Nor did this end the misfortunes of the clansmen. An attractive lure was held out to the new generation of chieftains, and greed and avarice were to triumph. Southern speculators had been rambling over the Highlands, eager to exploit the country. These men had seen a land of grass and heather, steep crag, and winter snow. Observing that the country was specially adapted to the raising of sheep, they sought by offering high rents to acquire land for sheep-walks. Thus, through the length and breadth of the Highlands, great enclosures were formed for the breeding of sheep. Where many crofters had once tilled the soil, only a lone shepherd was now found, meditating on scenes of desolation. Ruined dwellings and forsaken hamlets remained to tell the tale. Human beings had been evicted: sheep had become the 'devourers of men.' In many parts of the Highlands the inhabitants, driven from mountain homes, were forced to eke out a meagre existence on narrow strips of land by the seashore, where they pined and where they half-starved on the fish caught in the dangerous waters.
From such a dilemma there was but one escape. Behind the evicted tenantry were the sheep-walks; before them was the open sea. Few herrings came to the net; the bannock meal was low; the tartan threadbare. In their utter hopelessness they listened to the good news which came of a land beyond the Atlantic where there was plenty and to spare. It is small wonder that as the ships moved westward they carried with them the destitute Highlander, bound for the colonies planted in North America.
This 'expatriation' was spread over many weary years. It was in full process in 1797, when Thomas Douglas became Lord Daer. His six elder brothers had been ailing, and one by one they had died, until he, the youngest, alone survived. Then, when his father also passed away, on May 24, 1799, he was left in possession of the ancestral estates and became the fifth Earl of Selkirk.
As a youngest son, who would have to make his own way in the world, Thomas Douglas had prepared himself, and this was a distinct advantage to him when his elevation in rank occurred. He entered into his fortune and place an educated man, with the broad outlook upon life and the humanitarian sympathy which study and experience bring to a generous spirit. Now he was in a position to carry out certain philanthropic schemes which had begun earlier to engage his attention. His jaunts in the Highlands amid 'the mountain and the flood' were now to bear fruit. The dolorous plaint of the hapless clansmen had struck an answering chord in the depths of his nature. As Thomas Douglas, he had meant to interest himself in the cause of the Highlanders; now that he was Earl of Selkirk, he decided, as a servant of the public, to use his wealth and influence for their social and economic welfare. With this resolve he took up what was to be the main task of his life—the providing of homes under other skies for the homeless in the Highlands.
In the spring of 1802 the young earl addressed a letter to Lord Pelham, a minister in the British government, in which he dwelt with enthusiasm upon the subject of emigration. His letter took the form of an appeal, and was prophetic. There had previously come into Selkirk's hands Alexander Mackenzie's thrilling story of his journeys to the Arctic and the Pacific. This book had filled Selkirk's mind with a great conception. Men had settled, he told Lord Pelham, on the sea-coast of British America, until no tract there was left uninhabited but—frozen wastes and arid plains. What of the fruitful regions which lay in the vast interior? It was thither that the government should turn the thoughts of the homeless and the improvident. Leading to this temperate and fertile area was an excellent northern highway—the waters of Hudson Bay and the Nelson.
Lord Selkirk received a not unfavourable reply to his appeal. The authorities said that, though for the present they could not undertake a scheme of emigration such as he had outlined, they would raise no barrier against any private movement which Lord Selkirk might care to set on foot. The refusal of the government itself to move the dispossessed men was dictated by the political exigencies of the moment. Great Britain had no desire to decrease her male population. Napoleon had just become first consul in France. His imperial eagles would soon be carrying their menace across the face of Europe, and Great Britain saw that, at any moment, she might require all the men she could bring into the field.
As the government had not discountenanced his plan, the Earl of Selkirk determined to put his theories at once into practice. He made known in the Highlands that he proposed to establish a settlement in British North America. Keen interest was aroused, and soon a large company, mostly from the isle of Skye, with a scattering from other parts of Scotland, was prepared to embark. It was intended that these settlers should sail for Hudson Bay. This and the lands beyond were, however, by chartered right the hunting preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company, of which more will be said. Presumably this company interfered, for unofficial word came from England to Selkirk that the scheme of colonizing the prairie region west of Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes would not be pleasing to the government. Selkirk, however, quickly turned elsewhere. He secured land for his settlers in Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The prospective colonists, numbering eight hundred, sailed from Scotland on board three chartered vessels, and reached their destination in the midsummer of 1803.
Lord Selkirk had intended to reach Prince Edward Island in advance of his colonists, in order to make ready for their arrival. But he was delayed by his private affairs, and when he came upon the scene of the intended settlement, after sunset on an August day, the ships had arrived and one of them had landed its passengers. On the site of a little French village of former days they had propped poles together in a circle, matted them with foliage from the trees, and were living, like a band of Indians, in these improvised wigwams.
There was, of course, much to be done. Trees and undergrowth had to be cleared away, surveys made, and plots of land meted out to the various families. Lord Selkirk remained for several weeks supervising the work. Then, leaving the colony in charge of an agent, he set out to make a tour of Canada and the United States.
Meanwhile, Selkirk's agents in Scotland were not idle. During the same summer (1803) a hundred and eleven emigrants were mustered at Tobermory, a harbour town on the island of Mull. Most of them were natives of the island. For some reason, said to be danger of attack by French privateers, they did not put out into the Atlantic that year; they sailed round to Kirkcaldy and wintered there. In May 1804 the party went on board the ship Oughton of Greenock, and after a six weeks' journey landed at Montreal. Thence they travelled in bateaux to Kingston.