Father Burke, who was to drum up more colonists at home, the chief factors Auld and Cook, and the Company men watched the launching of the boats the first week of July. Baggage stored, all hands aboard, all craft afloat--the head steersman gives the signal by dipping his pole. The priest waves a God-speed. The colonists signal back their farewell--farewell to the despair of the long winter, farewell to the lonely bay, farewell to the desolate little fort on the verge of this forsaken world! Come what may, they are forward bound, to the New Life in their Promised Land. If we could all of us see the places along the trail to a Promised Land, few would set out on the quest. The trail that the colonists followed was the path inland that Kelsey had traversed with the Indians a century before, and Hendry gone up in 1754, and Cocking in 1772, up Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg. While the fur brigade made the portages easily with their light canoes, the colonists were hampered by their heavy boats, which had to be rolled along logs where they could not be tracked up rapids. Instead of three weeks to go from York to Lake Winnipeg, it took two months. The end of August, 1812, saw their boats heading up Red River for the Forks, now known as Winnipeg. Instead of rocks and endless cataracts and swamp woods, there opened to view the rolling prairie, russet and mellow in the August sunlight with the leather tepee of wandering Cree dotting the river banks, and where the Assiniboine flowed in from the west--the palisades of the Nor’Westers’ fort. MacDonell did not ascend as high as the rival fort. He landed his colonists at that bend in Red River, two miles north of the Assiniboine, where he built his cabins, afterward named Douglas in honor of Selkirk. Painted Indians rode across the prairie to gaze at the spectacle of these “land workers” come not to hunt but to till the soil. No hostility was evinced by the Nor’Westers, for word of the Northwest Company’s policy had not yet come from London to the annual meeting of winterers at Fort William. The Highlanders were delighted to find Scotchmen at Fort Gibraltar who spoke Gaelic like themselves, and the Nor’Westers willingly sold provisions to help the settlers. In accordance with Selkirk’s instructions, MacDonell laid out farm plots of ten acres near the fort, and farm plots of one hundred acres farther down the river at what is now known in memory of the settlers’ Scottish home as Kildonan. The farm lots were small so that the colonists could be together in case of danger. The houses of this community were known as the Colony Buildings in distinction from the fort. It was too late to do any farming, so the people spent the winter of 1813 buffalo hunting westward of Pembina.