SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND DISCOVERIES 

 OF ROBERT CAMPBELL 



Chief Factor of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company 



The Historical and Scientitic Society of Manitoba met in 

 the City Hall, Winnipeg, on the evening of April 14th, 1898. A 

 large audience had assembled to hear the papers of the evening. 

 Chief Factor William Clark, President of the Society, occupied 

 the Chair. The first paper of the evening was read by Rev. Dr. 

 Bryce, a life member of the Society, on the " Life and Discov- 

 eries of the late Chief Factor Robert Campbell. A large map, 

 prepared by Bulman Bros., was used in following the interesting 

 account of the explorations of the distinguished discoverer on 

 Liard River, Dease Lake, the Upper Stikine, and the Upper 

 Yukon rivers. Dr. Bryce said as follows : 



More than twenty-six years ago, the writer remembers as 

 one of the first men he met in Red River Chief Factor Robert 

 Campbell, the discoverer of the Upper Yukon River, which is 

 the goal of so many gold seekers to-day. Robert Campbell was 

 a natural leader of men. His tall, commanding figure, sedate 

 bearing, and yet shrewd and adaptable manner, singled him out 

 as one of the remarkable class of men who in the service of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company governed an empire by their personal 

 magnetism, and held many thousands of Indians in check by 

 their honesty, tact and firmness. 



Robert Campbell, like so many of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany's officers and men, was of Scottish origin, and was born, the 

 son of a considerable sheep farmer, in Glenlyon, Perthshire, Scot- 

 land, on the 21st of February, 1808. Having received a fair 

 education in his native glen, which was further carried on in 

 the City of Perth, he was led b}'' Sir George Simpson, the 

 Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to come to the 

 Red River in 1832 to superintend the sheep farm being- 

 started by the Company at St. James Parish, on the Assiniboine 

 River, a few miles west of the City of Winnipeg of to-day. 



