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Show A FAMOUS POLICE UNIT. The news dispatch relating the arrival at The Pas, Manitoba, of a Royal Northwest North-west mounted police officer, Sergeant Thompson, after "mushing" 1100 miles over 'a snow trail with an insane Indian lashed to his dog sled, recalls to mind an organization which probably is without parallel in semi-military history. Thompson Thomp-son traveled the more than thousand miles from Trout lake, near Hudson 's bay, to the Manitoba frontier post without with-out a guide, part of the trip being made through a blizzard. His dogs, weak from lack of food, were barely able to drag their load into town. When western Canada was unsettled, in the days when Manitoba, Assiniboin, Saskatchewan and Alberta comprised what was known as the "Northwest territory," ter-ritory," the Koyal Northwest mounted police was organized to deal with sporadic spo-radic troubles between Indian tribes and the few settlers and nurrlerous fur traders trad-ers who had ventured into that vast region. Headquarters were established at Eegina, then little more than an outpost, out-post, now the flourishing capital of the province of Saskatchewan; with a population popu-lation of approximately 60,000. The province is larger than Utah; its population popu-lation being about that of the Beehive state. The mounted police were empowered with authority not enjoyed by their brothers in civil service in the older portions of the Dominion. Until their activities were largely curtailed by the increasing emigration to the northwest they policed this vast district, carrying the royal authority with them and enforcing en-forcing law and order, not so much by their drastic methods as by the very moral influence exerted by their organization. or-ganization. Some of the most readable works of fiction dealing with the Canadian Cana-dian northwest have been woven about the exploits of this small but decidedly efficient semi-military police. In early days the "beats" of members mem-bers of the organization extended in all directions from Begina to points as remote re-mote as the Yukon, the mouth of the Mackenzie river, Hudson's bay and the great Peace River valley. Even now extraordinary details are covered by the Koyal polico, as Sergeant Thompson's Thomp-son's journey will illustrate. In the United States thero are some organizations which bear resemblance to tho famous Canadian unit, as, for instance, in-stance, the Texas Bangers and the stato constabulary of Pennsylvania. ' But to neither of these American organiza- tions attaches tho romance wlikli is in- ! separable from the name of the Boy a! ; Northwest mounted police. For one j thing, there is a witchery about the trackless snows of the Dominion which cannot be sensed on the Mexican border bor-der or .in the congested industrial centers cen-ters of the Keystone state. . For another, an-other, romance is all the more interesting interest-ing when it weaves its fancy about an unknown country, which northwest Canada once was, but rapidly is becoming becom-ing no more. |