The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1910-04-22

main, and with them and of them are ordered
and orderly living
If the story OF how this came about is the story
OF the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
The mounted police, Don't you remember
when you were a little chap. how you looked after
the uniformed man on the glossy bay as he can
tered through the park, and how you had no
deareT dream Of glory than TO be like him? Even
now don't you feel the Old boysh thrill at the
sight OF a blue-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 10 the Never Neyer-Neyer Land
But for US favourable children" the sight of
the mounted policeman still catches at those old
heaTtstTings.
And if all this for the blue-coated, brassbut-
toned horseman Of the parks and bOuleyards
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, lis quarry? Surely even your dued
imagination. poor. tobe-pitied grown-ups. can
catch fire family from the CLEAN of his scarlet
coat.
Recruited chiefly from the younger sons Of we'll
TODD, and even titled, English families the North
west Mounted Police has long been an institu'
ton where an English university man can work
off the bubbng froth of drop Of gypsy blood
before settling down as head of a county family
and warden of his church. in the main a collec-
ton of young men for whom the Red Gods call
too wildly men with daredevil dash in their
makeup, who leave England because they are i'm
pecunious or because of row with their fami'
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
..s.L 49,
cynical smile-and it was bad form for the re-
cruiting officer to notice this smie-men who had
a habit of reaching for monocle that wasn't
there, of talking with the correct London proaun-
citation, and thrashing the fellow-trooper who
called attention to this fact.
And any story you ever heard Of the heir-pre-
sumptive to an English marquisate patroiing a
500-mile 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.
Englishmen OF kiplings gentleman ranker' type
made up fully half of the force and the other half
was composed of wild ITishmen with all their
countrys love of fight old plainsmen and Indian
fighters, the silent steady-eyed hard-riding men
who gather on the frontier where the savage falls
away before the ragged vanguard of civilization.
And they have done their work so we'll that they
are fast driving away their own excuse for be-
ing. The present northwest Is no more what it
was in 1874 than busy Winnipeg of to-day is the
old Fort Garry to which the first troop of the
mounted" came 40 years ago. They have made
western Canada what it is out of the lawess "ter.
ritory"-an almost preposterous undertaking.
onequarter of the number of policemen n New
! York to govern country 100000 square miles
| larger than the United States.
| In short, the mounted police have brought
| British law into western Canada and firmly
/ tablished it. The homesteader can go into any
of the provinces and take out his claim, secure in
! the assurance that he can work his land undis-
| turbed and harvest his crop uninjured. The home
steader is doing it by thousands, and the Last
/ West is vanishing. The frontier-the last from
tier of Americans being prosaically plowed by
/ the practical man in blue overalls, who doesn't
! carry even hunting knife, except to cut off his
/ chew of Granger Twist
/ The Indian has been reduced to his lowest
/ terms. When men of the United States were
! building the Union Pacific across the plains they
were obliged to employ Uncle Sans troops to
guard the builders If the ghosts of the dead who
died violently in that first five-years' 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 3O-mie ride from the North Saskatche
wan last idll uSI uuZeuS Vi teams QTlES0 almost
wholly by Indians and half-breeds 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
Trunk Pacfc's stee! bridge
What contrast! Instead of hindering as was
once the case the northern Indians are helping to
build the railroad In the construction of the
! new government transcontinental line the In
dams are employed wherever they can be used,
for the road is being rushed with all possible
speed consistent with good work The Indians
are useful, also, to the pathfnders guides;
they know the forests of new Canada; they know
the mountain Businesses of the Peace river and
they know all the crooks and canyons of the
Coast Range. In short, the red man of to-day is
the trusted guide and faithful servant of the path
finder. He hunts for the white man STILL but quite
differently from the way he used to hunt for the
| pioneers of old.
| Thanks to the Royal Northwest Mounted Po-
lice, civilizations house is in order To-day the