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Updated: June 25, 2025
In the presence of this odd company Governor Macdonell read the Earl of Selkirk's patent to Assiniboia. About him was drawn up a guard of honour, and overhead the British ensign fluttered in the breeze. Six small swivel-guns, which had been brought with the colonists, belched forth a salute to mark the occasion. The Nor'westers were visibly impressed by this show of authority and power.
Then the combined force of half-breeds, French Canadians, and Indians, in round numbers amounting to one hundred and twenty men, advanced to Portage la Prairie. They reached this point on or about June 16, and proceeded to make it a stronghold. They arranged bales of pemmican to form a rude fortification and planted two brass swivel-guns for defence.
This artillery commands the sea and river, while other pieces are mounted farther up to defend the bar, besides some other moderate-sized field-pieces and swivel-guns. These fortifications have their vaults for storing supplies and munitions, and a magazine for the powder, which is well guarded and situated in the inner part; and a copious well of fresh water.
Their principal trade is with Herat, and consists of woollen and camel-hair fabrics and clarified butter. The farming population all live in small hamlets. The better classes of these live in villages surrounding or joined to the castle of a Khan. These castles are encompassed by a rude wall, having frequently turrets at the corners, and occasionally armed with swivel-guns or wall-pieces.
She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant vessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, and had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her carrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns which proved that she had got her armament not much later than the middle of the last century and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older vessel even than the Wasp.
The boat leaving Grouville Bay was a yacht carrying twelve swivel-guns, bringing Admiralty despatches to the Channel Islands. The boat leaving St. Heliers harbour was a new yawl-rigged craft owned by Jean Touzel. It was the fruit of ten years' labour, and he called her the Hardi Biaou, which, in plain English, means "very beautiful." This was the third time she had sailed under Jean's hand.
They were all armed with cannon, the grabs carrying as many as twenty or thirty 12-pounders, and the gallivats swivel-guns of 6 or 9 pounds.
The large boat and the whaler belonging to the Astrolabe were sent to this place, and, not without some difficulty, their crews hauled up an anchor weighing 1,800 lbs., a brass gun, some pigs of iron, and two copper swivel-guns.
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