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FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN
EMIGRATION
IN the very year that
Wordsworth penned his sonnet of lament for England, and gave forth
his cry for help for the British people, Lord Selkirk was deep in
contemplation as to how he might relieve their necessities. To him
emigration seemed the remedy. He had just read Sir Alexander
Mackenzie's journal, and had heard of the district of Red River as
being fertile and affording room for a large population. The plan
flashed into his mind of being the leader in a pioneer movement of
settlement for Rupert's Land which would relieve the distress of
crofter, farm labourer, and operative alike, and restore the
equilibrium disturbed by war and other disasters.
Accordingly His
Lordship, on April 4th, 1802, sent to Lord Pelham, home secretary, a
letter and memorial. This has never been published, but through the
kindness of the Earl of Kimberley when he was colonial secretary
some years ago, a copy was furnished to the writer.
In these documents
Lord Selkirk says: "No tract of land remains unoccupied on the
sea-coast of British America, except barren and frozen deserts. To
find a sufficient extent of good soil in a temperate climate we must
go far inland. This inconvenience is not, however, an insurmountable
obstacle to the prosperity of a colony, and appears to be amply
compensated by other advantages that are to be found in some remote
parts of British territory. At the western extremity of Canada, upon
the waters which fall into Lake Winnipeg, and, uniting with the
great river of Port Nelson, discharge themselves into Hudson Bay, is
a country which the Indian traders represent as fertile, and of a
climate far more temperate than the shores of the Atlantic under the
same parallel, and not more severe than that of Germany and Poland.
Here, therefore, the colonists may, with a moderate exertion of
industry, be certain of a comfortable subsistence, and they may also
raise some valuable objects of exportation. . . . Some of the
British traders have extended their discoveries into a climate which
appears well adapted even for the vine, the successful cultivation
of which would save immense sums that go every year from this
kingdom into the hands of its enemies. To a colony in these
territories the channel of trade must be the river of Port Nelson."
Here is the genesis
of Lord Selkirk's emigration movement almost a decade before he
organized his expedition to enter upon the land to be reached by way
of Nelson River. Lord Buckinghamshire, the colonial secretary, did
not favour the scheme, "the prejudices of the British people were so
strong against emigration." This is not to be wondered at. Britain
was engaged in a great war in which her very existence was at stake.
Surely it would be folly to weaken her supply of men. Lord Selkirk,
in his book published three years after this letter, combats the
arguments against emigration. He especially falls foul of the
Highland Society, which had strenuously opposed the removal of the
Highlanders from their lands to the New World.
Lord Selkirk was,
however, impressed with the thought of relieving suffering, and, in
1803, had organized and carried out his first emigration party.
Forbidden by the British government to begin a colony six hundred
miles inland from Hudson Bay, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, he was
compelled to content himself with a strip of land on the coast of
Prince Edward Island, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which could be
reached by ship.
In his work on
emigration a good account is given of this colony. The unoccupied
land extended, on the east coast of Prince Edward Island, for some
thirty miles. "Separated by an arm of the sea from any other
settlement," he says, "the ernigrants were placed in circumstances
scarcely more favourable than if the island had been completely
desert."
Lord Selkirk had
intended himself to precede the colonists, and to oversee the
preparations made for their reception. This he was unable to do.
Eight hundred persons, the greater proportion of whom were from the
Isle of Skye, and a number from each of the shires of Ross, Argyle,
and Inverness, with a few from the Island of Uist, made up this
pioneer party. They sailed from the British Isles in three ships,
and arrived respectively on the 7th, 9th, and 27th August, 1803. On
Lord Selkirk's reaching Charlottetown, the capital of the island, he
found that the third ship had just arrived, and that the settlers
had debarked from the other vessels in the district selected for
them.
The selected region
had been cleared by the French, who had been driven out in the year
before the taking of Quebec, and in the lapse of forty years
thickets of young trees had grown up, interspered with grassy
glades. This afforded a suitable region for encampment and
settlement. The settlers had, in the openings, built for each family
a hut of poles, which they had covered over with spruce branches,
and in these they were fairly comfortable. The camp had a strange
appearance; confused heaps of baggage were everywhere piled up
beside the huts; the fires built at night in the open spaces gave a
weird appearance to the scene. Lord Selkirk had his tent pitched at
the end of the camp, and all seemed to feel that the happy days of
clanship were back again, and that the "Clearances" were a thing of
the past.
The usual
difficulties were experienced. The land was not well surveyed, each
family was impatient, and indeed somewhat jealous as to the spot
which should be assigned to it. Certain measurements were absolutely
necessary. This took time. Discontent began to arise. Visitors came
from the English settlements of the island and started doubts by
their advice, and at one time the settlement was nearly broken up.
