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

anu Albany ana IN 1907 lDerV1lle with small
squadron invaded Hudson Bay, met and defeated
the comPany's ships and captured Fort Nelson
In 1872 La Perouse also captured Fort Prince of
Wales, an important stronghold which had been
forty years in building had high and thick walls
of masonry, and would have required four hundred
men for its defense. AS it had only tnirty-nine
the chief factor, Samuel Hearne, the Mungo
Park" of Canada, surrendered it without firing a
shot, presenting its keys to the victorious French
man on silver salver; for which his memory has
been eXecrated by the companys people ever since.
The first governor of the company was Prince
Rupert, and its second ohm Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough. Its original capital was only ten
thousand pounds, and it operated in only small
way at first; but SO enormous were its profits that
within twenty years it nomnally trebled its capital
SO as to make It's annual dividends appear smaller.
Yet in 1884 the dividend paid was fifty per cent,
and IN 1889 thirty per cent, although the company
claimed to have lost one hundred and twenty thou
sand pounds during the decade by French maraud-
ings. Thirty years later the capital was trebled
again. BY this time the company had its posts
spread all over the western wilderness and inter
national amity prevailing, compelled to meet
the commercial competition of rival concerns
which took hte in the piping times of peace John
Jacob Aston, the founder of the New York family
of that name, laid the foundations of his for
tune by the establishment of the Astoria Company
Tor the western fur trade the story of which told
in Washington lrving's g Astoria" The X. Y. H.
Company was another rival but the most dangerous
OF all was the Northwest Company, which was got
nd OF only by being amalgamated with the Hudson
Bay Company in 1921 after bloody battle between
their rival forces of trappers and voyageurs at Fort
carry (1oW Wlnnpeg), IN Which Governor Semple,
of the latter, was killed.
The Company's First Blow
THESE rivals disposed of, the company was able
to devote its undivided energies to extending its
commercial progress until 1870 when the discovery
that silk could be used instead of beaver-skns in
the manufacture of hats proved disastrous blow
to its leading branch of trade After the War of
1912 the American Government excluded it from
the western country then claimed by the United
States. But it still maintained itself in the wilds
of the Rockies and the Pacific slope; it tlourished
in Vancouver Island, part of British Columbia
1t invaded the Yukon country; and for many years
previous to the purchase of Alaska by the United
States that whole territory leased by the COM
pany from the Russians When the Oregon bound
airy dispute settled in 1871 by Secretary Seward
and Lord Lyons, the United States Government
paid the Hudson Bay Company four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for the REIMBURSEMENT of
ITS territorial rights in the region transferred the
American flag, while the same year Canada ex-
tnguished its overlordship in the Northwest by
payment of one and half million dollars and
some trading and landlord privileges not inconsistent
with the paramountcy of the Dominion.
This step became necessary because the autocratic