" Joy is immortal! sorrow dies! the petty features are
absorbed in the broad ones; those capable only of conveying truth.
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.
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