on a lengthy tour through the United States and Canada. At the end of the following September (1804) the earl revisited his colony, which he found in a most satisfactory condition. To-day the descendants of Selkirk's settlers are among the most prosperous inhabitants of the island.
During the time Selkirk thus spent in the New World he corresponded frequently with the government of Upper Canada (now Ontario) as to the settlement of that province. He had already been connected with the establishment of a colony (still known as Baldoon, after one of his ancestral estates) in Kent county, and in August 1803 he offered to construct a good wagon road from Baldoon to York (now Toronto) at an expense of over 20,000l. In return he asked certain of the vacant crown lands lying on each side of his proposed road. The proposal was, however, declined, though such roads were then very badly needed, and the colonial government was too poor to construct them. Again, in 1805, Selkirk offered to colonise one of the Mohawk townships on the Grand River. This time his plans were accepted by government, but the unsettled state of Europe at the time prevented their being carried out. In the same year was published his ‘Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland, with a View of the Causes and Probable Consequences of Emigration’ (2nd edit. in 1806), a strikingly clear, well-written work. It was admittedly written partially in self-defence, and ‘in consequence of some calumnious reports that had been circulated’ as to his object in promoting colonisation. Scott declares (Waverley, chap. lxxii.) that he had traced ‘the political and economical effects of the changes’ Scotland was then undergoing ‘with great precision and accuracy.’
In 1806, and again in 1807, Selkirk was chosen one of the sixteen representative Scotch peers. Thereafter he frequently took part in the debates in the House of Lords. On 10 Aug. in the latter year he delivered a ‘Speech on the Defence of the Country,’ which was immediately after published in pamphlet form (2nd edit. in same year). On 28 March 1807 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and on 24 Nov. following he married, at Inveresk, Jean, only daughter of James Wedderburn-Colvile of Ochiltree and Crombie, who survived him many years. In July 1808 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. About the same time he published a volume ‘On the Necessity of a more Effectual System of National Defence.’ This, like the speech on the same subject, excited much interest at the time. So lately as 1860 Sir John Wedderburn considered the remarks in the volume of 1808 so valuable that he actually republished it. Early in 1809 Selkirk published a ‘Letter on the subject of Parliamentary Reform’ (2nd edit. in the same year; 3rd, Manchester, 1816). His experience of politics in America had induced him to leave the reform party to which his family had belonged.
During all this time Selkirk still cherished his original idea of colonising the Red River valley. It now, it seems, appeared to him that his scheme could be most easily carried out through or in conjunction with the Hudson's Bay Company. The charter granted to this corporation by Charles II in 1670 was an endless and almost a boundless one. Although its legality was disputed, the company still maintained its claim. About 1810 the stock was much depressed in value, and Selkirk gradually acquired an amount of it sufficiently large to give him practically the control of the directorate. At a general court of the company held in May 1811 he applied for a huge tract of land, covering forty-five millions of acres, in the Red River valley, and comprising large portions of what are now Manitoba and Minnesota. The partisans of the North-west Fur Company were at once in arms. They had long traded without molestation in the territories claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company, and entirely disputed the power of that body to make the grant in question. A contest began which lasted during the ten following years, and was furiously carried on, in this country by the pen, but in British North America by the weapons of war. In all the events connected with this contest Selkirk took a leading part.
In the autumn of 1811 a party of well-selected, and mostly unmarried, pioneers, collected in the highlands by the earl's agents, and chiefly consisting of ‘colony servants,’ who were to receive a hundred acres of land after working three years, set sail from Stornoway under Miles MacDonell, who had received appointments both from the company and Selkirk. After a winter spent amid much misery at York Factory on Hudson's Bay, the party arrived at the colony in the following autumn, about the same time as another party which had sailed from Scotland in the spring of the year. The colonists, about a hundred in number, again spent a most miserable winter (1812–13), provisions being very scarce. They built and lived in Forts Douglas and Daer, both so named after Selkirk. Their lot from first to last was misery and destitution. Selkirk's foresight was rendered useless by the fraud or apathy of his own servants and friends, accidents by sea and land,
