CHAPTER XXIX

1816-1821

BOTH COMPANIES MAKE A DASH TO CAPTURE ATHABASCA WHENCE CAME THE MOST VALUABLE FURS—ROBERTSON OVERLAND TO MONTREAL, TRIED AND ACQUITTED, LEADS A BRIGADE TO ATHABASCA—HE IS TRICKED BY THE NOR’WESTERS, BUT TRICKS THEM IN TURN—THE UNION OF THE COMPANIES—SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, GOVERNOR.

It wasmid-winter before word that Fort Douglas had fallen into the hands of the Nor’Westers and Fort William into the hands of Lord Selkirk, came to Colin Robertson ice-bound at Moose. Robertson was ever the stormy petrel of every fight—one of those doughty heroes of iron strength who thought no more of tramping seven hundred miles on snowshoes for Christmas dinner with some comrade of the wilds than town men think of a voyage across their own dining-room. Though he knew very well that the Half-breeds had threatened “to flay him alive,” that the Indians had been bribed to scalp him, and that warrants were out in Montrealfor his arrest in connection with the seizure of Gibraltar from the Nor’Wester, Cameron—Robertson did not hesitate for a moment. He set out on snowshoes for Montreal. Now that Selkirk was on the field, Robertson knew it would be a fight to the death. The company that captured Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs, would be able to force the other to terms of union.

To be sure, Sherbrooke, Governor General of Canada, had issued a Royal Proclamation commanding peace; but Williams, the new Hudson’s Bay governor, declared “the royal proclamation was all d—— nonsense!” He “would drive every Nor’Wester out of the country or perish in the attempt.” On the Nor’Westers’ side was equal defiance of the Proclamation. The most of the Northwest Eastern partners were either under bail or yet in confinement. Of their Western partners, Norman McLeod, the justice of the peace, was the ruling spirit; and his views of the Canadian Proclamation may be guessed from orders to his bullies in Athabasca: “Go it, my lads! Go it! You can do what you like here! There is no law in the Indian Territory!”

Down to Montreal, then, came Colin Robertson, full of fight as an Irishman of Tipperary. “The effusions of the Nor’Westers might have staggered my resolution to come to Montreal,” he writes in hisletters of 1817 to officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. “‘Robertson go to Montreal! No! He may find his way to the States if we don’t catch him!’ Such was the language held forth at SaultSte.Marie, Lake Superior, which had no other effect on me than calling forth a little caution.... I was at the Sault when a fur trader made his appearance in a light canoe on his way from Red River to Montreal. With him, I embarked and arrived at the Lake of the Two Mountains on the 11th of August, 1817.... As soon as the fur trader pushed off, I requested a Frenchman to furnish me with a small Indian canoe and two faithful Iroquois ... I embarked at midnight ... and crossed the lake about an hour after sunrise.... M. de Lotbiniere ... furnished me with a calash at eleven that night.... I entered Montreal at five in the morning and drove to Dr. Monroe’s, the least suspicious place, his profession making early calls frequent. I was at once recognized by the doctor, who informed me that a partner of the North-West Company had apartments in the upper part of the house. I immediately muffled myself in my cloak and so entered.... As soon as I had breakfast, I made my appearance in the streets of Montreal, where I was stared at by friends of the Nor’Westers as if I were a ghost ... and myappearance gathered such a crowd, I was obliged to disappear inside a boarding house....”

“The residences of the Nor’Westers in London and Montreal are splendid establishments, the resorts of the first in society, the benefit from this ostentatious display of wealth being the friendship of legal authorities.... Even the prisons of Montreal are become places of public entertainment from the circumstance of yet holding some partners of the North-West Company.... Every other night, a ball or supper is given; and the Highland bagpipes utter the sound of martial music as if to deafen public censure. The most glaring instance of the Nor’Westers’ contempt for law is their attempt to attract public notice by illuminating all the prison windows every night. Strangers will naturally ask: ‘for what crimes are these gentlemen committed? For debt?’ No ... for murder ... arson ... robbery.... Our old friend, Mr. Astor, is here.... He is frequently in the society of the Nor’Westers ... and feels very sore toward them about Astoria.”

