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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-25 07:10:42 -0800 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..904f517 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #69591 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69591) diff --git a/old/69591-0.txt b/old/69591-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9a90fe1..0000000 --- a/old/69591-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9871 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The conquest of the great Northwest, -Volume I (of 2), by Agnes C. Laut - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The conquest of the great Northwest, Volume I (of 2) - being the story of the Adventurers of England known as the - Hudson's Bay Company, new pages in the history of the Canadian - northwest and western states - -Author: Agnes C. Laut - -Release Date: December 20, 2022 [eBook #69591] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Fiona Holmes, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian - Libraries. - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT -NORTHWEST, VOLUME I (OF 2) *** - - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - -A number of the variants in spelling have been left, e.g. gayly/gaily. - -Much of the hyphenation has been standardised. - -Changes made are noted at the end of the book. - -In this text version, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_ -and in the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of the project, text -surrounded with = indicate =bold=. - - - - -THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST - -[Illustration: Collier’s famous picture of Hudson’s Last Hours.] - - - - -THE CONQUEST OF THE -GREAT NORTHWEST - -_Being the story of the ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND known as THE HUDSON’S -BAY COMPANY. New pages in the history of the Canadian Northwest and -Western States._ - -BY - -AGNES C. LAUT - -_Author of “Lords of the North,” -“Pathfinders of the West,” etc._ - -IN TWO VOLUMES -VOLUME I - - -TORONTO -THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY LIMITED - - - - -Copyright, 1908, by -THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY - -Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England - -_All Rights Reserved_ - - - - -_TO_ -G. C. L. -and -C. M. A. - - - - -CONTENTS OF VOLUME I - - -PART I - -CHAPTER I PAGE - -Henry Hudson’s First Voyage 3 - - -CHAPTER II - -Hudson’s Second Voyage 16 - - -CHAPTER III - -Hudson’s Third Voyage 26 - - -CHAPTER IV - -Hudson’s Fourth Voyage 49 - - -CHAPTER V - -The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay—Jens - Munck’s Crew 72 - - -PART II - -CHAPTER VI - -Radisson, the Pathfinder, Discovers Hudson Bay - and Founds the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers 97 - - -CHAPTER VII - -The Adventures of the First Voyage—Radisson Driven - Back Organizes the Hudson’s Bay Company and Writes - his Journals of Four Voyages—The Charter and the - First Shareholders—Adventures of Radisson on the - Bay—The Coming of the French and the Quarrel 111 - - -CHAPTER VIII - -“Gentlemen Adventurers of England”—Lords of the - Outer Marches—Two Centuries of Company - Rule—Secret Oaths—The Use of Whiskey—The - Matrimonial Offices—The Part the Company Played - in the Game of International Juggling—How Trade - and Voyages Were Conducted 132 - - -CHAPTER IX - -If Radisson Can Do Without the Adventurers, the - Adventurers Cannot Do Without Radisson—The - Eruption of the French on the Bay—The Beginning - of the Raiders 162 - - -CHAPTER X - -The Adventurers Furious at Radisson, Find it Cheaper - to Have him as a Friend than Enemy and Invite him - Back—The Real Reason Why Radisson Returned—The - Treachery of Statecraft—Young Chouart Outraged, - Nurses his Wrath and Gayly Comes on the Scene - Monsieur Péré—Scout and Spy 180 - - -CHAPTER XI - -Wherein the Reasons for Young Chouart Groseiller’s - Mysterious Message to Our Good Friend “Péré” are - Explained—The Forest Rovers of New France Raid the - Bay by Sea and Land—Two Ships Sunk—Péré, the Spy, - Seized and Sent to England 198 - - -CHAPTER XII - -Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville Sweeps the Bay 211 - - -CHAPTER XIII - -D’Iberville Sweeps the Bay (_continued_) 228 - - -CHAPTER XIV - -What Became of Radisson?—New Facts on the Last - Days of the Famous Pathfinder 256 - - -PART III - -CHAPTER XV - -The First Attempts of the Adventurers to - Explore—Henry Kelsey Penetrates as far as the - Valley of the Saskatchewan—Sanford and Arrington, - Known as “Red Cap,” Found Henley House Inland from - Albany—Beset from Without, the Company is also - Beset from Within—Petitions Against the - Charter—Increase of Capital—Restoration of the - Bay from France 277 - - -CHAPTER XVI - -Old Captain Knight, Beset by Gold Fever, Hears the - Call of the North—The Straits and Bay—The First - Harvest of the Sea at Dead Man’s Island—Castaways - for Three Years—The Company, Beset by Gold Fever, - Increases its Stock—Pays Ten Per Cent. on Twice - Trebled Capital—Coming of Spies Again 298 - - -CHAPTER XVII - -The Company’s Prosperity Arouses Opposition—Arthur - Dobbs and the Northwest Passage and the Attack - on the Charter—No Northwest Passage is Found, but - the French Spur the English to Renewed Activity 320 - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -The March Across the Continent Begins—The Company - Sends a Man to the Blackfeet of the South - Saskatchewan—Anthony Hendry is the First - Englishman to Penetrate to the Saskatchewan—The - First Englishman to Winter West of Lake Winnipeg—He - Meets the Sioux and the Blackfeet and Invites - them to the Bay 334 - - -CHAPTER XIX - -Extension of Trade toward Labrador, Quebec and - Rockies—Hearne Finds the Athabasca Country and - Founds Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan—Cocking - Proceeds to the Blackfeet—Howse Finds the Pass in - Rockies 355 - - -CHAPTER XX - -“The Coming of the Pedlars”—A New Race of Wood-rovers - Throngs to the Northwest—Bandits of the Wilds War - Among Themselves—Tales of Border Warfare, Wassail - and Grandeur—The New Northwest Company Challenges - the Authority and Feudalism of the Hudson’s Bay - Company 389 - - - - -ADDENDA - - -PAGE - -Map of Hudson’s First and Second Voyages 22 - -Map of Hudson’s Third Voyage—Hudson River 46 - -Map showing Hudson’s and Munck’s Voyages 408 - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - -Collier’s Famous Picture of Hudson’s Last Hours _Frontispiece_ - -FACING PAGE - -Prince Rupert 10 - -James II, Duke of York 26 - -New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660 34 - -Albany from an Old Print 34 - -The Duke of Marlborough 42 - -Le Moyne d’Iberville 58 - -Iberville’s Ship Run Aground Off Nelson in a - Hurricane 74 - -Churchill Harbor as Drawn by Munck 82 - -Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian - Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson 90 - -Bienville 106 - -Photograph of the Copy of Radisson’s Voyage 114 - -Rupert House 130 - -Copy of Robson’s Drawing of York Harbor 170 - -Silver Fox Skins 178 - -Montagu House 202 - -Petition of the H. B. C. Signed by Churchill, or - Marlborough 218 - -Terms of Surrender Between Le Moyne d’Iberville and - Governor Walsh at York Fort 234 - -Radisson’s House 258 - -Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake 362 - -Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing 378 - - - - -FOREWORD - - -It has become almost a truism to say that no complete account of -the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers has yet been written. I have often -wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they -meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to -Rupert’s Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer -Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas -of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death -carving a path through the wilderness—were not to be checked by the -mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of -their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the -unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It -was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched -and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana. -This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they followed -the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north -were MacKenzie River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser and the -Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to -these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River. -Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Oregon down as far as the -Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson’s -Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft, -and founding their fur empire of wildwood rovers, took toll of the -wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever -collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the -Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe—California, -Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson’s -Bay Adventurers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and -three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now -run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death -across Nevada deserts, Hudson’s Bay trappers had long before marched in -dusty caravans sweeping the wilderness of beaver. Where San Francisco -stands to-day, the English Adventurers once owned a thousand-acre farm. -By a bold stroke of statecraft, they had hoped to buy up Mexico’s bad -debts and trade those debts for proprietary rights in California. The -story of why they failed is theme for novelist or poet rather than -historian. Suffice to say, their Southern Brigades, disguised as -Spanish horsemen, often went south as far as Monterey. _Yet more!_ The -Hudson’s Bay Adventurers had a station half way across the Pacific in -Hawaii. - -In all, how large was their fur empire? Larger, by actual measurement, -much larger, than Europe. Now what person would risk reputation by -saying no complete account had yet been written of all Europe? The -thing is so manifestly impossible, it is absurd. Not one complete -account, but hundreds of volumes on different episodes will go to the -making of such a complete history. So is it of the vast area ruled by -the Hudson’s Bay Company. The time will come when each district will -demand as separate treatment as a Germany, or a France or an Italy in -its history. All that can be attempted in one volume or one series of -volumes is the portrayal of a single movement, or a single episode, -or a single character. In this account, I have attempted to tell the -story of the Company only as adventurer, pathfinder, empire-builder, -from Rupert’s Land to California—feudal lord beaten off the field by -democracy. Where the empire-builder merges with the colonizer and -pioneer, I have stopped in each case. In Manitoba, the passing of the -Company was marked by the Riel Rebellion; in British Columbia, by the -mad gold stampede; in Oregon, by the terrible Whitman massacres; in -California, by the fall of Spanish power. All these are dramas in -themselves worthy of poet or novelist; but they are not germane to the -Adventurers. Therefore, they are not given here. Who takes up the story -where I leave off, must hang the narrative on these pegs. - -Another intentional omission. From the time the Adventurers wrote off -£100,000 loss for search of the North-West Passage, Arctic Exploration -has no part in this story. In itself, it is an enthralling story; but -to give even the most scrappy reference to it here would necessitate -crowding out essential parts of the Adventurers’ record—such as -McLoughlin’s transmontane empire, or the account of the South Bound -Brigades. Therefore, latter day Arctic work has no mention here. For -the same reason, I have been compelled to omit the dramatic story of -the early missions. These merit a book to themselves. - - * * * * * - -Throughout—with the exception of four chapters, I may say altogether—I -have relied for the thread of my narrative on the documents in -Hudson’s Bay House, London; the Minute Books of some two hundred -years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, the -Daily Journals kept by chief factors at every post and sent to London -from 1670. These documents are in tons. They are not open to the -public. They are unclassified; and in the case of Minute Books are in -duplicates, “the Foule Minutes”—as the inscription on the old parchment -describes them—being rough, almost unreadable, notes jotted down -during proceedings with interlinings and blottings to be copied into -the Minute Books marked “Faire Copie.” In some cases, the latter has -been lost or destroyed; and only the uncorrected one remains. It is -necessary to state this because discrepancies will be found—noted as -the story proceeds—which arise from the fact that some volumes of the -corrected minutes have been lost. The Minute Books consist variously -from one to five hundred pages each. - -Beside the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, there is a great -mass of unpublished, unexploited material bearing on the Company in -the Public Records Office, London. I had some thousands of pages of -transcripts of these made which throw marvelous side light on the -printed records of Radisson; of Iberville; of Parl. Report 1749; of the -Coltman Report and Blue Book of 1817-22; and the Americans in Oregon. - -In many episodes, the story told here will differ almost unrecognizably -from accepted versions and legends of the same era. This is not by -accident. Nor is it because I have _not_ consulted what one writer -sarcastically called to my attention as “the secondary authorities”—the -words are his, not mine. Nearly all these authorities from earliest to -latest days are in my own library and interlined from many readings. -Where I have departed from old versions of famous episodes, it has -been because records left in the handwriting of the actors themselves -compelled me; as in the case of Selkirk’s orders about Red River, -Ogden’s discoveries in Nevada and Utah and California, Thompson’s -explorations of Idaho, Howse’s explorations in the Rockies, Ogden’s -robbery of the Americans, the Americans’ robbery of him. - -I regret I have no clue to any Spanish version of why Glen Rae blew -out his brains in San Francisco. On this episode, I have relied on the -legends current among the old Hudson’s Bay officers and retold so well -by Bancroft. - -To Mr. C. C. Chipman, commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to Mr. -William Ware, the secretary, and Lord Strathcona-and-Mount-Royal, the -Governor—I owe grateful thanks for access to the H. B. C. documents. - -On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring -the blush of regret to those jealous for the Company’s honor. It is -a record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp—in the best -sense of the words—and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too, -not always in the best sense of the words—which must take its place in -the world’s history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror -in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an -important and successful rôle in America, only in the end to be driven -from the stage by Young Democracy. - - - - -PART I - -1610-1631 - -Being an Account of the Discoveries in the Great Sea of the North -by Henry Hudson and the Dane, Jens Munck. How the Search for the -North-West Passage Led to the Opening of two Regions—New York and the -North-West Territories. - - - - -THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST - - - - -CHAPTER I - -1607 - -HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE - - -Practical men scorn the dreamer, especially the mad-souled dreamer who -wrecks life trying to prove his dream a reality. Yet the mad-souled -dreamer, the Poet of Action whose poem has been his life, the Hunter -who has chased the Idea down the Long Trail where all tracks point one -way and never return—has been a herald of light for humanity. - -Of no one is this truer than the English pilot, Henry Hudson. - -Hudson did not set out to find the great inland waters that bear his -name—Hudson River and Hudson Bay. He set out to chase that rainbow -myth—the Pole—or rather the passage across the Pole. To him, as to -all Arctic explorers, the call had become a sort of obsession. It was -a demon, driving him in spite of himself. It was a siren whom he could -not resist, luring him to wreck, which he knew was certain. It was a -belief in something which reason couldn’t prove but time has justified. -It was like a scent taken up by a hound on a strange trail. He could -not know where it would lead but because of Something in him and -Something on the Trail, he was compelled to follow. Like the discoverer -in science, he could not wait till his faith was gilt-edged with profit -before risking his all on the venture. Call it demon or destiny! At its -voice he rose from his place and followed to his death. - - * * * * * - -The situation was this: - -Not a dozen boats had sailed beyond the Sixtieth degree of north -latitude. From Sixty to the Pole was an area as great as Africa. This -region was absolutely unknown. What did it hide? Was it another new -world, or a world of waters giving access across the Pole from Europe -to Asia? The Muscovy Company of England, the East India Company of -Holland, both knew the Greenland of the Danes; and sent their ships to -fish at Spitzbergen, east of Greenland. But was Greenland an island, -or a great continent? Were Spitzbergen and Greenland parts of a vast -Polar land? Did the mountains wreathed there in eternal mists conceal -the wealth of a second Peru? Below the endless swamps of ice, would men -find gold sands? And when one followed up the long coast of the east -shore—as long as from Florida to Maine—where the Danish colonies had -perished of cold centuries ago—what beyond? A continent, or the Pole, -or the mystic realm of frost peopled by the monsters of Saga myth, -where the Goddess of Death held pitiless sway and the shores were lined -with the dead who had dared to invade her realm? Why these questions -should have pierced the peace of Henry Hudson, the English pilot, and -possessed him—can no more be explained than the Something on the Trail -that compels Something in the hound. - -Like other dreamers, Hudson had to put his dreams in harness; hitch his -Idea to every day uses, The Muscovy Company trading to Russia wanted -to find a short way across the Pole to China. Hudson had worked up -from sailor to pilot and pilot to master on the Dutch traders, and was -commissioned to seek the passage. The Company furnished him with a crew -of eleven including his own boy, John. It would be ridiculous if it -were not so pathetic—these simple sailors undertaking a venture that -has baffled every great navigator since time began. - -Led by Hudson with the fire of a great faith in his eyes, the men -solemnly marched to Saint Ethelburge Church off Bishopgate Street, -London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God’s aid. Back to the -muddy water-front opposite the Tower; a gold coin for last drinks; a -hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company pompous -in self-importance and lace ruffles—and the little crew steps into a -clumsy river boat with brick-red sails. One gentleman opines with a -pinch of snuff that it may be “this many a day before Master Hudson -returns.” Riffraff loafers crane necks to see to the last. Cursing -watermen clear the course by thumping other rivermen out of the way. -The boat slips under the bridge down the wide flood of the yeasty -Thames through a forest of masts and sails of as many colors as -Joseph’s coat. - -It is like a great sewer of humanity, this river tide with its city’s -traffic of a thousand years. Farmers rafting down loads of hay, market -women punting themselves along with boat loads of vegetables, fishing -schooners breasting the tide with full-blown sails, high-hulled -galleons from Spain, flat-bottomed, rickety tubs from the Zee, gay -little craft—barges with bunting, wherries with lovers, rowboats with -nothing more substantial than silk awnings for a sail—jostle and throng -and bump each other as Hudson’s crew shoots down with the tide. Not a -man of the crew but wonders—is he seeing it all for the last time? - -But here is the Muscovy Company’s ship all newly rigged waiting at -Gravesend, absurdly small for such a venture on such a sea. Then, in -the clanking of anchor chains and sing-song of the capstan and last -shouts of the noisy rivermen, apprehensions are forgotten. Can they but -find a short route to China, their homely little craft may plough back -with as rich cargo as ever Spanish caravel brought from the fabulous -South Sea. The full tide heaves and rocks and bears out; a mad-souled -dreamer standing at the prow with his little son, who is very silent. -The air is fraught with something too big for words. May first, 1607, -Hudson is off for the Pole. He might as well have been following the -Flying Dutchman, or ballooning to the moon. - - * * * * * - -The city along the banks of the Thames has presently thinned to towns. -The towns slide past into villages. The villages blur into meadow lands -with the thatch roof of the farmer’s cot; and before night, the last -harbor light has been left in the offing. The little ship has headed -her carved prow north. The billows of the North Sea roll to meet her. -Darkness falls with no sound but the swish of the waters against the -ports, the hum of the wind through the rigging, and the whirring flap -of the great sails shifting to catch the breeze. - -For six weeks, north, northwest, they drove over the tumbling world -of waters, sliding from crest to trough, from blue hollow to curdling -wave-top, ploughing a watery furrow into the region of long, white -light and shortening nights, and fogs that lay without lifting once in -twenty days. The farther north they sailed, the tighter drew the cords -of cold, like a violin string stretched till it fairly snapped—air full -of pure ozone that set the blood jumping