travel to the Rocky
Mountains without passing a wood, a mile long. The soil on the Red River
and the Assiniboine is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture,
and capable of bearing rich crops."

He goes on to state, "that the buffalo comes to the fords of the
Assinboil, besides in these rivers are plenty of sturgeon, catfish,
goldeyes, pike and whitefish--the latter so common that men have been
seen to catch thirty or forty a piece while they smoked their pipes." To
reach this land of plenty, which his brother knew so well, Miles
Macdonell became the leader of Lord Selkirk's Colonists. He arrived in
Great Britain in the year for the starting of the Colony, and
immediately as being a Roman Catholic in religion went to the West of
Ireland to recommend the Emigration scheme, obtain subscriptions of
stock, and to engage workmen as Colonists. Glasgow was then, as now, the
centre of Scottish industry, and it is to Glasgow that the penniless
Highlanders flock in large numbers for work and residence. Here was a
suitable field for the Emigration Agent, and accordingly one of their
countrymen, Captain Roderick McDonald, was sent thither. The way to
Canada was long, the country unknown, and it required all his persuasion
and the power of the Gaelic tongue--an open Sesame to an Highlander's
heart--to persuade many to join the Colonists' bank. It required more.
The Highlander is a bargainer, as the Tourist in the Scottish Highlands
knows to this day. Captain Roderick McDonald was compelled to promise
larger wages to clerks and laborers to induce them to join. He secured
less than half an hundred men at Stornoway--the trysting place--and the
promises he had made of higher wages were a bone of contention through
the whole voyage.

Perhaps the most effective agent obtained by Lord Selkirk was a returned
trader of the Montreal merchants named Colin Robertson. He had seen the
whole western fur country, and the fact that he had a grievance made him
very willing to join Lord Selkirk in his enterprise.

One of the Nor'-Westers in Saskatchewan a few years before the beginning
of Lord Selkirk's Colony, was "Bras Croche," or crooked-arm McDonald. He
was of gentle Scottish birth, but his own acquaintances declared that he
was of a "quarrelsome and pugnacious disposition." In his district Colin
Robertson was a "Bourgeois" in charge of a station. A quarrel between
the two men resulted in Colin Robertson losing his position, and as we
shal