Robertson’s letters then tell of his trial for the seizure of Gibraltar and his acquittal. He frankly hints that his lawyers had to bribe the Montreal judge to secure “a fair” hearing. So passed the year. In 1818 came Selkirk back from Red Riverto Montreal, who agreed with Robertson that the only way to force the Nor’Westers to their knees was to send a second expedition to capture Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs that enabled the rival Company to bribe the courts. In April, 1819, Robertson set out with a flotilla of nineteen canoes fromSte.Anne’s, each canoe with five French voyageurs, and went up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. “This place gave me a bad turn the other day,” he writes. “The wind blew fresh but the swell was by no means high. My Indians seemed reluctant to attempt the traverse. I imprudently ordered them a glass of rum, when the whoop was immediately given! In a moment, our canoe was in the swell. We came where a heavy sea was running. Here, we began to ship water. The guide ordered the bowman removed back to the second thwart. This lightened the head. An oilcloth was then thrown over the head of a canoe to avoid the breaking of the sea. The silence that prevailed, when one of those heavy swells was rolling upon us, was truly appalling. Paddles were lifted and all watched the approach with perfect composure. Our steersman kept balancing the slender bark by placing her in the best position to the waves.... The moment the roller passed, every paddle was in the water, every nerve stretched to gain the land! Althoughtwo men were employed bailing out water, fifty yards more would have swamped us....”

From Lake Superior, the brigade passed up to the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg, where Robertson was joined by the same John Clarke who had suffered defeat in Athabasca on the first expedition. Here the forces were increased to one hundred and thirty men by the refugees of the first brigade, who had escaped from the North. Robertson’s letter from this point gives some particulars of the first brigade’s expulsion from Athabasca: “The Nor’Westers did not confine themselves to the seizure of persons and property. They administered an oath to our servants, threatening with starvation and imprisonment if they did not comply, that for the space of three years these Hudson’s Bay servants would not attempt to oppose the North-West Company. One of the guides, a witty rogue, who knew theology from the circumstance of his cousin being a priest, fell on a way of absolving his French countrymen from this oath ... to repair to the woods and cross themselves and ask pardon of their Maker for a false oath to a heretic; but some poor Scotchmen could not cheat their conscience so easily, and I have had to let them leave me on that account....”

The Nor’Westers had kept as a deadly secret fromthe Indians all knowledge of the fact they had been beaten by Lord Selkirk. Robertson’s next letter tells how the secret leaked out in Athabasca. Amidst the uproarious carousals of the Nor’Westers at Chippewyan, the Hudson’s Bay captives were brought to the mess room to be the butt of drunken jokes. On one occasion, Norman McLeod bawled out a song in celebration of the massacre of settlers at Red River, of which each verse ended in this couplet:

“The H. B. C. came up a hill, and up a hill they came,The H. B. C. cameupthe hill, butdownthey went again!”

“The H. B. C. came up a hill, and up a hill they came,

The H. B. C. cameupthe hill, butdownthey went again!”

Roars of laughter were making the rafters ring when it suddenly struck one of the Hudson’s Bay prisoners that the brutal jeer might be paid back in kind.

“Y’ hae niver asked me for a song,” says the canny Hudson’s Bay McFarlane to his Nor’West tormentor. “If agreeable, I hae a varse o’ me ain compaesin’.”

“Silence, gentlemen,” roars McLeod to the drunken roomful of partners and clerks and Indians. “Silence! Mr. McFarlane, your song.”

Remembering that the power of the Northwest Company with the Indians depended on the frightened savages being kept ignorant of Lord Selkirk’s victories, the Hudson’s Bay man’s thin voice piped up these words to the same tune:

“But Selkirk brave went up a hill, and to Fort William came,When in he popped—and out from thence—could not be driven—a-g-a-i-n!”

“But Selkirk brave went up a hill, and to Fort William came,

When in he popped—and out from thence—could not be driven—a-g-a-i-n!”

Before the last words had died in the appalling silence that fell on the rowdies, or the Indians could quite grasp what the song meant, McLeod had jumped from his chair yelling:

“I’ll give you a hundred guineas if you’ll tell the name of the man who brought news of that here.”

But McFarlane had no wish to see some faithful coureur’s back ripped open with the lash. “Tut-tut,” says he, “a hundred guineas for twa lines of me ain compaesin’—Extravagant, Mr. McLeod, Sir!”

October saw Robertson at last on the field of action—in Athabasca. “Well may the Nor’Westers boast of success in the North,” he writes. “Not an Indian dare speak to the Hudson’s Bay. At Isle a la Crosse, a clerk and a few of our men were in a hut surrounded by the sentinels of our opponents. Apart from no intercourse with the Indians, they were thankful to be able to procure mere subsistence for themselves. All their fish nets and canoes had been destroyed by the Nor’Westers in prowling excursions. The only canoe on which their escape depended was hidden in a bedroom. No Indian dared to approach. Thewindows were covered by damaged table cloths. Wild fowl shot flying over the house had to be plucked with the door shut.... Not an Indian could be found.... As we voyaged up to Athabasca, we began firing and kept our men singing a voyageur’s song to let the Indians know we were passing.” Finally, an Indian was seen hiding behind brush of the river bank, and was bribed to go and bring his tribe. The truth was told to the Chippewyans about the Nor’Westers’ defeat on Red River and Lake Superior. Peace pipes were whiffed, and a treaty made.

