Bay and Nor'-West Companies.

Lord Selkirk's coming was like a ray of sunshine to the Colonists of Red
River. Being of an intensely religious disposition, the people reminded
him that the elder who came out in 1815, who was able to baptize and
marry, had been carried away by main force by the Nor'-Westers to Canada
in 1818, so that they were without religious services. They always
continued to have prayer meetings and to keep up the pious customs of
their fathers. This practise long survived among them. In repeating his
promise of a clergyman, Lord Selkirk asserted to them: "Selkirk never
forfeited his word."

His work done among his Colonists, he left them never to see them again.
He went south from Fort Douglas to the United States, visited, it is
said, St. Louis, came to the Eastern States, and rejoined in Montreal
his Countess and children who had in his absence lived in great anxiety.
One of his daughters, afterwards Lady Isabella Hope, told the writer
nearly thirty years ago that she as a girl remembered seeing Lord
Selkirk as he returned from this long journey, coming around the Island
into Montreal Harbor paddled by French voyageurs in swift canoes to his
destination. His attention was immediately given to law suits and
actions brought against him in the courts of Upper Canada. These legal
conflicts originated from the troubles about the two centres--Fort
Douglas and Fort William--where the collisions had taken place. The
influence of the Nor'-Westers in Montreal was so great that the U.E.
Loyalists of Upper Canada sympathised with them against the noble
philanthropist. Justice was undoubtedly perverted in Upper Canada in the
most shameless way. Weak in body at the best, Lord Selkirk by his
misfortunes, losses and legal persecution began to fail in health. With
the sense of having been unjustly defeated, and anxious about his
Colonists in Red River, he returned with his family to Britain to his
beloved St. Mary's Isle. He sought for justice from the British
Parliament, but could there get no movement in his favor. A copy of a
letter to him from Sir Walter Scott, his old friend, is in the hands of
the writer, but Sir Walter was himself too ill at the time to lend him
aid in presenting his case before the British public. Heart-broken, he
gave up the struggle. With the Countess and his family he went to the
South of France and died on April 8th, 1820, at Pau, and his bones lie
in the Protestant Cemetery of Orthes