Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1910-04-22


main, and with them and of them ordered
and orderly living
II the story of how this about is the story
of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
The mounted police! Don't you remember
when you little chap how you looked after
the uniformed man on the glossy bay he can
tered through the park, and how you had no
dearer dream of glory than to be like him? Even
now don't you feel the old, boyish thrill at the
sight of bue-coated, erect figure in the saddle
at a crowded city crossing? If you do not, you
are grown up"-saddest of labels-and will
journey no more to the Never Never-Never Land.
But for us ''incurable children" the sight of
the mounted policeman still catches at those old
heart-strings
And if all this for the blue-coated, brass-but-
toned horseman of the parks and boulevards.
what of that other horseman the one who rides
alone with the stretch of endless prairies for his
beat, with the criminal who holds life at less
than naught, his quarry? Surely even your dulled
imagination, poor, tobe-pitied grownups can
catch fire family from the CLEAN of his scarlet
coat.
Recruited chiefly from the younger of we'll
TODD, and titled English families, the North
west Mounted Police has long been institu-
ton where English university man can work
off the bubbling frOth of a drop OF gypsy blood
before settling down head of a county family
and warden of his church. in the main a collec
too wildly, men with a daredevil dash in their
makeup who leave England because they are i'm
pecunious, because of row with their famf
lies, or for sheer love of adventure Come with
me to Regina or Edmonton and you will hear
stories of men who gave the recruiting officer the
name of plain John Smith with something Of
cynical smle-and it was bad form for the re-
cruiting officer to notice this smile-men W%o had
a habit of reaching for a monocle that wasn't
there, OF talking with the correct London pronun
ciation and thrashing the feow-trooper who
called attention TO this fact
And any story you ever heard of the heirpre-
sumpt1ye English marQusate patroling
50G-znile beat along the Arctic circle can be out
matched On the written records OF the force and
In the memory of any officer Fifteen years ago.
TmgEishmen OF Kipiing's gentleman ranker" typo
made up fiy half of the force, and the other half
was composed OF wild Irishmen with all their
cDuntrys love of fight. old painsmen and Indian
fighters the silent. stsady-eyed, hard-riding men
who gather the frontier where the savage falls
AWAY before the ragged vanguard Of civilization.
And they have done their work well that they
are fast driving away their own excuse for be-
Ing The present northwest Is more what 1t
was In 1874 than busy Winnipeg Of to-day is the
CID Fort Garry to which the first troop Of the
mounted came 30 years ago They have made
western Canada what It IS out OF the awless ter
rftory"-sn almost preposterous undertaking
one-ouarter OF the number Of policemen in New
York to govern a country 100000 square miles
larger than the United Statesi
In short, the mounted police have brought
British law into western Canada. and firmly es'
tsb.ished 1t. The homesteader go into any
nj the provinces and take out his claim, secure in
the assurance that he work his land undis-
t,,rb<sd and harvest his crop uninjured The home
slender is doing 1t by thousands. and the Last
West is vanishing The frontier-tho last from
tier of Americans being prosaically plowed by
the practical man in blue overalis. who doesn't
carry even q hunting knife. except to cut off his
chew of Granger Twist,
The Indian has been reduced to his lowest
terms. When mon Of the United States were
building the Union Pacific across the plains they
were obliged to employ Uncle Sans troops to
quard the builders, If the ghosts of the dead who
died violently in that first dveyears fight for the
west were to line up along the right of way there
would be almost enough Of them to mark the
miles
On a 30-me ride from the North Saskatche-
wan last fall met dozens of teams driven almost
wholly by Indians and alfbreeds. They were
hauling the long logs that were to be driven
twenty to thirty feet into the sands of the Sas-
katchewan to carry the false work of the Grand
1rrunk Pacifc's stee! bridge.
What a contrast! Instead of hindering, was
once the case the northern Indians are helping to
build the railroad. In the construction of the
now government transContinental line, the In
dians are employed wherever they can be used,
for the road is being rushed with all possible
sDeed consistent with good work. The Indians
ore useful also, to the pathfnders as guides;
chow know the forests of new Canada; they know
tho mountain Businesses of the Peace river, and
they know all the crooks and canyons Of the
coast Range. In short, the red man OF today is
10 trusted guide and faithful servant of the path
Gnder He hunts for the white man STILL but quite
si@orenty from the way he used to hunt for the
rioneers of Old
pi THANKS to the Royal Northwest Mounted Po-
Nc Io In nrA0r Tn.6o a
long before the mounted will be