and uncompromising adherence to what is reverenced as a principle; by a similar plainness and simplicity in their habits of life, and by the general purity and sobriety of their morals; by an equal indifference, or even contempt, for the refinements of art and elegant literature; and, not least, by the exaggerated stress which they have been accustomed to lay on the most insignificant trifles of form. With the scruples of our Puritan ancestors about the surplice, the cross in baptism, and the ring in marriage, may be compared the still more extravagant sensitiveness of the Russian dissenters about the impiety of the established clergy in giving the benediction with three fingers instead of with two, and the sinfulness of a compliance with the world in adopting the modern abominations of eating potatoes, smoking tobacco,* and shaving the beard. In another respect the parallel still holds. Some of the Starovers, like the Quakers and Primitive Methodists among ourselves, have no regular ministry. We may deride these notions and usages as fantastic and absurd; but they indicate a stubborn tenacity of religious conviction in that portion of the Sclavonic race from which its future civilisation must chiefly proceed. The Rascolniks may do for Russia what the Puritans have done for England, and what the Huguenots might have done for France, had they not been exterminated by the explosion of a noxious mixture of intolerance with infidelity.

There is another section of the Eastern Church which has a deep significance for the future: that which has its seat in Greece itself, and stands in more direct antagonism with Mahometanism. A friend of ours, who spent some time in the Morea several years ago, where he enjoyed great opportunities of intercourse with its inhabitants, spoke to us in high terms of their moral qualifications for a higher form of Christianity, which he believed to be already in preparation among them. From such a revival of the religious life in Greece, we might reasonably look for the gradual restitution of a spiritual Christianity in those fair provinces of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, where its earliest triumphs were won, and which are now languishing under the double weight of superstition and despotism. Europe is beginning at length to repay her ancient debt to the East, and in all directions is exerting a restorative and quickening influence on the outlying tracts of quiescent degradation and

Like the Puritans, too, the Starovers have a Scriptural authority for their strangest fancies. When asked by Peter the Great, whether they thought smoking tobacco was more wicked than drinking brandy, they answered, "Yes; because it has been written, Not that which goeth into a man, but that which cometh out of a man, defileth him.'" The new unheard-of food of the potato was supposed to be the very accursed "apple of the earth” by which the devil tempted Eve. Eastern Church, p. 474.

stagnant barbarism. The slow results of former civilisation furnish no adequate measure of the possibilities of future progress. Civilising agencies are now wielded by European nations, the mere idea of which would have seemed a wild chimera to the most far-seeing in the ages that are gone. The press itself, long the great instrument of human advancement, is transcended in its effects, and invested with a wider and more immediate influence, by the railway, the telegraphic wire, and the photographic process. These marvellous powers are spreading themselves gradually over the whole earth, and marking out the lines of future conquest. There are yet vast spaces to be reclaimed to civilisation and Christianity in every quarter of the globe. But though the material progress of the world must occasionally be checked by such internal convulsions as are now rending asunder the great Republic of the West, to teach men humility and self-control, and to prove that there can be no safe progress without religion and moral principle; yet there are nations evidently marked out by Providence for the future work of civilisation, with spheres of determinate action distinctly assigned to each; and they will doubtless fulfil their appointed mission. When some present obstructions are removed out of the way, as in time they must be,-with the immense power over nature now possessed by man and daily on the increase, and with the wonderful means of locomotion and intercourse, of more ready and complete expression for all the operations of thought, of colonisation, culture, and social progress placed at his disposal,-it seems no rash or unreasonable conjecture that, in less than half the time which has elapsed from the introduction of Christianity, every continent and island, every habitable spot of earth, will be peopled and civilised, with no outlet for its redundant population, no outlying wilderness to reclaim, no still subsisting barbarism to bring over to a Christian life. At this point our little planet will seem to have fulfilled the destiny of its existing constitution, and to have reached the threshold of some new development. What may then be in reserve for the actual occupants of earth, it would be presumptuous to speculate. Imagination pauses with reverent awe before the solemn possibility, and language drops into the expressive silence of a devout trust.

ART. III. THE INTERIOR OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA. Narrative of the Canadian Red-River Exploring Expedition of 1857, and of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. By Henry Youle Hind, M.A., F.R.G.S. London: Longman and Co., 1860.

Papers relative to the Exploration by Captain Palliser of that portion of British North America which lies between the Northern Branch of the River Saskatchewan and the Frontier of the United States, and between the Red River and the Rocky Mountains. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1859.

