The life of Lord Strathcona

Front matter

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Contents

CHAP, PAGE XIX. A COLD-BLOODED MURDER. . 122 XX. DONALD SMITH LEAVES RED RIVER 130 XXI. THE FALL OF RIEL . . . 136 XXII, RIEL’S FATE . . . - 143

XXIII. THE CANADIAN HALF-BREEDS - 149

XXIV. THE RISE OF MANITOBA . . 153 XXV. A VISIT TO LONDON . . . 160

Chapter II His Boyhood

ALEXANDER SMITH, the father of Donald Alexander Smith (Lord Strathcona), was a fine example of the typical Highlander of Scotland— well built and tall, earnest in purpose and active in limb, ready alike to turn an unpromising moorland tract into a fertile farm, or to enter into that world of adventure in which many of his family had found a way to the advantage of themselves and the credit of the Empire.

But Alexander’s destiny was not to be found as a pioneer in realms beyond the seas. The appeal of the world outside Elginshire had been irresistible to many of his kinsmen; as for instance in the neighbouring parish of Abernethy, of which the Rev Dr Forsyth has written,—‘Our parish has continued to give some of its best blood to other lands. We have sent bankers to England, farmers to Ireland, and parsons to every county in the Highlands. We have sent settlers to Canada and the United States, shepherds to Fiji, stock-keepers to New Zealand, gold-diggers to Australia, diamond merchants to Africa, doctors to the Army and Navy, and soldiers to fight our cause in all parts of the world.’

Alexander Smith settled down as a merchant within the confines of his own county, and was happy in winning for his bride Miss Barbara Stuart of the Elginshire parish of Abernethy. Her family, who had held for over three centures the manor of Lainchoil, formerly known as Leth-na-Coyle, had been highly respected far and wide as well for their own good qualities and unblemished traditions as for the good social position _of their connections. The Grants, in whose honour Grantown was named, were among the kinsfolk of Miss Barbara Stuart, as was also Sir Archibald Grant who, half a century earlier, had founded the town of Archieston. The young merchant had made a choice which not only conduced to his life-long happiness, but strengthened his own

osition by an alliance with one of the most honoured and substantial families in all that countryside.

A few weeks after the wedding at Abernethy, Alexander Smith established his home in the romantically situated town of Forres, near to the mouth of the Findhorn, in the county of Elgin. Two sons were born to him. The elder was given the Christian name of John Stuart, after his mother’s brother, the famous explorer; the second boy was Donald Alexander Smith—the subject of our biography—the successful fur-trader—the philanthropist whose heart was in the work of the social and religious well-being of the tens of thousands of scattered units in the ice- and snow-bound realms of northern Canada— the statesman who, as Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, linked his name with the

HIS BOYHOOD 15 inception and fulfilment of a Canada forming one vast dominion from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the northern boundaries of the United States to the frozen solitudes of the Arctic shores.

The house where the future Lord Strathcona was born, August 6, 1820, was recently pulled down to make room for some local improvements. It adjoined the two-arched bridge spanning the swiftly flowing stream of the Mosset, which, mingling with the broader waters of the Findhorn, enters the estuary of Moray Firth. It was a plain structure of stone, mean in appearance and tenanted by lowly people, but large and substantial enough to have been formerly a suitable residence for a family of good local standing.

The pleasantly situated town of Forres, and the wild and barren heaths in the neighbourhood, have an abiding renown in the pages of Shakespeare. They supply many of the principal scenes in the tragedy of Macbeth, for it was on the sterile and desolate heath in the neighbourhood, known as the Hard Muir—still a ‘blasted heath,’ as described in the play—that Macbeth first met the ‘weird sisters,’ who with their greeting, ‘All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter,’ aroused the fearful ambition that led him to wade through blood to a throne and perdition :—

‘How far is’t call’'d to Forres? What are these So wither’d, and so wild in their attire, That look not like the mhabitants o’ the earth And yet are on’t?’

On the western side of Forres is still shown the site of the royal palace where Macbeth, at the Coronation Banquet, drank to the health of the absent Banquo, and saw seated in a chair, vacant to all the rest of the company, the ghost of the comrade he had caused to be slain by hired assassins.

Lord Strathcona’s native county of Elginshire is bounded on the north by Moray Firth and on the south by the picturesque mountain scenery of Inverness. ‘Through the county flow three streams —the Spey, the Lossie, and the Findhorn—all prolific in salmon, and all remarkable for the romantic charm of their valleys; while, in the beautiful little lochs dotted over the pleasant region and forming the source of several streams tributary to the main rivers, trout of an excellent kind are abundant.

