Note 92 — Chapter XXIX · 1808-1812.

"I have," writes Sir Alexander Mackenzie from London, 13th April, 1812, "finally settled with that Lord (Selkirk). After having prepared a bill to carry him before the Lord Chancellor, it was proposed to my solicitor by the solicitor of his Lordship that one-third of the stock that was purchased on joint account before I went to America, amounting to £47,000, and the balance of cash in his Lordship's hands, belonging to me, should be given up to me; of this I accepted, though I might have obliged his Lordship to make over to me one-third of the whole purchase made by him in this stock, which at one time I was determined to do, having been encouraged thereto by the house of Suffolk Lane and countenanced by that of Mark Lane. But these houses thought it prudent to desist from any further purchases."

Mackenzie says that by a verbal understanding with Mr. McGillivray, his purchase of the Hudson's Bay stock belonged to the North-West Company, and that, if Mr. McGillivray himself had been there, a sum of £30,000 might have been invested in that stock, "all of which Lord Selkirk purchased, and if he persists in his present scheme, it will be the dearest he yet made.

"He will put the North-West Company to a greater expense than you seem to apprehend, and had the Company sacrificed £20,000 which might have secured a preponderance in the stock of Hudson's Bay Co., it would have been money well spent."