The head Chief, Crowfoot, coming forward to sign the treaty, declared that the advice given to his people had proved to be good. “If the Police had not come,” said he, “where would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few of us indeed would have been left to-day. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter.” And Red Crow, Chief of the Bloods, who signed with Crowfoot, added that MacLeod had made many promises to him and kept them all; not one of them was broken. The town that grew up beside MacLeod’s old fort preserves his memory in its name; and Calgary, where he built a fort in 1875, was called after his birthplace on the west coast of Scotland. A French trading post had been established near the same spot on the Bow River as far back as 1752, by Niverville, a kinsman of the great explorer Vérendrye. The most romantic tales are told of the Mounted Police and their unbeatable pluck. Too romantic to be true, perhaps you think. No; I might have thought so once. But after seeing these men at work, in peace and war, I can imagine no duty so hard, so long or so dangerous that they would shrink from shouldering it or fail to carry it through at any cost. A single trooper would think no more of walking into the strongest camp, arresting an Indian and bringing him out, than I would think of riding into a herd of cattle and cutting out a steer. Next day, with an equally light heart, he would start off on a six months’ hunt for some desperate criminal in the ends of the earth, travelling summer and winter, over land and water and snow and ice, and bringing back his man or perishing in the attempt. The Indians quickly learnt that the man in the red coat was “he who must be obeyed.” They were impressed by the fact that the Police, whether one or many, had the authority of the “Great White Mother,” the Queen. That by itself, however, might have forced only a grudging obedience. It was the character of the police themselves that won for them an authority over the tribes as remarkable as the Hudson’s Bay factor ever possessed. With rare exceptions, which were swiftly thrown out on discovery, the Mounted Police were not only brave but considerate, scrupulously fair, and neither to be bribed nor wheedled. That is, they upheld the true British standard of honor. The Indian learnt to trust them because they proved themselves worthy of trust. I have known tribesmen come to a police corporal, rather than any one else, for advice in all sorts of social and domestic difficulties.