Selkirk

“ Selkirk hastens to transport thither his hatchets, his guns, his seal-skins and goat-skins, his Bible, his spy-glass, his pipes, his ladder, his stools, even his traps; all his riches! it is a complete removal.
On taking possession of the island, he had engraved on the bark of several trees the date of his arrival; he now inscribes upon them the day of his departure. For many months his reckoning has been interrupted; to determine the date is impossible; he knows only the day of the week. ”

“ Selkirk stops; he comprehends the mute language of the bird.
'You do not know then what a man is! He is the enemy of every creature to whom God has given life, the enemy even of his kind! You have then never been threatened by the arms that I bear!'
And with the palm of his hand, striking the butt of his gun, he made the hammer click. ”

“ Alas! that one should record the fact,—in old days the drainage of the upper town (what there was of drainage in those times, that is to say) , fell into the Haining Loch not a hundred yards from the spot where the town's supply was drawn off! And yet people lived in Selkirk to unusually great ages. Our ancestors were hardy persons; but perhaps it was only the very fit who then survived.
It must have been a dull, uneventful, depressing life, that of the prisoners in Selkirk, more especially in those months between October and March, when darkness comes early and the days are chill and grey. ”

“ This was what you hoped to contemplate, poor Selkirk! and this joy, like many others, is henceforth forbidden.
In his floating prison, in his submarine cell, his only employment is to listen to the dashing of the waves against the ship, or now and then to catch a glimpse of the blue sky through the hatchways.
What cares he? He does not complain; he has learned to abhor mankind, and he loves to be alone, in company with himself and his own thoughts. ”

“ Selkirk did not fail to visit Scotland. Passing through St. Andrew, could he help experiencing anew the desire to see his old friend pretty Kitty? Once more he appeared before the bar of the Royal Salmon. This time, on meeting, Selkirk and Catherine both experienced a sentiment of painful surprise. The latter, stouter and fuller than ever, fat and red-faced, touched the extreme limit of her fourth and last youth ”

“ By the moonlight, he perceives as it were a long and slender chain, which, gliding upon the crest of the waves, directs itself towards the shore. By its form, by its copper color, by the multiplicity of its rings, unfolding in the distance, Selkirk recognizes the sea-serpent, that terror of navigators, as he has often heard it described.
The mind of the solitary is a perpetual mirage.
Filled with terror, he flies again; he conceals himself, trembling, in the caverns of his mountains; he has become a coward; why should he affect a courage he does not feel? No one is looking at him! ”

“ I was five years at school at Selkirk, have lived all my days within two miles of that town, and never once heard a tradition of this imaginary contest till I saw it in print.
"Although the words are not very ancient, there is every reason to believe, that they allude to the battle of Flodden, and to the different behaviour of the souters, and Lord Home, upon that occasion. At election dinners, &c. when the Selkirk folks begin to get fou', (merry) they always call for music, and for that tune in particular. ”

“ But summer dragged into autumn and autumn into winter, and no Lord Selkirk. Then we began to think ourselves secure; for the streams were frozen to a depth of four feet like adamant, and unless Selkirk were a madman, he would not attempt to bring his soldiers north by dog-train during the bitter cold of mid-winter. But 'tis ever the policy [Pg 370] of the astute madman to discount the enemy's calculations; and Selkirk utterly discounted ours by sending his hardy, dare-devil De Meurons across country under the leadership of that prince of braggarts, Captain D'Orsonnens. ”

“ The Island San Ambrosio.—Selkirk at last knows what Friendship is.—The Raft.—Visits to the Tomb of Marimonda.—The Departure.—The two Islands.—Shipwreck.—The Port of Safety.
As he read this, Selkirk was seized with intense pity for the unfortunate shipwrecked. What! on this same ocean, undoubtedly on these same shores, lives another unhappy being, like himself exiled from the world, enduring the same sufferings, subject to the same wants, experiencing the same ennui, the same anguish as himself! ”