and finger-tips tingling! -Green spray froze the sails stiff as boards. The rigging became ropes -of ice, the ship a ghost gliding white through the fogs. At last came -a squall that rolled the mists up like a scroll, and straight ahead, -high and lonely as cloud-banks, towered the white peaks of Greenland’s -mountains. Though it was two o’clock in the morning, it was broad -daylight, and the whole crew came scrambling up the hatches to the -shout of “Land!” Hudson enthusiastically named the mountain “God’s -Mercy”; but the lift of mist uncurtained to the astonished gaze of the -English sailors a greater wonder than the mountains. North, south, -east, west, the ship was embayed in an ice-world—ice in islands and -hills and valleys with lakes and rivers of fresh water flowing over -the surface. Birds flocked overhead with lonely screams at these -human intruders on a realm as white and silent as death; and where one -crystal berg was lighted to gold by the sun, a huge polar bear hulked -to its highest peak and surveyed the newcomers in as much astonishment -at them as they felt at him. Truly, this was the _Ultima Thule_ of -poet’s dream—beyond the footsteps of man. Blue was the sky above, blue -the patches of ocean below, blue the illimitable fields of ice, blue -and lifeless and cold as steel. The men passed that day jubilant as -boys out of school. Some went gunning for the birds. Others would have -pursued the polar bear but with a splash the great creature dived into -the sea. The crew took advantage of the pools of fresh water in the -ice to fill their casks with drinking water. For the next twenty-four -hours, Hudson crept among the ice floes by throwing out a hook on the -ice, then hauling up to it by cable. - -By night the sea was churning the ice in choppy waves, with a growl of -wind through the mast, and the crew wakened the next morning to find a -hurricane of sleet had wiped out the land. The huge floes were turning -somersets in the rough sea with a banging that threatened to smash -the little ship into a crushed egg shell. Under bare poles, she drove -before the wind for open sea. - -As she scudded from the crush of the tumbling ice, Hudson remarked -something extraordinary in the conduct of his ship. Veering about, -sails down, there was no mistaking it—_she was drifting against -the wind_! As the storm subsided, it became plainer: the wind was -carrying in one direction, the sea was carrying in another. Hudson had -discovered that current across the Pole, which was to play such an -important part with Nansen three hundred years later. Icebergs were -floating _against_ the wind, too, laboriously, with apparently aimless -circlings round and round, but circles that carried them forward -against the wind, and the ship was presently moored to a great icepan -drifting along with the undertow. - -Then the curse of all Arctic voyagers fell on the sea—fog thick to the -touch as wool, through which the icebergs glided like phantoms with a -great crash of waters, where the surf beat on the floes. Never mind! -Their anchor-hold acts as a breakwater. They are sheltered from the -turmoil of the waves outside the ice. And they are still headed north. -And they are up to Seventy-three along a coast, which no chart has -ever before recorded, no chart but the myths of death’s realm. As the -coast might prove treacherous if the ice began thumping inland, Hudson -names the region “Hold Hope,” which may be interpreted, “Keep up your -Courage.” - -[Illustration: Prince Rupert, from a Photograph in the Ottawa -Archives, after Painting by Vandyke.] - -Ice and fog, fog and ice, and the eternal silences but for the thunder -of the floes banging the ports; up to Seventy-five by noon of June 25, -when the sailors notice that the floundering clumsy grampus are playing -mad pranks about the ship. The glistening brown backs race round -the prow and somerset bodily out of the water in a very deviltry of -sauciness! Call it sailors’ superstition, but when the grampus schools -play, your Northern crew looks for storm, and by noon of June 26, the -storm is there pounding the hull like thunder and shrieking through the -rigging. Not a good place to be, between land and ice in hurricane! -Hudson scampers for the sea, still north, but driven out east by the -trend of Greenland’s coast along an unbroken barrier of ice that seems -to link Greenland to Spitzbergen. - -No passage across the Pole this way! That is certain! But there is a -current across the Pole! That, too, is certain! And Greenland is as -long as a continent. So driving before the storm, Hudson steers east -for Spitzbergen. In July, it is warmer, but heat brings more ice, and -the man at the masthead on the lookout for land up at Seventy-nine -could not know that a submerged iceberg was going to turn a somerset -directly under the keel. There was a splintering crash. Something -struck the keel like a cannon shot. Up reared the little boat on end -like a frightened horse. When the waters plunged down two great bergs -had risen one on each side of the quivering ship and a jagged gash -gaped through the timbers at water line. Water slushed over decks in a -cataract. The yardarms are still dipping and dripping to the churning -seas when the crew leaps out to a man, some on the ice, some in small -boats, some astraddle of driftwood to stop the leak in the bottom. As -they toil—and they toil in desperation, for the safety of the ship -is their only possibility of reaching home—they notice it again—wood -drifting _against_ the wind, the undertow of some great unknown Polar -Current. - -Hudson cannot wait for this current to carry him toward the Pole, -as Nansen did. Up he tacks to Eighty-two, within eight degrees of -the baffling Pole, within four degrees of Farthest North reached by -modern navigators. When he finds Spitzbergen locked by the ice to the -north, he tries it by the south. But the ice seems to become almost -a living enemy in its resistance. Hudson had anchored to a drifting -floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began -running—the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The fog -was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind -stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant -destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew -rowed for dear life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main -force, but their puny human strength was as child’s play against the -great powers of the elements. Backwash had carried rowers and ship and -small boats within a stone’s throw of the ramming icebergs when a faint -air breathed through the fog. Moistening their fingers, the sailors -held up hands to catch the motion of any breeze. No mistake—it was a -fair wind—right about sails there—the little ship turned tail to the -ice and was off like a bird, for says the old ship’s log: “_it pleased -God to give us a gale, and away we steered_.” - -The battle for a passage seemed hopeless. Hudson assembled the crew on -decks and on bended knees prayed God to show which way to steer. Of no -region had the sailors of that day greater horror than Spitzbergen. -They began to recall the fearful disasters that had befallen Dutch -ships here but a few years before. Those old sailors’ superstitions of -the North being the realm of the Goddess of Death, came back to memory. -That last narrow escape from the ice-crush left terror in the very -marrow of their bones. In vain, Hudson once more suggested seeking the -passage by Greenland. To the crew, the Voice of the North uttered no -call. Glory was all very well, but they didn’t want glory. They wanted -to go home. What was the good of chasing an Idea down the Long Trail -to a grave on the frozen shores of Death? - - * * * * * - -When men begin to reason that way, there is no answer. You can’t -promise them what you are not sure you will ever find. The Call is -only to those who have ears to hear. You must have hold of the end -of a GOLDEN THREAD before you can follow the baffling mazes of a -discoverer’s faith, and these men hadn’t faith in anything except a -full stomach and a sure wage. After all, their arguments were the same -as the obstructions presented against every expedition to the Pole -to-day, or for that matter, to any other realm of the Unknown. It was -like asking the inventor to show his invention in full work before he -has made it, or the bank to pay its dividends before you contribute -to its capital. What reason could Hudson give to justify his faith? -Standing on the quarter deck with clenched fists and troubled face, he -might as well have argued with stones, or pleaded for a chance with -modern money bags as talked down the expostulations of the mutineers. -They were men of the kidney who will always be on the safe side. As the -world knows—there was no passage across the Pole suitable for commerce. -There was no justification for Hudson’s faith. Yet it was the goal of -that faith, which led him on the road to greater discoveries than a -dozen passages across the Pole. - -Faith has always been represented as one of three sister graces; -cringing, meek-spirited, downtrodden damsels at their best. In view of -all she has accomplished for the world in religion, in art, in science, -in discovery, in commerce, Faith should be represented as a fiery-eyed -goddess with the forked lightnings for her torch, treading the mountain -peaks of the universe. From her high place, she alone can see whence -comes the light and which way runs the Trail. Step by step, the battle -has been against darkness, every step a blow, every blow a bruise -driving back to the right Trail; every blood mark a milestone in human -progress from lowland to upland. - - * * * * * - -But Hudson’s men were obdurate to arguments all up in air. They will -_not_ seek the passage by Greenland. Hudson must turn back. To a great -spirit, obstructions are never a stop. They are only a delay. Hudson -sets his teeth. You will see him go by Greenland one day yet—mark his -word! Meantime, home he sails through what he calls “slabbie” weather, -putting into Tilbury Docks on the 15th of September. If money bags -counted up the profits of that year’s trip, they would write against -Hudson’s name in the Book of Judgment—Failure! - - - - -CHAPTER II - -1608 - -HUDSON’S SECOND VOYAGE - - -Henceforth Hudson was an obsessed man. First, _he_ possessed the Idea. -Now the _Idea_ possessed him. It was to lead him on a course no man -would willingly have followed. Yet he followed it. Everything, life or -death, love or hate, gain or loss, was to be subservient to that Idea. - -That current drifting across the Pole haunted him as it was to haunt -Nansen at a later date. By attempting too much, had he missed all? -He had gone to Spitzbergen in the Eighties. If he had kept down to -Nova Zembla Islands in the Seventies, would he have found less ice? -The man possessed by a single idea may be a trial to his associates. -To himself, he is a torment. Once he becomes baffled, he is beset by -doubts, by questions, by fears. If his faith leaves him, his life goes -to pieces like a rope of sand. Hudson must have been beset by such -doubts now. It is the place where the adventurer leaves the milestones -of all known paths and has not yet found firm footing for his own -feet. Hundreds, thousands, have struck out from the beaten Trail. Few, -indeed, have blazed a new path. The bones of the dead bleach on the -shores of the realm ruled by the Goddess of the Unknown. It is the -place where the beginner sets out to be a great artist, or a great -scientist, or a great discoverer. Thousands have set out on the same -quest who should have rested content at their own ingle-nook, happy -at the plow; not good plowmen spoiled. The beginner balances the -chances—a thousand to one against him! Is his vision a fool’s quest, a -will-o’-the-wisp? Is the call the tickling of his own restless vanity; -or the voice of a great truth? He can learn only by going forward, and -the going forward may take him over a precipice—may prove him a fool. -This was the place Hudson was at now. It is a place that has been -passed by all the world’s great. - -Nine Dutch boats had at different times passed between Nova Zembla and -the main coast of Russia. To be sure, they had been blocked by the ice -beyond, but might not Hudson by some lucky chance follow that Polar -Current through open water? The chances were a thousand to one against -him. Who but a fool would take the chance? Nansen’s daring plan to -utilize the ice-drift _to lift_ his ship above the ice-crush—did not -occur to Hudson. Except for that difference, the two explorers—the -greatest of the early Arctic navigators and the greatest of the -modern—planned very much the same course. - -This time, the Muscovy Company commissioned Hudson to look out for -ivory hunting as well as the short passage to Asia. Three men only of -the old crew enlisted. Hudson might enjoy risking his life for glory. -Most mortals prefer safety. Of the three who re-enlisted one was his -son. - -Keeping close to the cloud-capped, mountainous shores of Norway, the -boat sighted Cape North on June 3, 1608. Clouds wreathed the mountains -in belts and plumes of mist. Snow-fields of far summits shone gold in -sudden bursts of sunshine through the cloud-wrack. Fjords like holes -in the wall nestled at the foot of the mountains, the hamlets of the -fisher folk like tiny match boxes against the mighty hills. To the -restless tide rocked and heaved the fishing smacks—emblems of man’s -spirit at endless wrestle with the elements. As Hudson’s ship climbed -the waves, the fishermen stood up in their little boats to wave a -God-speed to these adventurers bound for earth’s ends. Sails swelling -to the wind, Hudson’s vessel rode the roll of green waters, then dipped -behind a cataract of waves, and dropped over the edge of the known -world. - -Driftwood again on that Polar Current up at Seventy-five, driftwood and -the endless sweep of moving ice, which compelled Hudson “_to loose from -one floe_” and “_bear room from another_” and anchor on the lee of one -berg to prevent ramming by another; “_divers pieces driving past the -ship_,” says Hudson—just as it drove past Nansen’s _Fram_ on the same -course. - -To men satiated of modern life, the North is still a wonder-world. -There are the white silences primeval as the morn when God first -created Time. There is “_the sun sailing round in a fiery ring_”—as one -old Viking described it—instead of sinking below the horizon; nightless -days in summer and dayless nights in winter. There is the desolation of -earth’s places where man may never have dominion and Death must always -veil herself unseen. Polar bears floundered over the ice hunting seals. -Walrus roared from the rocks in herds till the surf shook—ivory for -the Muscovy Company; and whales floated about the ship in schools that -threatened to keel the craft over—more profit for the Muscovy traders. - -What wonder that Hudson’s ignorant sailors began to feel the marvel of -the strange ice-world, and to see fabulous things in the light of the -midnight sun? One morning a face was seen following the ship, staring -up from the sea. There was no doubt of it. Two sailors saw it. Was it -one of the monsters of Saga myth, that haunted this region? The watch -called a comrade. Both witnessed the hideous apparition of a human -face with black hair streaming behind on the waves. The body was like -a woman’s and the seamen’s terror had conjured up the ill omen of a -mermaid when wave-wash overturned its body, exhibiting the fins and -tail of a porpoise—“skin very white”—mermaid without a doubt, portent -of evil, though the hair may have been floating seaweed. - -Sure enough, within a week, ice locked round the ship in a vise. The -floes were no brashy ice-cakes that could be plowed through by a -ship’s prow with a strong, stern wind. They were huge fields of ice, -five, ten, twenty and thirty feet deep interspread with hummocks and -hillocks that were miniature bergs in themselves. Across these rolling -meadows of crystal, the wind blew with the nip of midwinter; but when -the sun became partly hidden in fiery cloud-banks, the scene was a -fairy land, sea and sky shading off in deepest tinges to all the tints -of the rainbow. Where the ocean showed through ice depths, there was -a blue reflection deep as indigo. Where the clear water was only a -surface pool on top of submerged ice, the sky shone above with a light -green delicate as apple bloom. Where the ice was a broken mass of an -adjacent glacier sliding down to the sea through the eternal snows of -some mountain gorge, a curious phenomenon could sometimes be observed. -The edge of the ice was in layers—each layer representing one year’s -snowfall congealed by the summer thaw, so that the observer could count -back perhaps a century from the ice layers. Other men tread on snow -that fell but yesterday. Hudson’s crew were treading on the snowfall of -a hundred years as though this were God’s workshop in the making and a -hundred years were but as a day. - -Beyond the floating ice fields, the heights of Nova Zembla were -sighted, awesome and lonely in the white night, gruesome to these -men from memory of the fate that befell the Dutch crews here fifteen -years previously. Rowing and punting through the ice-brash, two men -went ashore to explore. They saw abundance of game for the Muscovy -gentlemen; and at one place among driftwood came on the cold ashes of -an old fire. It was like the first print of man’s footstep found by -Robinson Crusoe. Startled by signs of human presence, they scanned the -surrounding landscape. On the shore, a solitary cross had been erected -of driftwood. Then the men recalled the fate of the Dutch crew, that -had perished wandering over these islands in 1597. What fearful battles -had the white silences witnessed between puny men explorers and the -stony Goddess of Death? What had become of the last man, of the man who -had erected the cross? Did his body lie somewhere along the shores of -Nova Zembla, or had he manned his little craft like the Vikings of old -and sailed out lashed to the spars to meet death in tempest? The horror -of the North seemed to touch the men as with the hands of the dead whom -she had slain. - -[Illustration: HUDSON’S VOYAGES of 1607-1608 To Pass across the Pole -from EUROPE to ASIA.] - -The report that the two men carried back to Hudson’s boat did not raise -the spirits of the crew. One night the entire ship’s company but Hudson -and his son had gone ashore to hunt walrus. Such illimitable fields -of ice lay north that Hudson knew his only chance must be between the -south end of Nova Zembla (he did not know there were several islands -in the group) and the main coast of Asia. It was three o’clock in the -morning. The ice began to drive landward with the fury of a whirlpool. -Two anchors were thrown out against the tide. Fenders were lowered to -protect the ship’s sides. Captain and boy stood with iron-shod poles -in hand to push the ice from the ship, or the ship from the ice. The -men from the hunt saw the coming danger and rushed over the churning -icepans to the rescue. Some on the ice, some on the ship, with poles -and oars and crowbars, they pushed and heaved away the icepans, and -ramming their crowbars down crevices wrenched the ice to splinters -or swerved it off the sides of the ship. Sometimes an icepan would -tilt, teeter, rise on end and turn a somerset, plunging the sailors -in ice water to their arm pits. The jam seemed to be coming on the -ship from both directions at once, for the simple reason the ship -offered the line of least resistance. Twelve hours the battle lasted, -the heaving ice-crush threatening to crush the ship’s ribs like slats -till at last a channel of open water appeared just outside the ship’s -prison. But the air was a dead calm. Springing from icepan to icepan, -the men towed their ship out of danger. - -Rain began to drizzle. The next day a cold wind came whistling through -the rigging. The ship lay in a land-locked cove of Nova Zembla. Hudson -again sent his men ashore to hunt, probably also to pluck up courage. -Then he climbed the lookout to scan the sea. It was really to scan his -own fate. It was the old story of the glory-seeker’s quest—a harder -battle than human power could wage; a struggle that at the last only -led to a hopeless _impasse_. The scent on the Trail and the eagerness -in the hound leading only to a blind alley of baffled effort and ruin! -Every great benefactor of humanity has come to this _cul de sac_ of -hope. It is as if a man’s highest aim were only in the end a sort of -trap whither some impish will-o’-the-wisp has impelled him. The thing -itself—a passage across the Pole—didn’t exist any more than the elixir -of life which laid the foundations of chemistry. The question is how, -when the great men of humanity come to this blind wall, did they ever -have courage to go on? For the thing they pursued was a phantom never -to be realized; but strangely enough, in the providence of God, the -phantom pursuit led to greater benefits for the race than their highest -hopes dared to dream. - -No elixir of life, you dreamer; but your mad-brained search for the -elixir gave us the secrets of chemistry by which man prolongs life -if he doesn’t preserve eternal youth! No fate written on the scroll -of the heavens, you star-gazer; but your fool-astrology has given -us astronomy, by which man may predict the movements of the stars -for a thousand years though he cannot forsee his own fate for a -day! No North-West Passage to Asia, you fevered adventurers of the -trackless sea; but your search for a short way to China has given -us a New World worth a thousand Chinas! Go on with your dreams, you -mad-souled visionaries! If it is a will-o’-the wisp you chase, your -will-o’-the-wisp is a lantern to the rest of humanity! - - * * * * * - -Climbing the rigging to the topmast yardarm, Hudson scanned the sea. -His heart sank. His hopes seemed to congeal like the eternal ice of -this ice-world. The springs of life seemed to grow both heavy and cold. -Far as eye could reach was ice—only ice, while outside the cove there -raged a tempest as if all the demons of the North were blowing their -trumpets. - -“There is no passage this way,” said Hudson to his son. Then as if hope -only dies that it may send forth fresh growth like the seed, he added, -“But we must try Greenland again, on the west side this time.” It was -ten o’clock at night when the men returned laden with game; but they, -too, had taken counsel among themselves whether to go forward; and the -memory of that dead crew’s cross turned the scales against Hudson. -It was only the 5th of July, but they would not hear of attempting -Greenland this season. From midnight of the 5th to nine o’clock of the -6th, Hudson pondered. No gap opened through the white wall ahead. The -Frost Giants, whose gambols may be heard on the long winter nights -when the icecracks whoop and romp, had won against Man. “_Being void -of hope_,” Hudson records, “_the wind stormy and against us, much ice -driving, we weighed and set sail westward_.” Home-bound, the ship -anchored on the Thames, August 26. