The vigorous action of the united interests soon told upon the trade
and discipline of the vast area hunted and traded over. The Indians
were brought back to tea and water in place of rum and brandy; and
peace was restored, everywhere, between the white man and the red. The
epidemics of small pox, which had at times decimated whole tribes of
Indians, were got rid of by the introduction of vaccination.
Settlement, if only on a small scale, was encouraged by the security of
life and property. The enlargement of their action, as issuers of notes
and as bankers aided the trade and the colonists; and so good was a
Hudson's Bay Company's note that it was taken everywhere over the
northern continent, when the "Shin Plasters" of banks in the United
States and Canada were refused. When, for a short time, in 1865 and
1866, I held the office of shareholders' auditor of the Hudson's Bay
Company, I cancelled many of these notes, which had become defaced,
mainly owing to the fingering of Indians and others, who left behind on
the thick yellow paper coatings of "Pemmican,"--the pounded flesh and
fat of the buffalo, done up in skins like sausages--a food eminently
nutritious and lasting long, but fearfully odorous and nasty.
Mr. Ellice supplied much of the political energy inside the old Reform
party, displayed in the Reform Bill struggle of 1830-1832.
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