I do not touch on the Riel Rebellion in this chapter, as it belongs to the history of the colony rather than the company; and if I gave it, I should also have to give the Whitman Massacres of Oregon and the Gold Stampede of B. C., which I do not consider inside the scope of the history of the company as empire builder. Much of thrilling interest in the lives of the colonists I have been compelled to omit for the same reason; for instance, the Sioux massacres in Minnesota, the adventures of the buffalo hunters, such heroism as that of Hesse, the flood in Red River, the splendid work of the different missionaries as they came, the comical half garrison life of the old pensioners, including the terrible suicide of an officer at Fort Douglas over a love affair. Whoever tells the story where I have left off will have these pegs to hang his chapters on; and I envy him the pleasure of his work, whether the story be swung along as a record of the pioneer, or of Lord Strathcona —the Frontenac of the West—or of the great Western missionaries.
Two or three discrepancies bother me in this chapter, which the wise may worry over, and the innocent leave alone. In Parl. Inquiry, 1857, Ellice gives the united capital of H. B. C. and N. W. C. in 1821, as £400,000. As I made transcripts of the minutes in H. B. C. House, London, I made it £250,000. In any case, it was increased to five before the Int. Fin. Association took hold.
Another point, the new company paid £1,500,000 for the stock. The stock sold to the public totalled a larger capital—much larger. I do not give this total, though I have it, because at a subsequent period the company retired part of its capital by returning it to the shareholders, if you like to put it that way; or paying a dividend which practically amounted to a retirement. That comes so late in the Company’s history, I feel it has no place here. Therefore, to name the former large capital would probably only mislead the reader.
It was in the days of Alex MacDonell, the grasshopper governor, that the traders used to turn a whiskey bottle upside down filled with sand, neck to neck on another whiskey bottle, making an hour-glass, and drink till all the sand ran from the upper bottle, when if the thirst was not quenched, both bottles were reversed to begin the revels over again. If tradition is to be trusted, the same hour bottle was much to blame for the failures of the experimental farms.
The widow of John Clarke, who came a bride to the West in 1822, and lived in the palmy Arcadian days of Red River, is still living in Montreal, aged 105, and has just at this date (1907) had her daughter issue a little booklet of the most charmingly quaint reminiscences I have enjoyed in many a day.