A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds
No longer by these streams, but far away
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back
The white man's face-among Missouri's springs,
And pools whose issues swell the Oregor-
He rears his little Venice. In these plains
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp
Roams the majestic brute in herds that shake
The earth with thundering steps-yet here I meet
His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

Still this great solitude is quick with life.
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,

And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer

Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,
A more adventurous colonist than man,
With whom he came across the eastern deep,
Fills the savannas with his murmurings,
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,
Within the hollow oak. I listen long
To his domestic hum, and think I hear
The sound of that advancing multitude
Which soon shall fill these deserts.
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn
Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain
Over the dark brown furrow. All at once
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,
And I am in the wilderness alone.

From the ground

7. From Kildonan to Kildonan.

THE REV. PRINCIPAL BRYCE, M.A., LL.B.

[Lord Selkirk's colonists called their settlement on the Red River "Kildōnan," in memory of their old parish in Sutherlandshire.]

In the little fishing village of Helmsdale, on the east coast of the Scottish county of Sutherland, a band of colonists were waiting the arrival of the vessel in which they were to begin their journey and cross the tempestuous North Atlantic to a new home in America. It was seventy years ago, and the vessels that went round the stormy coasts of the north of Scotland, and

there faced the billows of the Pentland Frith, were no doubt stanch and well tried. Manned with the hardy coastmen and the islanders from Orkney, the trim little vessel rose and fell with the waves as if endowed with life. Yet who would now think of facing the dangers of the great sea in such craft! Those were not the days of the Allan liners, and for weeks these small sailing-vessels of the older days danced about the Atlantic with a westward trend, until at length the new world was reached. The village grave-yard spoke of many a daring mariner who had at last fallen a prey to the stormy North Sea, and been dashed in some hurricane upon the shore; but the sea was the means of livelihood to the fishermen, and though they knew that sooner or later the water wraith would appear on its weird mission of death, yet for wife and hungry bairns the dangers must be faced, and familiarity lessens fear.

But the colonists were not fishermen. Along the coast of Sutherlandshire and the north-east of Scotland there live side by side two distinct races. The fishermen are of Norwegian descent, are chiefly known by the blue eye of the Norse nations, and speak a Teutonic language. The people living by farming-to whom the colonists belonged-had the color of the Celt, the language of the Celt, and the Highland pride of the mountaineer. Woe to the luckless damsel of Highland blood who listened to the wooing strains of any young fisher-lad! If thus she made her choice, she might ever after count on the contempt of her own people, which could remain as strong a feeling toward her and her offspring fifty years after as on the day when she forsook the ancestral tradition by plighting troth to a fisherman lover. But sad days had fallen upon the Highlands. The “Highland clearances" will ever glow with the lurid recollections of homes broken up, Highland thousands driven to foreign lands, and Highland hearts torn with pain at having to leave home and country. And now the exiles stand gazing at the stormy sea and their rolling vessel with failing hearts. they must go. The company has gathered, and the bustle of needed preparation is mingled with the weeping of women, the farewells of relatives, and the wild joy of the unconscious children, who see and know only the novelty of the scene.

But

The colonists are going out under distinguished patronage, and no less a person than a noble of one of Scotland's oldest families is present to see the colony depart. A tall, spare man, full six feet high, with a pleasant countenance, is the Earl of

Selkirk, and he is bidding his people a hearty good-bye, with a promise to come and visit them in their new homes on the prairies in the very heart of North America. Though from the south of Scotland, and without a drop of Celtic blood in his veins, his love for the Highland race had enabled him to take up their language while rambling in their beautiful glens. His lordship makes his promises to the older men, comforts their weeping spouses with those Gaelic expressions which are the vehicle of intensest feeling, and gives words of encouragement to the young men the hope of the colony. The whole number of this first party is about seventy; but this is only the advanced guard, for on the land acquired by their patron is the room denied them in their native country, and not for them alone, but for a million of people.

After going round the north of Scotland and past the Hebrides, they land at Sligo, in north-western Ireland, where they are joined by less than a score of Celts like themselves, but different in language and customs and sympathies. Once more out upon the open Atlantic their prow is turned northward, for they are searchers for a home that must be reached by the dangerous and unpromising route followed by the seekers of the North-West Passage. Through the icebergs drifting southward from Davis Strait they pass successfully, then thread their way through Hudson Strait, and in the autumn of 1811 reach Fort Churchhill on the north-west shore of the great inland sea of Hudson Bay. Here they must stay the winter. They are provided with daily supplies of food, and anxiously await the spring, when they may journey southward to the land of promise on the Red River of the north, the spot now the centre of the fertile province of Manitoba, the cynosure of many eyes.

Manitoba: Its Infancy, Growth, and Present Condition (1882).

ENOCH ARDEN WATCHING FOR A SAIL.
ALFRED TENNYSON (b. 1809).

The mountains wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender cocoa's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses

That coiled around the stately stems and ran
Even to the limit of the land, the glows

And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched
And blossomed in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day

The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise-but no sail.

Enoch Arden (1864).

PASSAGES FROM "LOCKSLEY HALL" (1842).

ALFRED TENNYSON (b. 1809.)

["The most finished of Tennyson's works, full of passionate grandeur and intensity of feeling and imagination. It partly combines the energy and impetuosity of Byron with the pictorial beauty and melody of Coleridge."R. CHAMBERS.]

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn;

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orīon sloping slowly to the west.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime, With the fairy tales of Science, and the long result of Time;

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn,

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the lights he looks at, in among the throngs of men;