Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-06-24

who have been frequenting those for seventy
years The bay itself gives access to the great
Canadian Northwest, the vast territory once known
as Ruperts Land 1t was named from the dashing
Stuart Prince who was the first governor of the
Hudson Bay Company, which in 1910 acquired
from King Charles II. the wilderness west and south
The Hudson Bay Company was formed by
Der of men interested in the Newfoundland trade,
mobiles and favorites of the Merry Monarch" who
had obtained from him extensive plantations
the coast of that and the neghboring islands.
Great annual harvests of fishes, seals and petries
reaped; but they fired to dreams of i'm
mensely greater riches by the stories of two French
explorers Radisson and Groseilier, who had pene-
trated the wilderness from Lake Superior through to
Hudson Bay, and had brought to London (being re-
buffed at Quebec and Paris) accounts of country
filled with fur-bear1ng animals and an ocean teemng
with fish. They proposed to reach both by taking
ships through Hudson Strait and establishing posts
the shores of the bay thence piercing the interior
and so avoiding quarrels with the French in
Canada which, as at that time understood,
meant virtually the present Province of Quebec and
the eastern Districts the western boundary ending
where the pioneer varied with the savage.
Entire Provinces From the Grant
THE Province of Manitoba has already been
created out of Ruperts Land, and westward it
extended beyond the Rocky Mountains, the
pany holding sway what is now British Column
bia Washington and Oregon States and even the
North Pacific Islands, while, after the new Provinces
of Saskatchewan and Alberta were taken from it in
1905, there still remain the unOrganized territories of
Ungava Keewatin Mackenzie, Athabasca and
Franklin, to form the nucleus of future Provinces
There is IN the history of commercial exploitation
OF oversee possessions scarcely any fascinating
chapter than that which treats of this Hudson Bay
Company: how it resisted nations overcame rivals,
outwltted parhaments subJugated natives, and
made itself sovereign of a region which embraced
substantially half of the continent of North America
At the zenith of its power seventy years ago it enjoy
eddoman territorylarger than Western Europe,
with an area exceeding four million square miles,
peopled by than fifty different Indian tribes
and yielding yearly tribute in fin, fur and feather
the enormous value of which fairly staggers belief.
For two centuries the Hudson Bay Company
had ruled its vast baihwick despotically as the
Cars ruled Russia. Only its store-ships, bringing
in supplies and munitions articles of barter and
platoons of servitors and conveying the years
accumulation of peltries and fish, could cruise in
Hudson Bay. Only its factors, clerk, and trappers
could venture into its inland areas at the risk
OF death Over the northern plains the company's
word was law its tokens were currency its factors
exercised the powers of life and death, liberty and
lordshlp. In its earliest days it had a desperate
struggle to maintain its existence; for the French
rePudiated its charter, ignored its authority and
did actual battle to crush it out In 1886 Troyes
and lie