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -1609 - -HUDSON’S THIRD VOYAGE - - -While Hudson was pursuing his phantom across Polar seas, Europe had -at last awakened to the secret of Spain’s greatness—colonial wealth -that poured the gold of Peru into her treasury. To counteract Spain, -colonizing became the master policy of Europe. France was at work -on the St. Lawrence. England was settling Virginia, and Smith, the -pioneer of Virginia, who was Hudson’s personal friend, had explored the -Chesapeake. - -[Illustration: James II, Duke of York, Second Governor of the Hudson’s -Bay Company.] - -But the Netherlands went a step farther. To throw off the yoke of -Spain, they maintained a fleet of seventy merchantmen furnished as -ships of war to wage battle on the high seas. Spanish colonies were -to be attacked wherever found. Spanish cities were to be sacked as -the buccaneers sacked them on the South Sea. Spanish caravels with -cargoes of gold were to be scuttled and sunk wherever met. It was to be -brigandage—brigandage pure and simple—from the Zuider Zee to Panama, -from the North Pole to the South. - -Hudson’s voyages for the Muscovy merchants of London to find a short -way to Asia at once arrested the attention of the Dutch. Dutch and -English vied with each other for the discovery of that short road to -the Orient. For a century the chance encounter of Dutch and English -sailors on Arctic seas had been the signal for the instant breaking -of heads. Not whales but men were harpooned when Dutch and English -fishermen met off Nova Zembla, or Spitzbergen, or the North Cape. - -Hudson was no sooner home from his second voyage for the English than -the Dutch East India Company invited him to Holland to seek passage -across the Pole for them. This—it should be explained—is the only -justification that exists for writing the English pilot’s name as -Hendrick instead of Henry, as though employment by the Dutch changed -the Englishman’s nationality. - -The invitation was Hudson’s salvation. Just at the moment when all -doors were shut against him in England and when his hopes were utterly -baffled by two failures—another door opened. Just at the moment when -his own thoughts were turning toward America as the solution of the -North-West Passage, the chance came to seek the passage in America. -Just when Hudson was at the point where he might have abandoned his -will-o’-the-wisp, it lighted him to a fresh pursuit on a new Trail. It -is such coincidences as these in human life that cause the poet to sing -of Destiny. - -But the chanciness of human fortune did not cease because of this -stroke of good luck. The great merchants of the Netherlands heard his -plans. His former failures were against him. Money bags do not care to -back an uncertainty. Having paid his expenses to come to Holland, the -merchant princes were disposed to let him cool his heels in the outer -halls waiting their pleasure. The chances are they would have rejected -his overtures altogether if France and Belgium had not at that time -begun to consider the employment of Hudson on voyages of discovery. The -Amsterdam merchants of the Dutch East India Company suddenly awakened -to the fact that they wanted Hudson, and wanted him at once. Again -Destiny, or a will-o’-the-wisp as impish as Puck—had befriended him. - -At Amsterdam, he was furnished with two vessels, the _Good Hope_ as an -escort part way; the _Half Moon_ for the voyage itself—a flat-bottomed, -tub-like yacht such as plied the shallows of Holland. In his crew, he -was unfortunate. The East India Company, of course, supplied him with -the sailors of their own boats—lawless lascars; turbaned Asiatics -with stealthy tread and velvet voices and a dirk hidden in their -girdles; gypsy nondescripts with the hot blood of the hot tropics -and the lawless instincts of birds of plunder. Your crew trained to -cut the Spaniard’s throat may acquire the habit and cut the master’s -throat, too. Along with these sailors, Hudson insisted on having a few -Englishmen from his former crews, among whom were Colman and Juet and -his own son. Juet acted as astronomer and keeper of the ship’s log. -From Juet and Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England in whose hands -Hudson’s manuscripts finally fell—are drawn all the facts of the voyage. - -On March 25 (April 6, new style), 1609, the cumbersome crafts swung out -on the hazy yellow of the Zuider Zee. Motlier ships were about Hudson, -here, than on the Thames, for the Dutch had an enormous commerce with -the East and the West Indies. Feluccas with lateen sails and galleys -for oarsmen had come up from the Mediterranean. Dutch pirates of -the Barbary Coast—narrow in the prow, narrow in the keel, built for -swift sailing and light cargoes—had forgathered, sporting sails of a -different design for every harbor. Then, there were the East Indiamen, -ponderous, slow-moving, deep and broad, with cannon bristling through -the ports like men-of-war, and tawny Asiatic faces leering over -the taffrail. Yawls from the low-lying coast, three-masted luggers -from Denmark, Norwegian ships with hideous scaled griffins carved on -the sharp-curved prows, brigs and brigantines and caravels and tall -galleons from Spain—all crowded the ports of the Netherlands, whose -commerce was at its zenith. Threading his way through the motley craft, -Hudson slowly worked out to sea. - -All went well till the consort, _Good Hope_, turned back north of -Norway and the _Half Moon_ ploughed on alone into the ice fields of -Nova Zembla with her lawless lascar crew. This was the region where -other Dutch crews had perished miserably. Here, too, Hudson’s English -sailors had lost courage the year before. And here Dutch and English -always fought for fishing rights. The cold north wind roared down in -gusts and flaws and sudden bursts of fury. Against such freezing cold, -the flimsy finery of damasks and calico worn by the East Indians was no -protection. The lascars were chilled to the bone. They lay huddled in -their berths bound up in blankets and refused to stir above decks in -such cold. Promptly, the English sailors rebelled against double work. -The old feud between English and Dutch flamed up. Knives were out, and -before Hudson realized, a mutiny was raging about his ears. - -If he turned back, he was ruined. The door of opportunity to new -success is a door that shuts against retreat. His friend, Smith of -Virginia, had written to him of the great inlet of the Chesapeake in -America. South of the Chesapeake was no passage to the South Sea. Smith -knew that; but north of the Chesapeake old charts marked an unexplored -arm of the sea. When Verrazano, the Italian, coasted America for France -in 1524, he had been driven by a squall from the entrance to a vast -river between Thirty-nine and Forty-one (the Hudson River); and the -Spanish charts of Estevan Gomez, in 1525, marked an unknown Rio de -Gamos on the same coast. Hudson now recalled Smith’s advice—to seek -passage between the James River and the St. Lawrence. - -To clinch matters came a gust driving westward over open sea. Robert -Juet, seeking guidance from the heavenly bodies, notices for the first -time in history, on May 19, that there is a spot on the sun. If Hudson -had accomplished nothing more, he had made two important discoveries -for science—the Polar Current and the spot on the sun. Geographers -and astronomers have been knighted and pensioned for less important -discoveries. - -West, southwest, drove the storm flaw, the _Half Moon_ scudding bare of -sails for three hundred miles. Was it destiny again, or his dæmon, or -his Puck, or his will-o’-the-wisp, or the Providence of God—that drove -Hudson contrary to his plans straight for the scene of his immortal -discoveries? Pause was made at the Faroes for wood and water. There, -too, Hudson consulted with his officers and decided to steer for -America. - -Once more afloat, June saw the _Half Moon_ with its lazy lascars -lounging over rails down among the brown fogs of Newfoundland. Here -a roaring nor’-easter came with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The -scream of wind through the rigging, the growlers swishing against the -keel, then the thunder of the great billows banging broadsides—were -like the burst of cannon fire over a battlefield. The foremast snapped -and swept into the seas as the little _Half Moon_ careened over on -one side, and the next gust that caught her tore the other sails to -tatters, but she still kept her prow headed southwest. - -Fogs lay as they nearly always lie on the Grand Banks, but a sudden -lift of the mist on June 25 revealed a sail standing east. To the -pirate East Indian sailors, the sight of the strange ship was like the -smell of powder to a battle horse. Loot! Spanish loot! With a whoop, -they headed the _Half Moon_ about in utter disregard of Hudson, and -gave chase. From midday to dark the _Half Moon_ played pirate, cutting -the waves in pursuit, careening to the wind in a way that threatened to -capsize boat and crew, the fugitive bearing away like a bird on wing. -This little by-play lasted till darkness hid the strange ship, but -the madcap prank seemed to rouse the lazy lascars from their torpor. -Henceforth, they were alert for any lawless raid that promised plunder. - -Back about the _Half Moon_ through the warm June night. Dutch and -English forgathered in the moonlight squatting about on the ship’s -kegs spinning yarns of bloody pirate venture, when Spanish cargoes -were scuttled and Spanish dons tossed off bayonet point into the sea, -and Spanish ladies compelled to walk the plank blindfolded into watery -graves. What kind of venture did they expect in America—this rascal -crew? - -Then the fogs of the Banks settled down again like wool. Here and -there, like phantom ships were the sails of the French fishing fleet, -or the black-hulled bateaux, or the rocking Newfoundland dories. - -A long white curl of combing waves, and they have sheered off from the -Wreckers’ Reef at Sable Island. - -Slower now, and steady, the small boats sounding ahead, for the water -is shallow and the wind shifty. In the calm that falls, the crew -fishes lazily over decks for cod. Through the fog and dark of July 16, -something ahead looks like islands. The boat anchors for the night, -and when gray morning breaks, the _Half Moon_ lies off what is now -known as Penobscot Bay, Maine. - -Two dugouts paddled by Indians come climbing the waves. Dressed in -breechcloths of fur and feathers, the savages mount the decks without -fear. The lascars gather round—not much promise of plunder from such -scant attire! By signs and a few French words, the Indians explain that -St. Lawrence traders frequent this coast. The East India cut-throats -prick up their ears. Trade—what had these defenceless savages to trade? - -That week Hudson sailed up the river and sent his carpenters ashore to -make fresh masts, but the East India men rummaged the redskins’ camp. -Great store of furs, they saw. It was not the kind of loot they wanted. -Gold was more to their choice, but it was better than no loot at all. - -[Illustration: New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660.] - -[Illustration: Albany from an Old Print.] - -The _Half Moon_ was ready to sail on the 25th of July. In spite of -Hudson’s commands, six sailors went ashore with heavy old-fashioned -musketoons known as “murderers.” Seizing the Indian canoes, they opened -fire on the camp. The amazed Indians dashed for hiding in the woods. -The sailors then plundered the wigwams of everything that could be -carried away. This has always been considered a terrible blot against -Hudson’s fame. The only explanation given by Juet in the ship’s log -is, “_we drave the savages from the houses and took the spoyle as they -would have done of us_.” Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in London, who -had Hudson’s account, gives another explanation. He declares the Dutch -sailors conducted the raid in spite of all the force with which Hudson -could oppose them. The English sailors refused to enforce his commands -by fighting, for they were outnumbered by the mutineers. No sooner were -the mutineers back on deck than they fell to pummeling one another over -a division of the plunder. Any one, who knows how news carries among -the Indians by what fur traders describe as “the moccasin telegram,” -could predict results. “The moccasin telegram” bore exaggerated rumors -of the outrage from the Penobscot to the Ohio. The white man was a man -to be fought, for he had proved himself a treacherous friend. - -Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land, warned off the reefs -through fog by _a great rutt or rustling of the tide_, the pirate -sailors now disregarding all commands, the _Half Moon_ drifted lazily -southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nantucket, a lonely cry sounded -from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some Christian had -been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hudson sent his small -boat ashore. A camp of Indians was found dancing in a frenzy of joy -at the apparition of the great “winged wigwam” gliding over the sea. A -present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the brim. - -Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in shady -nooks—the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding goldenrod; -and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at the roots of -a great oak. Robert Juet’s ship log records that “_the Indian country -of great hills_”—Massachusetts—was “_a very sweet land_.” - -On August 7, Hudson was abreast New York harbor; but a mist part heat, -part fog, part the gathering purples of coming autumn—hid the low-lying -hills. Sliding idly along the summer sea, mystic, unreal, lotus dreams -in the very August air, the world a world of gold in the yellow summer -light—the _Half Moon_ came to James River by August 18, where Smith of -Virginia lived; but the mutineers had no mind to go up to Jamestown -settlement. There, the English would outnumber them, and English law -did not deal gently with mutineers. A heat hurricane sent the green -waves smashing over decks off South Carolina, and in the frantic fright -of the ship’s cat dashing from side to side, the turbaned pirates -imagined portent of evil. Perhaps, too, they were coming too near the -Spanish settlements of Florida. All their bravado of scuttled Spanish -ships may have been pot-valor. Any way, they consented to head the boat -back north in a search for the passage above the Chesapeake. - -Past the swampy Chesapeake, a run up the Delaware burnished as a -mirror in the morning light; through the heat haze over a glassy sea -along that New Jersey shore where the world of pleasure now passes -its summers from Cape May and Atlantic City to the highlands of New -Jersey—slowly glided the _Half Moon_. Sand reefs gritted the keel, and -the boat sheered out from shore where a line of white foam forewarned -more reefs. Juet, the mate, did duty at the masthead, scanning the -long coast line for that inlet of the old charts. The East India men -lay sprawled over decks, beards unkempt, long hair tied back by gypsy -handkerchiefs, bizarre jewels gleaming from huge brass earrings. Some -were paying out the sounding line from the curved beak of the prow. -Others fished for a shark at the stern, throwing out pork bait at the -end of a rope. Many were squatted on the decks unsheltered from the -sun, chattering like parrots over games of chance. - -A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead—of shoals! A grit of the -keel over pebbly bottom! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of -watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between islands turbid -and muddy as if it came from some great river—September 2, they have -found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of New -York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by Hudson’s -name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. The -ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points to -the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to the -south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right with a -lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie Coney -Island and Long Island. The East India men laugh with glee. It’s a -fine land. It’s a big land. This is better than risking the gallows -for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut -boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship’s log does -not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren’s record, but I -don’t think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a -leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the _Half Moon_ anchored -at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the Goddess of -Liberty waves her great arm to-day. - -Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch -sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the Pole -know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought Spain—would -one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he never so -wildly, Hudson’s wildest dream could not have forseen that the river -he had discovered would one day throb to the multitudinous voices of a -world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth. - -In Hudson’s day, Spain was the leader of the world’s commerce against -whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty -million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the -penniless pilot dreamer, discovered, the commerce of a hundred million -people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been -made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national -incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s -greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume -of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the -pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal -mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied -in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness. - - * * * * * - -Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. The _Half -Moon_ then glided a pace inland. Three great rivers seemed to open -before her—the Hudson, East River and one of the channels round Staten -Island. On the 4th, while the small boat went ahead to sound, some -sailors rowed ashore to fish. Tradition says that the first white men -to set foot on New York harbor landed on Coney Island, though there is -no proof it was not Staten Island, for the ship lay anchored beside -both. The wind blew so hard this night that the anchor dragged over -bottom and the _Half Moon_ poked her prow into the sands of Staten -Island, “_but took no hurt, thanks be to God_,” adds Juet. - -Signal fires—burning driftwood and flames shot up through hollow -trees—had rallied the Indian tribes to the marvel of the house afloat -on the sea. Objects like beings from heaven seemed to live on the -house—so the poor Indians thought, and they began burning sacrificial -fires and sent runners beating up the wise men of all the tribes. A -religious dance was begun typifying welcome. Spies watching through the -foliage came back with word that one of the Manitous was chief of all -the rest, for he was dressed in a bright scarlet cloak with something -on it bright as the sun—they did not know a name for gold lace worn by -Hudson as commander. When the Manitou with the gold lace went ashore at -Richmond, Staten Island, Indian legend says that the chiefs gathered -round in a circle under the oaks and chanted an ode of welcome to the -rhythmic measures of a dance. The natives accompanied Hudson back to -the _Half Moon_ with gifts of maize and tobacco—“_a friendly people_,” -Hudson’s manuscript describes them. - -Two days passed in the Narrows with interchange of gifts between whites -and Indians. On the morning of the 6th, Hudson sent Colman and four men -to sound what is now known as Hell Gate. The sailors went on to the -Battery—the southernmost point of New York City as it is to-day—finding -_lands pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly oaks_, the air -crisp with the odor of autumn woods. With the yellow sun aslant the -painted autumn forests, it was easy to forget time. The day passed in -idle wanderings. At dusk rain began to fall. This extinguished “the -match-lighters” of the men’s muskets. Launching their boat again, they -were rowing back to the _Half Moon_ through a rain fine as mist when -two canoes with a score of warriors suddenly emerged from the dusk. -Both parties paused in mutual amazement. Then the warriors uttered -a shout and had discharged a shower of arrows before the astonished -sailors could defend themselves. Was the attack a chance encounter -with hostiles, or had “the moccasin telegram” brought news of the -murderous raid on the Penobscot? One sailor fell dead shot through the -throat. Two of the other four men were injured. The dead man was the -Englishman, Colman. This weakened Hudson against the Dutch mutineers. -Muskets were wet and useless. In the dark, the men had lost the ship. -The tide began to run with a high wind. They threw out a grapnel. It -did not hold. All night in the rain and dark, the two uninjured men -toiled at the oars to keep from drifting out to sea. Daylight