42 A French Newspaper. He concludes by forbidding the holding of political meetings at the church doors on Sundays and by desiring that such gatherings should be held on weekdays only. The foregoing summary of this pastoral letter not only shows the opinions which the Archbishop inculcates, but it justifies me in asserting that if other dignitaries of his Church displayed the same tact and good taste there would never be any cause for protesting against priestly interference at elections. Before leaving St. Boniface, I must note that this suburb of Winnipeg promises to thrive even better in the future than it has hitherto done. The terminus of the Pembina branch of the St. Paul and Pacific Railway is here, and this has given an impetus to building. A newspaper in French, called Le Métis, is published weekly. It is the only French journal published in the Canadian North-West and taking cognizance of the wishes and wants of the large class there which preserves the use of the French language. There is no part of Canada where speech is more diversified than in the Province of Manitoba, nor is there any in which the ordinary routine of existence is more varied. CHAPTER III. THE PROVINCE OF MANITOBA. THE surprise which I felt on first walking along the streets of Winnipeg and seeing so many tokens of progress and civilization was increased when I journeyed through the Province of which Winnipeg is the capital. I had read that the country was totally unfit for settlement. I had read that it was pre-eminently adapted for farming and that no other part of the Continent was a more desirable place of abode. Indeed, few regions of the world have been the subjects of greater controversy than Manitoba, the Prairie Province of Canada. It has had many indiscreet eulogists and as many unscrupulous defamers. If the former are right, the Province must be an Earthly Paradise; if the latter set forth the whole truth, it must be the counterpart of Dante's Inferno. Though the discussion as to the advantages or drawbacks of this place has been 44 Opinions about the Region. specially keen and persistent of late years, yet the difference of opinion concerning it is of old date. Since the Hudson Bay Company received their charter from Charles the Second in 1670, doubts have been expressed and uncertainty has prevailed as to the character of the region out of which this Province has been carved. The matter was carefully investigated by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1749 and again in 1857. Mr. Gladstone was a member of the Committee which sat in 1857 and he was not so ready as some of his colleagues to conclude that the officers of the Hudson Bay Company were justified in maintaining that the entire Canadian North West was unsuited for settlers and had been evidently designed by Providence to be a perpetual breeding-ground of wild beasts and a congenial habitation for wild Indians. Sir George Simpson, who had been Governor of the Hudson Bay Company's territory during thirty-seven years and who had traversed every part of it, emphatically assured the Committee that the region now known as Manitoba was cursed with a poor soil, a variable and inhospitable climate and disastrous and frequent inundations. The Right Hon. Edward Ellice, speaking on behalf of the governing body of the Company in England, confidently asserted that |