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Updated: June 27, 2025
Not a single house was left standing. Cabins, storehouses, the colony's grinding mill all were reduced to a mass of ruins. Cameron's duplicity had been crowned with success; Alexander Macdonell's armed marauders had finished the task; Lord Selkirk's colony of farmers-in-the-making was scattered far and wide. Nevertheless, the Nor'westers were not undisputed masters of the situation.
Up the river they came and rounded what we now call Point Douglas, in the City of Winnipeg, a name afterwards given to mark Lord Selkirk's family name. They had completed a journey of seven hundred and twenty-eight miles, from York Factory to the site of Winnipeg and they had done this in fifty-five days. Now they landed.
It was a matter of common knowledge among the Nor'westers that Selkirk was on his way to the Red River with a squad of armed men, but they understood that he would follow the route leading past their fort at Fond du Lac. There is evidence to show that a plot to compass Selkirk's death or seizure had been mooted some weeks before.
The British boundary at that time ran south of Red Lake, and would still so run but for the indifference of bygone Commissioners. This purchase became the theatre of Lord Selkirk's far-seeing scheme of British settlement in the North-West, with whose varying fortunes and romantic history the average reader is familiar. The first Canadian treaties were those effected by Mr.
Ruby seized the oar, and, notwithstanding the breach of the seas and the narrowness of the passage, steered the boat close to the rock at the proper moment. "Starboard, noo, stiddy!" shouted John Watt, who leant suddenly over the bow of the boat and seized poor Strachan by the hair. In another moment he was pulled inboard with the aid of Selkirk's stout arms, and the boat was backed out of danger.
But the remnant of Lord Selkirk's settlers who had dared to linger on the Red River were at the end of their resources. Taking counsel together, they resolved to quit the colony. They launched their boats on the river, and followed the canoe route which led to Hudson Bay. They were accompanied by a band of Indians of the Saulteaux tribe as far as the entrance to Lake Winnipeg.
CHARLES. "Oh! for the imagination of Daniel de Foe to conjure up the delightful pictures of his Robinson Crusoe. The poet Cowper has done much towards handing the event down to posterity, in his touching account of the feelings of the poor outcast when he found himself on the desolate shore." GEORGE. "Oh! you mean Alexander Selkirk's soliloquy. I think I can remember some of the verses:
At the time of the fall of French power at Quebec in 1759 there were about two thousand of these wilderness hunters in the West. Fifty years later by way of Hudson Bay came Lord Selkirk's Settlers Orkneymen and Highlanders, hardy, keen and dauntless as their native rock-bound isles.
In Lord Selkirk's time the factory was more than half a mile from the Bay and lay between the two rivers. Miles Macdonell states that it was on "low, miry ground without a ditch." The stagnant water by which the post was surrounded would be productive of much ill-health, were there a longer summer.
The tenor of this and Selkirk's other writings would indicate the staunchness of his patriotism. In his efforts at colonization his desire was to keep Britain's sons from emigrating to an alien shore. 'Now, it is our duty to befriend this people, he affirmed, in writing of the Highlanders.
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