The Iuka vidette. (Iuka, Miss.) 1894-1912, 1910-04-21
cOPEAGHT BY PEARSON
PUB. CO

March 81. 1911. What
1CF .ST5Fy53--J after that?
-" Their work is done.
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 tunic 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 a record of tireless-
ness, fearlessness. unhinching courage and pa
tence-the making of a new and great empire.
Change has already to the mounted. The
days when scant 500 men were magistrates doc
tors coroners, explorers, surveyors mining re-
corders, crown-timber agents, revenue and Gus
toms officers, teegraphers, scouts riders drivers
boatmen, canoemen, marines and sailors, dog dri-
vers, maicarriers couriers public-health and ami
mal-quarantine officers. prairie and forest-fire
guardians, constables and soldiers for one-third
of the British Empire passing with every
new mile of railroad. The border "wofer," the
cattle "rustler," the whisky trader, the fighting
Indian, the whole band of staggering ru1ans 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 hardhood and picturesqueness of the force
necessarily have somewhat changed in the de-
velopment of the thoroughly civilized new north
west. Now the young fellows are getting their
breakingin among the settled districts. while the
old stagers are 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,
1t is thoroughly competent and efficient. force,
as it in the days of the Territory The mem
bers must pass physical and mental examination
which guarantees that came upon one of them
in moment of leisure studying a textbook the
common law. and he showed me some examina-
ton questions which implied that he must know
how to conduct a cross-examination in open court
SO 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 manner that 1t be pre-
scented evidence In court. The reason for this
is that he combines the functions of policeman
with those of a petty magistrate
And this arrangement, whereby the same man
could arrest you and then try you himself and
finally put you in prison and be your keeper,
an ideal arrangement in the days when justice
was justice of the saddle, and all the more de-
sirable for being summary. Although there
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 Sullivans Pooh-Bah Primarily he
keeps order. After that, he does everything that
ought to be done, and that 1t isn't any one elses
duty to do And when else leaves his
duty undone, the mounted policeman takes it up
and finishes it. When the mail-carrier, who COW
the North Country dog sledges, reaches the
most northern limit of his route, the mounted po-
liceman takes over the bags, and goes 500 miles
farther north with them Not long ago a letter
came to my hands from the Leffingwen polar ex-
petition in which the writer stated that he would
take five dogs and companion and travel 800
miles over the ice to mail the letter. When the
letter reached its destination, the envelope bore
the stamp of the Royal Northwest Mounted Po-
lice, who evidently had received it at one of their
posts in the arctic, and then had carried it by dog
train from the ice fields to railway connection
fbo
undertake anything, from Winding the baby to
hanging a man. with equal placidity. and put it
through without fiicking an eyelash. They have
done their part to demonstrate that the one
thing on this earth longer than the equator is the
arm of English justice. Less than three years
ago mounted policeman tracked Yukon MUIR
derer over 5000 miles, caught up with him In
Mexico, brought him back by way Of jamaica
and Halifax, avoiding United States soil to pre-
vent extraditon complications, and hanged him
within sight of the scene of his crime.
There has never been ynching in Canada. Put
that down to the credit of the mounted police. who
administered justice so successfully that there
was never any temptation for the work to be ta-
ken up by private enterprise. There never
any parallel for the experience of Bismarck North
Dakota, where 1t Is said the first "a graves were
these of men who had died by violence. Toward
the Indians, the mounted police maintained ira
dition of stern vigilance which prevented anything
like the costly Indian wars which the United
States waged up to few years ago. There was
never in the history Of Canada train robbery
such as still feature the headlines of United
States newspapers from time to time. The des-
perado of every type had healthy respect for
the mounted policeman and preferred to conduct
his little enterprises south of the border.
Canadians are particularly fonds4of telling the
newly arrived American about the troop of Amer
lean cavalry-a whole troop. mind you-who ten
derby escorted band of bad Indians" bent on
crossing the border. to the Canadian boundary
line. They were met by single mounted police
man.