complete extirpation. Fish and wild fowl abounded in the wilderness. The treeless plain regions were coursed at intervals by bottom lands and streams whose banks were well wooded, and the primeval forests kept their awful solitudes. The aborigines, adapting themselves to circumstances, found the supply of all their wants in simply skimming the surface of their domains.

Such was the region, in its furnishings and surroundings, which was put to the service of the chartered Hudson's Bay Company, to be used for much or little, as power and will, opportunity and circumstances, might decide. The legality, wisdom, and rectitude of the company as a business corporation were questioned through its whole extended existence. It would perhaps be difficult to pronounce on the question whether or not it fairly and effectively filled its place of enterprise and influence in the series of efforts and struggles which have opened and enriched the new world. Within its own aims and methods the company certainly must be said to have marvellously prospered. Starting with a capital of £10,500, it has been carefully estimated that it has carried from this country furs which have sold for one hundred and twenty million dollars. But of this more by and by.

Immediately on the receipt of the charter the company began its mercantile operations with energy and zeal. Though setting aside for the present the question of the validity of its charter, reasonable strictures have found forcible expression as to the harm which it suffered from its own narrow and selfish policy. Reference has already been made to the fact that the French traders from Canada, entering the country of furs at another point than the Bay, had begun to find vast profit over the whole northwest territory. The company always aimed to have it appear that the straits and Bay offered the best practicable entrance to the fur region, and discouraged the route through Lake Superior. So the company planted its earliest posts on the margins of the icy coast, at the mouths of the principal rivers. The situation from the first precluded all labors and much. profits by tillage of the soil, though in peculiarly favorable seasons a few vegetables were cultivated. With seven or eight months of freezing weather, which bound the earth in frost very deep below the surface, the extreme heat of the brief summer availed only to relax the surface, and this became soft, wet, and marshy. Below three feet of thaw there were fifteen feet of frost. The thermometer in the course of the year had a free range of a hundred and fifty degrees, rising a hundred degrees above and sinking fifty degrees below the freezing point. Even had France been willing to admit the right of the English monarch to confer the chartered territory on his subjects, the relations existing between the two powers would not have allowed a transit to the company through Canada. shall find that all the subsequent rivalries and contests between the opposing fur companies were prompted and embittered by the conditions under which the Bay Company began its operations and continued them for more

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than half a century, without penetrating any distance into the country by lakes and rivers. The French penetrated the interior to open trade with the savages; the English waited to have the peltries brought to them at their outer posts.

In the first year of the charter the company sent Charles Bayly, as its first resident agent, to set up a factory at Rupert's River. The French had already wintered in the Bay, and the first of the series of collisions, soon to be referred to, occurred. In 1685 there were five posts of the company. The next year De Troyes went by land from Canada and destroyed three of them, and so the posts changed hands till the Treaty of Utrecht. A single English ship annually sufficed for a time to conduct the business. There were never more than two in a year besides a small sloop retained in the Bay. The mariners soon, so to speak, learned to know their way to the inhospitable port, and no other vessels than those belonging to the company were allowed access. The intention was that the ships should arrive within the straits between the 10th and 15th of August, and, after changing cargo, should go out between September 15th and 20th. But the tight or the floating masses of ice did not dispose their movements by the almanac, and patience and seamanship were put to sore trials. Captain Herd, in his testimony before a parliamentary committee in 1857, said that in passing through the straits he had experienced all the difference, in his successive voyages, between four days and five weeks. Of the distance between London and the Bay, which he estimated to be about 3,500 miles, the way through ice was from 800 to 1,000 miles, requiring an average of three weeks to penetrate it. This sturdy seaman seems to have contined himself strictly to the deck of his vessel when in the Bay. He had no curiosity about the country or its people, and could give no information. He said he "was always very glad to get there, and very glad to leave it again." The two annual vessels endeavored to keep together on the outward passage, parting after entering the Bay, the one for York Factory, the other for Moose Factory on James' Bay, and also to come out of the straits in company.

