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This tablet is erected near Selkirk's lookout, by Commodore Powell and the officers of H. M. S. Topaze, A. D. 1868. The cave in which Selkirk dwelt while on the island is at the head of the bay now called Robinson Crusoe Bay. It is around a bold headland west of the present anchorage and landing. Ships have anchored there, but it affords a very indifferent berth.
To effect this he brought together at Fort Douglas a body of chiefs who represented the Cree and Saulteaux nations. The Indian chiefs made eloquent speeches. Selkirk's desire was to obtain as much on each bank of these streams for the length agreed upon as could be seen under a horse's belly towards the horizon, or approximately two miles, and the Indians agreed.
McDonald and Colin Robertson, had set the heather on fire on behalf of Lord Selkirk's project, so the aid of the press was used to throw doubt upon the enterprise.
My own opinion is that with Lord Selkirk's presumptuous claims to exclusive possession in Red River and the recent high-handed success of the Hudson's Bay, the men of Fort Douglas were so flushed with pride they did not realize the risk of a brush with the Bois-Brulés.
In order to make no mistake they thought it best to restrain themselves until their partners should hold their summer meeting at Fort William, on Lake Superior. The partners of the North-West Company met at Fort William in the month of July 1814. Their fond hope had been that Lord Selkirk's colony would languish and die. Instead, it was flourishing and waxing aggressive.
On a blustering night, amid storm and darkness, Selkirk's men crept up to the walls, carrying ladders. In a trice they had scaled the ramparts, and the fort was in their possession. On the first day of May 1817 Lord Selkirk himself went forward to the west from Fort William, taking with him the bodyguard which he had procured at Drummond Island.
The deer flee to their coverts, the wolf and the fox are exterminated, and even the muskrat has a troubled existence when the dog and cat, the domestic animals, make their appearance. The proposed settlement is to be opposed, and Lord Selkirk's plans thwarted at any cost.
At the door of the largest a pair of children sported in the solitude, as fearlessly as the birds on Selkirk's island; looking into the hotel, he saw a few porters and call-boys seated in statuesque repose against the wall, while the clerk pined in dreamless inactivity behind the register; some deserted ladies flitted through the door of the parlor at the side.
As a finishing touch, a flagstaff was raised within the stockade, and in honour of one of Lord Selkirk's titles the name Fort Daer was given to the whole. In the meantime a body of seventeen Irishmen, led by Owen Keveny, had arrived from the old country, having accomplished the feat of making their way across the ocean to Hudson Bay and up to the settlement during the single season of 1812.
He thoroughly understood the motives of both parties, and his decisions led to a perfect era of peace, and moreover in the end to the union of the Hudson's Bay and Nor'-West Companies. Lord Selkirk's coming was like a ray of sunshine to the Colonists of Red River.
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