ends by the most thoroughgoing animosity. In this great emigration
movement, there were great new world interests involved, and champions
of the rival parties concerned were two stalwart chieftains, of
Scotland's best blood, both with great powers of leadership and both
backed up with abundant means and strongest influence. It was a
duel--indeed a fight, as old Sir Walter Scott would say, "a
l'outrance"--to the bitter end. That the struggle was between two
chieftains--one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander, did not count for
much, for the Lowlander spoke the Gaelic tongue--and he was championing
the interest of Highland men.

The two men of mark were the Earl of Selkirk and Sir Alexander
Mackenzie. Before showing the origin of the quarrel, it may be well to
take a glance at each of the men.

Thomas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, was the youngest of seven sons, and was
born in 1771. Though he belonged to one of the oldest noble families, of
Scotland, yet when he went to Edinburgh, as a fellow student of Sir
Walter Scott, Clerk of Eldon, and David Douglas, afterward Lord Reston,
it was with a view of making his own way in the world, for there were
older brothers between him and the Earldom. He was a young man of
intense earnestness, capable of living in an atmosphere of
enthusiasm--always rather given indeed to take up and advocate new
schemes. There was in him the spirit of service of his Douglas
ancestors, of being unwilling to "rust unburnished," and he was strong
in will, "to strive, to seek, to find." This gave the young Douglas a
seeming restlessness, and so he visited the Highlands and learned the
Gaelic tongue. He went to France in the days of the French Revolution,
and took great interest in the Jacobin dreams of progress. The minor
title of the House of Selkirk was Daer, and so the young collegian saw