The consternation of the Nor’Westers when they saw Robertson, and Clarke whom they had abused in captivity three years before, now draw up on Athabasca Lake before Fort Chippewyan with a force of one hundred and thirty armed men, at once gave place to plots for the ruin of the intruders. Black, who had been the chief tormentor of Clarke, dashed down to the waterside shouting: “Mr. Robertson! Mr. Robertson! To avoid trouble, let me speak to our Indians before you land! You are an honorable man—give us justice!”

“Honorable,” roared the indignant Clarke, shaking the canoe in his wrath. “Justice be blanked! Did you giveusjustice when you hounded us out of Athabasca,” and he followed the serenade up witha volley that brought the whole Northwest Company to the shore.

Before trouble could brew, Robertson marshaled his men to the old Hudson’s Bay quarters, and within a few days more than forty Indian tents had deserted from the Nor’Westers. Clarke was sent up Peace River for the winter. Robertson retained a force of one hundred men well equipped with arms and provisions to hold the fort at Lake Athabasca. “We had completed the fitting out of the Indians,” he writes, “established our fisheries and closed the fall business when the loaded canoes of the Northwest hunters began to arrive. Black, the Nor’Wester, is now in his glory, leading his bullies. Every evening they come over to our fort in a body, calling on our men to come out and fight pitched battles. One of their hair-pulling bullies got his challenge accepted and an unmerciful thrashing to boot from a little Frenchman of ours—Boucher. Mr. Simon McGillivray, the chief partner of the Nor’Westers, who is with Mr. McLeod, was rather forward on this occasion. Having a strong force, he approached too near. I ordered our men to arms and his party made a precipitate retreat. Our men are in high spirits. The Indians have regained confidence in us and boldly leave the Nor’Westers every day for the Hudson’s Bay.”

Now that their winter hunters had come in, andthey were stronger, the Nor’Westers were not to be so easily routed from Athabasca. Robertson’s next letters are dated from the Nor’Westers’ fort. He had been captured within ten days of his arrival. “You ... will perceive from the date of this letter, the great reverse.... If I were the only sufferer it might be borne, but when I reflect on the consequences to the Hudson’s Bay Company and to Lord Selkirk, it almost drives me mad.... On the morning of the 11th of October, about an hour before day, my servant entered my bedroom and informed me a canoe had just arrived with the body of a fisherman accidentally shot the night before.... Sleep was out of the question. I rose and ordered an early breakfast, but just as we were sitting down one of the men entered with word that a Northwest bully had come and was daring little Boucher to fight. As was my custom, I put a pistol in my pocket and going toward the fellow saw Mr. Simon McGillivray, the Northwest partner.... Just then eight or ten Nor’Westers made a rush from concealment behind.... It was all a trick.... I was surrounded.... In the struggle my pistol got entangled and went off.... At the sound, they rushed on me and dragged me to the beach.... I freed myself and laid about with my empty pistol.... When thrown in thecanoe, I tried to upset and escape by swimming, but Black put a pistol to my head till we arrived at the Nor’Westers’ fort.... Landing, I dashed for their Indian Hall and at once ... called on the Indians, representing that the cowardly attack was an effort to reducethemto slavery; but Black rushed up to stop me. Seizing a fork on the hall table I kept the vagabond at bay. I loaded him with every abuse and evil name I could think of, then to the Indians: ‘Do not abandon the Hudson’s Bay on this account! There are brave men at our fort to protect you! That fellow was not brave enough toseizeme; hestoleme, and he would now rob you of your hunt if it were not for the young men I have left in my fort. Tell Clarke not to be discouraged. We will be revenged for this, but not like wolves prowling in the bushes. We will capture them as we captured them at Fort William, with the sun shining on our faces.’ At this moment, the Indian chief came up and squeezing my hand, whispered, ‘Never mind, white man! All right! We are your friends.’ ... This closed the turbulent scene.... Figure my feelings ... tumbled by an act of illegal violence from the summit of hope ... confidence of friends withdrawn ... all my prospects for life blasted ... mere personal danger is secondary now—I am in despair.”

Simon McGillivray, Black, McIntosh, McLeod, in a word, the most influential partners in the Northwest Company were at Fort Chippewyan when Robertson was captured; but the post was in charge of that John George McTavish, who had helped to trick Astor out of his fur post on the Columbia. It was probably the ruinous lawsuits against the Nor’Westers that now restrained their savage followers from carrying out their threat “to scalp Robertson and feed him to the dogs,” but the Hudson’s Bay leader was clapped into a small room with log walls, under guard day and night. He was compelled to state his simplest wants in a formal daily letter. Pen and paper, the clothes on his back, a jack-knife in his pocket—that was Robertson’s entire paraphernalia during his captivity; but for all that, he outwitted the enemy. One of his written requests was that a Nor’Wester go across to the Hudson’s Bay fort under flag of truce for a supply of liquor. The Nor’Westers were delighted at the chance to spy on the Hudson’s Bay fort, and doubly delighted at the prospect of their captive fuddling himselfhors de combatwith drink. It was an easy trick to give a rival his quietus with whiskey.

