received courtesy and hospitality. His route was wholly by the watercourses. He sets down minute details of distances, portages, camping-places, and the incidents of travel, of life at the posts which he visited, and of the efforts of garden and field culture. He speaks kindly of the company, its methods and conduct.

The history of Lord Selkirk's settlement down to 1852 is covered in Alexander Ross's The Red River Settlement: its Rise, Progress, and present State. With some account of the Native Races and its general history to the present day (London, 1856). The writer was at an early age in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company at a post deep in the wilderness, and after many years of service took up his residence in the settlement where he has held prominent and honored positions, highly respected and confided in. Most intelligently and impartially does he trace the history and development of the colony from its troubled and distracted beginnings to the comparative prosperity which it reached. It had not, however, come to the end, either of its internal or its external conflicts, when he closed his work. With some few exceptional strictures, he in general terms approves the policy and conduct of the Bay Company. While expressing his belief that Mr. Isbister, in his sharp controversy with the company, was betrayed by the unfounded representations of his countrymen, he speaks in the highest terms of respect of that gentleman for his personal excellence and humanity. Very full, interesting, and trustworthy accounts are given in the volume of the good and the ill conditions mixed in the settlement; its resources and prospects; of its agricultural and social life; of the native tribes around it, and of the stirring hunting expeditions. Especially sagacious and practical are the views of the author about the contentions of religious sects and the necessity that civilization should precede "conversion."

Of Robert Michael Ballantyne's sprightly and entertaining Hudson's Bay: or everyday life in the Wilds of North America, during six years' residence in the Territories of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company (London, 3d ed., 1857) there have been repeated editions. The writer describes himself to have been in his Highland home in 1841, when he was thrilled with joy on his appointment as an apprentice clerk in the service of the Hudson Bay Company. Robust and vigorous in constitution and animated in spirits, he entered with full zest into the conditions and duties of his office, with its tasks and hardships, and found full enjoyment in its rude relaxations. Making many long journeys by boats in the open season and with dog-sledges in the winter, he describes with minuteness of detail all the methods of travel, the smooth and the rough passages, the toil over the portages, the shooting of rapids, the trailing or dragging of boats up cascades by cheery voyageurs having but a slippery footing on precipitous banks; the coming in to the posts of the wild bands of boisterous Indians, their women, children, and dogs, with furs and hides, and the opening riot of intoxication, the method of trade, the giving forth of supplies, and the return of quiet; the gay scenes of half-breed life, the dance and the wedding. On his homeward way the writer went by Lake Superior and the old Canadian posts to Quebec and Tadousac, a journey of many hardships and romantic incidents.2

Mr. Joseph James Hargrave was evidently an intelligent observer and candid reporter of matters which came under his own knowledge during his seven years' residence in the Dominion province now called Manitoba. He traces in his Red River (Montreal, 1871) the history of the Red River settlement from its origin under Lord Selkirk, and gives a sufficiently full statement of the disasters, sufferings, and finally the limited prosperity

1 Cf. also his Fur Hunters of the Far West (London, 1855).

2 As illustrating other adventures of this period, cf. Archibald McDonald's Peace River, a canoe voyage from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific (Ottawa, 1872), and the publication by Viscount Milton and Dr. Wm. B. Cheadle, called The Northwest Passage by Land. Being the Narra

tive of an Expedition from the Atlantic to the Pacific (London, 1865). The route followed was down the Red River to Fort Garry, hence through British Columbia. The writers both wield a ready and lively pen, sketching many striking scenes, with incidents of perilous adventure, strange companionships, hunting expeditions, and camp-life.

which it had reached at the time of his visit. It will be remembered that the settlement was the scene of the sharpest rivalry and contests, involving a great loss of life, between the opposing parties of the Hudson Bay and the Northwest Companies. Notwithstanding its chartered privileges and its position and resources on the spot, the Bay Company was the loser in that strife. The period of Mr. Hargrave's residence was between 1861 and 1869. The volume will always be of high historical value, because it so faithfully describes and comments upon scenes and occurrences which have so rapidly changed on the panorama of the past. The community which he portrays was a strangely heterogeneous one, bringing together people of many nationalities, of various mixtures of blood, and many of whom appeared during the year in the three characters of farmers, fishermen, and hunters.

