The Red River Settlement in the days adverted to is an idyl simple and pure: a nomadic pastoral, inwrought with Indian traits and color; our one acted poem in the great national prosaic life. When the vast country in the far future is teeming with wealth and luxury, this light rescued and defined will shine adown the fullness of the time with hues all its own. The story that it tells will be as a sweet refreshment: a dream made possible, called by those who shared in its great calm, "Britain's One Utopia--Selkirkia." CHAPTER XXIV. PICTURES OF SILVER. Lord Selkirk's Colonists never had, as have seen, a bed of roses. Adversity had dodged their steps from the time that they put the first foot forward toward the new world--and Stornoway, Fort Churchill, York Factory, Norway House, Pembina and Fort Douglas start, as we speak of them, a train of bitter memories. Flood and famine, attack and bloodshed, toil and anxiety were the constant atmosphere, in which for a generation they existed. Higher civilization is impossible when the struggle for shelter and bread is too strenuous. Though the ministrations of religion were supplied within a few years of the beginning of the Colony, yet the Colonists were not satisfied in this respect till forty years had passed. It was a generation before the Roman Catholic Church had a Bishop, who held the See of St. Boniface instead of the title "in the parts of the heathen." It was not before the year 1849 that a Church of England Bishop arrived, and it was two years after that date when the first Presbyterian minister came to be the spiritual head of the Selkirk Colonists. Before this the education and elevation of the people was represented by a few schools chiefly maintained by private or church effort. The writer intends to bring out, from selected quotations from different sources, the few bright spots in the gloom--the pictures of silver--on a rather dark background. ABBE DUGAS' STORY. The good Father's story circles around the first Canadian woman known to have reached Red River. This was Marie Gaboury, wife of J. Baptiste Lajimoniere, who reached the Forks in 1811 in the very year when the Colonists were lying at York Factory. The Lajimonieres spent the winter in Pembina. It was the brave husband of Marie Gaboury who made the long and lonely journey from Red River to Montreal. The Abbe says: "J.B. Lajimoniere was engaged by the Governor of Fort Douglas to carry letters to Lord Selkirk, who was then in Montreal. Lajimoniere said he could go alone to Montreal, and that he would make every effort to put the letters confided to his care into Lord Selkirk's hands. Being alone, Madame Lajimoniere left the hut on the banks of the Assiniboine to become an inmate of Fort Douglas. Lajimoniere is reported to have urged upon Lord Selkirk in Montreal to send as part of his recompense for his long journey, a priest to be the guide of himself and family. Father Dugas says: (See printed page 2.)