Lord Selkirk soon hastened on and overtook his expedition at Sault Ste. Marie, now consisting of two hundred and fifty men all told, and these being maintained at his private expense. They immediately proceeded westward, intending to go to the extreme point of Lake Superior, near where the town of Duluth now stands, and where the name Fond du Lac is still retained. The expedition would then have gone north-westward through what is now Minnesota to Red Lake, from which point a descent could have been made by boat, through Red Lake River and Red River to the very settlement itself. This route would have avoided the Nor'-Westers altogether.
Westward bound, the party had little more than left Sault Ste. Marie, during the last week of July, when they were met on Lake Superior by two canoes, in one of which was Miles Macdonell, former Governor of Red River, who brought the sad intelligence of the second destruction of the colony and of the murder of Governor Semple and his attendants. His Lordship was thrown into the deepest despair. The thought of his Governor killed, wholesale murder committed, the poor settlers led by him from the Highland homes, where life at least was safe, to endure such fear and privation, was indeed a sore trial. To any one less moved by the spirit of philanthropy, it must have been a serious disappointment, but to one feeling so thorough a sympathy for the suffering and who was himself the very soul of honour, it was a crushing blow.
He resolved to change his course and to go to Fort William, the headquarters of the Nor'-Westers. He now determined to act in his office as magistrate, and sought to induce two gentlemen of Sault Ste. Marie, Messrs. Ermatinger and Askin, both magistrates, to accompany him in that capacity. They were unable to go. Compelled to proceed alone, he writes from Sault Ste. Marie, on July 29th, to Sir John Sherbrooke, and after speaking of his failure to induce the two gentlemen mentioned by him to go, says, "I am therefore reduced to the alternative of acting alone, or of allowing an audacious crime to pass unpunished. In these circumstances I cannot doubt that it is my duty to act, though I am not without apprehension that the law may be openly resisted by a set of people who have been accustomed to consider force as the only true criterion of right."