(3) The books already mentioned making up his library, his printed maps, two sets of twelve-inch globes, a large achromatic telescope, Wilson's microscope, and a brass sextant, a barometer, and all his thermometers were to be taken by the Governor of the Red River colony and kept in Government hands for the general good of the Selkirk colonists.
(4) Cattle, swine, and poultry, which he had purchased for one hundred pounds from John Wills, of the North-West Company, the builder of Fort Gibraltar, were to be left for the sole use of the colony, and if any of his children were to ask for a pair of the aforesaid animals or fowls their request was to be granted.
(5) To his Indian wife, Mary Fidler, he bequeathed fifteen pounds a year for life to be paid to her in goods from the Hudson's Bay Company store, to be charged against his interest account in the hands of the Company.
(6) The will required further that of all the rest of the money belonging to him, in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company or the Bank of England, as well as the legacy left him by his Uncle Jasper Fidler and other moneys due him, the interest be divided among his children according to their needs.
(7) After the interest of Fidler's money had been divided among his children till the youngest child Peter should come of age, the testator makes the following remarkable disposal of the residue: "All my money in the funds and other personal property after the youngest child has attained twenty-one years of age, to be placed in the public funds, and the interest annually due to be added to the capital and continue so until August 16th, 1969 (I being born on that day two hundred years before), when the whole amount of the principal and interest so accumulated I will and desire to be then placed at the disposal of the next male child heir in direct descent from my son Peter Fidler" or to the next-of-kin. He leaves his "Copyhold land and new house situated in the town of Bolsover, in the county of Derby," after the death of Mary Fidler, the mother of the testator, to be given to his youngest son, Peter Fidler.
This will was dated on August 16th, 1821, and Fidler died in the following year. The executors nominated were the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Governor of the Selkirk settlement, and the secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Some time after the death of this peculiar man, John Henry Pelly, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson's Bay Company, Donald McKenzie, Governor of the Selkirk settlement, and William Smith, Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company, renounced the probate and execution of the will, and in October, 1827, "Thomas Fidler," his natural and lawful son, was appointed by the court to administer the will.
A considerable amount of interest in this will has been shown by the descendants of Peter Fidler, a number of whom still live in the province of Manitoba, on the banks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Lawyers have from time to time been appointed to seek out the residue, which, under the will, ought to be in process of accumulation till 1969, but no trace of it can be found in Hudson's Bay Company or Bank of England accounts, though diligent search has been made.
STUBBORN JOHN MCLEOD.
John McLeod has already figured in our story. Coming out with Lord Selkirk's first party from the Island of Lewis, as one of the "twelve or thirteen young gentleman clerks," he, as we have seen, gave a good account of himself in the "imminent and deadly breach," when he defended the Hudson's Bay Company encampment at the Forks against the fierce Nor'-Westers. His journal account of that struggle we found to be well told, even exciting. It further gives a picture of the fur trader's life, as seen with British eyes and by one of Hudson's Bay Company sympathies.