Boniface, St. Norbert, St. Vital on the Red River, with St. Charles, St.
Francois Xavier and Baie St. Paul on the Assiniboine. And now of
Scottish Settlers with French and English half-breeds, the population of
Red River Settlement had reached the number of 1,500 souls.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE JOLLY GOVERNOR.
Great crises in the world's history generally produce the men who solve
them. Cromwell, Washington, Garibaldi--each of them was the movement
itself. A wider philosophy may see that the age or the Community evolves
the man, but as Carlyle shows, it is the man who reacts upon the
community, becomes the embodiment of its ideal, and is the mouthpiece
and the right hand of the age which produces him.
That Andrew Colville, a brother-in-law of Lord Selkirk, should select a
young clerk in London and send him out to Athabasca to see the great
fur-region of the Mackenzie River District, is not a wonderful thing,
but that after one year of active service this young man should be
chosen to guide the destinies of the great united fur company, made up
of the Hudson's Bay and Nor'-Wester Companies is a wonder.
This was the case with George Simpson, a Scottish youth, who was the
illegitimate son of the maternal uncle of Thomas Simpson, the famous
Arctic explorer, who is known as having followed out a portion of the
coast line of the Arctic Sea.
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