ns
with the seal and signature of the Hudson's Bay Company, attached by
Alexander Lean, the secretary. Before this, however, Selkirk had
become deeply engrossed in the details of his enterprise. No time was
to be lost, for unless all should be in readiness before the Hudson's
Bay vessels set out to sea on their summer voyage, the proposed
expedition of colonists must be postponed for another year.

Selkirk issued without delay a pamphlet, setting forth the advantages
of the prospective colony. Land was to be given away free, or sold for
a nominal sum. To the poor, transport would cost nothing; others would
have to pay according to their means. No one would be debarred on
account of his religious belief; all creeds were to be treated alike.
The seat of the colony was to be called {36} Assiniboia, after a tribe
of the Sioux nation, the Assiniboines, buffalo hunters on the Great
Plains.

Wherever this pamphlet was read by men dissatisfied with their lot in
the Old World, it aroused hope. With his usual good judgment, Selkirk
had engaged several men whose training fitted them for the work of
inducing landless men to emigrate. One of these was Captain Miles
Macdonell, lately summoned by Lord Selkirk from his home in Canada.
Macdonell had been reared in the Mohawk valley, had served in the ranks
of the Royal Greens during the War of the Revolution, and had survived
many a hard fight on the New York frontier. After the war, like most
of his regiment, he had gone as a Loyalist to the county of Glengarry,
on the Ottawa. It so chanced that the Earl of Selkirk while in Canada
had met Macdonell, then a captain of the Royal Canadian Volunteers, and
had been impressed by his courage and energy. In consequence, Selkirk
now invited him to be the first governor of Assiniboia. Macdonell
accepted the appointment; and promptly upon his arrival in Britain he
went to the west coast of Ireland to win recruits for the settlement.
Owing to the straitened circumstances {37} of the Irish peasantry, the
tide of emigration from Ireland was already running high, and Lord
Selkirk thought that Captain Macdonell, who was a Roman Catholic, might
influence some of his co-religionists to go to Assiniboia.

Another agent upon whom Selkirk felt that he could rely was Colin
Robertson, a native of the island of Lewis, in the Hebrides. To this
island he was now dispatched, with instructions to visit other sections
of the Highlands as well. Robe