Mexico Missouri message. (Mexico, Audrain County, Mo.) 1899-1918, 1910-04-21

The spirit of adventure
which brought the men Of 1874 to Red River Set
Element willlure the hardest on to still more dis.
tant fields. The scarlet tunc will be seen no
longer, except in the pages of some historical
source book but the work Of these silent, steady
eyed men will live forever, record of tireless-
ness, fearlessness, unfiinching courage and pa
tience-the making of and great empire.
Change has already come to the mounted. The
days when a scant 500 men were magistrates, doc
tors, coroners, explorers, surveyors mining re-
corders, crown-timber agents, revenue and GUS
toms officers. telegraphers, scouts riders drivers,
boatmen, canoemen marines and sailors, dog-dri-
vers mailcarrers, couriers. publichealth and ami
malquarantlne officers, prairie and forest-tire
guardians, constables and soldiers for one-third
Of the British Empire passing with every
mile of railroad The border "wolfer," the
cattle "rustler," the whisky trader, the fighting
Indian, the whole band of staggering rufians who
used to give zest to life in the Territory" has
largely passed away, or been crowded northward
and westward toward the mining camps of Alas
ka and the Yukon. The reckless daring, the ro-
bust hardihood and picturesqueness of the force
necessarily have somewhat changed in the de.
velopment of the thoroughly civilized new north
west Now the young fellows getting their
breaking-in among the settled districts, while the
old stagers stationed to the north and west
where there is still the frontier" on the edge OF
untraversed wilderness
For the purposes of the new order of things
IL is thoroughly competent anu eHlCleuJ lOTCS
as it was in the days of the Territory. The mem
bers must pass a physical and mental examination
which guarantees that. came upon one of them
in a moment of leisure studying textbook on the
common law and he showed me examina
ton questions which implied that he must know
how to conduct cross-examination In open court
so as to avoid what are known in the law as
leading questions" And any lawyer will be i'm
pressed when / say that every mounted policeman
must know how to take murdered mans dying
declaration in such a manner that 1t can be pre-
sented as evidence in court. The reason for this
is that he combines the functions of a policeman
with those Of petty magistrate.
And this arrangement whereby the same mar
could arrest you and then try you himself and
finally put you in prison and be your keeper was
an ideal arrangement in the days when justice
was justice of the saddle and all the more de
sirabe for being summary. Although there are
regular civil courts in the southern portion OF
Canada now, in the far north the duties Of the
mounted policeman are still as varied as those Of
Gilbert and Sulivan's Pooh-Bah. Primarily he
keeps order. After that, he does everything that
ought to be done and that 1t isn't any one else's
duty to do. And when some one else leaves his
duty undone, the mounted policeman takes 1t VI
and finishes it. When the mail-carrieT, who GOV
ers the North Country on dog sledges, reaches the
most northern limit of his route, the mounted pc
Iiceman takes over the bags, and goes 500 miles
farther north with them. Not long ago a letter
came to my hands from the Lefhngwell polar ex
petition in which the writer stated that he would
take five dogs and companion and travel S0C
miles over the ice to mail the letter. When the
letter reached its destination, the envelope bore
the stamp of the Royal Northwest Mounted Pc
lice who evidently had received 1t at one Of thei
posts in the arctic and then had carried 1t by dog
train from the ice fields to railway connection.
It is all in the days work to them. They viii
undertake anything, from minding the baby t
hanging a man, with equal plaCidty and put i
Wi Clicking eVelaSh TheY laVC
done their part to demonstrate that the on'
thing on this earth longer than the equator Is thu
arm of English justice. Less than three year,
ago mounted policeman tracked Yukon muir
derer over 5000 miles, caught up with him II
Mexico brought him back by way OF JamacS
and Halifax, avoiding United States soil to pre-
vent extradition complications and hanged hin
within sight of the scene of his crime.
There has never been a lynching in Canada. Pu
that down to the credit of the mounted police, WHIT
administered justice so successfully that Their
was never any temptation for the work to be ia
ken UP by private enterprise. There was neVe
any parallel for the experience of Bismarck, Noru
Dakota, where 1t is said the first "a graves wert
those of men who had died by violence. Towart
the Indians, the mounted police maintained a ira
diton of stern vigilance which prevented anything
like the costly Indian wars which the United
States waged up to few years ago There wa
never In the history Of Canada a train robber.
such as still feature the headlihes of Unit@'
States newspapers from time to time. The des
perado OF every type had healthy respect 70
the mounted policeman and preferred to conduc
his little enterprises south OF the border
Canadians are particularly fond of telling tn
newly arrived American about the troop OF Amer
lean cavalry-a whole troop mind you-who ter
derby escorted band Of bad Indians" bent o.
crossing the border, to the Canadian boundar
line They were met by single mounted police
man.