brought -relief. The enemy had retreated, and the _Half Moon_ lay not far away. -By ten of the morning, they reached the ship. The dead man was rowed -ashore and buried at a place named after him—Colman’s Point. As the -old Dutch maps have a Colman’s Punt marked at the upper end of Sandy -Hook, that is supposed to have been the burial place. A wall of boards -was now erected round the decks of the _Half Moon_ and men-at-arms -kept posted. Indians, who came to trade that day, affected ignorance -of the attack but wanted _knives_ for their furs. Hudson was not to be -tricked. He refused, and permitted only two savages on board at a time. -Two he clothed in scarlet coats like his own, and kept on board to -guide him up the channel of the main river. - -[Illustration: The Duke of Marlborough, One of the First Governors of -the Hudson’s Bay Company.] - -The farther he advanced, the higher grew the shores. First were the -ramparts, walls of rock, topped by a fringe of blasted trees. Then the -coves where cities like Tarrytown nestle to-day. Then the forested -peaks of the Highlands and West Point and Poughkeepsie, with the -oaks to the river’s edge. Mist hung in wreaths across the domed green -of the mountain called Old Anthony’s Nose. Mountain streams tore down -to the river through a tangle of evergreens, and in the crisp, nutty -autumn air was the all pervasive resinous odor of the pines. Mountains -along the Hudson, which to-day scarcely feel the footfall of man except -for the occasional hunter, were in Hudson’s time peopled by native -mountaineers. From their eerie nests they could keep eagle eye on -all the surrounding country and swoop down like birds of prey on all -intruders. As the white sails of the _Half Moon_ rattled and shifted -and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of smoke -rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak like -watch fires—the signals of the mountaineers. From the beginning of -time they had dwelt secure on these airy peaks. What invader was this, -gliding up the river-silences, sails spread like wings? - -By the 13th of September, the _Half Moon_ had passed Yonkers. On the -morning of the 15th, it anchored within the shadow of the Catskills. On -the night of the 19th, it lay at poise on the amber swamps, where the -river widens near modern Albany. Either their professions of friendship -had been a farce from the first, or they were afraid to be carried into -the land of the Mohawks, but the two savages, who had come as guides, -sprang through the porthole near Catskill and swam ashore, running -along the banks shouting defiance. - -Below Albany, Hudson went ashore with an old chief of the country. “_He -was chief of forty men_,” Hudson’s manuscript records, “_whom I saw in -a house of oak bark, circular in shape with arched roof. It contained a -great quantity of corn and beans, enough to load three ships, besides -what was growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats -were spread to sit upon and food was served in red wooden bowls. Two -men were dispatched in quest of game, who brought in a pair of pigeons. -They likewise killed a fat dog and skinned it with great haste with -shells. The land is the finest for cultivation that ever I in my life -set foot upon._” Hudson had not found a passage to China, but his soul -was satisfied of his life labor. - -Above Albany, the river became shoaly. Hudson sent his men forward -twice to sound, but thirty miles beyond Albany the water was too -shallow for the _Half Moon_. - -How far up the river had Hudson sailed? Juet’s ship log does not give -the latitude, but Van Meteren’s record says 42° 40’. Beyond this, on -September 22, the small boat advanced thirty miles. Tradition says -Hudson ascended as far as Waterford. - -While the boats were sounding, the conspirators were at their usual -mischief. Indian chiefs had come on board. They were taken down to the -cabin and made gloriously drunk. All went merrily till one Indian fell -insensible. The rest scampered in panic and came back with offerings of -wampum—their most precious possession—for the chief’s ransom. When they -secured him alive, they brought more presents—wampum and venison—in -gratitude. To this escapade of the mischief-making crew, moccasin rumor -added a thousand exaggerations which came down in Indian tradition to -the beginning of the last century. After the drunken frenzy—legend -says—the white men made a great oration promising to come again. -When they returned the next year, they asked for as much land as the -hide of a bullock would cover. The Indians granted it, but the white -men cut the buffalo hide to strips narrow as a child’s finger and so -encompassed all the land of Manahat (Manhattan). The whites then built -a fort for trade. The name of the fort was New Amsterdam. It grew to be -a mighty city. Such are Indian legends of New York’s beginnings. They -probably have as much truth as the story of Rome and the wolf. - -On September 23, the _Half Moon_ turned her prow south. The Hudson lay -in all its autumn glory—a glassy sheet walled by the painted woods, -now gorgeous with the frost tints of gold and scarlet and carmine. The -ship anchored each night and the crew wandered ashore hatching pirate -plots. Finally they presented their ultimatum to Hudson—they would slay -him if he dared to steer for Holland. Weakened by the death of Colman, -the English were helpless against the Dutch mutineers. Perhaps they, -too, were not averse to seizing the Company’s ship and becoming sea -rovers along the shores of such a land. At least one of them turned -pirate the next voyage. Twice, the _Half Moon_ was run aground—at -Catskill and at Esopus—probably intentionally, or because Hudson dared -not send his faithful Englishmen ahead to sound. - -[Illustration: Hudson’s Third Voyage 1609, Discovery of Hudson River] - -Near Anthony’s Nose, the wind is compressed with the force of a huge -bellows, and the ship anchored in shelter from the eddying gale. Signal -fires had rallied the mountain tribes. As the ship lay wind-bound on -the night of October 1, the Indians floating about in their dugouts -grew daring. One climbed the rudder and stole Juet’s clothes through -the cabin window. Juet shot him dead red-handed in the act, and gave -the alarm to the rest of the crew. With a splash, the Indians rushed -for shore, paddling and swimming, but a boat load of white men pursued -to regain the plunder. A swimmer caught Juet’s boat to upset it. The -ship’s cook slashed the Indian’s arm off, and he sank like stone. -It was now dark, but Hudson slipped down stream away from danger. -Near Harlem River the next afternoon, a hundred hostiles were seen -ambushed on the east bank. Led by the guides who had escaped going up -stream, two canoes glided under _The Half Moon’s_ rudder and let fly a -shower of arrows. Much as Hudson must have disliked to open his powder -magazines to mutineers, arms were handed out. A spatter of musketry -drove the Indians a gunshot distant. Three savages fell. Then there was -a rally of the Indians to shoot from shore near what is now Riverside -Drive. Hudson trained his cannon on them. Two more fell. Persistent -as hornets, out they sallied in canoes. This time Hudson let go every -cannon on that side. Twelve savages were killed. - -_The Half Moon_ then glided past Hopoghan (Hoboken) to safer anchorage -on the open bay. It was October 4th before she passed through the -Narrows to the Sea. Here, the mutiny reached a climax. Hudson could -no more ignore threats. The Dutch refused to steer the ship to -Holland, where punishment would await them. Juet advised wintering in -Newfoundland, where there would be other Englishmen, but Hudson allayed -discontent by promising not to send the guilty men to Holland if they -would steer the ship to England; and to Dartmouth in Devon she came on -November 7, 1609. - -What was Hudson’s surprise to learn he had become an enormously -important personage! The Muscovy Gentlemen of London did not purpose -allowing his knowledge of the passage toward the Pole to pass into the -service of their rivals, the Dutch. Hudson was forbidden to leave his -own country and had to send his report to Holland through Van Meteren, -the consul. _The Half Moon_ returned to Holland and was wrecked a few -years later on her way to the East Indies. It is to be hoped Hudson’s -crew went down with her. The odd thing was—while Hudson was valued for -his knowledge of the Polar regions, the discovery of Hudson River added -not one jot to his fame. In fact, one historian of that time declares: -“_Hudson achieved nothing at all in 1609. All he did was to exchange -merchandise for furs._” Nevertheless, the merchants of Amsterdam were -rigging out ships to establish a trading factory on the entrance of -that newly discovered river. Such was the founding of New York. Money -bags sneer at the dreamer, but they are quick to transmute dreams into -gold, though three hundred years were to pass before any of the gold -drawn from his dreams was applied toward erecting to Hudson a memorial. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -1610 - -HUDSON’S FOURTH VOYAGE - - -Three years almost to a day from the time he set out to pursue his -Phantom Dream along an endless Trail, Hudson again set sail for the -mystic North. This time the Muscovy Gentlemen did not send him as -a company, but three members of that company—Smith, Wolstenholme -and Digges—supplied him with the bark, _The Discovery_. In his crew -of twenty were several of his former seamen, among whom was the -old mate, Juet. Provisions were carried for a year’s cruise. One -Coleburne went as adviser; but what with the timidity of the old crew -and the officious ignorance of the adviser stirring up discontent by -fault-finding before the boat was well out of Thames waters—Hudson was -obliged to pack Coleburne back on the first craft met home-bound. The -rest of the crew comprised the usual proportion of rogues impressed -against their will for a voyage, which regular seamen feared. - -Having found one great river north of the Chesapeake, Hudson’s next -thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot -and Frobisher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as -the Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hudson steered _The Discovery_ in -April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow -of Hekla’s volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign -of foul weather. Twice _The Discovery_ was driven back by storm, and -the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging -discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled -at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had -found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to -listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised -the men “to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need -firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by -Greenland.” And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn -against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining -that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was -Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round -Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that -led to the South Sea. - -It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if -the crew had been terrified by Juet’s tales of ice north of Asia, they -were panic-stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains -are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson -had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents -of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean’s spacious area, -but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for -four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To -make matters worse, up these passages jammed with icebergs washed hard -as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the -southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous “furious -overfall,” the nightmare of northern seamen—a cataract of waters thirty -feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the ice. It -is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless and tireless. - -Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to -an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits -are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky -islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth -of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a -cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice has literally ground -out of Labrador’s rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two -hundred miles from the ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This -is known as the Second Narrows. The mountainous, snow-clad shores -converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning -maelstrom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos -flings the Atlantic tide. - -Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and -accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade -captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of provisions for -the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for -mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called “ice ropes” were used. -Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve -chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder—were the regulation -requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special -rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker-board -sky—deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green lights -the sign of ice—was the invariable indication of distant ice. “Never go -on either at night or in a fog when you have sighted such a sky”—was -the rule. “Get your ice tackle ready at the straits.” “Stand away from -the indraught between a big iceberg and the tide, for if once the -indraught nails you, you are lost.” “To avoid a crush that will sink -you in ten minutes, run twenty miles inside the soft ice; that will -break the force of the tide.” “Be careful of your lead night and day.” - -But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All -was new to the seamen in Hudson’s day. All that was known to the -northern navigator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping -to a floe, hauling up to it _and worming a way through the ice with a -small sail_. - -Carried with the current southward from Greenland, sometimes slipping -into the long “tickles” of water open between the floes, again watching -their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg, -or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer’s heat -and therefore less likely to ram the hull—_The Discovery_ came to -Ungava Bay, Labrador, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic -seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian missionaries told me when -I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual -measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been -ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on -their long journey southward. - -An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson’s ship. There was an -avalanche of falling seas. “_Into the ice we put for safety_,” says -the record. “_Some of our men fell sick. I will not say it was for -fear, though I saw small sign of other grief._” Just westward lay a -great open passage—now known as Hudson Strait, so the island in Ungava -Bay was called _Desire Provoked_. Plainly, they could not remain -anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, and -the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the bay. - -Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a -sea. Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off -the streets of London to act as secretary—now played the tale-bearer, -fomenting trouble between master and crew. “Our master,” says Prickett, -one of Digges’ servants who was on board, “was in despair.” Taking out -his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they -had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly -to them—would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for -all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been -seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way -home. On both sides was equal danger—ice. To the west, was land. They -could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home, -the width of the ocean. - -The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and -see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side of _The Discovery_ with an -ominous jar of the timbers. All hands were mustered out. By the usual -devices in such emergencies—by blowing up the ice at the prow, towing -away obstructions, rowing with the ship in tow, all fenders down to -protect the sides, the steel-shod poles prodding off the icebergs—_The -Discovery_ was hauled to open water. Then, as if it were the very sign -that the crew needed—water opened to the west! There came a spurt of -wind. _The Discovery_ spread her sails to the breeze and carried the -vacillating crew forward. For a week they had lain imprisoned. By the -11th of July they were in Hudson Straits on the north side and had -anchored at Baffin’s Land, which Hudson named _God’s Mercy_. - -That night the men were allowed ashore. It was a desolate, silent, -mountainous region that seemed to lie in an eternal sleep. Birds -were in myriads—their flacker but making the profound silence more -cavernous. When a sailor uttered a shout, there was no answer but -the echo of his own voice, thin and weird and lonely, as if he, too, -would be swallowed up by those deathly silences. Men ran over the -ice chasing a polar bear. Others went gunning for partridge. The -hills were presently rocketing with the crash and echo of musketry. -Prickett climbed a high rock to spy ahead. Open water lay to the -southwest. It was like a sea—perhaps the South Sea; and to the -southwest Hudson steered past Charles and Salisbury Islands, through -“_a whurling sea_”—the Second Narrows—between two high headlands, -Digges island on one side, Cape Wolstenholme on the other, eventually -putting into Port Laperriere on Digges Island. Except for two or three -government stations where whaling captains forgather in log cabins, -the whole region from Ungava Bay to Digges Island, four hundred -miles, practically the whole length of the Straits on the south—is as -unexplored to-day as when Hudson first sailed those waters. - -The crew went ashore hunting partridge over the steep rocks of the -island and examining stone caches of the absent Eskimo. Hudson took a -careful observation of the sea. Before him lay open water—beyond was -sea, a sea to the south! Was it the South Sea? The old record says -he was proudly confident it was the South Sea, for it was plainly a -sea as large as the Baltic or Mediterranean. Fog falling, cannon were -set booming and rocketing among the hills to call the hunters home. -It was now August 4. A month had passed since he entered the Straits. -If it took another month to go back through them, the boat would be -winter-bound and could not reach England. There was no time to lose. -Keeping between the east coast of the bay with its high rocks and that -line of reefed islands known as The Sleepers, _The Discovery_ pushed on -south, where the lookout still reported “_a large sea to the fore_.” -This is a region, which at this late day of the world’s history, still -remains almost unknown. The men who have explored it could be counted -on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely bare but for moss, with valley -between where the spring thaw creates continual muskeg—moss on water -dangerous as quicksands—are broken by swampy tracks; and near Richmond, -where the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company maintained a post for a few years, -the scenery attains a degree of grandeur similar to Norway, groves -covering the rocky shores, cataracts shattering over the precipices and -lonely vistas opening to beautiful meadows, where the foot of man has -never trod. But for some unknown reason, game has always been scarce -on the east side of Hudson Bay. Legends of mines have been told by the -Indians, but no one has yet found the mines. - -The fury of Juet the rebellious old mate, now knew no bounds. The ship -had victuals for only six months more. Here was September. Navigation -would hardly open in the Straits before June. If the boat did not -emerge on the South Sea, they would all be winter-bound. The waters -began to shoal to those dangerous reefs on the south where the Hudson’s -Bay traders have lost so many ships. In hoisting anchor up, a furious -over-sea knocked the sailors from the capstan. With a rebound the -heavy iron went splashing overboard. This was too much for Juet. The -mate threw down his pole and refused to serve longer. On September 10, -Hudson was compelled to try him for mutiny. Juet was deposed with loss -of wages for bad conduct and Robert Bylot appointed in his place. The -trial showed Hudson he was slumbering over a powder mine. Half the crew -was disaffected, plotting to possess themselves of arms; but what did -plots matter? Hudson was following a vision which his men could not see. - -By this time, Hudson was several hundred miles south of the Straits, -and the inland sea which he had discovered did not seem to be leading -to the Pacific. Following the south shore to _the westernmost bay of -all_—James Bay on the west—Hudson recognized the fact that it was -not the South Sea. The siren of his dreams had sung her fateful song -till she had lured his hopes on the rocks. He was land-bound and -winter-bound in a desolate region with a mutinous crew. - -[Illustration: Le Moyne D’Iberville The famous bushranger who raided -the English forts from New England to Hudson Bay and rose to be the -first naval commander of France.] - -The water was too shallow for the boat to moor. The men waded -ashore to seek a wintering place. Wood was found in plenty and the -footprint of a savage seen in the snow. That night, November 2, it -snowed heavily, and the boat crashed on the rocks. For twelve hours, -bedlam reigned, Juet heading a party of mutineers, but