The future Lord High Commissioner for Canada received a sound rudimentary education in the local endowed school, founded in 1824 by the bounty of Jonathan Anderson, a native of Forres, who had given to the Magistrates and Town Council for the purpose some lands at Cowlairs, a district now included in the City of Glasgow. When Donald Smith had won distinction as one of the most honoured on the long roll of Britain’s Empire builders, there were several of his schoolfellows to bear witness to some of the boy’s striking characteristics which time, as the story of his life will show, only deepened and strengthened. He is described as being ‘of a shy, amiable disposition, but with a fund of sturdy resolution and even hardihood when occasion demanded it.’

HIS BOYHOOD 17

The man’s well-known sympathy with the troubles of his fellow-creatures had its foreshadowing so early as in his ninth year, when the country around Forres was devastated by a flood and several of the peasantry were drowned. Among those who lost their lives was one of little Donald’s companions; and it is recorded that, on hearing the news, he went to tell the anguish-stricken parents, who were poor people, how sorry he was. ‘With a gravity,’ we are told, ‘far beyond his years he condoled with them, and on leaving begged they would accept a slight token in memory of his friend. He then handed over all his pocket-money, amounting to a shilling and some odd coppers.’

Natives of Forres were justly proud—and are so still—of the link that connects their little town with Shakespeare’s tragedy. Donald Smith’s schoolmaster took care. in and out of school, to pose as the great local authority on the subject of Macbeth, and his daily declamations of the lines associated with Forres impressed his boyish auditors with an awe of the tragedy and an interest in their surroundings only excelled by the admiration they felt for their preceptor’s elocutionary powers. Nor did the worthy man’s literary reputation end here, His father was proud of having made the acquaintance of Dr Johnson during his Scottish itinerary, and was never weary of repeating anecdotes of the great man whom it had been his good fortune to meet. These reminiscences the Forres schoolmaster repeated over and over again to his pupils until they became as familiar with the sayings and doings of Dr Johnson as they were with the majestic lines of the tragedy; and not infrequently confused the Swan of Avon with the Oracle of Fleet Street.

On one occasion when some of the elder boys were surveying the surrounding country from a neighbouring tower, the burliest of them all, with a mixed remembrance of his schoolmaster’s literary disquisitions, pointed towards the site of the old palace and exclaimed, ‘Why, that’s the very place where Dr Johnson killed Banquo |’ The speaker’s prowess with his fists restrained the ridicule of all his companions with the exception of little Donald Smith, who, braving the consequences, laughed outright, and was forthwith challenged to a combat.

‘Bring your brother to help you,’ said the injured one scornfully, ‘and I'll thrash both of you one-handed.’

Donald, without waiting for the coming of his brother, faced the challenger as firmly as in after days he did his opponents in the fur-trading camps and in the Canadian Legislature; and skins would have been bruised that day had not the joy of fight been dashed aside by the appearance of the schoolmaster.

A START IN LIFE 19

CHAPTER ITI A START IN LIFE

As the time drew near for Donald and his brother John to leave school and begin their career in life, anxious discussions went on in the Smith family as to choice of occupation for the two boys; and while the parents were discussing one plan after another the thoughts and aspirations of Donald were all in the direction of his uncle, John Stuart, or Stewart, the successful fur-trader and daring explorer, who was even then on his way home from the wilds of New Caledonia, where his name is linked on the maps, with a lake and a river which his eyes were the first to see.

To Donald’s ardent mind there was a fascination not to be controlled in the glory of a life amidst the unconfined possibilities of the New World’s wide and mighty expanse; but to the mother it seemed a pity that a boy, mentally endowed as Donald was, should start upon a career so rough, so far removed from the pales of civilisation, as that of a fur-trader. Domestic counsels prevailed for a time, and when the future Lord Strathcona left school, he mede a_ sorrowful entrance into the offica of the Town Clerk of

Forres. But his heart was not there; from the law books his mental gaze went to the snowy wastes, the illimitable forests, the vast lakes and rivers of British North America; the ‘dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood’ was not for Donald Smith.

When the boy left the Town Clerk’s office his parents still longed for him to fix his mind on an ordinary business career within the limits of the British Islands; and, looking around them for an opening for Donald, they remembered that some wealthy and highly esteemed Manchester merchants named Grant were cousins of the Smith family, and to them the father wrote for advice in settling the lad’s future.

