s
temperate and fertile area was {16} an excellent northern highway--the
waters of Hudson Bay and the Nelson.

Lord Selkirk received a not unfavourable reply to his appeal. The
authorities said that, though for the present they could not undertake
a scheme of emigration such as he had outlined, they would raise no
barrier against any private movement which Lord Selkirk might care to
set on foot. The refusal of the government itself to move the
dispossessed men was dictated by the political exigencies of the
moment. Great Britain had no desire to decrease her male population.
Napoleon had just become first consul in France. His imperial eagles
would soon be carrying their menace across the face of Europe, and
Great Britain saw that, at any moment, she might require all the men
she could bring into the field.

As the government had not discountenanced his plan, the Earl of Selkirk
determined to put his theories at once into practice. He made known in
the Highlands that he proposed to establish a settlement in British
North America. Keen interest was aroused, and soon a large company,
mostly from the isle of Skye, with a scattering from other parts of
Scotland, was prepared to embark. {17} It was intended that these
settlers should sail for Hudson Bay. This and the lands beyond were,
however, by chartered right the hunting preserve of the Hudson's Bay
Company, of which more will be said. Presumably this company
interfered, for unofficial word came from England to Selkirk that the
scheme of colonizing the prairie region west of Hudson Bay and the
Great Lakes would not be pleasing to the government. Selkirk, however,
quickly turned elsewhere. He secured land for his settlers in Prince
Edward Island, in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The prospective colonists,
numbering eight hundred, sailed from Scotland on board three chartered
vessels, and reached their destination in the midsummer of 1803.

Lord Selkirk had intended to reach Prince Edward Island in advance of
his colonists, in order to make ready for their arrival. But he was
delayed by his private affairs, and when he came upon the scene of the
intended settlement, after sunset on an August day, the ships had
arrived and one of them had landed its passengers. On the site of a
little French village of former days they had propped poles together in
a circle, matted them with foliage from the trees, and were {18}
living, like a band of Indians, in these improvise