There are other novel features in this wonderful city. The old aborigines are not by any means extinct, and now and then one meets an Indian mother-a representative of a fast departing race-her papoose strapped tightly on her back, and covered with a blanket, the little urchin as a rule indicating very unmistakable objections to such close confinement by violent protestations audible from underneath its woollen protection.

The almost entire absence of pauperism, or anything approaching to squalor, is a noticeable feature of life in Winnipeg. Every one from the laboring man up is well and comfortably clad, and seems to be perfectly satisfied with the country in which his lot has been cast. This statement is corroborated by the fact that during the past year the City Council were required to expend less than $150 for charitable purposes.

In the evening after the stores and other places of business are closed, the hotels and real estate auction rooms are the centres around which the great mass of the people congregate. Every large hotel has a real estate office in connection with it. The excitement then is even more intense than during the day-and many of the largest transactions then take place. The auction rooms are generally crowded, and the amount of property sometimes disposed of is very large. There mechanics and workingmen, whose time is otherwise occupied during the day, mingle with those whose only business is to speculate, and venture a portion of their hard earned savings in a piece of Manitoba earth, which often in the course of a few days realizes the purchaser a handsome profit. The whole community seems to be permeated with a desire for speculation. Scarcely one in the city but has benefitted somewhat by the "boom" that has existed, and in many cases a very satisfactory nucleus for a future competence, has accrued to the fortunate investor. All who come are satisfied that the prospects are great, and many

doubting Thomases who came to see, remained to buy. In a week or two they are deep in the maelstrom of land speculation.

Socially, Winnipeg may be said to be as near what it ought to be as any city in existence. People of all classes and creeds, natives and foreigners, alike work together in perfect accord, with a single aim to further the resources of the great country tributary to it.

And thus are Winnipeg and the North-West working out their manifest destiny.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Churches and Schools in the North-West.

[A CHAPTER Written by G. M. GRANT, D.D., PRINCIPAL OF QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY,
KINGSTON, ONT.]

First Settlers in Manitoba Presbyterians-Their Piety-Attachment to the Church of their Fathers-First Anglican Missionaries-Their Zeal and Prudence-Highland Tenacity-Arrival of Rev. John Black-Kildonan Church-Roman Catholic Missions-Establishment of Churches and Schools by Missionaries from the Church of England—Rupert's Land Divided into Four Dioceses-One Episcopal Church for Canada-Methodist Missionaries-Rev. George Macdougal-Rev. George Young-Methodist Churches in Winnipeg-Missions of the Presbyterian Church-Knox and St. Andrew's Churches-A Common Mission Board for the Protestant Churches Required-First School Act-Its Provisions and Amendments on it-Educational Development-Difficulties Caused by Sparse Settlement-High School Work-Colleges-St. Boniface-St. John's-Manitoba College-Manitoba University-Harmonious Co-operation in it of all Churches and Colleges-Happy Solution of Difficulties Considered Insuperable Elsewhere-Omens for the Future. Roman Catholic Missions, by Archbishop Tache's Secretary-Missions of St. BonifaceEast St. Boniface-Colleges-Charitable Institutions.

THE celebrated book on snakes in Ireland commenced with the words "There are no Snakes in Ireland." Had a chapter on churches and schools in the North West been written half a century ago it would have opened in much the same way. But now, with regard to churches and schools, Manitoba styles herself the " Banner Province of the Dominion." Our young sister in the North-West has not had to pass through the initial era of social chaos, that characterised the history of many of the Western States. Her immigrants at the first were a God-fearing people, and so in the main they have always been and still are. Avoiding opposite fanaticisms in education, she has escaped the Scylla of sectarianism, and the Charybdis of anti-sectarianism. The settler is not expected to come without a live coal from his own venerated altar-fires, and he and his neighbors may well build school-houses, for one-eighteenth of the land has been set apart as an endowment for the schoolmaster.

The Highlanders, whom the Lowland Earl of Selkirk brought from Scotland in 1812 and 1816, were Presbyterians. Religion was the principle of their lives, and their religion was inextricably bound up with the simple forms of the Church of their fathers. They would not have left their mountains and glens for the prairies that, Lork Selkirk told them, were ready for the plough in the heart of an unknown continent, had he not promised that a minister of their chuch would accompany them to their new home. His Lordship arranged that the son of the parish minister of Resolis should go with them. At the last moment the young licentiate drew back, and the colonists had to set out with a lay catechist, one of the class emphatically styled "the men," as their spiritual guide. This lay missionary, James Sutherland by name, did his duty faithfully while with them, but the hostile influences of the North-west Company secured his removal after a few years, and the pious Highlanders were left with no man to care for their souls. They had, however, resources within themselves, and these did not fail them. They had their Gælic Bibles, and could read them. Family worship was observed as regularly as the sun rose and set. They sang the psalms of David in Gælic to those plaintive tunes that reach to the very marrow of the Highland nature, and prayed as men pray who believe that the living God can be moved by prayer. It might be supposed that men who could pray in public extempore, and exhort with an amazing combination of doctrinal knowledge and emotional fervor, would come to feel themselves independent of ministers of religion. Not at all. No men revere the ministerial office more than Highlanders. Consequently, as no minister of their own persuasion came to the distant Red River of the North, the settlers gave a hearty welcome to the missionaries of the Church of England. The Rev. John West, who arrived in 1820, was the first of these. He was succeeded by the Rev.

D. T. Jones. These men, and those who followed, did all that could be done to attach the Scotchmen to Anglican forms. They used Rouse's version of the Psalms, and held one of the services in the church on the Lord's Day according to the Presbyterian form. In 1846, the Bishopric of Rupert's Land, embracing the vast area from the Coast of Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, was founded, and the Reverend Mr. Anderson, a Scotchman, was its first bishop. He resigned in 1864, and another Scotchman, Bishop Machray, succeeded him. But, though the Highlanders attended their ministrations, and were married and had their children baptized according to the Anglican mode, they clung to the memory of the Church of their Fatherland. Those simple forms styled bald and cold by æsthetical religionists had a singular charm for those spiritually minded men, and they clung with extraordinary tenacity to the hope of some day seeing among them a minister of their own Church. I know nothing of the kind in recent Church History more touching than this fidelity, that no neglect and no disappointments could chill. Here are the words, taken from an affidavit made by them, in which they state how bootless all their efforts had been :-"Over and over again have we applied to every governor in the colony since its commencement, to Mr. Halkett, also to his lordship's kinsman, and to the Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land; and time after time petitioned the men in power among us; but all to no effect." The Church of England had done more than its duty, but the Church of Scotland seemed deaf. At length, the Canada Presbyterian Church heard their cry, and in 1852 sent the Rev. John Black to minister to them. We travel from Toronto to Winnipeg in two or three days. Thirty years ago, it took Mr. Black eight weeks to make the journey. And, had it not been for the aid of Governor Ramsay of Minnesota, the young minister would have been longer on the road. Illinois mud was as bad as Manitoba mud is now.