These Grants, high-minded, generous, warmhearted, have a very interesting association with literature, for Charles Dickens, in the early flush of his success, chanced ‘to meet them during a visit to Manchester, and introduced them into his novel of Nicholas Nickleby under the name of ‘The Cheeryble Brothers.’ Lord Strathcona’s grandmother was the sister of Mrs Grant, the mother of these delightful brothers; and what the mother was to the sons is set forth, as readers of Nicholas Nickleby will remember, in the description of the dinner given by the Cheerybles in honour of the birthday of Tim Linkenwater, their confidential clerk.

‘Brother Charles,’ said one Cheeryble to the other, ‘my dear fellow, my dear fellow, there is another association connected with this day which must never be forgotten by you and me. This day, which brought into the world a most

A START IN LIFE aI faithful and excellent and exemplary fellow, took from it the kindest and very best of parents— the very best of parents to us both. I wish that she could have seen us both in our prosperity and shared it, and had the happiness of knowing how dearly we loved her in it, as we did when we were poor boys. My dear brother—The Memory of our Mother.’

To these Grants of Manchester Mr Smith wrote for advice concerning the future of his son Donald. Promptly the reply came that there was a vacancy in their office which the young man might fill, and that though the position was humble, there would be a prosperous course open to him if he had capacity and industry. Such an opening promised a wider outlook and greater opportunities than could be afforded by settling down in the narrow groove of a Town Clerk’s office; and there is no doubt that it would have been eagerly accepted had not another outlook suddenly presented itself in the return home of John Stuart, the adventurous uncle whose career as a famous pioneer in the Far West shone like a guiding star in the skyey realms of young Donald’s most ardent desires. He offered to use his influence in obtaining for his nephew a junior clerkship in the service of the Hudson Bay Company; and when there came official information that he had succeeded there was no happier boy in Forres than Donald Smith.

The future Lord Strathcona and High Commissioner for Canada was in his eighteenth year when he embarked from Scotland for the vast region of the Canadas whose destiny his foresight, patriotism, and picturesque personality were to help in shaping to great and beneficent ends. Concerning this journey he wrote long afterwards, ‘When I went to Canada I took my first sea-voyage; and it is interesting, by way of comparison, that it took between forty and fifty days, and that the clipper ship in which I sailed, of 800 tons or thereabouts, was a considerable vessel in those days—the largest boat of this kind being about 1000 tons.’

The parting from his parents proved to be the final one. His father’s health gradually but surely declined, and twelve years after bidding farewell to Donald he died, Mrs Smith’s eyesight failed her about this time; but the darkness was cheered by the regular and frequent arrival of letters from the son whose greatness she did not live to see, but in whose capacity for gaining success she had unerring confidence. When Donald had made his way to honour and renown, there were many who remembered his mother’s oft-repeated words,—‘They’ll all be proud of my Donald yet.’

When Donald Smith arrived in Canada in 1837 it had not yet been federated intoa Dominion. The Provinces now known as Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, were separate units in the vast domain of British North America. The almost limitless expanse west of Ontario, which includes Manitoba and the North-West Territories of British Columbia, was under the sway of the Hudson Bay Company, as was also

A START 'IN LIFE 23 the desolate region, of which Labrador is a part, in the neighbourhood of Hudson Bay. Each Province regarded itself as a separate community, while almost the only inhabitants were the officers of the Company, the trappers, and the Indians. The population of this immense country, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the rivers and lakes of the south to the ice-bound Arctic shores, numbered less than one and a quarter millions.

In a lecture delivered by Lord Strathcona at Oxford, in 1899, some interesting particulars ara given concerning the condition of the country in the first year of Queen Victoria’s reign :-—

‘No one travelling through Ontario and the other Provinces to-day could imagine the state of things that existed in 1837. It seems almost incredible. Everything is made so easy for emigrants now—the travelling 1s comfortable, the journey is short, the food is better than many of them get at home.

‘In 1837 the only incorporated city in Ontario was Toronto, which at that time had a population of from 13,000 to 14,000 people. In Lower Canada, Quebec at that time was a more important city than Montreal. It was at the head of navigation, as the shallows in Lake St Peter, on the St Lawrence, had not then been dredged, and it was the recipient of a greater share of the St Lawrence trade than it has now. A few ocean vessels of light draught went up to Montreal, but much of the merchandise for that city was transhipped at Quebec into other vessels.

‘The social condition of the people was naturally not of a high standard. Their work was hard, their mode of living simple, their houses large log-huts, and they had to go long distances to sell their produce and to buy new supplies. This, of course, refers largely to the country districts, or backwoods, as they were called in those days. In the towns and villages there was plenty of intercourse; and, judging from my own early experiences, life in the centres of population was pleasant and attractive, and the Canadians were as generous in their hospitality as they are known to be to-day.’