next day the -storm floated the keel free. By the 10th of November, the ship was -frozen in. To keep up stock of provisions, Hudson offered a reward for -all game, of which there seemed an abundance, but when he ordered the -carpenters ashore to build winter quarters, he could secure obedience -to his commands only by threatening to hang every mutineer to the -yardarm. In the midst of this turmoil, the gunner died. Henry Greene, -the vagabond secretary, who received no wages, asked for the dead man’s -heavy great coat. Hudson granted the request. The mutineers resented -the favoritism, for it was the custom to auction off a dead man’s -belongings at the mainmast, and in the cold climate all needed extra -clothing. Greene took advantage of the apparent favor to shirk house -building and go off to the woods with a rebellious carpenter hunting. -Furious, Hudson turned the coveted coat over to Bylot, the new mate. - -So the miserable winter dragged on. Snow fell continuously day after -day. The frost giants set the ice whooping and crackling every night -like artillery fire. A pall of gloom was settling over the ship that -seemed to benumb hope and benumb effort. Great numbers of birds were -shot by loyal members of the crew, but the ship was short of bread -and the cook began to use moss and the juice of tamarac as antidotes -to scurvy. As winter closed in, the cold grew more intense. Stone -fireplaces were built on the decks of the ship. Pans of shot heated -red-hot were taken to the berths as a warming pan. On the whole, Hudson -was fortunate in his wintering quarters. It was the most sheltered part -of the bay and had the greatest abundance of game to be found on that -great inland sea. Also, there was no lack of firewood. Farther north on -the west shore, Hudson’s ship would have been exposed to the east winds -and the ice-drive. Here, he was secure from both, though the cold of -James Bay was quite severe enough to cover decks and beds and bedding -and port windows with hoar frost an inch thick. - -Toward spring came a timid savage to the ship drawing furs on a -toboggan for trade. He promised to return after so many sleeps from -the tribes of the South, but time to an Indian may mean this year or -next, and he was never again seen. As the ice began to break up in May, -Hudson sent men fishing in a shallop that the carpenters had built, -but the fishermen plotted to escape in the small boat. The next time, -Hudson, himself, led the fishermen, threatening to leave any man proved -guilty of plots marooned on the bay. It was an unfortunate threat. The -men remembered it. Juet, the deposed mate, had but caged his wrath and -was now joined by Henry Greene, the secretary, who had fallen from -favor. If these men and their allies had hunted half as industriously -as they plotted, there would have been food in plenty, but with -half the crew living idly on the labors of the others for a winter, -somebody was bound to suffer shortage of food on the homeward voyage. -The traitor thought was suggested by Henry Greene that if Hudson and -the loyal men were, themselves, marooned, the rest could go home with -plenty of food and no fear of punishment. The report could be spread -that Hudson had died. Hudson had searched the land in vain for Indians. -All unconscious of the conspiracy in progress, he returned to prepare -the ship for the home voyage. - -The rest of _The Discovery’s_ record reads like some tale of piracy -on the South Sea. Hudson distributed to the crew all the bread that -was left—a pound to each man without favoritism. There were tears in -his eyes and his voice broke as he handed out the last of the food. -The same was done with the cheese. Seamen’s chests were then searched -and some pilfered biscuits distributed. In Hudson’s cabin were stored -provisions for fourteen days. These were to be used only in the last -extremity. As might have been expected, the idle mutineers used their -food without stint. The men who would not work were the men who would -not deny themselves. When Hudson weighed anchor on June 18, 1611, for -the homeward trip, nine of the best men in the crew lay ill in their -berths from overwork and privations. - -One night Greene came to the cabin of Prickett, who had acted as a -sort of agent for the ship’s owners. Vowing to cut the throat of any -man who betrayed him, Greene burst out in imprecations with a sort of -pot-valour that “_he was going to end it or mend it; go through with it -or die_”; the sick men were useless: there were provisions for half the -crew but not all—— - -Prickett bade him stop. This was mutiny. Mutiny was punished in England -by death. But Greene swore he would rather be hanged at home than -starve at sea. - -In the dark, the whole troop of mutineers came whining and plotting -to Prickett. The boat was only a few days out of winter quarters and -embayed in the ice half way to the Straits. If such delays continued, -what were fourteen days’ provisions for a voyage? Of all the ill men, -Prickett, alone, was to be spared to intercede for the mutineers -with Sir Dudley Digges, his master. In vain, Prickett pleaded for -Hudson’s life. Let them wait two days; one day; twelve hours! They -called him a fool! It was Hudson’s death, or the death of all! The -matter must be put through while their courage was up! Then to add the -last touch to their villainy, they swore on a Bible to Prickett that -what they contemplated was for the object of saving the lives of the -majority. Prickett’s defense for countenancing the mutiny is at best -the excuse of a weakling, a scared fool—he couldn’t save Hudson, so -he kept quiet to save his own neck. It was a black, windy night. The -seas were moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could -forestall devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be -alike guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered, -too, the crew were impressed seamen, unwilling sailors, the blackguard -riffraff of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prickett -might have crawled above to Hudson’s cabin, but the mutineers kept -sleepless vigil for the night. At daybreak two had stationed themselves -at the hatch, three hovered round the door of the captain’s cabin. -When Hudson emerged from the room, two men leaped on him to the fore, -a third, Wilson the bo’swain, caught and bound his arms behind. When -Hudson demanded what they meant, they answered with sinister intent -that he would know when _he_ was put in the shallop. Then, all pretense -that what they did was for the good of the crew was cast aside. They -threw off all disguise and gathered round him with shouts, and jeers, -and railings, and mockery of his high ambitions! It was the old story -of the Ideal hooted by the mob, crucified by little-minded malice, -misunderstood by evil and designing fools! The sick were tumbled out -of berths and herded above decks till the shallop was lowered. One -man from Ipswich was given a chance to remain but begged to be set -adrift. He would rather perish as a man than live as a thief. The name -of the hero was Phillip Staffe. With a running commentary of curses -from Henry Greene, Juet, the mate, now venting his pent-up vials of -spleen, eight sick men were lowered into the small boat with Hudson and -his son. Some one suggested giving the castaways ammunition and meal. -Juet roared for the men to make haste. Wilson, the guilty bo’swain, -got anchors up and sails rigged. Ammunition, arms and cooking utensils -were thrown into the small boat. _The Discovery_ then spread her sails -to the wind—a pirate ship. The tow rope of the small boat tightened. -She followed like a despairing swimmer, climbing over the wave-wash -for a pace or two; then some one cut the cable. The castaways were -adrift. The distance between the two ships widened. Prickett looking -out from his porthole below, caught sight of Hudson with arms bound -and panic-stricken, angry face. As the boats drifted apart the old -commander shouted a malediction against his traitor crew. - -“Juet will ruin you all——” - -“Nay, but it is that villain, Henry Greene,” Prickett yelled back -through the porthole, and the shallop fell away. Some miles out of -sight from their victims, the mutineers slackened pace to ransack the -contents of the ship. The shallop was sighted oars going, sails spread, -coming over a wave in mad pursuit. With guilty terror as if their -pursuers had been ghosts, the mutineers out with crowded sails and fled -as from an avenging demon! So passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail -on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair—loss of -vision, of faith in his dream? Did life suddenly seem to him a cruel -joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell? - -What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his -fate. Barely the shadow of a legend illumines his last hours; though -Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yarns of the first -Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came -overland to the bay fifty years later, he found an old house “_all -marked by bullets_.” Did Hudson take his last stand inside that house? -Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the powers of -darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores with the -bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish fables -of a “ship with sails” having come to the bay; but many ships came in -those fifty years: Button’s to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, the -Dane’s, to meet a fate worse than Hudson’s. - -Hudson’s shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves -of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow. -A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his -child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice -fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with -bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. -They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a -Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more -than he could have dreamed—this pathfinder of two empires’ commerce. He -had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his Idea down -the Long Trail. What more could the most favored child of the gods ask? -With one’s task done, better to die in harness than rot in some garret -of obscurity, or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age—the fate of so -many great benefactors of humanity! - -It needed no prophet to predict the end of the pirate ship with such a -crew. They quarreled over who should be captain. They quarreled over -who should be mate. They quarreled over who should keep the ship’s log. -They lost themselves in the fog, and ran amuck of icebergs and disputed -whether they should sail east or west, whether they had passed Cape -Digges leading out of the Straits, whether they should turn back south -to seek the South Sea. They were like children lost in the dark. They -ran on rocks, and lay ice-bound with no food but dried sea moss and -soup made of candle grease boiled with the offal left from partridge. -Ice hid the Straits. They steered past the outlet and now steered back -only to run on a rock near the pepper-colored sands of Cape Digges. -Flood tide set them free. They wanted to land and hunt but were afraid -to approach the coast and sent in the small boats. It was the 28th of -July. As they neared the breeding ground of the birds, Eskimo kyacks -came swarming over the waves toward them. That day, the whites rested -in the Indian tents. The next day Henry Greene hurried ashore with six -men to secure provisions. Five men had landed to gather scurvy (sorrel) -grass and trade with the fifty Indians along the shore. Prickett being -lame remained alone in the small boat. Noticing an Eskimo boarding the -boat, Prickett stood up and peremptorily ordered the savage ashore. -When he sat down, what was his horror to find himself seized from -behind, with a knife stroke grazing his breast. Eskimo carry their -knives by strings. Prickett seized the string in his left hand and so -warded off the blow. With his right hand he got his own dagger out of -belt and stabbed the assailant dead. On shore, Wilson the bo’swain, and -another man had been cut to pieces. Striking off the Indians with a -club, Greene, the ringleader, tumbled to the boat with a death wound. -The other two men leaped down the rocks into the boat. A shower of -arrows followed, killing Greene outright and wounding the other three. -One of the rowers fainted. The others signaled the ship for aid, and -were rescued. Greene’s body was thrown into the sea without shroud or -shrift. Of the other three, two died in agonies. This encounter left -only four well men to man the ship home. They landed twice among the -numberless lonely islands that line the Straits and hunted partridge -and sea moss for food. Before they had left the Straits, they were -down to rations of half a bird a day. In mid-ocean they were grateful -for the garbage of the cook’s barrel. Juet, the old mate, died of -starvation in sight of Ireland. The other men became so weak they -could not stand at the helm. Sails flapped to the wind in tatters. -Masts snapped off short. Splintered yardarms hung in the ragged -rigging. It was like an ocean derelict, or a haunted craft with a -maimed crew. In September, land was sighted off Ireland and the joyful -cry of “a sail” raised; but a ship manned by only four men with a tale -of disaster, which could not be explained, aroused suspicion. _The -Discovery_ was shunned by the fisher folk. Only by pawning the ship’s -furniture could the crew obtain food, sailors and pilot to take them to -Plymouth. Needless to say, the survivors were at once clapped in prison -and Sir Thomas Button sent to hunt for Hudson; but Hudson had passed -to his unknown grave leaving as a monument the two great pathways of -traffic, which he found—Hudson River and the northern inland sea, which -may yet prove the Baltic of America. - - -DATA FOR HUDSON’S VOYAGES - -_Purchas’ Pilgrims_ contains the bulk of the data regarding Hudson’s -voyages. The account of the first voyage is written by Hudson, himself, -and by one of the company, John Playse, Playse presumably completing -the log-book directly from Hudson’s journal. This is supplemented by -facts taken from Hudson’s manuscripts (long since lost) now to be found -in _Edge’s Discovery of the Muscovy Merchants_ (Purchas III, 464) and -_Fotherby’s_ statement concerning Hudson’s journals (Purchas III, 730), -the whole being concisely stated with ample proofs in the _Hakluyt -Society’s_ 1860 publication on Hudson by Doctor Asher. The account of -the second voyage is given by Hudson, himself. On the third voyage, -the journal was kept by Juet, the mate. The story of the last voyage -is told in _An Abstract of Hudson’s Journals_ down to August 1610; -and in an account written by that Prickett who joined the mutineers, -plainly to excuse his own conduct. Matter supplementary to the third -voyage may be found outside _Purchas_ in such Dutch authorities as _Van -Meteren_ and _De Laet_ and _Lambrechtsen_ and _Van der Donck_. Also -in _Heckewelder_ and _Hessel Gerritz_. Every American historian who -has dealt with the discovery of Hudson River draws his data from these -sources. _Yates_, _Moulton_, _O’Callaghan_, _Brodhead_ are the earliest -of the old American authorities. Supplementary matter concerning the -fourth and last voyage is to be found in almost any account of Arctic -voyaging in America, though nothing new is added to what is told -by Hudson, himself, and by Prickett. Both the _New York Historical -Society_ and the _Hakluyt Society_ of England have published excellent -and complete transcripts of Hudson’s Voyages with translations of -all foreign data bearing on them including the voyages of _Estevan -Gomez_ and _Verrazano_ past New York harbor. For data bearing on -the navigation of Hudson Straits, the two reports of the Canadian -Government on two expeditions sent to ascertain the feasibility of such -a route—are excellent; but not so good, not so detailed and beautifully -unguarded as the sailing records kept by the old sea captains in the -service of the Hudson’s Bay furriers. The Government reports are too -guarded. Besides, the ships stayed only one season in the straits; but -these old fur company captains sailed as often as forty times to the -bay—eighty times in all through the straits; and I have availed myself -of Captain Coat’s sailing directions especially. In the Hudson’s Bay -Company Archives, London, are literally shelf loads of such directions. -That modern enterprise will ultimately surmount all difficulties of -navigation in the straits cannot be doubted. What man sets himself to -do—he does; but the difficulties are not child’s play, nor imaginary -ones created by politicians who oppose a Hudson Bay route to Europe. -One has only to read the record of three hundred years’ sailing by the -fur traders to realize that the straits are—to put it mildly—a trap -for ocean goers. Still it is interesting to note, it is typical of the -dauntless spirit of the North, that a railroad is actually being built -toward Hudson Bay. Not the bay, but the straits, will be the crux of -the difficulty. - -When I speak of “Wreckers’ Reef” Sable Island, it is not a figure of -speech, but a fact of those early days—that false lights were often -placed on Sable Island to lure ships on the sand reefs. Men, who waded -ashore, were clubbed to death by pirates: See Canadian Archives. - -The Indian legends of Hudson’s Voyage to New York are to be found in -early missionary annals: see New York History, 1811. - -The report of the Canadian Geologic Survey of Baffins Land and the -North was issued by Mr. A. P. Low as I completed this volume. - -All authorities—as seen by the map—place Hudson’s wintering quarters -off Rupert River. From the Journals, it seems to me, he went as far -west as he could go, and did not come back east, which would make -his wintering quarters off Moose. This would explain “the old house -battered with bullets,” which Radisson records. - -My authority for data on Moose Factory is Bishop Horden. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -1619 - -THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY—JENS MUNCK’S CREW - - -Though Admiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after -Hudson’s death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost -mariner—the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the -bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his -mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson’s -crew. Hudson’s old ship, _The Discovery_, was used with a larger -frigate called _The Resolution_. No sooner had the ships gone into -winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected -the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium -of the fur trade for three hundred years—became literally a camp of -the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not -enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned, -and for a second time Hudson’s ship, _The Discovery_, carried back -disheartened survivors to England. Button’s long absence had raised -hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes -were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease. - -In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him -at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes -were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged -persistence. The English adventurers, who had sent Button and Gibbon, -now fitted out Bylot, Hudson’s former mate. With him went a young man -named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They -found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea, -but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which -Baffin’s name has been given. - -The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a -breathing space. Where England left off, the trail of discovery was -taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt -the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norsemen had coasted the ice fields -from Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the Vinelands and Marklands -farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost -colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish -fireside. - -King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the -outfitting of two ships for discovery in America. _The Unicorn_, named -after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of forty-eight -including chaplain and surgeon. _The Lamprey_ was a little sloop with -sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a commander and that -fell without question on the fittest man in the Danish navy—Jens Munck, -such a soldier of fortune as the novelist might delight to portray. - -[Illustration: Iberville’s Ship run aground off Nelson in a -Hurricane—from La Potherie.] - -Munck’s father was a nobleman, who had suicided in prison, disgraced -for misuse of public funds. Munck’s mother was left destitute. At -twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier -of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor -to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to -be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout -with fate. The Dutch vessel was attacked off Bahia by the French and -totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into -the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the -Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to -bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless, -crawling ashore like a bedraggled water rat, here was the boy, utterly -alone in a strange land among a strange people speaking a strange -tongue. - -Such an experience would have set most boys swallowing a lump in their -throat. The little Dane was too glad to get the water out of his throat -and to set his feet on dry land for any such nonsense. For a year he -worked with a shoemaker for his board, and incidentally picked up a -knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese over the cobbler’s last. The most -of young Danish noblemen gained such knowledge from tutors and travel. -Then Munck became apprentice to a house