Further Papers relative to the Exploration by the Expedition under Captain Palliser of that portion of British North America which lies between the Northern Branch of the River Saskatchewan and the Frontier of the United States, and between the Red River and the Rocky Mountains, and thence to the Pacific Ocean. 1860. WE have hitherto known but little of the interior of our NorthAmerican possessions. Such information as we have had upon the subject has been derived either from the occasional notices of Arctic explorers, who have rested at the Hudson's Bay Company's posts in the course of a hurried journey to more northerly regions, or from the statements of the Company's servants. From neither of these sources could we look to obtain any very reliable data. The first kind of evidence was that of mere passing travellers; the second, that of men who, though they had passed their lives in the country, had yet been accustomed to keep their attention fixed on the fur-trade, and who had naturally cared little to spend either time or thought in experiments unconnected with, if not absolutely hostile to, that all-absorbing object. Mr. Hind's narrative, and Captain Palliser's letters to the Colonial Office, are therefore the first contributions of importance which the subject has received. The latter gentleman's journey was undertaken by the direction of the British Government, and at the instance of the Royal Geographical Society. The details of his explorations, however, are still unpublished, and his report is as yet, with the exception of the part which relates to the passes of the Rocky Mountains, little more than a hasty and somewhat barren itinerary. Those chapters of Mr. Hind's work which treat of the Red-River settlement have already appeared in substance in a blue-book printed in 1859; but the details of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan expedition are now published for the first time. It has long been suspected that the impression, studiously propagated, and we believe

conscientiously entertained, by the Company's officers, that the unsettled part of British America is unfitted for civilised habitation, is, in part at least, erroneous; and the information of which we are now put in possession goes a long way towards enabling us to determine the question for ourselves, so far as regards the country lying immediately to the north of the British frontier. How to legislate for this district is a subject of immediate and practical importance; but its discussion will be found to involve so many collateral questions, that we shall make no apology for prefacing our remarks by a sketch of the past history and present condition of the whole territory.

What may be termed the modern history of the Hudson's Bay Company begins with the cession of Canada to Great Britain in 1763. The fur-trade had long been carried on with great vigour and enterprise by the "Compagnie de la Nouvelle France," founded by Cardinal Richelieu, at Quebec, in 1627. Its agents had established posts on the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winipeg, and even reached the upper waters of the Saskatchewan. In 1763 the French Company was broken up, and the Canadian fur-trade for a time suspended; but in the course of a few years single traders made their way beyond Lake Superior, revisited by degrees the deserted French posts, and soon began to open a market with the Indians north of the Saskatchewan. With the French merchants the Hudson's Bay Company had never come into direct collision. They collected their furs in different districts, and disposed of them in different markets. But the competition of British subjects was another matter, and the prospect of it imparted an unwonted vigour to the English Company's proceedings. In 1774 their first settlement in the interior was founded by Samuel Hearne, who had already explored the continent westwards as far as Lake Athabasca and northwards to the Coppermine River; and the Cana dian merchants, finding themselves unable to compete with one another and a third party at the same time, united, in 1783, under the title of the "North-west Company of Montreal." The new association at once took possession of all the French and Canadian stations; the discoveries of Sir Alexander Mackenzie opened to them the Mackenzie and Peace Rivers; and the purchase of the interest of the Pacific Fur Company, founded by Jacob Astor, enabled them to extend their operations completely across the continent.

A fierce and prolonged struggle ensued. Wherever the North-west Company planted its foot, the Hudson's Bay Company followed. Their posts stood side by side on every river and lake from Canada to the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic Circle. The weapons of the contest were brandy and intimida

tion;-brandy, because there was nothing for which the Indians would sell their furs so freely, and intimidation, because, if left to themselves, they would sell as readily to one company as to the other. In the more remote districts, indeed, where society was too precious to be sacrificed to business, the rival settlements kept up friendly relations, though even here the interchange of hospitalities would sometimes be made to serve a purpose; and at a dance or a drinking-bout a few of the hosts would slip away unnoticed, and ride for miles to intercept the Indians, of whose approach they had been warned; or else they would spill the contents of their glasses to get the start of their intoxicated guests at the next day's barter. But in the south, where the numbers of each party were greater, and the Indians in their pay belonged to warlike and often mutually hostile tribes, the contest was far more violent, and during the period from 1812 to 1816 it assumed all the characteristics of an unscrupulous and sanguinary civil war. . The imminent bankruptcy of both the combatants at length forced them to consider whether it would not be better to share the monopoly between them than to prolong so disastrous and uncertain a struggle; and by the efforts of Mr. Ellice, then the guiding spirit of the Canadian as he has since been of the English company, a union was effected. The Hudson's Bay Company brought into the common stock its ancient foundation, its home influence, and its chartered rights; the North-west Company contributed a more extensive trade, a better organised machinery, and a practical acquaintance with regions into which their rivals had scarcely penetrated.

But though the existing strife was thus put an end to, the union of the Companies supplied no guarantee against the renewal of competition outside the territories comprised in the charter of Charles II. Mr. Ellice therefore induced the English Government to obtain an Act of Parliament empowering the Crown to confer the "exclusive privilege of trade with the Indians" in all the unsettled parts of British America beyond the limits of Rupert's Land, for any period not exceeding twentyone years. The power thus created was immediately exercised in favour of Mr. Ellice's clients. From that time till the year 1857 the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific was held by the Hudson's Bay Company under two different titles. In Rupert's Land, which is deemed to include the entire basin of Hudson's Bay, they claimed, by virtue of the charter of 1670, to be the owners of the soil itself; in the "Indian territory,' which comprised all the rest of the continent, the ownership of the soil remained in the Crown, but the Company were the actual possessors as the grantees of the license of exclusive trade. The territory on the further side of the Rocky Mountains was