Lord Selkirk perceived in them an instrument ready to his hand. He sent for their officers, four in number, Captains d'Orsonnens and Matthey, and Lieutenants Fauché and Graffenreith, and informed them he had work in hand. They listened and agreed to his terms on behalf of their men. They hastened in boats up the St. Lawrence, and at Kingston encountered twenty other foreign soldiers belonging to the De Watteville regiment, and also victims of peace. These were engaged on the same terms. Eighty soldiers and four officers of De Meuron's regiment, twenty of Watteville's, and several of the Glengarry Fencibles, with one of their officers, instead of remaining in Canada, preferred going to the Red River settlement on the terms proposed by Lord Selkirk. They were to receive pay at a certain rate per month for navigating the canoes up to Red River, were to have lands assigned to them at the settlement, and if they did not elect to remain were to be conveyed at his lordship's expense to Europe by way of Hudson's Bay. Whatever we may now think of the motive prompting the employment of these men, it must be conceded that it was effected with propriety and ingenuous formality. The men being discharged could no longer be held soldiers. They retained their clothing, as was usual in such cases, and Lord Selkirk furnished them with arms, as he had done to his other settlers. Had there existed a disposition to criticise this latter measure, ample justification was to be found in the instructions of the Board of Ordnance, in 1813, to issue some field pieces and a considerable number of muskets and ammunition for the use of the Red River colony. With this body of men Selkirk proceeded into the interior. [Sidenote: Fort Gibraltar captured.] While he was on the march, the colony on Red River was apprehending alarming consequences. Cameron and McDonell, the two North-West partners, had arrived the previous autumn and been astonished at the temerity of the settlers at returning to the forbidden spot, and measures had at once been taken to molest and discourage them. Thereupon the Hudson's Bay factor, Colin Robertson, who, in Governor McDonnell's absence, had placed himself at their head, planned an attack upon Fort Gibraltar, which he seized by surprise in the month of October. He thus recovered two of the field pieces and thirty stand of arms, which had been abstracted from the settlement in the previous year. In this capture no blood was shed, and although Cameron was taken prisoner he was released upon a promise to behave peaceably in future and was even reinstated in possession of his fort. But this posture of affairs was not long to endure.