Robertson’s letters then tell of his trial for the seizure of Gibraltar and his acquittal. He frankly hints that his lawyers had to bribe the Montreal judge to secure “a fair” hearing. So passed the year. In 1818 came Selkirk back from Red River to Montreal, who agreed with Robertson that the only way to force the Nor’Westers to their knees was to send a second expedition to capture Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs that enabled the rival Company to bribe the courts. In April, 1819, Robertson set out with a flotilla of nineteen canoes from Ste. Anne’s, each canoe with five French voyageurs, and went up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. “This place gave me a bad turn the other day,” he writes. “The wind blew fresh but the swell was by no means high. My Indians seemed reluctant to attempt the traverse. I imprudently ordered them a glass of rum, when the whoop was immediately given! In a moment, our canoe was in the swell. We came where a heavy sea was running. Here, we began to ship water. The guide ordered the bowman removed back to the second thwart. This lightened the head. An oilcloth was then thrown over the head of a canoe to avoid the breaking of the sea. The silence that prevailed, when one of those heavy swells was rolling upon us, was truly appalling. Paddles were lifted and all watched the approach with perfect composure. Our steersman kept balancing the slender bark by placing her in the best position to the waves.... The moment the roller passed, every paddle was in the water, every nerve stretched to gain the land! Although two men were employed bailing out water, fifty yards more would have swamped us....” From Lake Superior, the brigade passed up to the Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg, where Robertson was joined by the same John Clarke who had suffered defeat in Athabasca on the first expedition. Here the forces were increased to one hundred and thirty men by the refugees of the first brigade, who had escaped from the North. Robertson’s letter from this point gives some particulars of the first brigade’s expulsion from Athabasca: “The Nor’Westers did not confine themselves to the seizure of persons and property. They administered an oath to our servants, threatening with starvation and imprisonment if they did not comply, that for the space of three years these Hudson’s Bay servants would not attempt to oppose the North-West Company. One of the guides, a witty rogue, who knew theology from the circumstance of his cousin being a priest, fell on a way of absolving his French countrymen from this oath ... to repair to the woods and cross themselves and ask pardon of their Maker for a false oath to a heretic; but some poor Scotchmen could not cheat their conscience so easily, and I have had to let them leave me on that account....”