Taking long strips of writing paper, the Hudson’s Bay man invented a cipher code in numbers from one to six hundred, some well known trading phraseplaced opposite each number. This he rolled like a spool, so tight it was waterproof, sealed each end with wax, knocked the bung out of the whiskey barrel, bored a tiny hole beside the bung with his jack-knife, hooked a piece of twine through one end to the sealed message, the other to the inner end of the plug, thrust the paper inside the liquor and plugged up the hole. Then dusting all over with mud from the floor of the cabin, he complained the whiskey was musty—diluted with rum. He requested that it be sent back with orders for his men to cleanse the barrel. Before sending it back, the Nor’Westers actually sealed the barrel “contents unknown.” But what was Robertson’s disgust when the men of the fort instead of cleansingthisbarrel, sent back a fresh one!

Again he put his wits to work. Sending for a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, he wrote in fine pencil opposite Falstaff’s name: “Examine—the—first—keg.” The messenger, who went for the weekly supply, carried the Shakespeare back to the Hudson’s Bay fort. A week passed. No sign came from his men. Exasperated to the point of risk, Robertson tried a last expedient. The next week, the messenger carried an open letter to Robertson’s men. It was inspected by his captors but allowed to pass. It read: “To amuse myself, I am trying to throw into verse some of Falstaff’s good sayings. There is oneexpression where he blows out, ‘I am not awitbut the cause ofwitin others.’ This sounds harsh. Please send exact words as in the play.” No doubt the Northwest partners thought poor Robertson far gone with liquor when he took to versifying. Back came word with the week’s supplies, stating that the volume of Shakespeare had been carried off to the fishery by one of the traders; but “would Mr. Robertson please let his men know if he wished the following traders to have the following supplies”—a string of figures conveying the joyful news that the cipher had been found; the Hudson’s Bay fort was on guard against surprise; the men were in good spirits; the Indians loyal; all things prosperous.

For eight months a prisoner in a small room, Robertson directed the men of his own fort by means of the whiskey kegs, sending word of all secrets he could learn in the enemy’s camp, checkmating every move of the Nor’Westers among the Indians. In vain, he urged his followers to sally out and rescue him. The Hudson’s Bay traders were not willing to risk another such massacre as on Red River. Immunity bred carelessness. In the month of May a Nor’Wester, spying through crevices of the logs, caught Robertson sealing up the bung in the whiskey keg. Swords and pistol in hand, the angry partners burst into the room with torrents of abuse that Robertsonwas quite able to return. He was too dangerous a man to keep prisoner. The Nor’Westers decided to ship him out of the country on pain of assassination if he dared to return. No doubt Robertson smiled. His own coureurs had long since been sent speeding over prairie and swamp for Red River to warn the Hudson’s Bay governor, Williams, to catch the Northwest fur brigade when the canoes would be running the rapids of the Saskatchewan in June.

Of the forty Nor’Westers conducting the June brigade to Montreal, half a dozen were directors. “I was embarked with Simon McGillivray,” Robertson writes. “At Isle a la Crosse ... seeing the strong rapids before us, I threw off my cloak as was my custom when running rapids.... What was my horror when I perceived our canoe swept out of its track into a shute over the rocks.... Our steersman shouted, ‘My God, we are all lost.’ ... The canoe upset.... I attempted to swim ashore but the strong eddies drew me under the falls where I found Mr. Simon McGillivray and two or three others clinging to the gun’els of the canoe.... The canoe swept on down the current and Mr. Shaw, one of the partners, caught us below.” What was almost an escape through an accident evidently suggested to Robertson’s mind that it was not absolutely necessary heshould be deported out of the country against his will. At Cumberland House, where the brigade camped for a night, there was a Hudson’s Bay as well as a Northwest post. Robertson asked leave to say good-by to his old friends, but no sooner was he inside the gates of the Hudson’s Bay post than bolts were shot and every man of the ten inside the palisades, armed ready to fire if the Nor’Westers approached. “I have escaped,” he writes, “but not agreeable to my feelings.... However my friends may applaud the act, my conscience tells me I have not done right in breaking my parole.... However, it is all over now.... At half past ten in the morning, the Northwest canoes pushed off from the beach without me.”

