Lord Selkirk he would pay and should three-quarters of the Colony accept his offer they would have provisions provided for a year free of cost.  When the poor Colonists thought of the bleak, uncultivated country in which they were, of the inevitable hardships which lay before them, and saw the dangerous, unsettled state of the Selkirk settlement, they could not well resist the offer.  Furthermore, the schemer did not stop here.  As was afterward found out, George Campbell, the arch-agitator and leader among the disaffected settlers received a promise of L100, and others of L20 and the like.  Further to allay their fears it was urged that they were going where the British flag was flying and where the truest loyalty prevailed.  It was pointed out that it had been to prevent any obstacles being raised against their going, that the nine guns had been seized and were in the custody of the Nor’-Westers.  Accordingly full arrangements were made.  A supply of canoes was obtained and on the 15th of June, 1815, no less than one hundred and forty of the two hundred Colonists on Red River embarked and drifted down the river on their long canoe voyage of more than a thousand miles.  By the end of July they had gone over the dangerous Fur traders’ route and passing over four or five hundred miles reached Fort William, near Lake Superior.  But their journey was not one-half over.  Along the base of the rugged shores of Lake Superior, through the St. Mary’s River, down the foaming Sault and then along the shores of Georgian Bay, they paddled their way to Penetanguishene.  From this point they crossed southward to Holland Landing, which is forty miles north of Toronto, and arrived at their destination on the 5th of September.

It is hard to find a parallel for such a journey.  They were a large body, made up of men, women, and children, continuously journeying for eighty-two days, through an unsettled and barren country, running dangerous rapids, and exposed to storms with a poorly organized commissariat, and under fear of pursuit by the agents of Lord Selkirk, to whom many of them were personally bound.  In the township of West Gwillinbury, north of Toronto, near London, and in the Talbot settlement, near St. Thomas—­all in Upper Canada—­they received their lands.  Half a century later, in one of the townships north of Toronto, the writer had pointed out to him a man named MacBeth weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, of whom it was humourously told that he had been carried all the way from Red River.  The explanation of course was, that he had been brought as an infant on this famous Hegira of the Selkirk Colonists.

The finishing of Cameron’s work on the Red River, was handed over to Alexander Macdonell.  The plan was nothing less than that the settlers remaining should be driven by force from the banks of Red River.  The party led by Macdonell was made up of Bois-Brules, under dashing young Cuthbert Grant.  On their agile ponies they appeared like scourging Huns, to drive out the discouraged remnant of Colonists.