he heard in 1810 of Lord Selkirk's scheme to
send his Colonists to Red River. This he thought to be a plan of the
Hudson's Bay Company, to regain their failing prestige and to strike a
blow at the Nor'-Wester trade. To the fur trader or the rancher, the
incoming of the farmer is ever obnoxious. The beaver and the mink desert
the streams whenever the plowshare disturbs the soil. 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. Lord Selkirk had
in the eyes of the Nor'-Westers much presumption, indeed nothing less
than to buy out the great Hudson's Bay Company, which for a century and
a half had controlled nearly one-half of North America. The
Nor'-Westers--Alexander Mackenzie, Inglis and Ellice--made sport of the
thing as a dream. But the "eccentric Lord" was buying up stock and
majorities rule in Companies as in the nation. Contempt and abuse gave
place to settled anxiety and in desperation at last the trio of
opponents, two days before the meeting, purchased L2,500 of stock, not
enough to appreciably affect the vote, but enough to give them a footing
in the Hudson's Bay Company, and to secure information of value to them.

The mill of destiny goes slowly round, and Lord Selkirk and his friends
are triumphant. He purchases an enormous tract of land, 116,000 square
miles, one-half in what is now the Province of Manitoba, the other at
present included in the States of Minnesota and North Dakota, on the
south side of the boundary line between Canada and the United States.
The Nor'-Westers are frantic; but the fates are against them. The duel
has begun! Who will win? Cunning and misrepresentation are to be
employed to check the success of the Colony, and also local opposition
on the other side of the Atlantic, should the scheme ever come to
anything. At present their hope is that it may fall to pieces of its own
weight.

Lord Selkirk's scheme is dazzling almost beyond belief. A territory is
his, purchased out and out, from the Hudson's Bay Company, about four
times the area of Scotland, his native land, and the greater part of it
fertile, with the finest natural soil in the world, waiting for the
farmer to give a return in a single year after his arrival. A territory,
not possessed by a foreign people, b