While this work was being done the Nor'westers in London were burning with wrath at their inability to hinder Lord Selkirk's project. Their hostility, we have seen, arose from their belief, which was quite correct, that a colony would interfere with their trading operations. In the hope that the enterprise might yet be stopped, they circulated in the Highlands various rumours against it. An anonymous attack, clearly from a Nor'wester source, appeared in the columns of the Inverness _Journal_. The author of this diatribe pictured the rigours of Assiniboia in terrible colours. Selkirk's agents were characterized as a brood of dissemblers. With respect to the earl himself words were not minced. His philanthropy was all assumed; he was only biding his time in order to make large profits out of his colonization scheme. Notwithstanding this campaign of slander, groups of would-be settlers came straggling along from various places to the port of rendezvous, Stornoway, the capital of the {39} Hebrides. When all had gathered, these people who had answered the call to a new heritage beyond the seas proved to be a motley throng. Some were stalwart men in the prime of life, men who looked forward to homes of their own on a distant shore; others, with youth on their side, were eager for the trail of the flying moose or the sight of a painted redskin; a few were women, steeled to bravery through fires of want and sorrow. Too many were wastrels, cutting adrift from a blighted past. A goodly number were malcontents, wondering whether to go or stay. The leading vessel of the Hudson's Bay fleet in the year 1811 was the commodore's ship, the _Prince of Wales_. At her moorings in the Thames another ship, the _Eddystone_, lay ready for the long passage to the Great Bay. Besides these, a shaky old hulk, the _Edward and Ann_, was put into commission for the use of Lord Selkirk's settlers. Her grey sails were mottled with age and her rigging was loose and worn. Sixteen men and boys made up her crew, a number by no means sufficient for a boat of her size. It seemed almost criminal to send such an ill-manned craft out on the tempestuous North Atlantic. However, the three ships sailed from the {40} Thames and steered up the east coast of England. Opposite Yarmouth a gale rose and forced them into a sheltering harbour. It was the middle of July before they rounded the north shore of Scotland. At Stromness in the Orkneys the _Prince of Wales_ took on board a small body of emigrants and a number of the company's servants who were waiting there.