The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1924-03-21
| CAPTAINS OF
| ADVENTURE
BY ROGER POCOCK
By ROGER POCOCK
Merrill

set up a republic, and installed Louis
Riel as president at Fort Garry.
Naturally this did not meet the views
of the Canadian government, which
had bought the country, or Of the Hud-
sons Bay company, which owned the
stolen fort Mr. Smith, governor of
the company, was sent at once as COM
missioner for the Canadian government
to restore the settlement to order. On
his arrival the rebel president promptly
put him in Jail, and openly threatened
his life. In this awkward situation,
Mr. Smith contriyed not only TO stay
alive, but to conduct public meet
ing, with President Riel acting as his
interpreter TO the French half-breed
rebels The temperature at this out
door meeting was twenty degrees be-
low zero, with keen wind, but in
course of five hours debating. Mr..
Smith so undermined the rebel author
ity that from that time it began to col
lapse Afterward, although the rebels
murdered one prisoner, and times were
more than exciting, Mr.. Smiths policy
gradually Slapped the rebellion, until,
when the officer who later was Lord
Wolseley arrived with British troops,
Riel and his deluded half-breeds bolted.
So, thanks to Mr.. Smith, Fort Garry
is now Winnipeg, the central city of
Canada, capital of her central prov
ince, Manitoba
But when Sir Donald Smith had re-
signed from the Hudson's Bay COM
pany's service, and became politician,
he schemed, with unheard-of daring,
for even greater ends At his sugges-
was formed aid sent out TO take pos
session of the Great Plains. That add
ed a wheat field TO Canada which will
soon be able to feed the British en-
pre- Next he speculated with every
dollar he could raise, on a rusty rail-
way track, which some American build
ers had abandoned because they were
bankrupt. He got the rail head into
Winnipeg, and a large trade opened
with the United States. So began the
boom that turned Manitoba into pop
ulous country, where the buffalo had
ranged before his coming.
Now he was able to startle the Ca
madam government with the warning
that unless they hurried up with a
railway, binding the whole Dominion
from ocean to ocean, all this rich west
ern country would drift into the Unit
ed States. When the government had
failed in an attempt to build the i'm
possible railway, Sir Donald got Mon
treal financiers together, cousins and
friends of his own, staked every dol
lar he had, made them gamble as heav-
lily, and set to work on the biggest road
ever constructed. The country TO be
traversed was almost unexplored, al
most uninhabited except by savages,
fourteen hundred miles Of rock and
forest, a thousand miles of plains, six
hundred miles of high alps.
The syndicate building the road con-
sisted of merchants in what was then
a provincial town, and when they met
for business it was TO wonder vaguely
where the months pay was to come
from for their men. They would part
for the night to think, and by morning,
Donald Smith would say, well, here's
another million-that ought to do for
bit" On November {, 1885, he drove
the last spike, the golden spike, that
completed the Canadian Pacific rail-
way, and welded Canada into a living
nation.
Afterward as Lord Strathcona, he
endowed university and gave big
hospital TO Montreal. At cost of
three hundred thousand pounds he pre-
scented the famous regiment known as
Strathcona's Horse, to the service Of
his country, and, in his ninety-third
year was working hard as Canadian
high commissioner in London.