Three years before the starting of Lord Selkirk's Colonists and before
his marriage with Geddes Mackenzie, Sir Alexander took up his abode in
Scotland. He was the guardian of the rights of the North-West Company
and manfully he stood for them.
Mackenzie was startled when he heard in 1810 of Lord Selkirk's scheme to
send his Colonists to Red River. This he thought to be a plan of the
Hudson's Bay Company, to regain their failing prestige and to strike a
blow at the Nor'-Wester trade. To the fur trader or the rancher, the
incoming of the farmer is ever obnoxious. The beaver and the mink desert
the streams whenever the plowshare disturbs the soil. The deer flee to
their coverts, the wolf and the fox are exterminated, and even the
muskrat has a troubled existence when the dog and cat, the domestic
animals, make their appearance. The proposed settlement is to be
opposed, and Lord Selkirk's plans thwarted at any cost. Lord Selkirk had
in the eyes of the Nor'-Westers much presumption, indeed nothing less
than to buy out the great Hudson's Bay Company, which for a century and
a half had controlled nearly one-half of North America. The
Nor'-Westers--Alexander Mackenzie, Inglis and Ellice--made sport of the
thing as a dream.
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