Cuba and the annexation of slices of Mexico. The "irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery secures defeat for appropriations which would so decidedly benefit the free states. But our next election, seating in the chair of Washington a man of broad patriotism and securing legislative bodies which will hold to the nationality of freedom, will date a new era for our Northwest. The United States service will be naturalized on the northern boundary. The keels of mail steamers will plow through these inland waters from St. Paul to San Juan; and good post-roads will connect them from river to river. And then population will swarm along these natural routes of trade and emigration.

Here too is designated the most feasible and important route for the railroad to the Pacific. Somewhere on these northern plains, independently of, or in connection with Great Britain, a grand continental road should be projected. Here is the shortest route. Moving on these high level plateaus there would be comparatively little labor in grading. The slight snow-fall of winter would present small obstruction to the regular passage of trains; and the further they moved westward the warmer would be the climate. The commerce of the world demands this route. Opposite the western terminus of our international boundary are the now opened ports of those old opulent eastern peoples who have so long been excluded from the outside barbarians, and who include nearly one-half of the population of the globe. There too is the eastern capital of Russian art and commerce, inviting our friendly alliance. Puget Sound, a roadstead capacious enough for the ships and steamers of the merchant service and the navies of all the nations, with its six hundred miles of shore line receding around magnificent land-locked harbors, seems appointed for the commercial center and metropolis of the world. On its shores are illimitable forests of all timber for ship-building. Stretching north and south from it are the British and American territories, rich in gold and richer still in agricultural products and with utmost facilities for manufactures. Thus both coasts of the Pacific are

alluring capital and enterprise to complete the connection between the oriental and occidental civilizations.

The completion will be for the aggrandizement of our country. "The truth is," says the Edinburgh reviewer, "that though the accidents of political organization have decided otherwise, the district of the Red River is, according to all geographical considerations, a part of the state of Minnesota. It is beyond all question, that the natural approach to and outlet from the best part of the Hudson's Bay territory is through the state of Minnesota. Such commerce as the country has is destined to go to the south, and as far as its intercourse with the rest of the world is concerned, the Red River settlement is a part of the states which are watered by the Mississippi." What trade there is has already taken this route. Every summer there can be seen in the streets of St. Paul the Red River Trains. Half-breeds, strange in garb and physiognomy, with manners and traits of barbaric civilization, compounded from the amalgamation of manifold races and revealing at points the characteristics of each and of all; horses or oxen harnessed with strips of raw-hide and looking the worse for wear; rough carts of primitive formation, into the structure of which no iron enters, with wheels upon which there are no tires and which creak along the road with harsh discord, loaded with valuable furs, with utensils for cooking and all the materials for camping out, constitute the train. It is all under the direction of the trader or traders who thus come to the market from their successful expeditions into the hunting grounds of the rich Northwest. The half-breeds, with their teams, pass out of the city to a camping-place upon the prairie, and the trader with his traps takes his quarters at the "Fuller House."

In the winter, from the northern wilderness emerge dog-trains. A sledge consisting of a thin, slim slice of wood ten feet long and a foot and a half broad, bent up at one end like the runner of a sleigh, is drawn by several half-wolfish looking dogs who are attached to it tandem by raw-hide harnesses. It is loaded with furs and with supplies of pemmican, coffee, and dried meats for the hardy, semi-civilized Pembinese or Bois-brulè,

who with so scanty an outfit traverses the long distances between his home and the market. The bronzed visages of these strangers do not linger long in the city. The return journey is quickly undertaken. Citizens, attracted by curiosity, gather around the train; the wild dogs spring to their task as though glad to turn their noses northward again; and the bold hunter glides into the mysteries beyond the outposts

of civilization.

