Before showing the origin of the quarrel, it may be well to take a glance at each of the men.
Thomas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, was the youngest of seven sons, and was born in 1771.

Though he belonged to one of the oldest noble families, of Scotland, yet when he went to Edinburgh, as a fellow student of Sir Walter Scott, Clerk of Eldon, and David Douglas, afterward Lord Reston, it was with a view of making his own way in the world, for there were older brothers between him and the Earldom.

He was a young man of intense earnestness, capable of living in an atmosphere of enthusiasm--always rather given indeed to take up and advocate new schemes.

There was in him the spirit of service of his Douglas ancestors, of being unwilling to "rust unburnished," and he was strong in will, "to strive, to seek, to find." This gave the young Douglas a seeming restlessness, and so he visited the Highlands and learned the Gaelic tongue.

He went to France in the days of the French Revolution, and took great interest in the Jacobin dreams of progress.