New-York tribune., 1906-06-24

american Wnalefnen
who have been frequenting those waters for seventy
years The bay itself gives the great
Canadian Northwest, the vast territory once known
as Rupert S Land 1t was named from the dashing
Stuart Prince who the first governor of the
Hudson Bay Company, which in 1910 acquired
from King Charles H. the wilderness west and south
OF the bay not then occupied by other Governments.
The Hudson Bay Company was formed by a num-
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 neighborng islands.
Great annual harvests of fishes seals, and peltres
were reaped; but they were fired to dreams of i'm
mensely greater riches by the stories of French
explorers Radisson and Groseier, who had pene-
traed the wilderness from Lake Superior through to
Hudson Bay, and had brought to London (beng re-
buffed at Quebec and Pars) accounts of a country
filled with fur bearing animals and an ocean teemng
with fish. They proposed to reach both by taking
ships through Hudson Strait and establishing posts
on the shores of the bay thence piercing the interior,
and SO avoiding quarrels with the French in
Canada, which, at that time understood,
meant virtually the present Province of Quebec and
the eastern districts, the western boundary ending
where the pioneer warred with the savage.
Entire Provinces From the Grant
THE Province of Manitoba has already been
created out of Rupert's Land and westward it
extended beyond the Rocky Mountains, the com
pany holding sway over what is now British Column
bia, Washington and Oregon States, and even the
North Pacific Islands, while after the Provinces
of Saskatchewan and Alberta taken from it in
1905, there still remain the unorganized territories of
UngaVa keewatn, Mackenzie, Athabasca, and
Franklin, to form the nucleus of future Provinces.
There is in the history of commercial exploitation
of oversee possessions scarcely any more fascinating
chapter than that which treats of this Hudson Bay
Company: how it resisted nations, overcame rivals
outWltted parllaments, subJugated natives, and
made itself sovereign of a region which embraced
substantially halt of the continent of North America
At the zenith of its power seventy years ago enjoy
terri, ,ory larger than Western Europe
with exceeding four million square miles
peopled by more than fifty different Indian tribes
and yielding a 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 bahwiCk despotCay as the
Cars ruled Russia Only its store-ships bringing
IN supplies and munitions, articles of barter and
platOons of servitors and conveying out the years
accumulation of petries 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 companv's
word was law its tokens currency, its factors
exercised the powers of life and death, liberty and
lordship. In its earliest days it had a desperate
struggle to maintain its existence; for the French
repudated its charter ignored its authority, and
did actual battle to crush it out. In 1880 Troves
and lbervile captured the companys Forts Rupert