[86] Canadian archives.
[87] The tables enclosed in the dispatch show, first, the names and numbers of the posts occupied in the Indian country (exclusive of the King's posts), the number of partners, clerks and men employed, the latitude and longitude of each post being also given. The grand total shows that there were 117 posts, 20 partners, 161 clerks and interpreters, 877 common men, in all of a permanent staff 1,058 men, thus divided: Ninety-five in the territory of the United States from the south side of Lake Superior to the division of the waters falling into the Mississippi on the one side and Hudson's Bay on the other; seventy-six on the waters falling into the St. Lawrence from the Kaministiquia, and also from the St. Maurice; six hundred and thirty on the waters falling into Hudson's Bay, and two hundred and fifty-seven on the waters falling into the North Sea by the Mackenzie River. Besides these there were eighty or one hundred Canadians and Iroquois hunters, not servants, ranging free over the country and about five hundred and forty men employed in canoes on the Ottawa River. The average duties paid annually on landing in Britain amounted to upwards of £22,000 sterling and the price paid for the furs exported from Quebec in 1801, at the London sales, was £371,139 11s. 4d.
[88] Canadian Archives.
[89] It has been noted that several partners of the North-West concern were upon the grand jury which found the bill of indictment, and out of four judges who sat upon the bench, two were nearly related to individuals of that association.
[90] Already, in April, 1802, Lord Selkirk had addressed a letter and memorial to Lord Pelham, the Home Secretary, detailing the practicability of promoting emigration to Rupert's Land. "To a colony in these territories," he concluded, "the channel of trade must be the river of Port Nelson."
[91] In the course of a letter reporting on the disputes between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-Westers, Commissioner Coltman attributed the disasters in the territories to the Company having held in abeyance its right to jurisdiction and that this neglect was the reason for passing the act of 1803. This letter is in the Canadian Archives, v. Report 1892.
[92] "I have," writes Sir Alexander Mackenzie from London, 13th April, 1812, "finally settled with that Lord (Selkirk). After having prepared a bill to carry him before the Lord Chancellor, it was proposed to my solicitor by the solicitor of his Lordship that one-third of the stock that was purchased on joint account before I went to America, amounting to £47,000, and the balance of cash in his Lordship's hands, belonging to me, should be given up to me; of this I accepted, though I might have obliged his Lordship to make over to me one-third of the whole purchase made by him in this stock, which at one time I was determined to do, having been encouraged thereto by the house of Suffolk Lane and countenanced by that of Mark Lane. But these houses thought it prudent to desist from any further purchases."
Mackenzie says that by a verbal understanding with Mr. McGillivray, his purchase of the Hudson's Bay stock belonged to the North-West Company, and that, if Mr. McGillivray himself had been there, a sum of £30,000 might have been invested in that stock, "all of which Lord Selkirk purchased, and if he persists in his present scheme, it will be the dearest he yet made.
"He will put the North-West Company to a greater expense than you seem to apprehend, and had the Company sacrificed £20,000 which might have secured a preponderance in the stock of Hudson's Bay Co., it would have been money well spent."
[93] The district thus granted was called Assiniboia, a name undoubtedly derived from the Assiniboine tribe and river, yet alleged by some at the time to be taken from two Gaelic words "osni" and "boia"—the house of Ossian.