pride and laziness. Marked characteristics may also be found among the plain Indians as compared with those tribes inhabiting the forests.

In 1876, the Canadian Indians received a great reinforcement by the arrival of a large contingent from United States territory. Into the causes which led to the Indian exodus across the frontier it is not necessary here to enter. During December of that year United States Indians, numbering 500 men, 1000 women, and 1400 children, entered Canadian territory with 3500 horses, and camped east of the Cypress Hills. Towards the end of May, in the following year, Sitting Bull, with 135 lodges, also crossed the frontier and joined their friends, and these bands were further augmented by parties of Nez Perces and other tribes. Considering their warlike nature, they gave remarkably little trouble to the mounted police force, showing great appreciation of the kindness of their reception, the justice with which they were treated, and the absence of the molestation to which they had perhaps been accustomed. In 1881, Sitting Bull and a portion of his following returned to United States territory.

At the present time the Canadian Indians give no trouble whatever, except in the occasional direction of drunkenness, petty larceny, or horse-stealing-offences not entirely unknown amongst white men.

For some time past the policy of the Canadian Government has been to group the Indians, as far as possible, upon reservations, which are as numerous and as far apart as possible. The advantages of this system have been well epitomised as follows:

The reservations do not arrest the march of settlement in any one direction, and consequently do not to any great extent excite the cupidity of settlers.

The Indians, when congregated in small numbers, cling less tenaciously to their habits, customs, and

modes of thought, and are in every way more amenable to the influences of civilisation.

They have less opportunity for devising mischief, and lack the combination to carry it into operation. The danger of quarrels among hereditary enemies is avoided.

The game which contributes to an Indian's maintenance does not disappear with such rapidity as in the presence of large numbers of hunters.

The Indians find a market for produce and for labour, when distributed through various settled districts, and settlers in turn share equally in any advantage to be gained through furnishing such supplies as beef and flour, which can be purchased locally.

The difficulty of persuading the Indians to settle upon the allotted reservations was greatly minimised by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo, although at the same time new difficulties were thereby created. The task, however, was eventually done, and the government proceeded in its good work by the appointment of Indian agents, in such numbers that the needs and capacities of each individual Indian could be personally considered. A general system of rations was devised and so applied as in no way to pauperise the recipient or promote indolence, while sustaining him up to the point at which he might become self-sustaining.

Every encouragement is given to persuade and to enable the Indian to earn his own living, whether by hiring out his labour or by the sale of such articles as he is able to manufacture. He can obtain almost any special instruction that he may desire, whether it be in manufacturing, in agriculture, or in cattle-raising. loan system has been inaugurated by which stock cattle are loaned for certain periods, to be eventually returned or paid for. By methods such as this many Indian communities have already become self-supporting, and

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many others are making rapid advance in the same direction.

The Indian religions vary one from another almost as much as their customs, and it would be out of place to attempt any serious account of them. In the main they may be said to comprise various aspects of a not undignified nature worship, and the attempts that are inevitably made to modify or change their beliefs into those more in accord with the opinions of the white population around have met with a large measure of failure, and have too often resulted in the destruction of aboriginal virtues without any more exalted substitutes. It may well be that the present generation will not see a merging of the white and red peoples of Canada. For yet a long time the reservations may continue the most suitable home for the latter, as much to their own benefit as to that of the dominant race. But it may be confidently said that the efforts that have been made toward the instruction and the independence of the Red Indian have been so far fruitful of success as to encourage a continuance of method and of work worthy of the best humanitarian efforts of a great nation.

A SHORT REVIEW OF CANADIAN

LITERATURE

BY SIR J. G. BOURINOT, K.C.M.G., LL.D., D.C.L., LIT.D.

(Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society of Canada; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute, &c.; Author of the "Story of Canada" (Nations Series), “Parliamentary Procedure and Government in Canada," and other works on the History and Constitution of the Dominion)

THE five millions of people of two nationalities who own Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are displaying a mental activity commensurate with their expansion of territory and accumulation of wealth. If it were possible, within the compass of this article, to give a complete list of the many histories, poems, essays, and pamphlets that have appeared from the Canadian press, during the thirty years that the Dominion of Canada has been in existence, the number would astonish all who have not followed our intellectual progress. In fact, all the scientific, historical, and poetical contributions of three decades, whether good, bad, or indifferent in character, make up a quite pretentious library, which shows the growth of what may be called Canadian literature, since it deals with subjects essentially of Canadian interests.

The attention that is now devoted to the study and writing of history, and the collection of historical documents relating to the Dominion, proves clearly the national or thoroughly Canadian spirit that is already animating the educated and cultured class of the people.

I have now before ine a list of over a hundred

books, from the portly quarto to the unpretentious duodecimo, which have been printed during a decade of years in Canada or other countries, and all of them dealing with the general or local history of the Dominion and its divisions, or giving the biography of some of the famous men who have written their names indelibly in the annals of the country.

It was the American historian, Francis Parkman, who first lifted Canadian history from its low level of dulness, on which few readers even in Canada itself ventured. This history is even older than that of New England; contemporaneous rather with that of Virginia, since Champlain landed on the heights of Quebec, and laid the foundation of the ancient capital, only a year after the English adventurers of the days of King James stepped on the banks of the river named after the sovereign, and commenced the old town which has long since disappeared before the tides of the ocean that stretches away beyond the shores of the "Old Dominion." Indeed, even before this time, a little band of Frenchmen attempted a settlement by the beautiful basin of Annapolis in Acadia, that land of song and story. Canadian history recalls some of the most striking incidents in the annals of America, and of the ever-memorable contest between England and France for the supremacy on the continent. Even since the days of the French explorers and missionaries, who were the first to reveal the secrets of the mysterious west, and of the Mississippi-even since the close of the great war of seven years for dominion-that conflict which ended practically with the conquest of Quebec and the fall of Wolfe and Montcalm, "united in death and fame," the history of Canada as an English dependency is distinguished by many episodes of deep interest to the statesman and publicist, whether he belongs to the American or Canadian federation.