Where the Saskatchewan empties into Lake Winnipeg are rough ledges of rock known as Grand Rapids. Here, it was usual to lighten loads, passengers landing to walk across the portage, the voyageurs running the canoes down full swirl to a camp below the rapids. Robertson knew that Williams, the Hudson’s Bay governor from Red River, would be waiting for the Northwest brigade at this point. Barely had his captors’ canoes paddled away from Cumberland House, when Robertson launched out on their trail far enough behind to escape notice, bound for the exciting rendezvous of Grand Rapids.“In paddling along,” he writes, “we were suddenly interrupted with a shout ‘Canoe ahead!’ ... A shot was fired.... We arranged our pistols. The canoe was plainly approaching us. What shall be done? If these are enemies, the water is the safest place for defense. It was a moment of anxiety. As the canoe came nearer, a stranger stood up, waved his hat and shouted, ‘Glorious news! Five North-West partners captured at Grand Rapids—Shaw, McIntosh, Campbell, McTavish and Frobisher taken! I am sent to meet Mr. Robertson!’ We at once shaped our course to the canoe when our voyageurs struck up a song the men of both canoes yelling a cheer at each chorus.” At eleven on the morning of July 30th, Robertson crossed the portage of Grand Rapids. He found himself in the midst of a stirring scene. Strung across the river at the foot of the rapids were barges mounted with swivels. On the bank lay the entire year’s output of Athabasca furs, the poor French voyageurs huddling together, the loudest bully cowed; and apart from the camp in the windowless lodge of an old French hunter, were the captured Northwest partners surrounded by the guard of a hundred De Meuron soldiers under Governor Williams. This was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. As Williams blurted out in a gasconade striding forward to welcomeRobertson, “two could play at the capturing business.”

And a sorry thing “the capturing business” proved. Robertson does not give any details. He is evidently both ashamed of the episode and sorry; but the account is found in the journals of the Nor’Westers. Anxious to rescue Robertson, the Hudson’s Bay governor had his barges strung across the river and his soldiers in ambush along the trail of the portage, when the unsuspecting Athabasca brigade, laden with furs to the water line, glided down the Saskatchewan. The canoes arrived in three detachments on the 18th, and 20th, and 30th of June. Rapids behind and pointed swivels before, the voyageurs were easy victims, surrendering to the soldiers at once. It was another matter with the partners. Both Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers knew these lawless raids would be condemned by the courts; but each side also knew if it could capture and hold the other out of the Athabasca for a single year, the excluded rival would be ruined.

Frobisher and Campbell, accompanied by two servants, were the first partners to set out across the portage. Half way over, a movement in the grass caught their attention, and before they could speak they were surrounded by fifteen Hudson’s Bay soldiers with pointed bayonets. Frobisher was aman of enormous strength and violent temper. No Nor’Wester had exercised more wanton cruelty over Hudson’s Bay captives than he. As he saw himself suddenly looking into the barrel of a Hudson’s Bay gun, he had involuntarily knocked aside the muzzle and doubled his fist for a blow, when sharp bayonet prods in the small of his back sent him along the path at a run. The other partners as they came were captured in the same summary way. Cooped up in the hunter’s lodge at the foot of the rapids, they demanded of Governor Williams his warrant for such proceedings.

“Warrant?” roared the Hudson’s Bay governor. “What warrant had you when you held Robertson captive all last winter in Athabasca? What warrant had you for flogging Clarke out of the country two years ago? Talk to me of your Royal Proclamations of peace! I don’t care a curse for your royal proclamations. I rely on the charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Your governor of Canada is a d—— rascal! He is bribed by your Northwest gold! Warrants—indeed! Warrants are d—— nonsense in this country! Out of this country you go. I’ll drive out every Nor’Wester or die in the attempt.” In the midst of the tornado, some excitement arose from McIntosh, a Northwest partner, who was ill and had run the rapids with his canoemen, jumpingoverboard and trying to swim ashore. Two Hudson’s Bay canoemen pursued, caught him by the scruff of the neck and towed him ashore. Satisfied that he had captured all the partners in this brigade, Williams at once released the clerks and voyageurs with their cargoes of furs to proceed to Montreal. As the canoemen walked out of the hunter’s cabin past the sentry, Frobisher beside himself with rage at the governor’s rating—attempted to follow. He was clubbed to the ground. He hurled the full force of his herculean strength at his assailant. This time, the gun-stock struck him on the head. It is said from that moment he became so violently insane that he had to be kept under guard of two personal servants, Turcotte and Lepine. During the week that Williams waited at Grand Rapids for the coming of Robertson, the Northwest captives were kept on an island in midstream, forbidden even to leave their tent. One night, the partner McIntosh, succeeded in rolling himself out under the tent flap to the rear. Crawling to that side of the island farthest from the sentries, he bound two or three floating logs together in a raft and with a dead branch as a sweep, succeeded in escaping across the river. When he was missed in the morning, William, the Hudson’s Bay governor, ordered his Indian scouts out “to take McIntosh dead or alive,” but Indian friends faithfully concealed theNor’Wester. He was recaptured by force the next winter.

