prisoner.  His ingenuity, courage, and force of character were so great that at any time he might be the centre of a movement among the Metis.  It was in consequence decided that Duncan Cameron should be taken as a captive to England by way of York Factory and be tried across seas.  Colin Robertson was instructed to conduct him to York Factory.  No doubt this was a reprisal for the arrest and banishment meted out to Miles Macdonell.  Cameron was delayed at York Factory on his way to England for more than a year and after a short stay in Britain returned to Canada.  He afterwards obtained damages of L3,000 for his illegal detention.

[Illustration:  Fort Douglas From copy of a Pencil sketch made by Lord Selkirk and obtained by the author]

But there was future trouble brewing all through the West.

The new Governor, however, unaware of the real state of matters in Rupert’s Land and probably ignorant of the claim of Canada to the West, and of the force of a customary occupation of the land, procured with high-handed zeal a further reprisal.  Before Colin Robertson had gone to conduct Cameron to York Factory the Governor and Robertson had discussed the advisability of dismantling Fort Gibraltar.  To this course Robertson, knowing the irritation which this would cause to the Nor’-Westers strongly objected.  For the time the proposal was dropped, but when Robertson had gone, then the Governor proceeded with a force of thirty men to pull down Gibraltar, which was done in a week.  The stockade was taken down, carried to the Red River and made into a raft.  Upon this was piled the material of the buildings, and the whole was floated to the site of Fort Douglas and used in erecting a new structure and fully completing the Fort which John McLeod had begun.  The same aggressive course was pursued under orders from the Governor in regard to Pembina House which was captured, its occupants sent as prisoners to Fort Douglas, and its stores confiscated for the use of the Colony.  The spirit shown by Governor Semple, it is suggested, had something of the same treatment as that given to the Colonists by the official classes in England against which Edmund Burke burst out with such vehemence in his great orations.

Governor Semple’s course would not satisfy Colin Robertson nor would it have been approved by Lord Selkirk.  The course was his own and fully did he afterwards pay the price for his aggressions.

The last acts of Governor Semple as the report of them was carried westward and repeated over the camp fires of the Nor’-Westers and their Bois-brules horsemen and voyageurs caused the most violent excitement.  The Metis claimed a right in the soil from their Indian mothers.  The Indian title had never been extinguished and afterwards Lord Selkirk found it necessary to make a treaty and satisfy the Indian claim.  The Nor’-Westers were also by a good number of years the first occupants of the Red River district.  The Canadian discovery of the West by French traders, the daring occupation by Findlay, the Frobishers, Thompson, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie all from Montreal even to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, seemed strong to Canadians as against the undefined and shadowy claim to the soil of Lord Selkirk and his officers.