A council was set up with Spence as President. The first need was a court house and jail. To get the money for a building the council imposed a customs tariff; but the Hudson’s Bay Company factor refused to pay taxes to the new republic-within-a-monarchy--for Spence and his coadjutors avowed their loyalty to the British Empire, and denied the common allegation that their ultimate object was incorporation with the United States. [Illustration: SIR DONALD MANN “Whose capacities are in keeping with the solidity of his physical frame” (P. 248)] [Illustration: SIR WILLIAM MACKENZIE “Faced a heavier task than anything that confronted Stephen, Smith or Van Horne” (P. 241)] At High Bluff was a shoemaker named McPherson. He started the story that the customs collected for the temple of justice were being spent on beer and whiskey. Refusing to recant his charges he was arrested and tried, with President Spence as accuser and judge. Farmer John McLean interfered, in his broad dialect, and turned the trial into a farce. The republic died a natural death, Spence having vainly appealed for recognition to the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Buckingham. This republican episode is mentioned partly because it will be news to many people, and partly because it indicates that more than a mere spice of originality went into the infancy of communities like Portage la Prairie, and coloured their maturer years. Our public meetings were always well attended, and almost invariably produced their own rows. They were our only movies and were strictly home-made. The town nerve was on edge for many years, due, to a considerable extent, to the financial embarrassments that were legacies of the boom. In the year after I came whole blocks of land were sold for a dollar. Anywhere else the lots I bought at tax sales would have created a land baron. They merely impoverished me. The town’s debentures were of so precarious a value that a Government Commission was created to suggest how the civic liabilities should be met. In the midst of these economic difficulties the place was smitten by an epidemic of fires, beginning with the destruction of the fire hall itself, and the disabling of the engine. In the end a firebug was run down, when it turned out that he had been incited to and paid for arson by a prominent hotelkeeper. The incendiary went to jail for five years. The inciter was let off on the ground that he only gave coal oil to the other man when he was drunk. He accepted an invitation to depart.