When Colin Robertson came down the Saskatchewan in his canoe on the 30th of June, instead of being a prisoner as he had expected, he was one of a party of one hundred and thirty Hudson’s Bay men to conduct the captured Northwest partners across Lake Winnipeg to Norway House. Here, Robertson remained. Governor Williams took the prisoners on to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The question was—what to do with the prisoners? At any cost, they must be kept out of Athabasca. That would effect the ruin of the Northwest Company in a year, but the Hudson’s Bay Company would not thank Williams for landing them in any more lawsuits by illegal acts, and they could not be taken to Montreal. Shaw and Campbell and McTavish—the same McTavish who had sent Astor’s men packing from the Columbia—were treated as prisoners of honor in the main house of York Fort at Hudson’s Bay and allowed to exercise on the lead roof of the building. On the 30th of August came Franklin, the explorer, with letters of introduction to both Northwest and Hudson’s Bay traders. It was suggested by Franklin that the Northwest partners be sent home to England by the boat that had brought him out. Shaw and McTavish sailed as steerage passengers.Campbell chose to go down to the end of James Bay and overland to Canada, where the story of his adventures ran like wildfire; but the Hudson’s Bay governor went back to the interior without leaving any instructions as to Frobisher. Either the Company would not forgive his cruel treatment of Hudson’s Bay servants, or it was unsafe to release him in his violent condition. He was confined in a dilapidated outhouse where rain formed pools of water on the mud floor, with no protection against the cold but the clothes on his back and a three-point blanket. With him were the servants, Turcotte and Lepine. His violent ravings and maniacal struggles gradually gave place to a great depression. A servant of the fort took pity on the three prisoners and began smuggling extra rations at night through the iron-barred window.

From this time, Benjamin Frobisher planned a desperate escape, saving at the cost of physical strength food from their daily allowance for the inland voyage. His men expostulated. A voyage inland so late meant certain death. It was a pitch dark night on the 30th of September. Frobisher and his men broke gaol, coaxed the friendly Hudson’s Bay man to give them three extra pairs of moccasins and mits, picked up an old fish net, with a piece of deerskin to act as tent, and clambered overthe palisades. Winter had set in early. The rain-swollen river was cold as ice, but in the three emaciated fugitives plunged, and swam to the far shore where there chanced to rock an old canoe. With the help of the tide, they made ten miles that night. Frobisher began to recover courage, singing wildly and paddling buoyant as a school boy, irresponsible as a maniac. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades were still passing down the river. The three Nor’Westers passed these at night with muffled paddles, keeping to the far side of the stream. At intervals were abandoned hunter’s cabins. Here, the three would take refuge for a night, leaving their net set in the river for fish. The pemmican saved from the allowance at the fort and the fish caught at night were the only food. By the 19th of October, they had passed the Hudson’s Bay post, now called Oxford House, half way between Hudson Bay and the Saskatchewan. The nights now became bitterly cold, and there were no more old lodges—only a wind-break made of the canoe and the deerskin. Frobisher had become apparently quite sane, but provisions were running low, and he was visibly feebler each day.

The river here widened to a labyrinth of winding lakes, and the men kept losing themselves, missing in the blinding rains the poles stuck up here andthere to mark the way. They were wasting time, and it was a race against death. When they arose on October 23rd, six inches of snow lay on the ground, and shore ice was so thick they could not break it with their paddles. The canoe had to be left behind and the march continued by land. At the end of that week, there were only two pounds of pemmican left, and the men begged Frobisher to give himself up at the Hudson’s Bay post of Norway House near Lake Winnipeg, but Frobisher bade them push on. There would be Indians at Lake Winnipeg. By a curious perversity of weather, a thaw now came, and they found themselves at Lake Winnipeg before open water without a canoe. Whether they waited here with an Indian camp until the ice would bear them, or followed the north shore of the lake on foot, cannot be told from Frobisher’s disjointed journal. Their moccasins were worn to shreds, their feet bleeding, their only food the bit of deerskin and tatters of buffalo hide stuck up on the bushes as trail marks by the Indians. Staggering through snow and water to their waists, tripped and tangled by windfall, losing themselves in the autumn storms, the three men were now barely conscious. About the third week of November, Frobisher could walk no farther, and the brave Half-breeds, who could have saved their own lives by deserting himlong ago, carried him by turns on their backs. Such conduct needs no comment. On the 20th of November, they were only two days from the first Northwest post on the Saskatchewan. With a last flickering gleam of reason, Frobisher realized the only hope was for the men to leave him and get help. “For God’s sake,” he penciled on a slip of paper, “lose not a moment to relieve me,” and he ordered Turcotte and Lepine to carry this to the Northwest post on the Saskatchewan. They kindled fire for him and left him broiling a piece of the old deerskin for food; but the men were so feeble they made poor progress. It was four days before they reached the fort, having actually eaten their leather clothing and crawled the last day’s travel. The two Half-breeds arrived delirious. It was three days more before messengers reached Frobisher’s camp. His lifeless body was found lying across the ashes of the fire. So perished one of the founders of the Great Northwest Company—the victim of his own policy of lawless violence.