EARLY EXPLORERS OF HUDSON BAY 25

Chapter IV Early Explorers Of Hudson Bay

Hupson Bay, which has given its name to one of the most enterprising, successful, and romantic trading enterprises in the world’s history, is so called from the famous explorer, Henry Hudson, who, in 1611, was—

The first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

His terrible fate was to find himself land-bound and ice-bound with a mutinous crew amidst surroundings of utter desolation, and to be cast adrift with his son into the despairful solitude of that bleak and cheerless region. Collier’s famous picture represents him as gazing hopelessly seaward in a boat drifting to ruin among the icefields; but, although an expedition was sent from England in search of him, nothing was ever found, and ‘a silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his fate.’

‘For fifty years,’ writes the American author of The Conquest of the Great North-Wes#, ‘the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, lay in a silence es of death. To the east of it lay a a6 LORD STRATHCONA vast peninsular territory—crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, cataracts, upland tarns—Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen European countries. To the south, the great Clay Belt of untracked, impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St Lawrence, in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what is now known as the Great North-West—in area a second Russia.

‘A new cra’—the middle of the seventeenth century— ‘was now to open on the Bay—an era of wildwood runners tracking the snow-padded allences; of dare-devil gamestets of the wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid and ambuscade and massacre on the Bay; of two great Powers—first France and England, then the Hudson Bay Fur Company and the Nor’-Westetrs—locked in death-grapple during a century for the prize of dominion over ins iimense unknown territory inland from the

By,

Hudson and other explorers of this illimitable and forbidding region were followed by mien sich as Radiason and d’Iberville, who struck inland; and their endeavours—intrepid knights of the wilderness as they have been aptly called— led the way to the supremacy gained by Great Britain over a territory as large as the whole of Europe.

‘The third era on Hudson Bay comes down to our own day. It marks the transition ftom as’ with eemi-barbaric splendour, with all its virtues of out-door life and dashing bravery, and all its vices of unbridled freedom in a

EARLY EXPLORERS OF HUDSON BAY. 27 no-man’s land with law of neither God nor man, to modern commerce; the transition from the Eskimo’s canoe to latter-day Atlantic liners ploughing furrows over the main to the marts of commerce; and this period, too, is best typified in two commanding figures that stand out colossally from other actors on the Bay—Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist, and Lord Strathcona, whose activities only began at an age when other men have either made or marred their careers. For three hundred years, the history of Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name stands is really the history of these four men— Raddison, d’Iberville, Selkirk, and Strathcona.’ Several countries in succession strove for supremacy in Hudson Bay and the vast surrounding lands, A year or two after the tragic end of Henry Hudson’s heroic enterprise the work of exploration in this region of desolation was taken up by the Danes who, before Columbus — was born, had coasted the ice-fields from Iceland to Greenland and southwards to Nova Scotia and Rhode Island, King Christian IV. superintended the outfit of the expedition, and for commander was chosen Jens Munck, one of the most dashing adventurers in the romantic history of maritime enterprise. In 1619 the ships set sail, with the object of adding to Denmark a western dominion as great in extent as Russia.

Let Munck’s own log-book tell the end of the terrible story :—

‘January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five months. The BIBLIOTHEQUE du

Correes Sant JeAN priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was the last he ever gave on this earth.

‘January 25~—-Had the small minute gun discharged in honour of my mate’s burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that the cannon exploded.

‘February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in health to do the necessary work.

‘February 17—Twenty persons have died.

‘March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.

‘April r—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and fuel. Have begun to break wp our small boats for fuel.

‘April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the sermon for Good Friday, which I read.

‘May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie uncovered, because none of us has strength to bury them.’

In June, Munck was himself prostrated by illness. By his side the cook’s boy lay dead. On the deck and in the steerage were the corpses of six others of the crew, ‘for’—records the woestricken captain—‘nobody had strength to throw them overboard.’ With the exception of himself, only two survived, and these having crawled ashore at low tide were too weak to return. Fiction has never imagined a scene approaching the awfulness of the fate of these wretched

EARLY EXPLORERS OF HUDSON BAY 29 _ mariners, who had sailed from their native land in high spirits on a national enterprise, only to utterly fail and to die in despair and agony. After lying alone and without food for four days, Munck wrote the following, which he regarded as his last words,

‘As I] have now no more hope of life in this world, I request, for the sake of God, if any Christians should happen to come here, they will bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal forward to the King. ... Herewith, good-night to all the world, and my soul to God.

‘Jens Munck,’

Rescue came soon afterwards from other vessels in the expedition, and the ship returned to Denmark with the tale of the great disaster. If Munck had succeeded there would never have been a British North America.

