ired shattered in health to Europe, where he died in 1820.
The same year passed away Alexander MacKenzie, his old-time rival.

The truth is, each company had gone too far and was on the verge of ruin.
From Athabasca came the furs that prevented bankruptcy, and whichever
company could drive the other from Athabasca could practically force its
rival to ruin or union. When Colin Robertson had rallied the dispersed
colonists from Lake Winnipeg, he had left John Clarke to conduct the two
hundred Canadian voyageurs to Athabasca for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Clarke had been a Nor'wester before he joined Astor, and was a born
fighter, idolized by the Indians. So confident was he of success now
that he galloped his canoes up the Saskatchewan without pause to gather
provisions. Once on the ground on Athabasca Lake, he divided his party
into two or three bands and sent them foraging to the Nor'westers' forts
and hunting grounds up Peace River, down Slave Lake, at Athabasca itself.
Weakened by division and without food to keep together, his men fell easy
prey to the wily Nor'westers. Of those on Slave Lake eighteen died from
starvation. Those on Peace River were captured and literally whipped out
of the country, signing oaths never to return. Those at {399} Athabasca
being leading officers were held prisoners. Meanwhile the Hudson's Bay
Company is defeated at Seven Oaks and victorious at Fort William. The
Nor'westers at Athabasca were keen to keep the frightened Indians of the
north ignorant that Selkirk had triumphed at Fort William, but the news
traveled over the two thousand miles of prairie in that strange hunter
fashion known as "moccasin telegram," and the story is told how the
captured Hudson's Bay officers let the secret out for the benefit of the
Indians now afraid to carry their hunt to a Hudson's Bay man.

Revels and all-night carousals marked the winter with the triumphant
Nor'westers of Athabasca Lake. Often, when wild drinking songs were
ringing in the Nor'westers' dining hall, the Hudson's Bay men would be
brought in to furnish a butt for their merciless victors. One night,
when the hall was full of Indians, one of the Northwest bullies began to
brawl out a song in celebration of the Seven Oaks affair.

"The H.B.C. came up a hill, and _up_ a hill they came,
The H.B.C. came up the hill, but _down_ they went again."

Tired of their rude horseplay, one of the Hudson's Bay officers spoke up:
"Y' hae niv