led me to the conclusion that this is more of an acquired habit than a strictly hereditary trait: a piece of Indian education akin to certain habits of social life universally inculcated among ourselves. When off his guard, the wild Indian betrays great inquisitiveness, and when relaxing over the camp-fire after a laborious day gives free play to mirth and loquacity. So far, however, much that has been said applies to the mixed population of the Red River Settlement, living on a perfect equality with the white settlers, and constituting an integral part of the colony. They are neither to be confounded with the remarkable tribe of half-breed hunters, nor with the Indians of mixed blood already described, on older Canadian reserves. Remote as this settlement has hitherto been from ordinary centres of colonisation, and inaccessible except through the agency of the Hudson Bay Company, every tendency has been to encourage the introduction of the young adventurer, trapper, or _voyageur_, rather than the married settler. The habits of life incident to the fur trade made the distinction less marked between the Indian and the white man; and thus a people of peculiar type grew up there as intermediate in habits and mode of life as in blood from those of the old settled provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Much property is now possessed by men of mixed blood. Their young men have in some cases been sent to the colleges of Canada, and, after creditably distinguishing themselves, have returned to lend their aid in the progress of the settlement. Thus a favourable concurrence of circumstances in all respects tended to give ample opportunity for testing the experiment of intermingling the blood of Europe and America, and raising up a civilised race peculiar to its soil. With the rapid influx of emigrants; the settling of the prairie lands with a population of yeomen farmers; and the rise of villages and towns along the railways and river highways; the ultimate absorption of this half-breed population, and its merging into the homogeneous community that will ultimately be fashioned out of a meeting of very diverse settlers, is inevitable. Icelanders and Danes, Germans, Russians, Italians, French, Highland crofters, and Irish Celts, are all being interfused into the new community of which the half-breed element will form no unimportant factor.