Let us follow his colonists. Long before the vote had granted Selkirk an empire, Scotland was being scoured for settlers and servants by Colin Robertson. The new colony must have a forceful, aggressive leader on the field. For Governor, Selkirk chose a forest ranger of the Ottawa, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary War of America--Captain Miles MacDonell of the riotous clan, that had waged such murderous warfare for the Nor’Westers in Albany Department. This was fighting fire with fire, with a vengeance--a MacDonell against a MacDonell. It was the end of June, in 1811, before the Hudson’s Bay ships sheered out from the Thames on their annual voyage. Of the three vessels--_The Prince of Wales_, _The Edward and Anne_, _The Eddystone_--destined to convey the colonists to the Great Northwest--_The Eddystone_ was the ship which the Nor’Westers had formerly sent to the bay. Furious gales drove the ships into Yarmouth for shelter, and while he waited, Miles MacDonell spent the time buying up field pieces and brass cannon for the colony. “_I have learned_,” he writes to Selkirk, “_that Sir Alexander MacKenzie has pledged himself so opposed to this project that he will try every means in his power to thwart it_.” He might have added that Simon McGillivray, the Nor’Wester, was busy in London in the same sinister conspiracy. Writes McGillivray to his Montreal partners from London on June 1, 1811, that he and Ellice “_will leave no means untried to thwart Selkirk’s schemes, and being stockholders of the Hudson’s Bay Company we can annoy him and learn his measures in time to guard against them_.” Soon enough MacDonell learned what form the sinister plot was to take. Colonists enlisted were waiting at Stornoway in the Hebrides. In all were one hundred and twenty-five people, seventy settlers, fifty-nine clerks and laborers, made up of Highlanders, Orkneymen, Irish farmers and some Glasgow men. MacDonell was a Catholic. So were many of the Highlanders; and Father Bourke, the Irish priest, comes as chaplain. The first sign of the Nor’Westers’ unseen hand was the circulation of a malicious pamphlet called “The Highlander” among the gathered colonists, describing the country as a Polar region infested with hostile Indians. To counteract the spreading panic, MacDonell ordered all the servants paid in advance. Then, while baggage was being put aboard, the men were allured on shore to spend their wages on a night’s spree. MacDonell called on the captain of a man-of-war acting as convoy to seize the servants bodily, but five had escaped.