with some parties of natives, because their rivals, French and Americans, used them unstintedly to advance their trade. But, on the whole, the facts and the testimony bear hard against the company, even from those best informed in its affairs. A poor kind of spirit was manufactured in England for the company. Before it reached the natives it was diluted from a single part in ten up to even seven parts of water, for use among different tribes according to ascertained facts as to the relative susceptibility of their brains. The Indians were quick to learn about this reduction of the stimulating quality, and the term " fire-water" indicated their test by flame.

The heralds who announced the proximity of the fur-laden natives were dismissed with a present and the much-coveted dram. And then would soon appear on the scene a motley rush and grouping of wild crowds of Indians, all panting to meet the full reality of the fruition of the prospects which had cheered them through long months of solitary tramping. When the natives moved in companies for a visit to a post with their furs, they had to bring with them their food and all their household goods, their lodge-poles and coverings, their pans and kettles, and their whole families. The proud buck would carry no other burden than his gun. If they had dogs, these were put to the utmost service for drawing the laden sledge, if there was snow, or by an ingenious arrangement of two long poles fastened to their collars, and trailing behind them, with a pack attached. Failing help from brutes, the squaws bore all the impedimenta, and in the same pouch on their backs the pappoose would share his nestling-place with the puppy-dog, too young to travel on his legs. The picturesque or hideous spectacle-whichever epithet may meet our imagination of it — presented itself in all the bedizenment of Indian finery, with boisterous shouts, greetings, and yells. The visitors were required to keep at a respectful distance from the precincts of the post, so a considerable time was busily spent in settling an encampment after their own taste and fashion, while, during the interval, the employees of the post were carefully attending to their own securities and arrangements for meeting all the excitements and turbulences of the occasion, and for carrying out the well-prepared methods of profitable barter or traffic. Many all too faithful narrators have described to us in vivid pictures the scenes of the wild orgies and drinking bout which preceded the serious business negotiations. As much spirituous liquor as would on the one hand be thought not excessive, and on the other not meanly stinted, was sent out to the encampment. The squaws, well knowing what would follow, gathered up from the braves all their weapons and hid them away. Then for two or three days were enacted scenes of turbulence, of maudlin folly, and of demoniac passion and bestiality, which need no detail of description beyond the word pandemonium. When exhaustion and sleep had brought back shame and the reassertion of such manhood as these humbled victims of the white man's greed might retain, the actual business began. The natives were admitted singly within the guarded precincts of the trading-room. No specie or paper currency was used. The convenient

medium of exchange was found in bundles of little sticks, held by the clerk. A beaver represented the unit of value, and the tariff of other skins rose or fell by a fixed estimate. The native would open his pack, and, after the careful examination of its contents by the clerks, he would receive an answering number of these sticks. When all the natives had singly passed through this process, another apartment was in the same manner made accessible to them, one by one. Here were displayed goods and wares in abundance, supplies of all the articles attractive to native men and women, for uses of necessity or fancy. These, too, had their fixed prices by the tariff. The purchaser, dazed by the display, was allowed full time to make his selection, and, as his choice fell, the clerk took from him the answering value represented by the sticks which he had received for his peltries. A system of credit by advances to the natives was found by the officers of the company to work well in practice. By this system large numbers of the natives were kept in its debt, and the general testimony is that the creditors were faithful. On the general principle that a purchaser may fairly be left to accept the estimated worth of anything by its value to himself, under his own circumstances, there might be two sides. to the question whether the white men cheated the natives. Axes, knives, hatchets, kettles, blankets, cloths, guns, and ammunition were articles of high use and value to an Indian, and after his intercourse with the Europeans they became necessities to him. Trinkets and gewgaws and fancycolored stuffs also had to the squaws a worth compensatory to them for the drudgery of their hard life. Unfortunately, the wandering and reckless habits of these natives, who became all the more poor as their dependence upon the whites increased, made even articles of the highest value to be soon worthless in their possession, and they had no resources for their repair or preservation. Something will need to be said by and by of the profits drawn by the whites from this traffic, and we may see reason to approve the judgment that the advantage was, on the side of conscience, with the natives.

The trade being closed, the encampment was broken, and the party, laden with its return goods, took its way into the wilds. Then the clerks at the posts had their own well-defined task before them, to sort out the peltries which had been gathered in, and arrange them in packages for transfer by the ocean to the London warehouse. This was a process which required trained skill. Some of the very choicest skins needed to be treated with great care, as a trifling blemish would much reduce their value. The natives themselves, or rather the squaws, when they had the time to give to it, had a curious facility beyond even that of the whites in all the processes of scraping the flesh from the skin, softening, drying, and tanning it. These precious bales, for their ocean passage, needed to be guarded from heats and damps, and from gathering foul odors. But the requisite art seems to have been perfected.

Such, as selected and condensed from many thousands of pages, writ

ten amid the scenes above described, and by narrators whose whole range of life and activity was filled by occupations of steady labor and by incidents of romance, is a representation of service in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company.

