As soon as he was able to travel, Cozens left Zuni for the last time, returning, as he had come, to the Rio Grande, and thence to his old home in Mexico. Since his return, many a thrilling tale has been told of the wild doings of the Apaches and Navajoes; but gradually they, like their more northerly brethren, are succumbing to the civilizing influence of the white man, and their final subjugation is but a question of time.
The completion of the Southern Pacific railroad, and the opening of the many supplementary transit lines of the Union, have at last united in indissoluble bonds the States of the East and of the West. Fresh capital and fresh enterprise are ever flowing, like mighty arteries, throughout the once deserted wastes between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; and the shrill whistle of the steam-engine replaces alike the war-whoop of the savage and the wail of his victim.
NEW WEST BRITISH COLUMBIA.
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
BEFORE closing our record of the advance of the white man westwards, we must glance once more at British America, which we left on the eve of the great political crisis at the end of the last century—a crisis which, after long years of absorbing struggles, resulted in the consolidation into a single colony of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and the vast territories long held by the Hudson’s Bay and other North-west companies.
The banks of the Red River of the North, the shores of the Lake of the Woods, and the vast prairie lands beyond them, were by this time well dotted with French and English colonies. Lord Selkirk, a chief partner in the Hudson’s Bay Company, had purchased land of the Indians far beyond the original limits of British territory, and the French fur-traders continued to push their outposts into the wilderness on every side; while, as we know, the American colonies were ever spreading further and further to the north as well as to the west.
It was in the early part of this century that the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose previous career we have already sketched, was in the zenith of its prosperity. Even so long ago as 1684, it had declared a dividend of 50 per cent.; while a little later, about the time of the Peace of Utrecht, we are told that, by a call of only 10 per cent. upon its shareholders, it was able to treble its income. But early in the present century—in 1827—a recent writer informs us, “the price of a flint-lock musket, valued in Fort Dunvegan at perhaps twenty shillings, was worth sables at three pounds a piece, piled up on either side of the weapon until they were level with its muzzle. A six-shilling blanket was bartered for beavers which would bring in London eighteen or twenty pounds; and a black fox was obtained for a price at which the neediest Dog Rib or Locheaux would now laugh his loudest.” The Hudson’s Bay Company was indeed autocratic within the wide territories where it held sway, and it could make not its own prices merely, but also its own laws. As the century proceeded, however, a change came: first of all, the price of beaver decreased, from the growing use of silk in the manufacture of hats. Then came the rising tide of jealousy against monopolies and a consequent inclination to examine the Company’s titles. Moreover, Canada itself was eager for “elbow-room;” and still further, as we have seen, the United States were spreading northward, and so impinging upon its territory. Thus the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company has gradually come to be one of decay, and the great triumphs won, with the wonderful bargains struck by the directors, are alike things of the past.