In 1873, the investigation over the bounds of the province of Ontario led to two treatises, both of which are retrospective in their historical bearing. In David Mills' Boundaries of Ontario (Toronto, 1873), the second part is given to a historical summary of the French and English contests for the possession of Hudson's Bay from 1670 to the treaty of Utrecht; while a sketch of the early rivalry of the French and English in securing the fur trade is found in Charles Lindsey's Investigations of the unsettled Boundaries of Ontario (Toronto, 1873).1

In The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the Northwest of America (London, 1873), Captain W. F. Butler relates the occasion of his first range of distant travel in the Northwest. His errand into the country was induced by an official connection with the military expedition which went from Canada to suppress the revolt of the French half-breeds, under the "Dictator" Louis Riel, in 1869-1870, when the Red River settlement was made over from the control of the Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada. He passed through the United States, and anticipated for several months the arrival of the military force which came by the old Canadian route. He himself had some stirring adventures. Being on the spot, a keen, intelligent, and impartial observer, he gives us a most graphic account of the revolt, which threatened to be very serious in its origin and progress, but which ended in an absurd and inglorious discomfiture. Intending to return after this affair, he found himself invested with some judicial functions and the power of conferring them on others. He was thus led to make an expedition through the Saskatchewan Valley all the way to the company's post at the Mountain House, meeting with all the wild experiences of free adventure. He was an intrepid traveller, heroic and enduring, and his pages are vigorously written. He received the hospitalities of the company's officers and posts, and he passes no strictures on its policy. He traversed regions in which the natives had been wellnigh extirpated by an appalling visitation of the smallpox, which had also been severe in its ravages at some of the posts. He took with him large supplies of medical stores and directions for treating the disease. He is an ardent champion of the native qualities and the rights of the red man in his ever-ruinous contact with the whites.

A year later, Captain Butler, in his Wild North Land, being the story of a winter journey with dogs across northern North America (London, 1874), gives a delightful and instructive narrative of another expedition in the wilderness. This was wholly of a private nature, and was prompted by the spirit of adventure, made more exciting by its previous indulgence. His wanderings this time were principally on foot. He started from the Red River in the autumn of 1872, and in March following reached Lake Athabasca. Then he followed the winding Peace River to the Rocky Mountains, and through the north of British Columbia and New Caledonia, coming out on Fraser's River in June. His transient stops at the posts of the Bay Company, his sketches of the articles in which

1 Cf. Statutes, documents, and papers bearing on the discussion respecting the northern and western boundaries of Ontario, including the principal evidence supposed to be for or against the Province (Toronto, 1878).

Correspondence, papers, and documents, 18561882, relating to the northerly and westerly boundaries of Ontario (Toronto, 1882).

it trafficked, and his account of the wonderful mail-carriage in its semi-annual expeditions, furnish many lively and entertaining sketches.

The Earl of Southesk was substantially the guest of the Bay Company in 1859 and 1860, when he made the journey described in his Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains, A Diary and Narrative of Travel, Sport, and Adventure, during a Journey through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories (Edinburgh, 1875). He had been promised its aid and furtherance as an inducement to his trip, and he received from it all needed help. As the title of the book shows, he was an amateur explorer and huntsman, with the spirit of free adventure. He describes with vividness and geniality the incidents of travel and the camp, and adds many interesting facts about the natural history of the region, its wild animals and the natives, giving us many sketches from his own pencil.1

We find quite as much a summary of existing knowledge as of personal observation and experience in H. M. Robinson's Great Fur Land, or Sketches of Life in the Hudson's Bay Territory. With numerous Illustrations from Designs by Charles Gasche (New York, 1879). The book is written with much vivacity, and will have a charming interest for readers who seek for romantic narrative and sketches of wild life. He gives us very full particulars about the more recent operations and government of the Hudson Bay Company, without any reflections on its policy or administration, generally commending it for fairness and for wise and kindly dealing with the Indians. He presents with great vividness the scenes and conditions of life; the characters and habits of red men, white men, half-breeds, voyageurs, hunters, and traders; the modes of travelling by canoe or dog-sledges; life in the company's posts in summer and winter; the hunting expeditions; methods of trapping; accounts of the fur trade; a winter camp; the gayeties of wild festive scenes among the half-breeds; the mode in which traffic is carried on, and some statistics of the peltries.