Chapter V The Origin Of The Hudson Bay Company

FRANCE was first in the field of enterprise in adding to her possessions a great trading dominion in North America, and her sons had been steadily pushing westward from the St Lawrence to the Great Lakes and the fertile plains beyond. Indeed, if her monarchs in the seventeenth century had not allowed their energies and patriotism to be undermined by the lassitude of luxury and vicious pleasures, the French flag to-day might be waving over the greater part of America.

In 1665 there returned to England Sir George Carterett, who had been sent across the Atlantic by the English Government to report upon the condition of affairs in the American plantations. He brought with him two Frenchmen—brothersin-law—one named Medard Chouart de Groseillers, and described as a middle-aged man, heavily bearded, swarthy, weather-beaten; the other, clean-shaven, lithe, and energetic, Pierre Esprit Radisson by name, with a dash in his manners that was a cut between the courtier and the wilderness runner. Their fame as successful traders and daring pioneers had already reached England, and many a quiet merchant at home had grown

ORIGIN—HUDSON BAY COMPANY 31 envious at the news that in a single journey from Hudson Bay to Quebec, the two brought 600,000 beaver skins worth close upon {£200,000 in modern money.

Directly they reached England, the news spread that they had a most wonderful story to tell. The French Governor had robbed them and driven them from Quebec to Cape Breton, where, by their fellaw-countrymen, they had been treated with such indignity that they counted themselves happy in escaping with their lives to Nova Scotia.

‘In vain,’ says the historian of the Conguest af the Great North-West, ‘they had appealed to France for justice. The robber governor was all powerful at the French Court, and the two explorers—penniless nobodies pitting their power against the influence of wealth and nobility—were dismissed from the Court with a joke. They had been promised a vessel to make further explorations in the North, but when they came to Ile Percé, south of Anticosti, to await the vessel, a Jesuit was sent to them with word that the promise had been a put-off to rid the Court of troublesome suitors—-in a word, a perfidious joke.’

The two Frenchmen chanced to meet Sir George Carterett in America, and when he heard their story he asked them to accompany him te England, an invitation which they, burning with indignation and resentment at the wrongs they had endured from their own country, eagerly accepted. Charles II. was at Oxford, whither he had fled to be out of reach of the Great Plague which was ravaging London; and as he listened to Radisson’s story of the 600,000 beaver skins his thoughts went to his exchequer, woefully empty through the ravages of the fire, the plague, and the Dutch wars; but it is only fair to add that the imagination both of himself and his courtiers was kindled by the romantic narrative of the eloquent Frenchman.

Listen to a part of the entrancing story that captivated King Charles at Oxford :—

“We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs,’ said Radisson, describing a journey up the Ottawa and overland to Lake Superior, and away northwards by canoe to Hudson Bay. ‘We came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees (Indians of that locality). They suffer us not to tread the ground, but carry us like hens in a basket to their tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river and came to the seaside. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the Europeans whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the summer. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed the summer coasting the seashore of that vast country. We followed another river back to the Upper Lake (Lake Superior), and it was midwinter before we joined

ORIGIN—HUDSON BAY COMPANY § 33 the company at our fort to the north of Lake Superior.’

King Charles and his Ministers saw that infinite possibilities were suggested by the fascinating stories related by the Frenchmen, and great consideration was shown to these penniless soldiers of fortune. Presents were made to them, and a weekly sum granted for their maintenance, on condition that they kept within touch of the royal circle. But among all at Court they found no friend more enthusiastic than the impulsive and daring Prince Rupert, who advocated their suggestions fervently and unceasingly from the first.

At last—in a letter still in existence—the King directed James, Duke of York, head of the Royal Navy, to grant to the two adventurers the ship Eaglet for the purpose of carrying on trade in Hudson Bay, and—a secondary consideration, of | course, to a monarch in need of money—continuing their explorations of a new route by water to the Pacific. A second ship, the Nonsuch, was chartered, and the expense of manning and victualling both vessels was borne by Prince Rupert and his friends. All who contributed to the funds were made partners in the venture, although no company had as yet been formerly established.

When the ships were ready to start from Gravesend, the following written commission was given to the captains :—

‘You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company with each other to the place of rendezvous. You are to saile to such place

Ls. B as Mr Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr Radisson shall direct to trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each ship, the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr Gooseberry and Mr Radisson.’

Then follows a paragraph revealing the shady side of European business transactions with the native races in America—for the word in italics is but a cryptogram for spirituous drink, —

‘You are to take notice that the Nampumpeage which you carry with you is part of our joynt cargoes wee having bought it for money for Mr Gooseberry and Mr Raddison to be delivered by small quantities with like caution as the other goods.’