EW records of colonial settlement are more sad than those of the community that strove to root itself, early in the century, in the soil of the Red River. Sorely tried as the Scot has ever been, seldom has it been his lot to suffer so keenly. In the year 1811, a small band of Scottish Highlanders, with a sprinkling of Celts from the west of Ireland, landed at York Factory, and after a winter spent on the Nelson River, proceeded to settle on the virgin prairies of the Canadian North-West. Cheerless as was their surroundings on the bleak moorlands of the Old World they had left, more cheerless still was their introduction to the wild wastes of the New. When they came inland from the forbidding shores of Hudson Bay, to the banks of the Red River, they found that the heart of the continent did not warm to them. It gave them no welcome. Tear-dimmed eyes had watched their departing forms, as the vessel bore them from the home of their fathers; but knit brows scowled upon them as they set down their household gods to domicile themselves in a land which they now looked

upon as the heritage of their children. What a step-mother the country was to be to them and theirs, it was not long ere they unhappily found out.

We have already seen that the North-West Fur Company was in occupancy of the region to which the colony had emigrated, and that the title to possession of its rival, the Hudson Bay Company, was held in light esteem by it and its employés. But the Nor'-Westers themselves had acquired no proprietary interests in the soil: they were merely traders, doing business in the territory, and had no pretext to dispossess even the wandering Indian of his hereditary claim to the land. The Selkirk settlers were there not only by right of purchase from the Hudson Bay Company, whose title to possession, however imperfect it was, was certainly better than that of the Nor'Westers; but they were there after the Indian title had been quieted for a consideration paid them by the founder of the colony. The claim of the colony to possession was thus doubly valid. But however valid it might be, it did not suit the Nor'-Westers to have their hunting-grounds encroached upon by a people whose pursuits would prove disastrous to the interests which, as a trading corporation, they wished to conserve. It still less suited this Canadian Company to have a settlement grow up in the midst of its trade, by right of purchase from an organisation whose claims to possession it ignored, and which had been founded under the direct auspices of a powerful, and now likely to be actively aggressive, rival. In this latter circumstance is the gravamen of the matter. It was unfortunate that the colony came upon the scene at the time and in the manner it did. It was unfortunate even in the route by which it came to the country. All the circumstances attending its arrival at Red River were construed as a menace to the rival traders. First of all, the colony was unwelcome

because it was an undesirable intrusion upon lands which both Companies were interested in preserving for the purposes of the fur-trade. Secondly, it was unwelcome, because it had come to the country directly from the headquarters, the trading-posts, of its rivals. And, thirdly, it was unwelcome, because it had acquired the right to its location from a Company whose territorial claims were strenuously opposed by an organisation that had long been in occupancy. For these several reasons, the North-West Fur Company and its people, from the first, manifested hostility to the intruders, and looked sullenly upon the arrival of each instalment of the colonists. How this aversion afterwards found expression in overt acts of hostile intent, and finally, ended in foul murder and ruthless expatriation, we shall soon discover. Meantime, let us see who were these peo ple that had taken up their abode in the solitudes of the Far West, and who was the promoter of the scheme under which the colony came to settle.

After the Rebellion of 1745, a change came over the national and social condition of the Scottish Highlands. The heavy hand of power that then fell upon romantic Caledonia broke up the clans and severed many of the links that bound the Gael to his chieftain. With the snapping of these links were also severed the patriarchal relations the head of the clan held with his following. England's foreign wars, no less than the suppression of Jacobinism, broke up the feudal system, and drew the Highlander from his glens and straths to dye Continental battle-grounds with his life-blood. This break-up of the old order of things entailed great suffering upon the faithful clansmen of stern Caledonia. They were now as sheep without a shepherd. From being sturdy, well-fed retainers, and liegemen of the chiefs of their ancestral houses, they became cottars and crofters, holders of small farms, from which they strove to

wrest a poor and often precarious subsistence. Later on, the well-to-do, and moneyed, lowland farmer came in among them and outbid them for their holdings, while the southern magnate began to buy up their ancestral acres, to turn them into game-preserves and mammoth sheep pastures. For long it went hard with the poor Highlander. There was a time when

66 the fish of the lake, and the deer of the vale,
Were less free to Lord Dacre than Allan-a-dale;

but that time was not now. In this period of transition the noble endurance and many sterling qualities of the Scottish Celt were manifested in full and heroic force. The drain of absenteeism went on, and the poor Highlander, in his struggle with the hard conditions of his lot, daily became poorer. But, unlike the Irish Celt, upon whom governments ever lavished their consideration and bounty, the Scottish Ce't never shewed the world that he had a grievance. Nor did he manifest his distress in petulance and crime.

It has been remarked, that the Scot rarely complains that the world he has been brought into is too stern for his temper. The little world of Celtic Scotland, at the beginning of the century, was, however, a hard foster-father to the poor cottar, who was struggling for existence by the firths and estuaries of Northern Britain. Self-reliant as he was by nature, if he could not extract a living in the scenes of his birth, he was determined that he would not stay there to disgrace himself and his country by becoming a pauper. In other climes he would find that subsistence which his own had denied him. Deeply attached to the land of his fathers, the spirit of his fathers was in his breast, and in other lands he would achieve success and make a fairer home for his children. Emigration was the stern but accepted remedy.

Just at this time, there comes upon the scene a philanthropic Scottish nobleman, some thirty years of age, "full six feet high," with a kindly heart and pleasant countenance. His name is Thomas Douglas, and his title, fifth Earl of Selkirk, Baron Daer and Shortcleugh. He it was who was to become the Moses of the Scottish Exodus. On the family escutcheon were the arms of the Douglasses of Marr, and in the traditions of the house the record of their noble deeds. But knightly service was to take a new form: this scion of the twin-houses of Douglas and Angus was now to lead, not a cavalcade to battle, but the quieter pageant of a ship-load of simple, trusting hearts bound to a new Land of Promise. Early had the attention of this compassionate nobleman been drawn to the condition of the expatriated cottars in the north of Scotland. He had appealed to Government for their relief, and had frequently addressed the public, through pamphlets and articles in the press, on the subject of emigration to the British Colonies. In this he saw a remedy for the poverty and distress that were prevalent in the less fruitful regions of his country. In emigration, moreover, he saw the bettering of the lot of those who would take advantage of it. In 1803, at his own expense, and under his personal supervision, he transferred a band of 800 Highlanders from their native moors to comfortable homes on Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The descendants of those Highland colonists, now grown a numerous people, form the substantial yeomanry of one of the most prosperous provinces of our Young Dominion.

From the New Canaan of these cottars of Skye and Inverness, Lord Selkirk came to Canada, to cast about him for other desirable sites for colonial settlement. We find him interested in the western portion of what is now the Province of Ontario; and, in 1804, we learn that he was in correspondence with the