THE official and personal writings which have thus been surveyed involve, of course, the details of the history of the Hudson's Bay Company. Synoptical surveys of this history, with the extension of their field through the Indian territory and to the Pacific, will be found in H. H. Bancroft's Northwest Coast (ch. 14, etc.), and in Barrows's Oregon (ch. 6 and 12), where are particularly contrasted the opposing systems of settlement and of the trade for furs as brought into rivalry, to the advantage of the former in the saving of Oregon to the American Union (see ante, Vol. VII.). Bancroft gives a separate chapter (ch. 15) to collating the evidence about "Forts and Fort Life." All general histories of Canada and of Arctic exploration necessarily touch the subject. The best bibliography of the company's history can be picked out of the list of publications prefixed by Bancroft to his Northwest Coast. Some of the less important ones are grouped together in his vol. i. p. 457. Cf. also the section on Hudson's Bay in Chavanne's Literatur über die Polar-Regionen (Vienna, 1874). The bibliography of the explorations in the Northwest may be primarily followed in Bryce's paper on "Journeys in Rupert's Land," in the Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, 1886. The mass of periodical literature can be gleaned through Poole's Index, p. 611, and Supplement, - the best condensation of the history being found perhaps

in the Westminster Review (July, 1867), on "The last great monopoly."1 There is an enumeration of the typical maps of the Hudson Bay region in Winsor's Kohl Collection of Maps, section iv.

No. 6 of the Papers of the Manitoba Hist. Soc. is devoted to the sources of the history of the Canadian Northwest. As regards the respective rights of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Companies to the trade of the Winnipeg country, the question turned upon the validity of the parliamentary grant to the Hudson's Bay Company for an extension of their trade westerly of Rupert's Land, as against the rights inherited, or assumed by the Canadians as accruing by the accession of the rights of France, through exploration, before the cession of the country and its advantages to England by the Peace of Paris (1763). But the Hudson's Bay Company also claimed to have preceded the French in this region, by sending through it a young explorer, Henry Kelsey, in 1690.2 Vérandrye's explorations in 1731-49 were the earliest for the French (see references, ante, Vol. V. 567-8). La Franche first explored the route between Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay, 1738– 42. For a summary of overland explorations from 1640 to 1786, see ch. 19 of Bancroft's Northwest Coast, vol. i. The London Mag. in 1761 gave a map of the straits of St. Mary and Michillimackinac to show the situation and importance of the two westernmost settlements of Canada for the fur trade.

The history of the North West Company, formed at Montreal in 1787 by uniting various trading interests, can be followed in The origin and progress of the Northwest Company of Canada, with a history of the fur trade, as connected with that concern (London, 1811). Up to this time the main features of their career had been their occupation of the Red River district in 1788; the explorations of Mackenzie in their interest in 1789; the secession of the X Y Company in 1796; its reunion with the parent body in 1804; the contract with the Astor people in 1810; their building their first fort on the Columbia in 1811. They bought out the Astoria post in 1813. The book just cited has a map exhibiting the principal trading stations of the Northwest Company; and another map, showing these stations, with the routes of the traders from Fort William,3 on Lake Superior, is given in Alexander M'Donell's Narrative of Transactions in the Red River Country (London, 1819). The issue between the rival companies came with the grant to the Earl of Selkirk, by the Hudson's Bay Company, of a tract in this Winnipeg region. Before applying to the Bay Company, Selkirk got the opinion of Romilly and others that the company was competent to make such a grant (Bryce's Manitoba, 147; Mills' Boundaries of Ontario, p. 404; House of Commons' Report, 323). The map in M'Donell's Narrative shows the extent of this territorial grant, as was claimed. Selkirk by this time had become a large owner of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Of the conflict which ensued between the servants of the two companies, on the part of the Northwest Company to expel the Selkirk colonists, and on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company to protect them, we have a good account of a looker-on in Ross Cox's Adventures on the Columbia River (London, 1831; New York, 1832); but the trials which followed in the Canadian courts give us the conflict of testimony: Report of the Proceedings connected with the disputes between the Earl of Selkirk and the Northwest Company at the Assizes held at York, in Upper Canada, October, 1818. From minutes taken in Court (Montreal, 1819; reprinted, London, 1819).

