led from across the
seas. Not again until the twentieth century were the northern provinces
to receive so large a share of British emigrants as came across in the
twenties and thirties. Swarms were preparing to leave the overcrowded
British hives. Corn laws and poor laws and famine, power-driven looms
that starved the cottage weaver, peace that threw an army on a crowded
and callous labor market, landlords who rack-rented the Connaughtman's
last potato or cleared Highland glens of folks to make way for sheep,
rulers who persisted in denying the masses any voice in their own
government--all these combined to drive men forth in tens of thousands.
Australia was still a land of convict settlements and did not attract
free men. To most the United States was the land of promise. Yet, thanks
to state aid, private philanthropy, landlords' urging and cheap fares
on the ships that came to St. John and Quebec for timber, Canada and
the provinces by the sea received a notable share. In the quarter of
a century following the peace with Napoleon, British North America
received more British emigrants than the United States and the
Australian colonies together, though many were merely birds of passage.

The country west of the Great Lakes did not share in this flood of
settlement, except for one tragic interlude. Lord Selkirk, a Scotchman
of large sympathy and vision, convinced that emigration was the cure for
the hopeless misery he saw around him, acquired a controlling interest
in the Hudson's Bay Company, and sought to plant colonies in a vast
estate granted from its domains. Between 1811 and 1815 he sent out to
Hudson Bay, and thence to the Red River, two or three hundred crofters
from the Highlands and the Orkneys. A little later these were joined by
some Swiss soldiers of fortune who had fought for Canada in the War of
1812. But Selkirk had reckoned without the partners of the North-West
Company of Montreal, who were not prepared to permit mere herders and
tillers to disturb the Indians and the game. The Nor'Westers attacked
the helpless colonists and massacred a score of them. Selkirk retorted
in kind, leading out an armed band which seized the Nor'Westers' chief
post at Fort William. The war was then transferred to the courts, with
heart-breaking delays and endless expense. At last Selkirk died broken
in spirit, and most of his colonists drifted to Canada or across
the border. But a handful held on, and for fifty years their lit