Sweet thought, pure speech, went hand in hand, clad in nervous, pithy old English, or a "patois" of the French, mellowed and enlarged by their constant use of the liquid Indian tongues, flowing like soft-sounding waters about them, their daily talk came ever welcome to the ear.
AN ARCADIA.
Where locks for doors were unknown, or, known, unused, where a man's word, even in the transfer of land, was held as his bond--honesty became a necessity.

Lawyers were none.

Law was held to be a danger.

Still the importance attached by simple minds to an appearance in public, the amusing belief cherished by some, that, if permitted to plead his own case, exert his unsuspected powers, there could be but one result, brought some honest souls to the Red River forum, with matter of much moment, "the like never heard before." None can read the quaint, minutely-detailed record of these "causes celebres" that shook the little households as with a great wind, without a smile, or resist the conviction that no scheme of an English Utopia can safely be pronounced perfect without some such modest tribunal to afford vent for that ever-germinating desire for battle inherent in the race.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER ROSS Sheriff and Author.

Came to Red River Settlement in 1825 from British Columbia.