“ In a twinkling, Selkirk’s men have captured every cannon in Fort William and are knocking at the doors of the central building. Not a gun has been fired; not a blow struck; not a drop of blood shed; but the trampling feet terrify the women in the attic. They crowd above the trapdoor to hold it down, when, presto! the only tragedy of the semi-farce takes place! The crowding is too much for the trapdoor. ”

“ Never can one forget the picturesque beauty and impressive grandeur of the Selkirk range, and the ride by the side of {17} the broad, rapid Fraser, over trestle-work, around curves, and through tunnels, with the forest-clad mountains ever rising as far as the eye can reach, with glimpses of precipices and cañons, of cataracts and cascades that tumble down from the glaciers or snow-clad peaks, and resemble so many drifts of snow amid the green foliage that grows on the lowest slopes. ”

“ At sight of the poor monkey, thus thrown into confusion, Selkirk, for the first time since his residence in the island, laughs so loudly, that the echo follows the fugitive to the grotto, where she had taken refuge, and is prolonged from the grotto to the Oasis, from the Oasis to the summit of the Discovery.
The exile has at last laughed, laughed aloud, and, at the same moment, a terrible disaster is taking place without his knowledge; a new war is preparing for him, in which his arms will be useless. ”

“ The Selkirk scheme is put to the vote. To a man the Hudson’s Bay Company shareholders declare for it. To a man there vote against it all those Nor’Westers who have bought Hudson’s Bay stock, except the two whose purchase was made but a week before: £29,937 of stock for Selkirk, £14,823 against him. By a scratch of the pen he has received an empire larger than the British Isles. Selkirk believed that he was lord of this soil as truly as he was proprietor of his Scottish estates, where men were arrested as poachers when they hunted. ”

“ He hesitates—thrice returning to his first resolution, he brings the gun to his forehead; thrice he removes it. At last, to drive away this demon of suicide, he fires it in the air.
Scarcely has he thus uselessly thrown away this precious shot before he repents. He approaches the shore; it is at the moment when the tide is at its lowest ebb; the sun touches the horizon. Selkirk lies down on the damp beach:—'When the wave returns,' said he, 'if it be God's will, let it take me!'
Slumber comes first. Exhausted with emotion, yielding to the lassitude of his mind, he falls asleep. ”

“ Selkirk is the starting point. And Selkirk is a very seemly, very prosperous town, looking not at all like an ecclesiastic city, as it started to be in the dear dead days of David the saint, looking very much as a hill city in Italy will look some day when Italy becomes entirely "redeemed" and modern, and exists for itself in [Pg 71] stead of for the tourist. Selkirk is indifferent to tourists, as indeed is every Scottish town; Scotland and Scotsmen are capable of existing for themselves. Selkirk hangs against the hillside above the Ettrick, and its show places are few ”

“ Regarding the part borne by her sons in the last-named great struggle, there are many trad-'fons to which the inhabitants of Selkirk cling tenaciously. Some, I fear, will not bear too close investigation, Traditions are mis-chancey things to handle; it does not always do to enquire too closely if one would retain one's faith. A large body of the men of 256Selkirk and the Forest went to Flodden, and they fought as they always did fight. ”

“ Born in 1771, Selkirk came to his title in 1779, and in 1807 married the daughter of James Colville, one of the heaviest shareholders in the Hudson’s Bay Company. All that life could give the young nobleman possessed, wealth, position, love, power. ”

“ Charles being the Earl of Selkirk. The Lady Baldoon, she thought, answered: “Lord Selkirk is safe, madam; there is no matter.” The duchess thought she answered: “The woman’s mad; she knows not her lord is dead;” and that she [Lady Baldoon] added: “Is Basil dead? then let James [the duke] take all: I will meddle no more with the world.” All this she [the duchess] told in the Thursday morning, twelve hours or more before Lord Selkirk came to Hamilton, who brought the first word of it.’ [296] ”

