The population grew and comforts increased till eighteen
or twenty thousand souls could be reckoned in the colony.
The original whites had disappeared, and no face was to
be seen but that of a Metis in any of the cosy dwellings
in the settlement. These people had not yet learnt that
amongst the whites, whose blood knew no alloy, they were
regarded as a debased sort, and unfit socially to mix
with those who had kept their race free from taint. The
female fruitage of the mixture lost nothing by acquiring
some of the Caucasian stock, but the men, in numerous
cases, seemed to be inferior for the blending. In appearance
they were inane, in speech laconic; they were shy in
manners, and reserved, to boorishness, while in intellectual
alertness they were inferior to the boisterous savage,
or the shrewd, dignified white. But the woman perpetuated
the shy, winning coyness of her red mother, and the arts,
and somewhat of the refinements of her white father. The
eye was not so dusk; it gleamed more: as if the ray from
a star had been shot through it. There was the same olive
cheek; but it was not so tawny, for the dawn of the white
blood had appeared in it. She gained in symmetry too,
being taller than her red mother, while she preserved
the soft, willowy motion of the prairie-elk.
But the women were not good housekeepers; and many a
traveller has gone into the house of a Metis and seen
there a bride witchingly beautiful, with her hair unkempt
and disordered about her shoulders, her boots unlaced, and
her stocking down revealing her bare, exquisitely-turned
ankle.
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