Food rose in price to a high figure, and flour had to be brought
from Nova Scotia. Scarcity of food, exposure, and a new climate
brought their inevitable consequences, and a contagious fever broke
out among the settlers. Fortunately Lord Selkirk had brought with
him a competent and clever physician, and through his exertions very
few fatal cases occurred.
At the end of three
or four weeks from the time of Lord Selkirk's arrival all the
allocations had been made, and the land sold at a moderate price
—less than one half the price current on the island; the fever had
begun to abate; and provisions became more plentiful by their
importation from abroad by Lord Selkirk's agent. The narrator says:
"From the moment the settlers were fixed in their respective
allotments of land they were enabled to proceed without interruption
in their work."
The zeal of the
settlers is recorded to have been remarkable. A father and three
sons occupied one lot; the father, sixty years of age, insisted on
being an axeman; the sons had no resource but to hide the, axe, and
the aged woodman spared the tree for the best of reasons. An elderly
widow and her two sons had taken a claim; the young men being absent
from home, the octogenarian matron seized the axe and undertook to
fell a tree; the return of her sons stopped her well-meant efforts
in time to prevent the tumbling monarch of the forest from crushing
to the earth their humble dwelling.
The settlement
continued to thrive; the people gained courage; they began to love
their new home, and two years after their arrival Lord Selkirk says,
speaking of the general improvement, "One of very moderate property,
who had a small possession in the Isle of Skye, traces his lineage
to a family which had once possessed an estate in Ross-shire, but
had lost it in the turbulence of the feudal times. He has given to
his new property the name of the ancient seat of his family, has
selected a situation with more taste than might have been expected
from a mere peasant; and to render the house of Auchtertyre worthy
of its name, is doing more than would otherwise have been expected
from a man of his station.,"
Thus the colony
prospered. Probably not less than four thousand people on the island
trace their origin to the three shiploads of 1803, while many in
different parts of the Canadian West call themselves Lord Selkirk's
islanders.
As soon as Lord
Selkirk had seen his colonists fairly settled, he visited the United
States and Canada. His active mind was taken up with the problems he
saw being worked out in the New World, and his patriotic feeling was
roused in favour of the British dependency of Canada. In the United
States he found numbers of "families from Scotland and Wales in New
England and in the state of New York," who were willing to remove to
Canada if favourable terms could be obtained.
Becoming acquainted
with the leading men in Montreal and Toronto, Lord Selkirk, with
surprising alertness and courage, undertook several large schemes of
emigration and development. He purchased a tract of land in the
townships of Dover and Chatham, in the western part of Upper Canada
near Lake St. Clair. Some twenty families of his Highland colonists
from Prince Edward Island were, under the management of Alexander
Macdonell, Sheriff of the Home District, placed on these lands and
the name of one of his properties, Baldoon, was given to the
settlement. A road, known as Baldoon Street, was cut through to the
town of Chatham on the river Thames. Baldoon being situated in a
swampy district, did not thrive; the settlers suffered from the
fever and ague prevalent in the locality, and afterwards in the War
of 1812 had various losses.
From a bundle of
papers found in the archives of the Selkirk family, which the writer
had the opportunity of perusing, a glimpse of the Earl of Selkirk's
energy and determination may be seen. Observing the obstacles to
settlement and improvement arising; from the want of communication
through the country, Lord Selkirk, in 1804, proposed to the
government of Upper Canada the building of a main highway from
Amherstburg to York (Toronto), a distance of nearly three hundred
miles. The cost of this was estimated at £40,000 sterling, and as
the province was poor and weak the earl offered Governor Hunter to
provide the money required and to accept payment in wild lands on
each side of the road when constructed. To those who were familiar
with the fearful roads of the western peninsula of Upper Canada even
fifty years after this date, the proposal of Lord Selkirk will
appear to have been one of great value. The executive council,
however, over-estimating the value of the lands, regarded Lord
Selkirk's terms as too high and rejected them.
Writing from London,
England, in 1805,. the Earl of Selkirk proposed to take and settle
one of the Indian townships lying near the mouth of the Grand River
in Upper Canada. The township of Moulton, valued at between £3,000
and £4,000, seems to have been in the hands of the Earl of Selkirk
for a time, but like Baldoon, it was marshy, and so proved
unsuitable for immediate settlement, though in later times, after
drainage, it proved to be a valuable township.
Undoubtedly Lord
Selkirk's experiments in emigration were bravely undertaken, and
showed evidence of organizing ability, but they proved
unremunerative, as almost all early movements of the kind have done.
To-day thriving communities represent the Prince Edward Island,
Baldoon and Moulton settlements. They were the first attempts of one
who was yet to take a much higher and wider flight. They but served
to make definite and absorbing an ambition which was to become the
dominating passion of his life. |