“ As far as the eye could see were innumerable mountain peaks all around. In the southern foreground the ice-girdled, central mass of the Selkirks, with its northern marking stone, the bold, fascinating Sir Donald, appeared especially beautiful. In the east, beyond the lower Selkirk peaks, the long row of haughty Rockies lay spread in partly rounded, partly broken shapes—a scene which I shall never forget. Sharply outlined, dark rock masses interchanged with lofty snow-tops ”

“ Pale, bent double, with his hair standing upright, clinging to some projection of his barque, he in vain attempts to fix his glance on certain strange objects which he sees ascending, descending, and rolling around him.
They are the trunks of the trees which formed a part of his raft, limbs detached from its body, and which, now drawn into the same whirlpool, are by their repeated shocks, aiding in his complete destruction.
In face of this imminent, implacable death, Selkirk ceases to struggle against it. He has now but one resource; the belief in another life. ”

“ Fig. 1495.—Selkirk Parish Church. Stoup.
conjunction with the arms, it is supposed by Mr. T. Craig Brown [217] to commemorate one of the Scots of Harden, who lived at Aikwood or Oakwood, a tower still standing not far from Selkirk. The stone probably dates from about the early part of the sixteenth century.
The following figures represent three stoups in the possession of Mr. Craig Brown, Selkirk. Fig. 1495 shows the five sides of one of these. On one face is a lion rampant, and on the adjoining space to the right is a human face, the mouth of which forms an opening for emptying the basin. ”

“ Far, far, frae Flodden Field!
"J. B. Selkirk" (JAMES B. BROWN) .
By permission of W. Cuthbertson, Esq.
Another lyric, relating to the fatal battle of Flodden, refers to the gallantry of the Souters, or shoemakers of Selkirk, who, to the number of eighty, and headed by their town-clerk, joined the army as it entered England. They distinguished themselves greatly, and few returned. The "yellow and green" are the liveries of the house of Home, taxed by some with being the cause of the defeat.
THE SOUTERS OF SELKIRK
Up wi' the Souters of Selkirk,
And doun wi' the Earl of Home ”

“ In territory, resources, and influence the opening up of the West is making Canada complete. And, if so, we owe it to Lord Selkirk and to Selkirk Settlers, who stood true to their flag and nationality. Very willingly will we observe the Selkirk Centennial in 1912. "Many a time and oft" it looked in their case to be one long, continued and alarming drama, but on the 30th day of August, the day of their landing on the banks of the Red River, shall we recite the epic of Lord Selkirk's Colonists, and it will be of the temper of Browning's couplet:
God's in His Heaven,
All's right with the world. ”

“ Though a bit of a frolic in the pause of the hardships of mountain travel without even a trail—and unless you know devil's club and the jungle mixed with its forests you know nothing of trailless travel in the Selkirks—the perspective of the years now shows that prophetic episode in a fine glamour. ”

“ One morning, Selkirk finds his fish-pond and bed of water-cresses devastated.
Exasperated, he declares war against the invaders: during three days he tracks them, pursues them; ten of them fall beneath his balls, leaving the shore bathed in their blood. The rest at last take flight, and the army of seals, regaining the sea with despairing cries, goes to establish itself at the other extremity of the island.
This war has been profitable to the conqueror. With the skin of the vanquished he makes himself a new hammock, which permits him to employ his sail for other uses ”

“ On his side, Selkirk who had not met her for a long time, seemed to have forgotten his former aversion.
At all events, is she not the most intelligent being chance has placed near him? He remembers that, in the ship, she obeyed the voice, the gesture of the captain, and that her tricks amused the whole crew. This resemblance to the human form, which he at first disliked, now awakens in him ideas of indulgence and peace. He reproaches himself with having treated her so brutally, when the poor animal, who alone had accompanied him into exile, at first accosted him with a caress. ”

“ He comprehends then what an error he has committed in the complete destruction of the wild cats which peopled the island. With the most generous intentions, how often is man mistaken in the object he pursues! We think we are ridding us of an enemy, and we are depriving ourselves of a protector. God only knows what he does, and he has admitted apparent evil, as a principle, into the admirable composition of his universe; he suffers the wicked to live. Selkirk had been more severe than God, and he repents it. ”