Rather it was the case that the fur trading oligarchy ensconced in the plains of the West, could not understand the heart of a philanthropist—­of a man who could work for mere humanity.  Up till a few years ago it was the fashion for even historians, being unable to understand his motive and disposition, to speak of him as a “kind hearted, but eccentric Scottish nobleman.”

Lord Selkirk’s active mind led him into various different spheres of human life.  He visited France and studied the problem of the French Revolution, and while sympathizing with the struggle for liberty, was alienated as were Wordsworth and hundreds of other British writers and philanthropists, by the excesses of Robespierre and his French compatriots.  When the Napoleonic wars were at their height, like a true patriot, Lord Selkirk wrote a small work on the “System of National Defence,” anticipating the Volunteer System of the present day.  But his keen mind sought lines of activity as well as of theory.  Seeing his fellow-countrymen, as well as their Irish neighbors, in distress and also desiring to keep them under the British flag, he planned at his own expense to carry out the Colonists to America.  Even before this effort, reading Alexander Mackenzie’s great book of voyages detailing the discoveries of the Mackenzie River in its course to the Arctic Sea, and also the first crossing in northern latitudes of the mountains to the Pacific Ocean—­he had applied (1802), to the Imperial Government, for permission to take a colony to the western extremity of Canada upon the waters which fall into Lake Winnipeg.  This spot, “fertile and having a salubrious climate,” he could reach by way of the Nelson River, running into Hudson Bay.  The British Government refused him the permission necessary.  Lord Selkirk’s first visit to Canada was in the year 1803, in which his colony was placed in Prince Edward Island.  Canada was a country very sparsely settled, but it was then turning its eyes toward Britain, with the hope of receiving more settlers, for it had just seen settled in Upper Canada a band of Glengarry Highlanders.  Lord Selkirk visited Canada by way of New York.  To a man of his imaginative disposition, the fur trade appealed irresistibly.  The picturesque brigades of the voyageurs hieing away for the summer up the Ottawa toward the land of which Mackenzie had written, “the Nor’-Wester” garb of capote and moccassin and snowshoe, and the influence plainly given by this the only remunerative industry of Montreal, caught his fancy.  Then as a British peer and a Scottish Nobleman, the fun-loving but hard-headed Scottish traders of Montreal took him to their hearts.  He met them at their convivial gatherings, he heard the chanson sung by voyageurs, and the “habitant” caught his fancy.  He was only a little past thirty, and that Canadian picture could never be effaced from his mind.  In after days, these “Lords of the North” abused Lord Selkirk for spying out their trade, for catching the secrets of their business which were in the wind, and for making an undue use of what they had disclosed to him.  In this there was nothing.  His schemes were afire in his own mind long before, his Montreal experiences but fanned the flame, and led him to send a few Colonists to Upper Canada to the Settlement to Baldoon.  This settlement was, however, of small account.