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surveyed for future settlements, and a guarantee against exceptional taxation. The Company's governors became chief agents at trading posts. Their system of government was divided thus: (1) Commissioners-in-chief of Rupert's Land, (2) Commissioners and Councils of Districts, (3) Sheriffs, and (4) Magistrates. These officials still retained their position and influence. As a result of the handing over of their territory to the Dominion, the natives were placed in Prairie Reserves, and the amount given to half-breeds was 1,200,000 square miles. Since 1867, the Dominion Government has set aside in Manitoba and the North-West no less than 616,400 square miles of territory for the natives. Both natives and half-breeds are gradually adapting themselves to European customs and usages, and one half-breed was Premier of Manitoba for some years.

(10) But it is from the date of the Selkirk settlement that the colonisation of the Far West and the prosperity of Manitoba may be said to have begun. It was a romantic enterprise in the first instance, and was conducted for the relief of distressed Highlanders by Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, who had become chairman of the Hudson's Bay Company and acquired 116,000 square miles of land. The project had the warm sympathy of the great poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott, who, in a letter written some years afterwards to the founder (10th June, 1819), testified to his 'generous and disinterested disposition,' and also 'his talents and perseverance,' in carrying out wise schemes of national colonisation. The cause of their migration was the prostration which fell upon all classes after the terrible Napoleonic wars, and was felt more particularly by those who could least afford it.

(11) They set out from the little fishing village of Helmsdale, once a settlement of the Northmen in

Sutherland, in vessels manned by hardy Orkney islanders, and after rounding the north of Scotland touched at Sligo in Ireland, and then faced the terrors of the Atlantic in their small vessels. They followed the tempestuous course of those early mariners who tried to discover the north-west passage, threading their way through the drifting icebergs of Davis's Bay and entering Hudson's Bay in the autumn. They landed at Fort York, the trading port of the great Company, and prepared to pass the long and terrible winter there before going south along the valley of the Nelson River to Winnipeg. It was a bold venture and it had to be carried through, not only in face of the difficulties of the climate, but in spite of the Fur Company of Montreal, which was opposed to the Hudson's Bay Company. Although they set out in 1811, the Highlanders did not reach their destination till 1812. The prospect seemed so bad that they very nearly abandoned the project of colonisation, but, in 1816, Lord Selkirk appeared with a fresh band of emigrants, and they resolved to remain.

(12) The name of 'Selkirk' is preserved in the NorthWest, the metropolitan county of Manitoba being named after the Earl. Fort Daer (situated at the angle of the Red and Pembina Rivers) and Fort Douglas both preserve the honourable name of 'Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, and Baron Daer.' He deserves to be ranked with Lord Baltimore, who took a settlement to the Peninsula of Avalon in Newfoundland, afterwards removing to Maryland in the United States, and also with William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. Lord Selkirk conceived larger projects than either of these, and aspired to founding another Highland Province in the heart of North America. The attachment between himself and the Highlanders was deep and strong, and he moved amongst them as

a great chief. Lord Selkirk thus describes the scene on Prince Edward's Island in 1803, when he took a body of no fewer than eight hundred emigrants there in three ships. I arrived at the place late in the evening, and it had a very striking appearance. Each family had kindled a large fire near their wigwams, and around these were assembled groups of figures whose peculiar national dress added to the singularity of the scene. Confused heaps of baggage were everywhere piled together before their wild habitations, and by the number of fires the whole wood was illuminated. At the end of this line of encampment I pitched my own tent, and was surrounded in the morning by a numerous assemblage of people, whose behaviour indicated that they looked to nothing less than the happy days of clanship '.'

(13) About the time of the Selkirk settlements, there was a passion in England for Arctic adventure and exploration, encouraged by the Admiralty at home and to some extent by the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. Captain John Franklin, one of England's greatest heroes, who had sailed with David Buchan (1818) in the direction of the North Pole by way of Spitzbergen, undertook a series of voyages across the north-west of Canada, with a view especially of determining the character of the coast-line of the Polar Sea. On the occasion of his first reaching Norway Point on the peninsula which separates Play Green and Winnipeg Lakes, Franklin mentions in his Narrative that he met there a detachment of Lord Selkirk's colonists. 'These poor people,' he writes, 'were exceedingly pleased at meeting us again in this wild country: having accompanied them across the Atlantic, they viewed us in the light of old acquaintances.' The task Franklin had set himself to do required the greatest possible fortitude and 1 See Appendix x.

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