Report of trials in the Courts of Canada relative to the Destruction of the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement on the Red River, with observations. By A[ndrew] Amos (London, 1820). This is accompanied by a map of the Red River settlement as it was in 1816.

The publications of this period are hardly impartial. They espouse one side or the other. What may be considered the official representation of the Northwest Company is A Narrative of Occurrences in the Indian Countries of North America since the connection of the Earl of Selkirk with the Hudson's Bay Company, and his attempt to establish a colony on the Red River; with a detailed account of his Lordship's military expedition to, and subsequent proceedings at, Fort William (London, 1817).4

The protest on Selkirk's part can be found in his Sketch of the British fur trade in North America; with observations relative to the Northwest Company of Montreal (London, J. Ridgeway, 1816), which originally appeared in the Quarterly Review, October, 1816; and in the publication in his interest, compiled by John Halkett, and called a Statement respecting the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement upon the Red River; its destruction in 1815 and 1816; with observations upon a recent publication entitled “A narrative of occurrences in the Indian Countries,” etc. (London, 1817). It is accompanied by a map by Arrowsmith, showing the Winnipeg country. The letter book of Captain Miles Macdonell at the Selkirk Settlement, 1811-12, is given in Brymner's Report on the Canadian Archives, 1886.

1 Cf. also Canadian Monthly (v. 273); Cornhill Mag. (xxii. 159); "La traite au Nord-ouest et quelques notes sur la compagnie de la Baie Hudson, par L. A. Prud'homme," in the Revue Canadienne (Jan., 1887. p. 16); and Emile Petitot on "The Athabasca District," with a map, in the Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. (Nov., 1883).

2 Bryce's Manitoba; Manitoba Hist. Soc. Papers, no. 4. 8 We have a picture of life at Fort William, the Northwester's principal post, in Ross Cox's Columbia River, and particularly in Gabriel Franchère's Voyage à la Côte Nord-ouest de l'Amerique Septentrionale pendant les années 1810-1814 (Montreal, 1820), of which there is an English translation by J. V. Huntington (New York, 1954).

He had been one of the Astor expedition, and his natural story was much in Irving's mind, apparently, when he wrote his Astoria.

4 Cf. John Strachan's Letter to the Earl of Selkirk on his settlement at the Red River, near Hudson's Bay (London, 1816), and Alexander M'Donell's Narrative of Transactions in the Red River Country from the Commencement of the Operations of the Earl of Selkirk till the summer of the year 1816 (London, 1819).

Cf. also Arrowsmith's Map exhibiting the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America, inscribed by permission to the Hon. Company of Adventurers of England trading in Hudson's Bay (London, 1798-1811).

After Selkirk returned to England, in 1818, a motion was made in the House of Commons for all the official papers in the recent troubles, and in 1819 they were printed.

Selkirk died in 1820, and the next year the two companies were united, preserving only the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Sir George Simpson became governor. This story is told at length in Bancroft's Northwest Coast, ii. ch. 15.

John West's Substance of a journal during the residence at the Red River Country and frequent excursion among the Northwest American Indians, 1820-1823 (London, 1824), and Keating's Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's Lake (Lake Winnepeck) in 1823 (London, 1825), become now of

interest.

The later writers are variously inclined in their sympathies. Alexander Ross's Red River Settlement, its rise, progress, and present state, with some account of the native races and its general history to the present day, by Alexander Ross (London, 1836), is on the side of the elder company; and the same position is temperately sustained in George Bryce's Manitoba, its infancy, growth, and present condition (London, 1882).1 The story of the Red River events, as well as the subsequent career of both companies after their enforced union, is sufficiently told, and with a good many helpful references, in Bancroft's Northwest Coast, with the aid of some manuscript accounts, as well as of the great mass of printed material. The story of the Northwest Coast is further continued by Bancroft in his Oregon and in his British Columbia.

