ankness, "_pinning
the crew with fixed bayonets to the deck_." Lying snugly at anchor, the
victors awaited the coming of the other unsuspecting schooner, let her
cast anchor, bore down upon her, poured in a broadside, and took both
schooners to Mackinac. Freed from all apprehension of capture, the
North-West brigade proceeded eastward to the Ottawa River, and without
further adventure came to Montreal, where all was wild confusion from
another cause.

At the very time when war endangered the entire route of the Nor'
Westers from Montreal to the Pacific, the Hudson's Bay Company awakened
from its long sleep. While Mr. Astor was pushing his schemes in the
United States, Lord Selkirk was formulating plans for the control of all
Canada's fur trade. Like Mr. Astor, he too had been the guest at the
North-West banquets in the Beaver Club, Montreal, and had heard fabulous
things from those magnates of the north about wealth made in the fur
trade. Returning to England, Lord Selkirk bought up enough stock of the
Hudson's Bay Company to give him full control, and secured from the
shareholders an enormous grant of land surrounding the mouths of the Red
and Assiniboine rivers.

Where the Assiniboine joins the northern Red were situated Fort Douglas
(later Fort Garry, now Winnipeg), the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay
Company, and Fort Gibraltar, the North-West post whence supplies were
sent all the way from the Mandans on the Missouri to the Eskimo in the
arctics.

Not satisfied with this _coup_, Lord Selkirk engaged Colin Robertson, an
old Nor' Wester, to gather a brigade of _voyageurs_ two hundred strong
at Montreal and proceed up the Nor' Westers' route to Athabasca,
MacKenzie River, and the Rockies. This was the noisy, blustering,
bragging company of gaily-bedizened fellows that had turned the streets
of Montreal into a roistering booth when the Astorians came to the end
of their long eastward journey. Poor, fool-happy revellers! Eighteen of
them died of starvation in the far, cold north, owing to the conflict
between Fort Douglas and Gibraltar, which delayed supplies.

Beginning in 1811, Lord Selkirk poured a stream of colonists to his
newly-acquired territory by way of Churchill and York Factory on Hudson
Bay. These people were given lands, and in return expected to defend
the Hudson's Bay Company from Nor' Westers. The Nor' Westers struck back
by discouraging the colonists, shipping them free out of the country,
and get