But a life more or less was not to stand in the way of the fur trade. The very next winter, Colin Robertson was back with the Hudson’s Bay fur brigade on the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, pushing the traders over the mountains to the Pacific Coast. “Opponents have given us no trouble,” he writes,“but starvation nearly forced us to abandon the country. From November to February, I lived on dried berries and water with flour.” Letters record how at one post famine compelled the Hudson’s Bay men to surrender to the Nor’Westers; how at another, Black, “the Northwest bully,” was cudgelled from his post by Hudson’s Bay partisans. So the merry play went on with these dare-devil gamesters of the wilderness till in the spring of 1820, bringing the fur brigade down the Saskatchewan, Robertson found the tables reversed. The gamesters were again playing with loaded dice. “The Nor’Westers have assembled to catchusat Grand Rapids,” he writes. What defense can be expected from our sixty men worn down by hunger? This is returning the blow with a vengeance.... I told Mr. Miles, my assistant, all was not right at Grand Rapids. The governor was not there to protect our passing.... We hid the Company’s papers in a pemmican sack between beef and fat. If no scouts came back, either our spies were seized, or the Grand Rapids were clear and the passage free.... Passing a sleepless night, we embarked at daybreak, descended the current slowly, passed to the north bank ... then asked my guide to run the rapids without the men disembarking. This he positively refused to do, saying he would not venturethe rapids unless the men got out and each carried a pack to lighten the canoe.... So we began to cross the portage and had nearly reached the end when a large party of Half-breeds and Indians started from concealment, armed.... A Northwest agent snatched my gun ... my men hesitated whether to come to the rescue, but I signalled them to be off and escape in the canoes.

The Nor’Wester who had captured Robertson, was the same J. D. Campbell captured at this very place and sent down to Hudson’s Bay with Robertson’s aid two years before. Fortunately, this Northwest partner was deadly tired of the policy of gasconading violence. He told Robertson frankly he must either sign an oath never to return to Athabasca, or go a prisoner to Montreal. “I gave the fellow one look of perfect contempt,” writes Robertson. On his way down to Montreal, he succeeded in borrowing a few dollars from a friendly passer-by. At Wright’s Farm, near the present city of Ottawa, the brigade was ordered to rest for some days. Robertson knew it was only to enable constables to come up from Montreal to arrest him. When the order was given to embark, he seized a biscuit (his enemies say a crow-bar) and hurling it in the face of the Northwest partner, leveled his pistol and dared the whole company to take him. The Northwesters did notaccept the challenge. They no doubt knew as Robertson says, “that most of the constables in Montreal were out after me.” After a few days’ rest at the wayside inn, the doughty Hudson’s Bay fighter rode like mad for American territory, pausing only to change horses at Montreal. “The night was dark. The rain fell in torrents. A faithful friend rode before day and night all the way.... At three in the morning ... we reached Plattsburg.”

On the way to Montreal, Robertson had heard that the Nor’Westers were about to propose a union with the Hudson’s Bay, and he judged that he could serve his Company best by hurrying to London and pressing on the General Court the fact that the country was already in the hands of the Hudson’s Bay traders without any union. What was his amazement on taking ship at New York to find as fellow passengers two Northwest partners, Bethune and McLoughlin, now on the way to London to urge the union. “Hunting bees’ wings in their champagne glasses,” as Robertson describes their postprandial talks, the two Nor’Westers actually asked Robertson to introduce them to the Hudson’s Bay Company, but the feud lasted to the end of the voyage. “Wine went round freely and subscriptions were opened for the ship’s hands,” writes Robertson. “Our friend, the Nor’Wester, Dr. McLoughlin, hadput down his name. I took the pen to put mine down, but seeing Bethune, the other Nor’Wester, waiting, said to Abbé Carriere:

“‘Come Abbé, put down your name. I don’t want to sign between two Nor’Westers.’

“‘Never mind, Robertson,’ says the Abbé, ‘Christ was crucified between two thieves.’

“McLoughlin flew in a dreadful passion, but being a good Catholic, had to stomach it.”

As the world knows, the embassy of the Nor’Westers was successful. The two companies were united, and the aforetime bitter rivals returned to serve the Hudson’s Bay for many a year as faithful friends and loyal partners.

Over the united companies there was appointed as governor in America, George Simpson, who had been sent as clerk to Athabasca, quietly to observe the true state of affairs.

