The people were warned to save themselves by flight. Nightly, cabins and hay ricks blazed to the sky. In terror of their lives, abandoning everything--the people launched out on Red River and fled in blind fright for Lake Winnipeg. The Colony Buildings were burned to the ground. The houses were plundered; the people dispersed. By June 25th, of Selkirk’s colony there was not a vestige but the ruined fields and trampled crops. Inside Fort Douglas were only three Hudson’s Bay men. * * * * * The summer brigade from York usually reached Lake Winnipeg in August. The harried settlers camped along the east shore waiting for help from the North. To their amazement, help came from an opposite direction. One morning in August they were astonished to see a hundred canoes sweep up as if from Canada, flying the Hudson’s Bay flag. Signals brought the voyageurs ashore--two hundred Frenchmen led by Selkirk’s agent, Colin Robertson, bound from Quebec up the Saskatchewan to Athabasca. Robertson had all along advocated fighting fire with fire; employing French wood-runners instead of timorous Orkneymen, and forcing the proud Nor’Westers to sue for union by invading the richest field of furs--Athabasca, far beyond the limits of Red River. And here was Robertson carrying out his aggressive policy, with “fighting John Clarke” of Astor’s old company as second in command. The news he brought restored the faint courage of the people. Lord Selkirk was coming to Red River next year. A new governor had been appointed at £1,000 a year--Robert Semple, a famous traveler, son of a Philadelphia merchant. Semple had embarked for Hudson’s Bay a few months after Robertson had sailed to raise recruits in Quebec. With Semple were coming one hundred and sixty more colonists, a Doctor Wilkinson as secretary, and a Lieutenant Holte of the Swedish Marines to command an armed brig that was to patrol Lake Winnipeg and prevent the Nor’Westers entering Assiniboia.