The men were arrested and were brought before Macdonell and Hillier, sitting as magistrates.  This was about the end of February.  The rebels, however, defied the authorities, departed carrying Finlay with them and getting possession of a house took it defiantly for their own use.  During their remaining sojourn at York Factory they subsisted on provisions obtained at the Factory itself and carried by themselves from the post to the encampment.  Governor Macdonell, meantime, decided to send these rebellious spirits home to Britain for punishment, and not allow them to go on to Red River.

The possession by the rioters of some five or six stand of firearms, was felt to be a menace to the peace of the encampment.  An effort was made to obtain them by Macdonell, but “the insurgents,” as they were called, secreted the arms and thus kept possession of them.  In June on the rebels being very bold and being unable to get back across the Nelson River from the Factory for a number of days, they were forced by Mr. Auld, then at York Factory, to give up their arms and submit or else have their supplies from the Factory stopped.  They were thus compelled to submit and on the receipt of a note from Mr. Auld to Macdonell, the latter wrote a joyful letter to Lord Selkirk to the effect that the insurgents had at length come to terms, acknowledged their guilt and thrown themselves upon the mercy of the Hudson’s Bay Committee.

This surrender made it unnecessary to send the body of rioters back to England for trial.

During the months of later winter Governor Miles Macdonell was specially employed in building boats for the journey up to Red River.  He introduced a style of boat used on the rivers of New York, his native State.  These, however, he complains, were very badly constructed through the clumsiness and lack of skill of the Colonists and Company employees, whom he had ordered to build them.

Now on July fourth, 1812, Governor Macdonell, his Colonists, and the Hudson’s Bay officials—­Cook and Auld—­are all gazing wistfully up the Nelson and Hayes Rivers, and we have the postscript to the last letter as found in Miles Macdonell letter book, sent to Lord Selkirk, reading, “Four Irishmen are to be sent home; Higgins and Hart, for the felonious attack on the Orkneymen; William Gray, non-effective, and Hugh Redden, who lost his arm by the bursting of a gun given him to fire off by Mr. Brown, one of the Glasgow clerks.”

(Signed) H. MacD.

The expedition left York Factory for the interior on the 6th of July, 1812.

CHAPTER V.

First foot on red river banks.