The question of commercial intercourse with the Winnipeg country led to an exploration of the country between Lake Superior and the Red River settlement, of which a Report 2 was published, with a Map of a part of the valley of Red River, north of the 49th parallel, to accompany a Report on the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition, by H. Y. Hind. Of late years it has become a debatable question whether the route from Europe through Hudson's Bay may not be made commercially serviceable through a considerable part of the year. (Cf. Robert Bell's "Commercial Importance of Hudson's Bay" in the Roy. Geog. Soc. Proc., October, 1881, with a map; W. Skelford in the National Rev., London, vii. 541; C. R. Tuttle's Our North Land (Toronto, 1885), ch. 28; Science, vii. 278; Charles N. Bell's Northern Waters, Winnipeg, 1885; and some papers published by the Manitoba Historical Society: no. 1, Navigation of Hudson's Bay; no. 2, The Hudson's Bay Route.) The rebellions in the Red River region, which followed upon the creation of the Province of Manitoba, fall on a later period than this volume is intended to embrace, but the sources of their history involve the results of the final extinction of the Hudson's Bay Company as a great monopoly.3

An account of the fur trade along the Pacific is the essential body of Bancroft's Northwest Coast, which is of use in tracing the transactions of the Hudson Bay Company in those regions, with its abundant references. He says in his preface: —

"During the summer of 1878 I made an extended tour in this territory for the purpose of adding to my material for its history. Some printed matter I found, not before in my possession. I was fortunate enough to secure copies of the letters of Simon Fraser, and the original journals of Fraser and John Stuart; also copies from the originals of the journals of John Work and W. F. Tolmie, the private papers of John McLoughlin, and a manuscript History of the Northwest Coast by A. C. Anderson. Through the kindness of Mr. John Charles, at the time chief of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Pacific coast, I was given access to the archives of the fur company gathered at Victoria, and was permitted to make copies of important fort journals, notably those of Fort Langley and Fort Simpson. But most important of all were the historical and biographical dictations taken from the lips of several hundred of pioneers and earliest furhunters and settlers then living, by a short-hand reporter who accompanied me in my travels, and which were afterward written out, severally bound, and used in the usual way as material for history.

To no

"It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of this information, given as it was by actors in the scenes represented, many of whom have since departed this life, and all of whom will soon be gone. small extent it is early historical knowledge absolutely rescued from oblivion, and which, if lost, no power on earth could reproduce. Conspicuous among those who thus bear testimony are Mrs. Harvey, who gave me a biographical sketch of her father, Chief Factor McLoughlin; John Tod, chief for a time of New Cale

1 He gives a list of his authorities. Cf. Donald Gunn's Hist. of Manitoba to 1835, with a continuation to its admission to the Dominion by C. R. Tuttle (Ottawa, 1880); Alexander Begg's Creation of Manitoba and the history of the Red River Troubles (Toronto, 1871); and John Macoun's Manitoba and the Great Northwest (1883).

Henry Youle Hind's Northwest Territory. Reports of progress; with a preliminary and general report on the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan exploring expedition, made under instructions from the provincial secretary, Canada. Printed by order of the Legislative Assembly (Toronto, 1859); and the same author's Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857, and of the Assiniboine and Saskatawan Expedition of 1859 (London, 1860).

* Cf. Alexander J. Russell's Red River Country, Hud

son's Bay and Northwest Territories considered in relation to Canada (Ottawa, 1869; Montreal, 1870).

Red River Insurrection; Hon. Wm. McDougall's Conduct Reviewed (anon.).

The Red River Insurrection Reviewed; letters to Hon.
Jos. Howe by Wm. McDougall (Toronto, 1870).
Alexander Begg's Creation of Manitoba, or a history of
the Red River Troubles (Toronto, 1871).

Capt. Geo. Lightfoot Huyshe's Red River Expedition (London, 1871).

S. J. Dawson's Report on the Red River Expedition of 1870, printed by order of the House of Commons. Reprint, with remarks on certain strictures published in England by an officer of the expeditionary force (Ottawa, 1871).

Report of the Select Committee on the Causes of the difficulties in the Northwest Territory in 1869-70 (Ottawa, 1874).