Provincial Executive, with a view to giving aid to schemes of colonisation in Upper Canada. For some reason, however, his proposals were not taken advantage of, and, for a time, he returned to Scotland. There, his earnest desire to benefit the peasantry of his native country, led him to urge emigration in the most hearty manner, and, ere long, to formulate a scheme for planting a colony somewhere in the interior of the Hudson Bay Territory. To extend to the incipient colony every advantage it could have, in material as well as in moral support, the Earl and other members of his family acquired a large monetary interest in the Hudson Bay Company. The amount of this interest is said to have been £35,000, or about a fourth of its entire capital. A meeting of the general Court of Proprietors of the Company was then called, and the Selkirk proposal submitted to it. A grant of land was asked on which to settle a colony, to be located in the Assiniboine district, the expense of transport, the purchase of necessaries for the voyage, and the support of the colony for a time after settlement, the cost of agricultural and house-building implements, and the outlay for quieting the Indian title, were all to be borne by the noble applicant. The proposal, owing to alarm being taken at the scheme by some members of the Court, who were stockholders in the rival Canadian Company, met with active opposition. The grant was, however, carried by a large majority vote. The prospectus of the scheme was now launched, and emigrants were invited to join the colony. In the summer of 1811, a party of some seventy Highland cottars from Sutherlandshire, with a small contingent from the west of Ireland, set sail for Hudson Bay. Mr. Miles Macdonell, formerly a Captain in the Queen's Rangers, a corps that had done duty in Canada during Simcoe's administration, was appointed Governor by the Hudson Bay Company, and by Lord Selkirk, was given charge

of the colony. The emigrants spent the winter at the Company's post on the Nelson, and the next season arrived at Red River.

We have referred to the opposition to the colony, manifested at the meeting of shareholders in London, which was convened to consider Lord Selkirk's application for a grant of land for the purposes of settlement. It is worth while particularly to notice from whom this opposition came, and what were the apparent motives that prompted it. We have already said that objection was taken to the founding of the colony by men who held stock, not only in the Hudson Bay Company, but in the rival Canadian institution. From the literature of the period we learn that these objectors had acquired shares in the Hudson Bay Company only a short time before the call for a general meeting. The disingenuousness of their protest against the grant of land to the colony may therefore be judged from this fact. But not only were they largely interested in the North-West Fur Company, they were known to be its active London agents, and notoriously hostile to all settlement in the fur-trading territory. After this statement, little argument we think is needed to support the opinion, that the enmity of these gentlemen was incited by questionable motives, and that they had acquired their interest in one commercial company to work out purposes of their own in the administration of another. Such a proceeding, unhappily, is not unknown in the world of commerce: its effects in this instance, as we shall see, were to bring on the ill-fated colony a pall of disaster.

So far as Lord Selkirk is concerned, he is to be relieved of any reflection in regard to the arrangements he made for the weal of the colony. His care and forethought were in a thousand ways manifested; and everything he could reasonably do he did to make smooth the path of settlement. The situation

chosen for the Colony was the banks of the Red River, near the confluence of the Assiniboine,--now the site of the Prairie capital, the city of Winnipeg. The title given to it was the Kildonan Settlement, from the name of the parish in Sutherlandshire from which the bulk of the settlers had emigrated. Here, in the autumn of 1812, when other sections of Canada were in the turmoil of invasion, a peaceful colony sought to found homes for themselves in the wilderness. "The spot which had been selected,”—so writes a chronicler of the period, -“had been ascertained to be of the highest fertility and the most easy of cultivation. Houses were built; a mill was erected; sheep and cattle were sent up to the settlement; and all practicable means were taken to forward the agricultural purposes of the colony." Two years afterwards, it received some additions to its number, and in September, 1814, we learn, that the whole colony comprised two hundred settlers. The first two winters were spent at the wooded region of Pembina, close to the international boundary line, where Fort Daer had been erected by Governor Macdonell's orders, so as to afford better shelter and protection through the severe winter months. In the spring the settlers returned to their summer operations in the neighbourhood of the Colony's location, close by the Forks of the Assiniboine. Here Fort Douglas was erected as a refuge in emergency, and as a storehouse of supplies. As yet the colony had not become self-supporting; some root-crops had been raised, but, so far, little had been done in growing grain. There was want of horses and oxen. Abundant supplies of fish were to be had; but buffalo and even smaller game were scarce. For the latter they had to depend upon the Indians, who though at first friendly, were now being alienated by the malice of the hostile Nor'-Westers. While there was likelihood of the colony

suffering from the malevolence of these traders, it was in no apprehension as to its future. For contingencies, in the event of trouble, the settlers were in some measure prepared. Fort Douglas was capable of defence, for, thanks to the prevision of Lord Selkirk, some light brass field-pieces had been sent into the country, to be mounted on its ramparts; and the settlers had been furnished with arms and ammunition. But, as we have said, the settlement felt quite secure in its peaceful mission to the country, and had no dread of serious molestation. An authority of the period * emphasises this fact:

"In short, the settlers appeared confident of their security, contented with their situation, and happy in their prospects; nor did there exist any reasonable ground to doubt that, if left undisturbed, the colony in a few years would have been completely and firmly established. This, indeed, must have been the decided opinion at the time, even of those who proved to be its most inveterate opponents, otherwise they never would have thought it necessary to take violent means to destroy it. Had the settlement been likely to fail from causes inherent in its nature, or arising from the remoteness of its situation, or other local circumstances, its enemies (and none were better judges than they) would doubtless have left it to its fate; and, remaining passive spectators of its destruction, would gladly have permitted the colony to die a natural death, instead of incurring anxiety, expense, and the risk of the vengeance of the law, by adopting those active measures to which they resorted for the purpose of strangling it in its infancy."

But had the situation of the colony been more serious than it was, Scottish resoluteness and tenacity of purpose in the face of danger, would have acquiesced in the dispensation and contentedly accepted it. The Highland heart, though it had its tender spots, and was keenly sensitive to kindness, partic

* "Statement respecting the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement of Kildonan, on the Red River, its destruction in the years 1815 and 1816, and the massacre of Governor Semple and his Party." London. 1817.