As for the Nor'westers, let us look at their
rights. They disputed that the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company
applied beyond the bounds {382} of Hudson Bay. Even if it did so apply,
they pointed out that by the terms of the charter it applied only to
lands not possessed by any other Christian power; and who would dispute
that French fur traders and Nor'westers, as their successors, had
ascended the streams of the interior long before the Hudson's Bay men?
It was the spirit of democracy. It needed no prophet to foresee when
these two sets of claims came together there would be a violent clash.

It is evening in the little harbor of Stornoway, off the Hebrides, north
of Scotland, July 25, 1811. Waning midsummer has begun to shorten the
long days; and lying at anchor in the twilight a few yards offshore are
the three Hudson's Bay Company boats, outward bound. For a week the
quiet little fishing hamlet has been in a turmoil, for Governor Miles
MacDonell and Colin Robertson have ordered the Selkirk settlers here--129
of them, 70 farmers, 59 clerks--to join the Hudson's Bay boats as they
swing out westward on their far cruise to the north, and the atmosphere
has literally been on fire with vexations created by spies of the
Northwest Company. In the first place, as the settlers wait for the
ships coming up from London, trouble makers pass from group to group
scattering a miserable little sheet called "The Highlander," warning "the
deluded people" against going to "a polar land of Indian hostiles."
Besides, dark hints are uttered that the settlers are not wanted for
colonists at all, but for armed battalions to fight the Nor'westers for
the Hudson's Bay Company, in proof whereof the prophets of evil point
ominously to the cannon and munitions of war on board the three old fur
boats. Then there is too much whisky afloat in Stornoway that week.
Settlers are taken ashore and farewelled and farewelled and farewelled
till unable to find their way down to the rowboats, and then they are
easily frightened into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the
settlers who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell can
keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in advance and
are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the excise officer here is a
friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates {383} endless trouble rowing
round and round the boats, bawling . . . bawling out . . . to know "if
all who are embar