We have now to present in historical statement and review that continuous series of agitations, controversies, and discussions, with appeals to government and hearings before parliamentary committees, extending through the whole of two centuries, which brought under question the chartered rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and its administration. We may say at the start that, in view of this protracted struggle, one who follows out its stages with a fair recognition of the various and powerful agencies engaged against the monopolists will have cause to wonder at the tenacity of life in the company, the policy and skill with which it thwarted opposition, and its ingenuity in covering its most important secrets; while, through all the period of its existence, with but few interruptions of its pecuniary thrift, it yielded such magnificent profits. The truth is, the company was shielded by powerful patronage. It had friends in high places. Its rights of possession had acquired by lapse of time those prerogatives. and immunities which have for Englishmen so attractive and efficient an influence in sanctioning questionable claims, if not even abuses. It was more than once admitted, under official processes concerning the charter, that while neither crown nor Parliament would in modern times confer or concede any such rights or privileges as it bestowed, yet that this wiser lesson of experience could not be carried so far back as 1670 for its application. It was evident that a strong prestige of authority ran down with the charter attaching to it from the royal and princely titles connected with the original and gracious donation. For a long period we find the names of the successive sovereigns leading the lists of the shareholders, as substitutes for the name of Prince Rupert. Not that any one of them had ever paid the price of stock, but the object evidently was to secure a royal dignity for the corporation. The covenanted annual consideration enjoined by the charter of "two elks and two black beavers" to be returned to the sovereign may have been duly rendered. It would, however, have been generously commuted by the annual douceurs of much higher value which. were sure to reach the court. Doubtless many a rich marten or sable, the most precious of all the spoils of the wilderness, passed from the little creatures which had worn the skin to the shoulders of royalty. Tentative steps of inquisition as to the owners and value of the company's stock, at any given time, were baffled by pleas of unsettled accounts of profit and debt, and the assertion that some of the shares had passed by inheritance to women and children, thus involving processes of chancery.

There was much significance in the fact already stated, that so early as only twenty years after the sealing of the charter the company, under the prompting of some misgivings as to its validity, as it had only the sanction

of the crown, had sought and obtained for it a parliamentary confirmation. The draft of the act of confirmation had limited the grant to ten years. The period was reduced by the committee to seven years. A perfect silence is observable as to any measures taken by the company to secure a renewal of this sanction by extension of time or by an indefinite term. We are left to imagine an explanation of this course pursued by the company. By appealing to Parliament it had confessed a consciousness of insecurity, and it must have recognized that the termination of the limited. period might bring with it some form of a crisis. We can well understand that the company, in its close councils, under the caution of some shrewd adviser, judged it safest not to invite upon itself any further official attention or scrutiny.

The occasions and incidents which through the whole two centuries of the chartered existence and administration of the company kept it under conflict of open and aggressive warfare, jealousy, rival opposition, business and mercantile antagonism, and official processes by government, may be disposed and treated under three divisions. It may be premised that all these matters of strife were more or less directly the mischievous results of the fact intimated in the opening of this chapter, namely, that that spasmodically generous monarch, Charles II, who made many other similar gifts, in the charter which he granted to Prince Rupert and his associates bestowed lavishly what did not belong to him.

I. The first and the most serious collisions of the company, involving measures of warfare, havoc, and large pecuniary losses, were encountered in consequence of its trespass upon rights claimed by France and French subjects under recognized principles of public law.

2. A second class of vexatious and forcible annoyances and controversies met by the company, sprang from the sturdy and uncompromising opposition of other British subjects to its illegal and grasping monopoly, its utter neglect of the primary object of exploration recognized in its charter, and its policy of intrigue and jealousy.

3. The last series of controversies, which in their resolute and effective agitations brought about a surrender of the charter, were incident to an attempt to plant a resident colony on a portion of its territory.

In dealing with the first of these classifications, we remind ourselves that Charles II restricted the terms of the gift in his charter of "Rupert's Land" to such territory as should not be held by any other Christian prince or his subjects. By the complacent usage of titles at the time, Louis XIII of France was a "Christian prince," and he had precisely the same claim and rights of possession to the territory of Hudson's Bay as the English monarchs had to regions farther south on the Atlantic coast, -- the rights obtained by sighting the coast and entrance upon the shores. The king of France had by a charter in 1626, forty-four years previous to that of Rupert's Land, conveyed to the Company of New France the region now known as Canada, and the whole region of Hudson's Bay, which had been

HUDSON'S BAY, 1722.*

* [From Bacqueville de la Potherie. Bellin's map of 1744 is in Charlevoix. Other maps are in Prevost's Voyages, xiv. and xv.; and in the Allg. Hist. der Reisen, vols. xiv. (1756), xvi. (1756), and xvii. (1759). — ED.]

entered by French navigators. The first European that ever coursed the continent to the Rocky Mountains was a Frenchman, M. Varennes de la