of the forest was not liberty after the English pattern; the
coureur-de-bois was of an entirely different type from the
pioneers of British stock who were even then pushing their way
through the gaps in the Alleghanies and making homes in the
backwoods. Priest and seigneur, habitant and coureur-de-bois were
one and all difficult to fit into accepted English ways. Clearly
Canada promised to strain the digestive capacity of the British
lion.

The present western provinces of the Dominion were still the
haunt of Indian and buffalo. French-Canadian explorers and fur
traders, it is true, had penetrated to the Rockies a few years
before the Conquest, and had built forts on Lake Winnipeg, on the
Assiniboine and Red rivers, and at half a dozen portages on the
Saskatchewan. But the "Company of Adventurers of England trading
into Hudson's Bay" had not yet ventured inland, still content to
carry on its trade with the Indians from its forts along the
shores of that great sea. On the Pacific the Russians had coasted
as far south as Mount Saint Elias, but no white man, so far as is
known, had set foot on the shores of what is now British
Columbia.

Two immediate problems were bequeathed to the British Government
by the Treaty of Paris: what was to be done with the unsettled
lands between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi; and how were
the seventy thousand French subjects in the valley of the St.
Lawrence to be dealt with? The first difficulty was not solved.
It was merely postponed. The whole back country of the English
colonies was proclaimed an Indian reserve where the King's white
subjects might trade but might not acquire land. This policy was