Auld to Macdonell, the
latter wrote a joyful letter to Lord Selkirk to the effect that the
insurgents had at length come to terms, acknowledged their guilt and
thrown themselves upon the mercy of the Hudson's Bay Committee.
This surrender made it unnecessary to send the body of rioters back to
England for trial.
During the months of later winter Governor Miles Macdonell was specially
employed in building boats for the journey up to Red River. He
introduced a style of boat used on the rivers of New York, his native
State. These, however, he complains, were very badly constructed through
the clumsiness and lack of skill of the Colonists and Company employees,
whom he had ordered to build them.
Now on July fourth, 1812, Governor Macdonell, his Colonists, and the
Hudson's Bay officials--Cook and Auld--are all gazing wistfully up the
Nelson and Hayes Rivers, and we have the postscript to the last letter
as found in Miles Macdonell letter book, sent to Lord Selkirk, reading,
"Four Irishmen are to be sent home; Higgins and Hart, for the felonious
attack on the Orkneymen; William Gray, non-effective, and Hugh Redden,
who lost his arm by the bursting of a gun given him to fire off by Mr.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73