rending search, during which he had again and again to dodge the Apaches hunting for him, poor Stewart returned to the scene of the massacre of his other dear ones. Arrived there, a horrible sight greeted him. A huge fire had been lighted, and on it, half consumed, were the naked bodies of his wife and six children. All night long he lay upon the ground in an agony of despair, and the next day commenced an aimless wandering to and fro, careless of what should happen to himself. He came presently, however, upon a little Moquis village, where he was kindly received, and whence two natives conducted him to Zuni. He lived but long enough to tell his terrible story. His heart was broken, and after a few days of suffering he passed peacefully away. As soon as he was able to travel, Cozens left Zuni for the last time, returning, as he had come, to the Rio Grande, and thence to his old home in Mexico. Since his return, many a thrilling tale has been told of the wild doings of the Apaches and Navajoes; but gradually they, like their more northerly brethren, are succumbing to the civilizing influence of the white man, and their final subjugation is but a question of time. The completion of the Southern Pacific railroad, and the opening of the many supplementary transit lines of the Union, have at last united in indissoluble bonds the States of the East and of the West. Fresh capital and fresh enterprise are ever flowing, like mighty arteries, throughout the once deserted wastes between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; and the shrill whistle of the steam-engine replaces alike the war-whoop of the savage and the wail of his victim. Illustration: NEW WEST BRITISH COLUMBIA. CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUSION. BEFORE closing our record of the advance of the white man westwards, we must glance once more at British America, which we left on the eve of the great political crisis at the end of the last century――a crisis which, after long years of absorbing struggles, resulted in the consolidation into a single colony of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and the vast territories long held by the Hudson’s Bay and other North-west companies. The banks of the Red River of the North, the shores of the Lake of the Woods, and the vast prairie lands beyond them, were by this time well dotted with French and English colonies. Lord Selkirk, a chief partner in the Hudson’s Bay Company, had purchased land of the Indians far beyond the original limits of British territory, and the French fur-traders continued to push their outposts into the wilderness on every side; while, as we know, the American colonies were ever spreading further and further to the north as well as to the west.