The Hudson's Bay Company, abandoning the dangerous route into the Hudson's Bay, through which it has been accustomed to hold communication with the outer world, and seeing nothing attractive in the old route of its ancient rival, the Northwest Company, by Lake Superior, has within the past year begun to forward its supplies by New York and St. Paul, up the valley of the Red River to its interior posts. Public meetings, on this new route to the Pacific, have been attended, in the towns of the upper Mississippi, with enthusiasm. Expeditions, well-equipped, have, during the past summer, gone through this whole region, to open up more thoroughly its capabilities and to test by experiment its feasibility. Two steamers, the "Freighter" and the "Jeannette Roberts," moved up the Minnesota river during the high stage of water in the spring, for the sake of passing across from Big Stone Lake to Lake Traverse, and so of entering upon the navigation of the northern inland waters. Another steamer, the "Anson Northrup," was taken apart in the winter and drawn on sleds from Crow Wing on the Mississippi to Breckenridge on the Red River, where it was rebuilt; and this summer it has actually begun the navigation by steam of the Red River of the North. So private enterprise, unaided by governmental patronage, is gathering the laurels, and, we trust, profits also, on this realm of promise for the future.

ARTICLE VIII.-COÖPERATION IN HOME MISSIONS.-THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY AND THE CHURCH EXTENSION COMMITTEE.

THE Home Missionary work in this country, as conducted by Christian people of various denominations, has been one of the noblest and most successful works of patriotic and Christian wisdom and benevolence. Especially is this true of that work as conducted by Congregationalists and Presbyterians. These denominations were earliest in the field, and being substantially agreed except in the form and methods of church government, they adopted principles of fraternal and honorable coöperation, uniting their strength in the new countries, instead of acting divisively and so multiplying fecble and rival churches. As soon as people began to emigrate from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine on the north, and to New York and Ohio on the west, their fathers and brethren who remained behind were mindful of them, and sent to them and aided in sustaining among them missionaries of the gospel. As early as 1787 the Congregationalists of Connecticut sent missionaries to Vermont and western New York. In 1798 the spirit of Christian care and love for the scattered and struggling inhabitants of the new settlements first took organic shape. The Connecticut Missionary Society was formed in that year, by the General Association of Connecticut, and conducted its operations from that time with zeal and efficiency, laying the foundations of numerous churches which now constitute no small part of the Presbyterian forces, especially of those under the authority of the New School General Assembly. Indeed, such was the interest in this good work of planting and sustaining churches among the emigrants to the West, that pastors in Connecticut, in many instances, left their own people for months, and went on laborious missionary tours in

the new settlements, their pulpits being supplied by their brethren belonging to the same local or district Associations. In 1801 the Massachusetts Missionary Society was formed, and began to send out missionaries to Vermont, Maine, and western New York. And soon after the Hampshire Missionary Society in Massachusetts, and the Berkshire and Columbia Missionary Society in adjoining counties of Massachusetts and New York, were formed. In 1801, also, the New Hampshire Missionary Society was organized, and sent missionaries into northern New York, Vermont, Canada, and Maine, as well as into the destitute parts of its own State. A few years after, two societies for the same purpose were formed in New York city and vicinity, and conducted with zeal and efficiency by Christian people of the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches. These two, in the year 1822, were joined in one association, called The United Domestic Missionary Society. In 1826, after fraternal consultation among friends of these various societies in New England and New York, the American Home Missionary Society was formed in New York city, as the most convenient center of operations, the United Domestic Missionary Society in that city was merged in it, and the various New England Societies, as soon as practicable, became auxiliary to it.*

It has been claimed, of late, very strangely, that Presbyterians own the American Home Missionary Society by right of creation! In the last General Assembly of the New School Presbyterian Church, it was asserted that the American Home Missionary Society "is the creation" of that church, “the creature of the Assembly," "our employee" ""to fulfill our behests." And a Presbyterian periodical before us declares that the American Home Missionary Society was originally a Presbyterian concern, into which Congregationalists were admitted at their own request, gladly, freely indeed, but as a matter of grace, though with entire gracefulness"! This claim has been completely refu sed by an article from the pen of Dr. J. S. Clarke, in a late number of our able and valuable cotemporary, "The Congregational Quarterly." The facts about the origin of the Society, as there given, are substantially these. At an informal meeting of several gentlemen "from various parts of the United States," in Dr. Wisner's study, in Boston, September 30, 1825, the day after they had been ordaining a number of Andover students for the Home Missionary work in the service of the United Domestic Missionary Society of New York, two of the Committee of that Society, Rev. Messrs. Bruen and Cox, being present, some