Notes on Chapter XXIX.—The contents of this chapter are taken from Robertson’s letters to the directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company—some two hundred foolscap pages (manuscript). Frobisher’s death is given in the Masson Collection of N. W. C. Journals.The terms of union of the two companies as given in the H. B. C. Minutes of March 20, 1821, were in brief as follows: Present at the General Court: Joseph Berens, Gov.; John Pelly, Deputy; Thos. Langlois, Benj. Harrison, Andrew Colville, Thomas Pitt, Nicholas Garry, Wm. Smith, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice, Jno. Liebenwood, Wm. Thwaytes, Robt. Whitehead, M. P. Lucas, Alex. Lean.The Governor laid before the court draft of agreement proposed between the Adventurers of England on the one part andWm. McGillivray, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice on the second part, in behalf of the N. W. C., by which deed it was agreed to unite the whole fur trade carried on into one concern from the first day of June next, the said H. B. C. and N. W. C. to find an equal share of capital and to divide the profits and losses for the term of 21 years.... £150,000 of the sd. joint stock apportioned among holders of H. B. C. stock in proportion to their respective interests, and £100,000 apportioned to the N. W. C.Nicholas Garry was appointed to go out with Simpson and reorganize the united companies. With them as representing the N. W. C. went Simon McGillivray.Most of the actors mentioned in the episodes of this chapter retired to become great nabobs in Montreal. The McGillivrays bought an estate in Scotland. Robertson served the H. B. C. for many years. John Clarke became a magnate of the Montreal aristocracy and was to be seen driving John Jacob Astor every time the American came to Montreal. Those men, who did not retire to Montreal, went to Red River or the Oregon. Among those going to the Columbia were: McLoughlin, Ogden, McKay, Ermatinger. Just as this volume went to press, the widow of John Clarke, who is still living at a very advanced age in Montreal, and her daughter, Miss Adele Clarke, issued a small brochure of recollections of the old days in Montreal—a rare little treatise with a flavor of old wine.The gross sales of the H. B. C. from the time Athabasca was successfully invaded, ran up from £2,000 a year to £68,261.The cost of Robertson’s first Expedition to Athabasca is given in the minutes as £20,000—sheer loss.George Simpson went out at a salary of £600, with £400 for traveling expenses. He was the first governor to enter Red River by way of Montreal.It was in the winter of 1820-21 that Robertson and the Nor’Westers went to London. The company voted £1,000 to Robertson 21 Feb., 1821, as reward for his success, and granted him 21 shillings a day for expenses and £50 passage money back to Montreal.

The terms of union of the two companies as given in the H. B. C. Minutes of March 20, 1821, were in brief as follows: Present at the General Court: Joseph Berens, Gov.; John Pelly, Deputy; Thos. Langlois, Benj. Harrison, Andrew Colville, Thomas Pitt, Nicholas Garry, Wm. Smith, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice, Jno. Liebenwood, Wm. Thwaytes, Robt. Whitehead, M. P. Lucas, Alex. Lean.

The Governor laid before the court draft of agreement proposed between the Adventurers of England on the one part andWm. McGillivray, Simon McGillivray, Edward Ellice on the second part, in behalf of the N. W. C., by which deed it was agreed to unite the whole fur trade carried on into one concern from the first day of June next, the said H. B. C. and N. W. C. to find an equal share of capital and to divide the profits and losses for the term of 21 years.... £150,000 of the sd. joint stock apportioned among holders of H. B. C. stock in proportion to their respective interests, and £100,000 apportioned to the N. W. C.

Nicholas Garry was appointed to go out with Simpson and reorganize the united companies. With them as representing the N. W. C. went Simon McGillivray.

Most of the actors mentioned in the episodes of this chapter retired to become great nabobs in Montreal. The McGillivrays bought an estate in Scotland. Robertson served the H. B. C. for many years. John Clarke became a magnate of the Montreal aristocracy and was to be seen driving John Jacob Astor every time the American came to Montreal. Those men, who did not retire to Montreal, went to Red River or the Oregon. Among those going to the Columbia were: McLoughlin, Ogden, McKay, Ermatinger. Just as this volume went to press, the widow of John Clarke, who is still living at a very advanced age in Montreal, and her daughter, Miss Adele Clarke, issued a small brochure of recollections of the old days in Montreal—a rare little treatise with a flavor of old wine.

The gross sales of the H. B. C. from the time Athabasca was successfully invaded, ran up from £2,000 a year to £68,261.

The cost of Robertson’s first Expedition to Athabasca is given in the minutes as £20,000—sheer loss.

George Simpson went out at a salary of £600, with £400 for traveling expenses. He was the first governor to enter Red River by way of Montreal.

It was in the winter of 1820-21 that Robertson and the Nor’Westers went to London. The company voted £1,000 to Robertson 21 Feb., 1821, as reward for his success, and granted him 21 shillings a day for expenses and £50 passage money back to Montreal.

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