These events represented the decadence of the Company's rule; they indicated the rise of new forces that were to compel a change; and however harmful to those immediately involved they declared unmistakably that the old order changeth, giving place to new.
Typical of his times, there sat through the court scenes of these troublous days the old "clerk of court and council," William Robert Smith. With long grey beard he held his post, and was the genius of the place. He was the Nestor of Red River. A Bluecoat boy from London, he had come from school far back in 1813, to enter on the fur trade in Rupert's Land. At Oxford House, Ile à la Crosse, Little Slave Lake, and Norway House, he served eleven faithful years as a clerk, when he retired and became a settler of Red River. He was the first to settle near Lower Fort Garry, and named the spot "Little Britain," from one of his old London localities. Farming, teaching, catechizing for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopædia, and collector of Customs, he passed his versatile life, till, the year before the Sayer émeute, he became Clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years. How remarkable to think of the man of all work, the Company's factotum, reaching in his experience from the beginning to well-nigh the ending of the Selkirk settlement! One who knew him says, "From his long residence in the settlement he has seen governors, judges, bishops, and clergymen, not to mention such birds of passage as the Company's local officers, who come and go, himself remaining to record their doings to their successors."
COUNCIL OF HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY COMMISSIONED OFFICERS HELD IN WINNIPEG, 1887.
(See [Appendix G] for names.)
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
CANADA COVETS THE HUDSON'S BAY TERRITORY.
Renewal of licence—Labouchere's letter—Canada claims to Pacific Ocean—Commissioner Chief-Justice Draper—Rests on Quebec Act, 1774—Quebec overlaps Indian territories—Company loses Vancouver Island—Cauchon's memorandum—Committee of 1857—Company on trial—A brilliant committee—Four hundred folios of evidence—To transfer Red River and Saskatchewan—Death of Sir George—Governor Dallas—A cunning scheme—Secret negotiations—The Watkin Company floated—Angry winterers—Dallas's soothing circular—The old order still—Ermatinger's letters—McDougall's resolutions—Cartier and McDougall as delegates—Company accepts the terms.