The organization of the company in London provided for the administration of all its local business affairs within its chartered territory. Of course it had supreme authority, and all that it delegated under it was subject in its exercise to the revision and approval of the company. The charter, as we have seen, constituted a very small body of directors, and made a very small number of these a quorum for the transaction of business. As it was soon found that much reticence about its affairs was considered necessary to guard its secrets and to secure its interests as a monopoly, it became a corporation of the closest sort. It would seem that under the sharpest parliamentary inquisition certain secrets of the company could not be drawn out. It presented only such extracts from its papers and books as it saw fit to make public. And of course its most trusted officials in the Bay were expected to be confidential and loyal in its service. For some

years the company sent a superintendent to each of its posts. The method and details of local administration were developed and adjusted by circumstances and the expansion of the business of the company, and appear soon to have resulted in an admirably managed system. A local resident governor was appointed to supervise all the business arrangements in the Bay,

and to dispose all offices and trusts, under the approval of the company. It soon naturally became customary to set in this high responsibility, according to the rule for the promotion of its servants, one who had risen from the ranks, and had shown capacity and fidelity. This local governor was to preside at a council which was to be held annually, and oftener if there were occasion, for the purpose of directing all the arrangements of the business down to the most minute details regarding the assignment of posts to all subordinates and servants, the planning of expeditions, the disposal of goods, and every outlay. The territory was a vast one for any

* After a cut in Bryce's Manitoba, p. 291.

systematic oversight and for the distribution at long distances of those intrusted with property and business. The company came, under the stress of the assaults made upon it, to assuming and asserting, as if by authority of its charter, that it controlled all the territory whose waters drained into the Bay. This, however, was a constructive interpretation, not warranted by the letter of the instrument. But, as so construed, the region extended from the Bay easterly on the coast about 200 miles, on the south towards. Canada 300, and on the west to the Rocky Mountains nearly 1,500 miles. And when, as we shall notice, the company, at the period of its greatest energy, had procured a government license for "exclusive trade" over what was called the "Indian Territory," namely, the whole northwest of America, whose waters drained into the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific, the administration of affairs became a task for the highest executive ability. Deferring for the present a statement of the circumstances under which he came into the office, it may be noted here that in 1821 Sir George Simpson was the first person chosen to the great trust of representing the company in America, in its whole domain and in all its business. He, as "Governor of Rupert's Land," thus absorbed all the offices and responsibilities which had heretofore been distributed among petty heads at the various posts. After holding the office for nearly forty years, covering some of the most agitating controversies of the company, his failing health required him to leave the country. He died in England in 1860, while still in office.

The council over which the general local governor presided was composed of the highest in rank of the resident business officials of the company, called the "chief factors." If there were not enough of these present for full discussion and disposal of affairs, some of the "chief traders," the second grade of officials, might take part in the council. It would seem, however, that the power of the governor was autocratical and supreme, for his final judgment or decision could not be overruled. When questioned on this point before a parliamentary committee, in 1857, Governor Simpson said that there had never been an occasion in which a direct issue had been raised between him and the council. When fully organized, the resident corps of the company was: 16 chief factors; 29 chief traders; 5 surgeons; 87 apprentice clerks; 67 masters at posts; 1,200 permanent servants, Indians and others, and about 500 voyageurs; 150 officers and crews of vessels: thus employing about 3,000 men. The Indian population of Rupert's Land, over whom the company was supposed to exercise some influence, was estimated in 1857 at 43,000; in the Indian Territory, east of the mountains, at 13,000, and west of them, 80,000.

The council, which generally met in June, had to dispose of the affairs, the transmission of supplies, the return of furs, the oversight of the accounts, the assignment of officials, of clerks, apprentices and servants, and all the minutest details of these operations in the wilderness. Though not held to any one place of meeting, the council usually assembled at Norway House, at the northern end of Lake Winnipeg. This station became the

[NOTE.-Fac-simile of a plate in Robson's Hudson's Bay (London, 1752). - ED.]