This he did by sending out a third party in all nearly a hundred strong, under the leadership of a very capable man—Archibald Macdonald. This band of settlers in 1813 were bound on the ship Prince of Wales for York Factory. A very serious attack of ship fever filled the whole ship's crew with alarm. Several well-known Colonists died. The Captain, alarmed, refused to go on to his destination, but ran the ship into Fort Churchill and there disembarked them. Further deaths took place at this point. In the spring there was no resource but to trudge over the rocky ledges and forbidding desolation of more than a hundred miles between the Fort Churchill and York Factory. Only the stronger men and women were selected for the journey. On the 6th of April, 1814, a party of twenty-one males and twenty females started on this now celebrated tramp. At first the party began to march in single file, but finding this inconvenient changed to six abreast. Unaccustomed to snowshoes and sleds the Colonists found the snowy walk very distressing. Three fell by the way and were carried on by the stronger men. The weather was very cold. A supply of partridges was given them on starting, and the party was met by hunters sent from York Factory to meet them, who brought two hundred partridges, killed by the way. York Factory was reached on the 13th of April. This band of Colonists were superior to any who had come in the former parties. Many of them, as we shall see, did not remain in the Colony. A list of this party may be found in the Appendix. After remaining a month at York Factory, on the 27th of May, this heroic band went on their way to Red River, and reached their destination in time to plant potatoes for themselves and others. Comrades left behind at Churchill found their way to Red River. Lots along Red River were now being taken up by the settlers, and here they sought to found homes under a northern sky. Old and new settlers were now hopeful, but their hopes of peace and happiness were soon to be dashed to pieces.
The arrival of the third year's Colonists provoked still greater opposition. Feeling had been gradually rising against the new settlers at every new arrival. The excellence of the later immigrants but led their opponents to be irritated.
CHAPTER VII.
FIGHT AND FLIGHT.
The year 1815 was a year of world-wide disaster. Napoleon's Europe-shadowing wings had for years been over that continent and he like a ravenous bird had left marks of his ravages among the most prominent European nations. The world had a breathing spell for a short time with Napoleon a virtual prisoner in Elba, but now in March of this year he broke from the perch where he had been tethered and all Europe was again in terror. The nations were thunderstruck; the alarm was deepened by the appearance of Olber's great comet, and in their superstition the ignorant were panic-stricken, while the more religious and informed saw in these terrible events the scenes pictured in the Apocalypse and maintained that the battle of Armageddon was at hand. The epoch-marking battle of Waterloo in June of this year was sufficiently near the picture of blood painted in the Revelation to satisfy the credulous.
But in a remote corner of Rupert's Land, where the number of the combatants was small and the conditions exceedingly primitive the comet was alarming enough. The action of Governor Miles Macdonell in the beginning of 1814, in forbidding the export of food from Rupert's Land and in interfering with the liberty of the traders, Indians and half-breeds, who had regarded themselves as outside of law, and as free as the wind of their wild prairies, produced an open and out-spoken dissent from every class.
The Nor'-Westers took time to consider the grave step of interrupting trade which Governor Miles Macdonell had taken. Immediate action was impossible. It was four hundred miles and more from the Colony to the great emporium of the fur trade on Lake Superior. The annual gathering of the Nor'-Westers was held at Grand Portage, the terminus of a road nine miles long, built to avoid the rapids of the Pigeon River which flows into Lake Superior some thirty or forty miles southwest of where Fort William now stands. This concourse was a notable affair. From distant Athabasca, from the Saskatchewan, from the Red River and from Lake Winnipeg, the traders gathered in their gaily decked canoes, to meet the gentlemen from Montreal, who came to count the gains of the year, and lay out plans for the future. Indians gathered outside of Grand Portage Fort. The Highland Chieftains were now transformed into factors and traders, and for days they met in counsel together. Their evenings were spent in the great dining room of the Fort in revelry. Songs of the voyage were sung and as the excitement grew more intense the partners would take seats on the floor of the room and each armed with a sword or poker or pair of tongs unite in the paddle song of "A la Claire Fontaine," and make merry till far on in the morning. The days were laboriously given to business and accounts. When the great MacTavish—the head of the Nor'-Westers—was there he was often opposed by the younger men, yet he ended the strife with his tyrannical will and silenced all opposition.
The Nor'-Westers at their meeting, July, 1814, under Honorable William McGillivray, after whom Fort William was named, decided to oppose the Colony and sent two of their most aggressive men to meet force with force, and to give Miles Macdonell, the new Dictator, either by arms or by craft, the reward for his tyranny, as they regarded it.
The whole body of the traders were incensed against Lord Selkirk, for had not one of the chief Nor'-Wester partners written two years before from London saying, "Lord Selkirk must be driven to abandon his project, for his success would strike at the very existence of our trade."