ny's people
were little better provided. The river was the only resource, and from
the scarceness of hooks the supply of fish obtainable was rather scanty.

As the Colonists and their leader were strangers they desired leisure to
select a suitable location for their buildings. For the time being their
camp was at the Forks, on the east side of the river, a little north of
the mouth of the Assiniboine.

The Governor, Miles Macdonell, on the 4th of September, summoned three
of the North-West Company gentlemen, the free Canadians beside whom they
were encamped, and a number of the Indians to a spectacle similar to
that enacted by St. Lawson, at Sault Ste. Marie, nearly a hundred and
fifty years before. The Nor'-Westers had not permitted their employees
to cross the river. Facing, as he did, Fort Gibraltar, across the river,
the Governor directed the patent of Lord Selkirk to his vast concession
to be read, "delivering and seizin were formally taken," and Mr. Heney
translated some part of the Patent into French for the information of
the French Canadians. There was an officers' guard under arms; colors
were flying and after the reading of the Patent all the artillery
belonging to Lord Selkirk, as well as that of the Hudson's Bay Company,
under Mr. Hillier, consisting of six swivel guns, were discharged in a
grand salute.

At the close of the ceremony the gentlemen were invited to the
Governor's tent, and a keg of spirits was turned out for the people.

Having made such disposition as we shall see of the people, Governor
Macdonell went with a boat's crew down the river to make a choice of a
place of settlement for the Colonists. A bull and cow and winter wheat
had been brought with the party, and these were taken to a spot selected
after a three days' thorough investigation of both banks of the river
for some miles below the Forks. The place found most eligible was "an
extensive point of land through which fire had run and destroyed the
wood, there being only burnt wood and weeds left." This was afterwards
called Point Douglas.

He had, as we shall see, dispatched the settlers to their wintering
place up the Red River on the 6th of September, and set some half-dozen
men, who were to stay at the Forks, to work clearing the ground for
sowing winter wheat. An officer was left with the men to trade with
Indians for fish and meat for the support of the workers.

The winter, which is sharp, crisp and decided in all of Rupert