landless and the penniless men. Employment was to be supplied; work in
the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, or free grants of land to actual
settlers, or even a sale in fee simple of land for a mere nominal sum;
free passages for the poor, reduced passages for those who had small
means, food provided on the voyage, and the prospect of new world
advantages to all.

But the poor are timid, and they love even their straw-thatched
cottages, and it needs active and decided men to press upon them the
advantages which are offered them. The Emigration Agent is a necessity.

The fur traders' country was at this time well known to many of the
partners. It was by employing or consulting with some of these fur
traders that Lord Selkirk obtained a knowledge of the Western land which
he was to acquire. Years before the Colony began Lord Selkirk had been
in correspondence with an officer who belonged to a well known Catholic
family of Highlanders, the Macdonells, who had gone to the Mohawk
district in the United States before the American Revolution, and had
afterwards come to Canada as U.E. Loyalists. One of these, a man of
standing and of executive ability was Miles Macdonell. He had been an
officer of the King's Royal Regiment of New York, and held the rank of
Captain of the Canadian Militia. This officer had a brother in the
North-West Fur Company, John Macdonell, who, more than ten years before,
had been in the service of his Company on Red River and whose Journal
had no doubt fallen into the hands of his brother Miles. He had written:
"From the Forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers the plains are quite
near the banks, and so extensive that a man may travel to the Rocky
Mountains without passing a wood, a mile long. The soil on the Red River
and the Assiniboine is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture,
and capable of bearing rich crops."