It required more.
The Highlander is a bargainer, as the Tourist in the Scottish Highlands
knows to this day. Captain Roderick McDonald was compelled to promise
larger wages to clerks and laborers to induce them to join. He secured
less than half an hundred men at Stornoway--the trysting place--and the
promises he had made of higher wages were a bone of contention through
the whole voyage.
Perhaps the most effective agent obtained by Lord Selkirk was a returned
trader of the Montreal merchants named Colin Robertson. He had seen the
whole western fur country, and the fact that he had a grievance made him
very willing to join Lord Selkirk in his enterprise.
One of the Nor'-Westers in Saskatchewan a few years before the beginning
of Lord Selkirk's Colony, was "Bras Croche," or crooked-arm McDonald. He
was of gentle Scottish birth, but his own acquaintances declared that he
was of a "quarrelsome and pugnacious disposition." In his district Colin
Robertson was a "Bourgeois" in charge of a station. A quarrel between
the two men resulted in Colin Robertson losing his position, and as we
shall see he became one of the most active and serviceable men in the
history of the Colony.
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