ANCIENT HUDSON S BAY COMPANY WAKENS UP 31 



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 ban 

 quets 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, 

 Lork 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 Winni 

 peg), the headquarters of the Hudson s Bay Company, 

 and Fort Gibraltar, the North- West post whence sup 

 plies 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 bri 

 gade of voyageurs two hundred strong at Montreal and 

 proceed up the Nor Westers route to Athabasca, Mac- 

 Ivenzie River, and the Rockies. This was the noisy, 

 blustering, bragging company of gaily-bedizened fel 

 lows 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 rev 

 ellers ! Eighteen of them died of starvation in the far, 

 cold north, owing to the conflict between Fort Doug 

 las 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 