painter. Not a yelp against -fate did the plucky young castaway utter, and what is more marvel, -he did not lose his head and let it sink to the place where a young -gentleman’s feet ought to be—namely the pavement. Toiling for his daily -bread among the riffraff and ruff-scuff of a foreign port, Munck kept -his head up and his face to the future; and at last came his chance. - -Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come -to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor -authorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck’s -opportunity to escape, and he seized it with both hands. Jostling among -the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself, -Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes to -his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The vessels -escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five years he was -sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla and Russia—keeping -up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, knowledge of people and -things and languages wherever he went. Before he was thirty he had -joined the Danish navy and was appointed to conduct embassies to Spain, -and Russia where his knowledge of foreign languages held good. When -the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian looked for a commander to -explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was the man. - - * * * * * - -Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia -to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the -Northern seas. Some of Munck’s crews must have been impressed men, for -one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on. -Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three -extra men. - -Greenland was sighted in twenty days—a quick run in those times and -evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed -ahead at any cost, for the Hudson’s Bay fur trade captains considered -seven weeks quick time from London to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A -current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck -ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep -the big bergs off and protect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering -all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice -held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were -like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give -hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy -decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man’s arm would form on the -cross-trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts—cracking -when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were -in a drip of thaw. - -What with the slow pace of the ice drift and the heaviness of the ships -from becoming ice-logged, it was the middle of July before they reached -the Straits. Eskimos swarmed down to the islands of Ungava Bay, but -seemed afraid to trade with Munck’s crew. It was on one of the islands -here that the Eskimo two centuries later massacred an entire crew of -Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders, who had been wrecked by the ice jam -and escaped across the floes to the island. It was, perhaps, as well -for Munck that the treacherous natives took themselves off, bounding -over the waves in skin boats, so light they could be carried by one -hand over the ice floes. The collision of the Atlantic tide with the -eastward flowing current of the Straits created such a furious sea -as Munck had never seen. It was no longer safe to keep _The Lamprey_ -lashed to the frigate, for one wave wash caused by an overturning -iceberg lifted the little ship almost on the masts of _The Unicorn_. - -The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift. -A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships -would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with -the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off -the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six -hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and -the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes -last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for -beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool. -It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of -the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the -drive. Sometimes, a breeze and open passage gave them free way from -the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught -them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow -the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night -and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropical, the next -enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the -effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck -anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin’s -Land, one seaman—Andrew Staffreanger—died. Where he was buried, Munck -remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day—it is -interesting to note—those mica mines are being worked in Baffin’s Land. - -One night toward the end of July, ice swept on the ships from both -sides. Suddenly the crew were tumbled from their berths by the dull -rumbling as of an earthquake. The boards of the cabin floors had -sprung. Ice had heaped higher than the yardarms—the ships were like -toys, the sport of grim Northern giants. When the ships were examined, -a gash was found in the keel of _The Lamprey_ from stem to stern as -broad as one’s hand. Barely was this mended when the rudder was smashed -from _The Unicorn_. A great icepan tossed up on end and shivered down -in splinters that crashed over the decks like glass. A moment later -a rolling sea swept the ships, sending the sailors sprawling, while -the scuppers spouted a cataract of waters. Munck felt beaten. Again -he ran to the north shore for shelter. While the sailors rested, the -chaplain held services and made “offerings to God” beseeching His -help. Munck, meanwhile, went ashore and set up the arms of the Danish -King—a superfluous proceeding, as Baffin had already set up the arms of -England here. - -On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing -the most dangerous part of the Straits—the Second Narrows. An east wind -cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck’s ships shot out on the -open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck was six -weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer than one. - - * * * * * - -The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through -the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small -creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing -breakers _The Unicorn_ steered for the haven. A sunken rock protruded -in midcurrent. Munck sheered off, entered, drove upstream and found -himself in a land-locked lagoon such as he could not have discovered -elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its shores. By -chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of Hudson Bay, -called by the Indians, River-of-the-Strangers or Danish River, now -known as Churchill. - -Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for -the deliverance. But the little _Lamprey_ was still out, and the storm -raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, the men -waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to guide _The -Lamprey_ to the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out in a long fine -cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were kept burning -and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as blew the men -off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning of September -9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling billows. The -sailors of _The Unicorn_ ran up their ensign, hurrahed and heaped more -driftwood. By night the little _Lamprey_ came beating over the waves -and shot into the harbor with flying colors. - -The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the -season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the -sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up the harbor -that tore strips in the ship’s hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved -farther up stream to a point since known as Munck’s Cove. - -To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of -Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water’s -edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or -ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing -ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six -hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men -were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the -leaky keels. - -It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his -officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was -closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless—a second -Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony -that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth. - -[Illustration: Churchill Harbor as drawn by Munck, the Dane, from the -Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1897. Note the woods close to the sea -front, long since destroyed; drawn about 1620.] - -Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, -every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. -Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply -paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea -how to protect themselves against it. Later navigators compelled -to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, -tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet -of solid snow. Had Munck’s men used furs instead of happing themselves -up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have -wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces, -but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but -huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and -heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths. - -Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the -phials in the surgeon’s medicine chests went to pieces in nightly -pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst -their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after -night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the -shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice—as if giants had been -gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck’s -adventures may be told in his own words: - -October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At -next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand. - -October 30—Ice everywhere covers the river. There is such a heavy -fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country -without snowshoes. - -November 14—Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the -ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I -should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with a -present of goods for his owner. - -November 27—All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost. - -December 10—The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a -large circle and a cross appeared therein. - -December 12—One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain -unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared go -on shore. - -December 24, 25—Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which they -had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but no one -offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all celebrated -as a Christian’s duty is. We had a sermon, and after the sermon we gave -the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. There was not much -money among the men, but they gave what they had, some white fox skins -for the priest to line his coat. - -January 1, New Year’s Day—Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of pints -of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits. - -January 10—The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A -violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died. - -January 21—Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, who -was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his chest. -He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God would -not help, there was no remedy. - -It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh -vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck’s crew. In accordance with the -spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man’s fault but -to God’s Will. - -January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed five -months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, which was -the last he ever gave on this earth. - -January 25—Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate’s -burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that -the cannon exploded. - -February 5—More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God’s sake to -do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God -did not help there was no hope. - -February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in -health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as -filthy in his habits as an untrained beast. - -February 17—Twenty persons have died. - -February 20—In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the cabin -myself, for my servant is also ill. - -March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a lonely -wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick. - -April 1st—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same grave -as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water and -fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with great -difficulty I can get coffins made. - -April 13—Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the herbs -I could find in the surgeon’s chest, which did us all much good. - -April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the -sermon for Good Friday, which I read. - -May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie -uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them. - -Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in -June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook’s boy dead. In the -steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three -more dead, “for”—records Munck—“nobody had strength to throw them -overboard.” Besides himself, two men only had survived. These had -managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come -back. - -Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese -and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north. -Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes -drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland -region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. -Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched -on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. -Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the hungry wolves, who -gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the -water’s edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not -be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; -the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the -flacker of vulture wings and the lapping—the tireless lapping of the -tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist -brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the -Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. -Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental -and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied—two pints of wine and a -pint of whiskey a day—only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the -thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. -The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums.... - -Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his -last words: - -“As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the -sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will -bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal, -forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my -soul to God....” - -“JENS MUNCK.” - -The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the -deck’s edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore -alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and -labored weakness, they helped him down the ship’s ladder. On land, the -three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept -the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout -within reach. This was the very thing they had needed—green food. From -the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel -grass, they recovered. - -On the 18th of June, they were able to walk out at ebb tide to the -ships on the flats. By the 26th they could take broth made of fish and -fresh partridge. “In the name of Jesus after prayer and supplication -to God, we set to work to rig _The Lamprey_,” records Munck. The dead -were thrown overboard. So were all ballast and cargo. Consequently, -when the tide came in, the sloop was so light it floated free above -the ice-break of rocks and logs constructed the year before. Munck -then had holes drilled in the hull of _The Unicorn_ to sink her till -he could come back for the frigate with an adequate crew. “On the 16th -of July,” writes Munck, just a year from the time they had entered -Hudson Straits, “Sunday in the afternoon, we set sail from there in -the name of God.” Neither a kingdom nor a Northwest Passage had they -found for King Christian of Denmark, but only hardships unspeakable, -the inevitable fate of every pioneer of the New World, as though Nature -would test their mettle before she began rearing a new race of men, -pioneers of a new era in the world’s long history. - -If it had been difficult for crews of sixty-five to navigate the ice -floes, what was it for an emaciated crew of three? Forty miles out -from Churchill, a polar bear strayed across the ice sniffing at _The -Lamprey_ when the ship’s dog sprang over in pursuit with the bold -spirit of the true Great Dane. Just then the ice floe parted from the -sloop, and for two days they could hear the faithful dog howling behind -in dismay. A gale came banging the ship against the ice and smashed the -rudder, but Munck out with his grapnel, fastened _The Lamprey_ to the -ice and drifted with the floe almost as far as the Straits. A month it -took to cross the bay to Digges Island at the west end of the Straits. -For a second time, the brave mariner worked his way through the Straits -by the old trick of throwing out the grapnel and hauling himself along -the floes. This time he was drifting _with_ the ice, not _against_ it, -and the passage was easier. Once out of the Straits, such a gale was -raging “_as would blow a man off his legs_,” records Munck, but the -wind carried him forward. Off Shetland a ship was signaled for help, -but the high seas prevented its approach and the little _Lamprey_ -literally shot into a harbor of Norway, on September 20th. Not a soul -was visible but a peasant, and Munck had to threaten to blow the -fellow’s brains out before he would help to moor the ship. With the -soil of Europe once more firmly under their feet, the poor Danes could -no longer restrain their tears. They fell on their knees thanking God -for the deliverance from “the icebergs and dreadful storms and foaming -seas.” - - * * * * * - -[Illustration: Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian -Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson—photographed from the copy of La -Potherie in Archives, Ottawa, Canada.] - -As Munck did not record the latitude of his wintering harbor—presumably -to keep his ship in hiding till he could go for it—doubt arose about -the port being Churchill. This doubt was increased by an erroneous -account of his voyage published in France, but the identity of Munck’s -Cove with Churchill has been trebly proved. The drawing which Munck -made of the harbor is an exact outline of Churchill. Besides, eighty -years afterward when the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company established their -fort at Churchill, brass cannon were dug from the river flats stamped -with the letter C 4—Christian IV. Strongest confirmation of all were -the Indian legends. The savages called the river, River of Strangers, -because when they came down to the shore in the summer of 1620, they -found clothing and the corpses of a race they had never seen before. -When they beheld the ship at ebb tide, they could hardly believe their -senses, and when they found it full of plunder, their wonder was -unspeakable. But the joy was short-lived. Drying the cargo above their -fires, kegs of gunpowder came in contact with a spark. Plunder and -plunderers and ship were blown to atoms. Henceforth, Churchill became -ill omened as the River-of-the-Strangers. - -The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from -chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck’s father. The -Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage, -there was an unclaimed kingdom for Denmark, and he had planned to come -back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck -went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours -of his death on June 3, 1628. - -Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The -exploration of America was one long-fought battle of three hundred -years in which countless heroes went down to nameless graves in what -appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company, -their scouts, the flanking movement—met defeat, but the main body moved -on to victory. The honor was not the less because their division was -the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His crews -did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and they -perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of a -continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals. -Not the less is the honor theirs. - -By what chances does Destiny or Providence direct the affairs of -nations and men? If Munck had not been called back to the navy and -had succeeded in bringing the colonists as he planned back to Hudson -Bay, Radisson would not have captured that region for the Hudson’s Bay -Company. Though Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay, one -might almost say if Munck had succeeded, as far as the Northwest is -concerned, there would have been no British North America. - - -NOTES ON MUNCK - -Munck’s Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of -Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfortunately before his -authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in -France from mere hearsay, by _La Peyrére_. It is this erroneous -version of Munck’s adventures that appears in various collections of -voyages, such as _Churchill’s_ and _Jeremie’s Relation_ in the _Bernard -Collection_. Of modern authorities on Munck, Vol. II of the _Hakluyt -Society_ for 1897, and the writings of _Mr. Lauridsen_ of _Copenhagen_ -stand first. Data on the topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin’s -Land may be found in the Canadian Government Reports from 1877 down -to 1906. But best of all are the directions of the old sailing masters -employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which are only to be found in -the Archives of Hudson’s Bay House, London. In English reports—though -all English accounts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society’s are limited -to a few paragraphs—his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it -Munck. - - - - -PART II - -1662-1713 - -How the Sea of the North is Discovered Overland by the French Explorers -of the St. Lawrence—Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of the -Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson’s Bay and Leads the -Company a Dance for Fifty Years—He is Followed by the French Raiders -Under d’Iberville. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -1662-1674 - -RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND FOUNDS THE COMPANY -OF GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS - - -For fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, -lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast peninsular -territory—crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, -cataracts, upland tarns—Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen -European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked, -impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence, -in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what -is now known as the Great Northwest—Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, -Alberta, Mackenzie River and British Columbia—in area, a second Russia; -but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. Fox -and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane; -and the record of their sufferings has been compared to the Book of -Lamentations; but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret -of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable -treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory -bordering its coasts. - -A new era was now to open on the bay—an era of wildwood runners -tracking the snow-padded silences; of dare-devil gamesters of the -wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid and -ambuscade and massacre on the bay; of two great powers—first France and -England, then the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company and the Nor’Westers—locked -in death-grapple during a century for the prize of dominion over the -immense unknown territory inland from the bay. Hudson and Jens Munck, -Vikings of the sea, were to be succeeded by those intrepid knights of -the wilderness, Radisson the pathfinder, and d’Iberville, the wildwood -rover. The third era on Hudson Bay comes down to our own day. It marks -the transition from savagery with semi-barbaric splendor, with all -its virtues of outdoor life and dashing bravery, and all its vices of -unbridled freedom in a no-man’s land with law of neither God nor man—to -modern commerce; the transition from the Eskimo’s kyack and voyageur’s -canoe over trackless waters to latter-day Atlantic liners plowing -furrows over the main to the marts of commerce, and this period, too, -is best typified in two commanding figures that stand out colossally -from other actors on the bay—Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist, -and Lord Strathcona, whose activities only began at an age when other -men have either made or marred their careers. For three hundred years, -the history of Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name -stands is really the history of these four men—Radisson, d’Iberville, -Selkirk and Strathcona. - - * * * * * - -While Hudson Bay lay in its winter sleep, the world had gone on. The -fur traders of New France had pushed westward from the St. Lawrence to -the Great Lakes and Mississippi. In fact, France was making a bold bid -for the possession of all America except New Spain, and if her kings -had paid more attention to her colonies and less to the fripperies of -the fool-men and fool-women in her courts, the French flag might be -waving over the most of America to-day. In New England, things had also -gone apace. New York had gone over from Dutch to English rule, and the -commissioners of His Majesty, King Charles II, were just returning -from revising the affairs of the American plantations consequent upon -the change from Cromwell’s Commonwealth to the Stuart’s Restoration. -In England, at Oxford, was Charles himself, fled from the plague -of London. Majesty was very jaded. Success had lost its relish and -pleasure had begun to pall from too much surfeit. It was a welcome -spur to the monarch’s idle languor when word came posthaste that the -royal commissioner, Sir George Carterett, had just arrived from America -accompanied by two famous Frenchmen with a most astonishing story. - -They had set sail from America on August 1, 1665, Carterett bearing -a full report of conditions in the American plantations. When off -Spain, their boat had been sighted, pursued, captured and boarded -by a Dutch privateer—_The Caper_. For two hours, hull to hull, rail -to rail, hand to hand, they had fought, the men behind the guns at -the portholes of one ship looking into the smoke-grimed faces of the -men behind the guns on the other ship till a roaring broadside from -_The Caper_ tore the entrails out of Carterett’s ship. Carterett just -had time to fling his secret dispatches overboard when a bayonet was -leveled at his breast and he surrendered his sword a captive. Likewise -did two French companions. Taken on board _The Caper_, all three were -severely questioned—especially the Frenchmen. Why were they with -Carterett? Where were they going? Where had they come from? Could they -not be persuaded to go to Holland with their extraordinary story. -One—Medard Chouart de Groseillers—was a middle-aged man, heavily -bearded, swarthy, weather-worn from a life in the wilderness. The -other—his brother-in-law—Pierre Esprit Radisson, was not yet thirty -years of age. He was clean-shaved, thin, lithe, nervous with the -restlessness of bottled-up energies, with a dash in his manners that -was a cut between the courtier and the wilderness runner. These were -the two men of whom such famous stories had been told these ten years -back—the most renowned and far traveled wood-runners that New France -had yet produced. It was they, who had brought 600,000 beaver skins to -Quebec on a single trip from the North. How they had been robbed by the -governor of New France and driven from Quebec to Cape Breton, where, -out of jealousy, they were set upon and mobbed, escaping only with the -clothes on their backs to Port Royal, Nova Scotia—was known to all men. -In vain, they had appealed to France for justice. The robber governor -was all powerful at the French court and the two explorers—penniless -nobodies pitting their power against the influence of wealth and -nobility—were dismissed from the court as a joke. They had been -promised a vessel to make farther explorations in the North, but when -they came to Isle Percé, south of Anticosti, to await the vessel, a -Jesuit was sent to them with word that the promise had been a put-off -to rid the court of troublesome suitors—in a word, a perfidious joke. -There had followed the flight to Cape Breton, the setting to work -of secret influence against them, the mob, the attempted murder, -the flight to Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Port Royal was at this time -under English rule, and an English captain, Zachariah Gillam, offered -his ship for their trip North, but when up opposite Hudson Straits, -the captain had been terrified by the ice and lost heart. He turned -back. The season was wasted. The two Frenchmen had then clubbed their -dwindling fortunes together and had engaged two vessels on their own -account, but fishing to lay up supplies at Sable Island, one of the -vessels had been wrecked. For four years they had been hounded by a -persistent ill-luck: First, when robbed by the French governor on -pretense of a fine for going to the North without his permission; -second, when befooled by the false promises of the French court; third, -when Captain Gillam refused to proceed farther amid the Northern ice; -and now, when the wreck of the vessel involved them in a lawsuit. -In Boston, they had won their lawsuit, but the ill-luck left them -destitute. Carterett, the Royal Commissioner, had met them in Boston -and had persuaded them to come to England with him. - -The commander of the Dutch ship listened to their story and took down -a report of it in writing. Could they not be persuaded to come on -with him to Holland? The two Frenchmen refused to leave Carterett. -Groseillers, Radisson and Carterett were then landed in Spain. From -Spain, they begged and borrowed and pawned their way to France, and -from France got passage to Dover. Here, then, they had come to the king -at Oxford with their amazing story. - -The stirring adventures of these two explorers, I have told in -another volume, and an exact transcript of their journals I am giving -elsewhere, but their story was one to make King Charles marvel. How -Radisson as a boy had been captured by the Mohawks and escaped through -the Dutch settlement of New York; how, as a youth, he had helped the -Jesuits to flee from a beleaguered fort at Onondaga; how before he was -twenty-five years old, he had gone overland to the Mississippi where -he heard from Cree and Sioux of the Sea of the North; and how before -he was thirty, he had found that sea where Hudson had perished—all -those adventures King Charles heard. The King listened and pondered, -and pondered and listened, and especially did he listen to that story -of the Sea of the North, which Henry Hudson had found in 1610 and from -which Radisson sixty years later had brought 600,000 beaver. Beaver at -that time was worth much more than it is to-day. That cargo of beaver, -which Radisson had brought down from Hudson Bay to Quebec would be -worth more than a million dollars in modern money. - -“We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs,” -related Radisson, telling how they had passed up the Ottawa to Lake -Superior and from Lake Superior by canoe seven hundred miles north to -Hudson Bay. “We had thwarted (portaged) a place forty-five miles. We -came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we -knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came -full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats -rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees. They suffer us -not to tread the ground but carry us like cocks in a basket to their -tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river -and came to the seaside, where we found an old house all demolished -and battered with bullets. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the -Europeans, whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all -summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the -summer. This river comes from the lake that empties in the Saguenay -at Tadoussac, a hundred leagues from where we were in the Bay of -the North. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed -the summer coasting the sea. This is a vast country. The people are -friendly to the Sioux and the Cree. We followed another river back to -the Upper Lake (Lake Superior) and it was midwinter before we joined -the company at our fort” (north of Lake Superior). - -When King Charles moved from Oxford to Windsor, Radisson and -Groseillers were ordered to accompany him, and when the monarch -returned to London, the two Frenchmen were commanded to take chambers -in town within reach of the court, and what was more to the point, the -King assigned them £2 a week maintenance, for they were both destitute, -as penniless soldiers of fortune as ever graced the throne room of a -Stuart. At Oxford, too, they had met Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert -espoused their cause with the enthusiasm of an adventurer, whose -fortunes needed mending. The plague, the great fire in London, and -the Dutch war—all prevented King Charles according the adventurers -immediate help, but within a year from their landing, he writes to -James, Duke of York, as chief of the navy, ordering the Admiralty -department to loan the two Frenchmen the ship _Eaglet_ of the South -Sea fleet for a voyage to Hudson Bay, for the purpose of prosecuting -trade and extending their explorations toward the South Sea. I have -his letter issuing the instructions, and it is interesting as proving -that the initiative came from King Charles, as Prince Rupert has -hitherto received all the credit for organizing the Adventurers of -England trading to Hudson Bay. Prince Rupert and half a dozen friends -were to bear the expense of wages to the seamen and victualling the -ships. During the long period of waiting, Charles presented Radisson -with a gold medal and chain. To Groseillers—if French tradition is to -be accepted—he gave some slight title of nobility. During this time, -too, Radisson and Groseillers heard from the captain of the Dutch ship, -who had questioned them. There came a spy from Amsterdam—Eli Godefroy -Touret, who first tried to bribe the Frenchmen to come to Holland, -and failing that, openly accused them of counterfeiting money. The -accusation could not be proved, and the spy was imprisoned. - -[Illustration: Bienville, founder of Louisiana, who took part with his -brother Le Moyne d’Iberville, in the famous naval battle for possession -of Hudson Bay.] - -The year 1667-8 was spent in preparations for the voyage. In addition -to _The Eaglet_ under Captain Stannard, the ship _Nonsuch_ under -Captain Gillam, who had failed to reach the bay from Nova Scotia—was -chartered. As far as I could gather from the old documents in Hudson’s -Bay House, London, the ships were supplied with provisions and goods -for trade by leading merchants, who were given a share in the -venture. The cash required was for the seamen’s wages, running from -£20 to £30 a year, and for the officer’s pay, £3 a month to the -surgeons, £50 a trip to the captains, with a bounty if the venture -succeeded. With the bounty, Gillam received £160 for this trip, -Stannard, £280. Thomas Gorst, who went as accountant, and Mr. Sheppard -as chief mate, were to assume command if anything happened to Radisson -and Groseillers. All, who advanced either cash, or goods, or credit -for goods, were entered in a stock book as Adventurers for so many -pounds. There was as yet no company organized. It was a pure gamble—a -speculation based on the word of two penniless French adventurers, and -in the spirit of the true gambler, gay were the doings. Captain Gillam -facetiously presents the Adventurers with a bill for five shilling -for a rat catcher. The gentlemen honor the bill with a smile, order a -pipe of canary, three tuns of wine, “a dinner with pullets,” dinners, -indeed, galore, at the Three Tunns and the Exchange Tavern and the Sun, -at which Prince Rupert and Albermarle and perhaps the King, himself, -“make merry like right worthy gentlemen.” Everybody is in rare, good -humor, for you must remember Mr. Radisson brought back 600,000 beaver -from that Sea of the North, and the value of 600,000 beaver divided -among less than a dozen Adventurers would mean a tidy $100,000 of -modern money to each man. Then, the gentlemen go down to Gravesend -Docks to see the ships off. Each seaman shakes hands heartily with his -patron. Then the written commission is delivered to the captains: - -“You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company -with each other to your place of rendezvous (the old mark set up by -Radisson when he went overland to the bay.) You are to saile to such -place as Mr. Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson shall direct to -trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small -parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each shipp, -the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out -any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr. Gooseberry -(Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson.” - -Then follows a cryptogramatic order, which would have done credit to -the mysterious cipher of pirates on the high seas. - -“You are to take notice that the _Nampumpeage_ which you carry with you -is part of our joynt cargoes wee having bought it for money for Mr. -Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson to be delivered by small quantities with -like caution as the other goods.” - -No more drinking of high wines, my gentlemen! Strict business now, -for it need scarcely be explained the mysterious _Nampumpeage_ was a -euphemism for liquor. Fortifications are to be built, minerals sought, -the cargo is to be brought home by Groseillers, while Radisson remains -to conduct trade, and - -“You are to have in your thought the discovery of the passage into -the South Sea and to attempt it with the advice and direction of Mr. -Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson, they having told us that it is only seven -daies paddling or sailing from the River where they intend to trade -unto the Stinking Lake (the Great Lakes) and not above seven daies more -to the straight wch. leads into that Sea they call the South Sea, and -from thence but forty or fifty leagues to the Sea itselfe.” - -Exact journals and maps are to be kept. In case the goods cannot be -traded, the ships are to carry their cargoes to Newfoundland and the -New England plantations, where Mr. Philip Carterett, who is governor of -New Jersey, will assist in disposing of the goods. - -“Lastly we advise and require you to use the said Mr. Gooseberry and -Mr. Radisson with all manner of civility and courtesy and to take care -that all your company doe bear a particular respect unto them, they -being the persons upon whose credit wee have undertaken this expedition, - -Which we beseech Almighty God to prosper.” - -RUPERT ALBERMARLE (signed) CRAVEN G. CARTERETT J. HAYES P. COLLETON. - -A last shout, the tramp of sailors running round the capstans, and the -ships of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England trading to Hudson’s Bay -are off; off to find and found a bigger empire for England than Russia -and Germany, and France, and Spain, and Austria combined. - -_Notes on Chapter VI._—Full details of Radisson’s life prior to his -coming to England, when he was an active explorer of New France, are -to be found in the previous volume, _Pathfinders of the West_. The -data for that volume came almost exclusively from the Marine Archives -of Paris. The facts of this chapter are drawn from the Archives of -Hudson’s Bay House, London, England, which I personally searched with -the result of almost three hundred foolscap folio pages of matter -pertaining to Radisson, and from the Public Records Office of London, -which I had searched, by a competent person, on the Stuart Period. -It is extraordinary how the Archives of France and the Archives of -England dove-tail and corroborate each other in every detail regarding -Radisson. King Charles’ letter in his favor is to be found in the -Public Records Office, State Papers, Domestic Series, Entry Book 26. -The Admiralty Board Books, No. 15, contain the correspondence regarding -the voyage. The instructions to the captains—five foolscap pages—are in -the S. P. Dom. Carl. II. No. 180. The exact data regarding Radisson’s -movements, given in this chapter, are from his Manuscript Journal in -the Bodleian and from the two petitions which he filed, one to the -Company, one to Parliament, copies of which are in Hudson’s Bay House, -London. It is necessary to give the authorities somewhat explicitly -because in the case of _Pathfinders of the West_, the _New York Evening -Post_ begged readers to consult original sources regarding Radisson. As -original sources are not open to the public, the advice was worth just -exactly the spirit that animated it. However, transcripts of all data -bearing on Radisson will be given to the public with his journals, in -the near future. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -1668-1674 - -THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST VOYAGE—RADISSON DRIVEN BACK ORGANIZES -THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AND WRITES HIS JOURNALS OF FOUR VOYAGES—THE -CHARTER AND THE FIRST SHAREHOLDERS—ADVENTURES OF RADISSON ON THE -BAY—THE COMING OF THE FRENCH AND THE QUARREL - - -At last, then, five years from the time they had discovered the Sea of -the North, after baffling disappointments, fruitless efforts and the -despair known only to those who have stood face to face with the Grim -Specter, Ruin, Radisson and Groseillers set sail for Hudson Bay from -Gravesend on June 3, 1668. Radisson was on the big ship _Eaglet_ with -Captain Stannard, Groseillers on _The Nonsuch_ of Boston, with Captain -Gillam. - -Countless hopes and fears must have animated the breasts of the -Frenchmen. It is so with every venture that is based on the unknown. -The very fact that possibilities _are_ unknown gives scope to unbridled -fancy and the wildest hopes; gives scope, too, when the pendulum -swings the other way, to deepest distrust. The country boy trudging -along the road with a carpetbag to seek his fortunes in the city, -dreams of the day when he may be a millionaire. By nightfall, he longs -for the monotonous drudgery and homely content and quiet poverty of the -plow. - -So with Radisson and Groseillers. They had brought back 600,000 beaver -pelts overland from Hudson Bay five years before. If they could repeat -the feat, it meant bigger booty than Drake had raided from the Spanish -of the South Seas, for the price of beaver at that time fluctuated -wildly from eight shillings to thirty-five. And who could tell that -they might not find a passage to the South Seas from Hudson Bay? That -old legend of a tide like the ocean on Lake Winnipeg, Radisson had -heard from the Indians, as every explorer was to hear it for a hundred -years. The explanation is very simple to anyone who has sailed on Lake -Winnipeg. The lake is so shallow that an inshore wind lashes the waters -up like a tide. Then sudden calm, or an outshore breeze, leaves the -muddy flats almost bare. I remember being stranded on that lake by such -a shift of wind for twenty-four hours. To the Indians who had never -seen the ocean, the phenomenon seemed like the tide of which the white -man told, so Radisson had reported to the Adventurers that the Indians -said the South Sea was only a few weeks’ journey from Hudson Bay. - -Radisson, whose highest hope from boyhood was to be a great explorer, -must have dreamed his dreams as the ships slid along the glassy waters -of the Atlantic westward. Six weeks, ordinarily, it took sailing -vessels to go from the Thames to the mouth of Hudson Straits, but -furious storms—as if the very elements themselves were bent on the -defeat of these two indomitable men—drove their ships apart half way -across the Atlantic. As is often the case, the little ship—Gillam’s -_Nonsuch_—weathered the hurricane. Now buried under billows -mountain-high, with the yardarms drenched by each wash of the pounding -breakers, now plowing through the cataract of waters, the little -_Nonsuch_ kept her head to the wind, and if a sea swept from stem to -stern, battened hatches and masts naked of sails took no harm. The -staunch craft kept on her sea feet, and was not knocked keel up. - -But _The Eaglet_, with Radisson, was in bad way. Larger and ponderous -in motion, she could not shift quick to the raging gale. Blast after -blast caught her broadsides. The masts snapped off like saplings -uprooted by storm. A tornado of waters threw the ship on her side -“_till we had like to have swamped_”—relate the old Company -records—and when the storm cleared and the ship righted, behold, of -_The Eaglet_ there is left only the bare hull, with deck boards and -cabin floors sprung in a dozen places. The other ship was out of sight. -Carpenters were set at work to rig the lame vessel up. It was almost -October before the battered hull came crawling limply to her dock on -the Thames. There, Sir James Hayes, Rupert’s secretary, turned her over -to the Admiralty. - -[Illustration: Photograph of the copy of Radisson’s Voyages, end of -the third trip on which he discovered Mississippi River, beginning -of the fourth trip on which he discovered the overland route to the -Sea of the North, or Hudson’s Bay. The original of Radisson’s first -four voyages is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, part of the famous -Pepys Collection. The question has been raised is this Radisson’s -handwriting, or that of a copyist, like Rodd and others who did -professional work for Shaftesbury and others of Radisson’s associates? -Specialists on the handwriting and idioms of the period say this is -undoubtedly the work of a foreigner not familiar with the idioms of the -English.] - -Adversity is a great tester of a man’s mettle. When some men fall -they tumble _down_ stairs. Other men, when they fall, make a point of -falling _up_ stairs. Radisson was of the latter class. His activity -redoubled. The design in the first place had been for one of the two -ships to winter on the bay; the other ship to come back to England in -order to return to the bay with more provisions. Radisson urged his -associates not to leave _The Nonsuch_ in the lurch. Application was -made to the Admiralty for another ship. _The Wavero_ of the West Indies -was granted. Radisson spent the winter of 1668-69 fitting up this ship -and writing the account of his first four voyages through the wilds of -America, “_and I hope_”—he concludes the fourth voyage—“_to embarke -myselfe by ye helpe of God this fourth year_” of coming to England. -But _The Wavero_ on which Radisson sailed in March, 1669, proved -unseaworthy. She had to turn back. What was Radisson’s delight to -find anchored in the Thames, _The Nonsuch_, with his brother-in-law, -Groseillers. - -After parting from the disabled _Eaglet_, _The Nonsuch_ had driven -ahead for Hudson Straits, which she missed by going too far north to -Baffin’s Land, but came to the entrance on the 4th of August. Owing -to the lateness of the season, the straits were free of ice and _The -Nonsuch_ made a quick passage for those days, reaching Digges’ Island, -at the west end of the straits on the 19th of August. Groseillers and -Gillam then headed south for that rendezvous at the lower end of the -bay, where the two Frenchmen had found “a house all battered with -bullets,” five years before, and had set up their own marks. Slow and -careful search of the east coast must have been made, for _The Nonsuch_ -was seven weeks cruising the seven hundred miles from Digges’ Island -to that River Nemisco, which had seemed to flow from the country of -the St. Lawrence or New France. Here they cast anchor on September 25, -naming the river Rupert in honor of their patron. Beaching the ship on -the sand-bars at high tide, the crew threw logs about her to fend off -ice jams and erected slab palisades round two or three log huts for the -winter—a fort named after King Charles. - -Weather favored _The Nonsuch’s_ crew. The south end of Hudson Bay often -has snow in October, and nearly always ice is formed by November. -This year, the harbor did not freeze till the 9th of December, but -when the frost did come it was a thing to paralyze these Englishmen -used to a climate where a pocketful of coal heats a house. The -silent pine forests, snow-padded and snow-wreathed; the snow-cones -and snow-mushrooms and snow-plumes bending the great branches with -weight of snow like feathers; the icy particles that floated in the -air; ice fog, diamond-sharp in sunshine and starlight but ethereal -as mist, morning and evening; the whooping and romping and stamping -and cannon-shot reports of the frost at night when the biggest trees -snapped brittle and the earth seemed to groan with pain; the mystic -mock-suns that shone in the heavens foreboding storm, and the hoot -and shout and rush of the storm itself through the forests like the -Indians’ Thunder Bird on the wings of the wind; the silences, the -awful silences, that seemed to engulf human presence as the frost-fog -closed mistily through the aisled forests—all these things were new and -wondrous to the English crew. It was—as Gillam’s journal records—as -if all life “had been frozen to death.” And then the marvel of the -frost world, frost that fringed your eyelashes and hair with breath -as you spoke, and drew ferns on the glazed parchment of the port -windows, and created two inches of snow on the walls inside the ship! -Snow fell—fell—fell, day after day, week after week, muffling, dreamy, -hypnotic as the frost sleep. - -But these things were no new marvels to Groseillers. The busy Frenchman -was off to the woods on snowshoes in search of the Indians—a search -in which a twig snapped off short, old tepee poles standing bare, a -bit of moose skin blowing from a branch, deadfall traps, rabbit snares -of willow twigs—were his sole guides. True wood-loper, he found the -Ojibways’ camps and they brought down their furs to trade with him in -spring. I don’t know what ground there is for it, but Groseillers had -the reputation for being a very hard trader. Perhaps it was that the -cargo of 600,000 pelts had been brought back when he had gone North -with only two canoe loads of goods. As far as I could ascertain from -the old records, the scale of trade at the time was half a pound of -beads, one beaver; one kettle, one beaver; one pound shot, one beaver; -five pounds sugar, one beaver; one pound tobacco, one beaver; one -gallon brandy (diluted?), four beaver; one blanket, six beaver; two -awls, one beaver; twelve buttons, one beaver; twenty fishhooks, one -beaver; twenty flints, one beaver; one gun, twelve beaver; one pistol, -four beaver; eight bells, one beaver. At this stage, trade as barter -was not known. The white man dressed in gold lace and red velvets -pompously presented his goods to the Indian. The Indian had previously, -with great palaver, presented his furs to the trader. Any little -difference of opinion as to values might be settled later by a present -from the trader of drugged liquor to put the malcontent to sleep, or a -scalping raid on the part of the Indian. - -As spring came, life awakened on the bay. Wild geese darkened the -sky, the shrill honk, honk, calling the sailors’ notice to the long -curved lines marshaled like armies with leaders and scouts, circling, -maneuvering, filing north. Whiskey jays became noisier and bolder than -in winter. Red bills alighted in flocks at the crew’s camp fires, and -a constant drumming told of partridge hiding in underbrush the color -of his own plumage. There was no lack of sport to Gillam’s crew. -The ice went out with the rush of a cataract in May, and by June it -was blistering hot, with the canaries and warblers and blue jays of -Southern climes nesting in the forests of this far Northern bay. -By June, _The Nonsuch_ was ship-shape for homeward voyage, and the -adventurers sailed for England, coming into the Thames about the time -Radisson was driven back on _The Wavero_. - -There is no record of what furs Groseillers and Gillam brought back, -doubtless for the reason that the proceeds of their sale had to satisfy -those creditors, who had outfitted the ships and to purchase new ships -for future voyages. But the next move was significant. With great -secrecy, application was made to King Charles II for a royal charter -granting “the Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson’s Bay” monopoly -of trade and profits for all time to come. - -In itself, the charter is the purest piece of feudalism ever -perpetrated on America, a thing so alien to the thought of modern -democracy and withal destined to play such a necessary part in the -development of northern empire that it is worth examining. In the first -place, though it was practically deeding away half America—namely all -of modern Canada except New France, and the most of the Western States -beyond the Mississippi—practically, I say, in its workings; the charter -was purely a royal favor, depending on that idea of the Stuarts that -the earth was not the Lord’s, but the Stuarts, to be disposed of as -they wished. - -The applicants for the charter were Prince Rupert, the Duke of -Albermarle, the Earl of Craven, Lord Arlington, Lord Ashley, Sir -John Robinson, Sir Robert Viner, Sir Peter Colleton, Sir Edward -Hungerford, Sir Paul Neele, Sir John Griffith, Sir Philip Carterett, -Sir James Hayes, John Kirke, Frances Millington, William Prettyman, -John Fenn and John Portman. “Whereas,” runs the charter, “these have -at their own great cost and charges undertaken an expedition for -Hudson’s Bay for the discovery of a new passage to the South Sea and -for trade, and have humbly besought us to incorporate them and grant -unto them and their successors the whole trade and commerce of all -those seas, straits, bays, rivers, creeks and sounds in whatsoever -latitude that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson’s -Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon -the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers, -creeks and sounds not now actually possessed by the subjects of any -other Christian State, know ye that we have given, granted, ratified -and confirmed” the said grant. There follow the official name of the -company, “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading -with Hudson’s Bay,” directions for the appointment of a governor and a -governing committee—Prince Rupert to be the first governor—Robinson, -Viner, Colleton, Hayes, Kirke, Millington and Portman to be the first -committee, to which elections are to be made each November. Their -territory is to be known as Rupert’s Land. Of this territory, they are -to be “true and absolute lords” paying as token of allegiance to the -King when he shall happen to enter these dominions “two elks and two -black beaver.” - -Permission is given to build forts, employ mariners, use firearms, pass -laws and impose punishments. Balboa has been laughed at ever since he -crossed Panama to the Pacific for claiming Heaven and earth, air and -water, “from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic” for Spain; but what -shall we say of a charter that goes on royally to add, “and furthermore -of our own ample and abundant grace we have granted not only the whole, -entire and only liberty of trade to and from the territories aforesaid; -but also the whole and entire trade to and from all Havens, Bays, -Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas unto which they shall find entrance -by water or land out of the territories aforesaid ... and to, and -with, all other nations adjacent to the said territories, which is not -granted to any other of our subjects?” - -In other words, if trade should lead these Adventurers far afield from -Hudson Bay where no other discoverers had been—the territory was to be -theirs. For years, it was contended that the charter covered only the -streams tributary to Hudson Bay, that is to the headwaters of Churchill -and Saskatchewan and Moose and Rupert Rivers, but if the charter was -to be valid at all, it was to be valid in all its provision and the -company might extend its possessions indefinitely. And that is what -it did—from Hudson Bay to Alaska, and from Alaska to California. The -debonair King had presented his friends with three-quarters of America. - -All other traders are forbidden by the charter to frequent the -territory on pain of forfeiture of goods and ships. All other persons -are forbidden to inhabit the territory without the consent of the -Company. Adventurers at the General Court in November for elections -are to have votes according to their stock, for every hundred pounds -one vote. The Company is to appoint local governors for the territory -with all the despotic power of little kings. In case of misdemeanors, -law-breakers may be brought before this local governor or home to -England for trial, sentence, and punishment. The Shah of Persia had -not more despotic power in his lands than these local governors. Most -amazing of all, the Company is to have power to make war against other -“Prince or People whatsoever that are not Christians,” “for the benefit -of the said company and their trade.” Should other English intrude on -the territory, the Company is explicitly granted the right to seize and -expel them and impose such punishment as the offense may warrant. If -delinquents appeal against such sentence, the Company may send them -home to England for trial. Admirals, judges, sheriffs, all officers of -the law in England are charged by the charter to “aid, favor, help and -assist” the Company by “land and sea....” signed at Westminster, May 2, -1670. - -We of to-day may well smile at such a charter; but we must remember -that the stones which lie buried in the clay below the wall are just -as essential to the superstructure as the visible foundation. Let us -grant that the charter was an absurd fiat creating a tyranny. It was an -essential first step on the trail that was to blaze a way through the -wilderness to democracy. - -In the charter lay the secret of all the petty pomp—little kings in -tinsel—with which the Company’s underling officers ruled their domain -for two hundred years. In the charter lay the secret of all the -Company’s success and all its failure; of its almost paternal care of -the Indians and of its outrageous, unblushing, banditti warfare against -rivals; of its one-sidedness in driving a bargain—the true caste idea -that the many are created for exploitation by the few—of its almost -royal generosity when a dependent fell by the way—the old monarchical -idea that a king is responsible for the well-being of his subjects, -when other great commercial monopolists cast their useless dependents -off like old clothes, or let them rot in poverty. Given all the facts -of the case, any man can play the prophet. With such a charter, -believing in its validity as they did in their own existence, it is not -surprising the Adventurers of Hudson Bay ran the magnificent career the -Company has had, and finally—ran their privileges aground. - - * * * * * - -Thus, then, was the Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated. Its first stock -book of 1667 before incorporation, shows the Duke of York to have £300 -of stock; Prince Rupert, £470; Carterett, £770 in all; Albermarle, -£500; Craven, £300; Arlington, £200; Shaftsbury, £600; Viner, £300; -Colleton, £300; Hungerford, £300; Sir James Hayes, £1800; Sir John -Kirke, £300; Lady Margaret Drax, £300—with others, in all a capital -of £10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It -may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett -and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships -from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little -actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were -impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after -the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on -credit by those merchants who are credited with shares. At least, -the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years, -gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young, -or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who advance money to Radisson -and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these -shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and -Stannard, the captains, are credited with £160 and £280 in the venture, -as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock. - - * * * * * - -The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off -for the bay with three ships, _The Wavero_ under Captain Newland, _The -Shaftsbury_ under Captain Shepperd, _The Prince Rupert_ under Gillam, -in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the Admiralty. -Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary; Peter -Romulus, the French apothecary, as surgeon at £20 a year. While -the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took -the small boat _Wavero_ along the south shore westward, apparently -seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose, -and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named -after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson, -where Radisson himself erected the English King’s Arms. Only a boat -of shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy -flats and bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous -drive of ice stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by -Radisson to have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose -was Albany River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the -building of a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from -Moose, marked where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson -Bay. All this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could -be explored only by anchoring _The Wavero_ off shore and approaching -the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was -an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs -from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present. -Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to -hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and -seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit -to the Company. North of Henrietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground. -Button and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its -two magnificent harbors—Nelson and Hayes River—taking its name from -Button’s seaman, Nelson, who was buried here. Groseillers wintered on -the bay but Radisson came home to England on _The Prince Rupert_ with -Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. This -year, the Company held its meetings at Prince Rupert’s lodgings in -Whitehall. - -In the summer of 71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before, -to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred -muskets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade. -Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 1771-72 on -the bay, there was no mistaking the fact—not so many Indians were -bringing furs to Rupert River for trade. Radisson reported conditions -when he returned to London in the fall of ’72, and he linked himself -more closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the -daughter of Sir John Kirke. - -“It is ordered,” read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, “that -_The Prince Rupert_ arriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not stire -from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to London with the report.” -The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from Canada -were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The Company -decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddell, for the west -coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in ’74, a council was -held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the ships -were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor Bayly -to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful of divided -authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length consented to -leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. When he came -back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by an emissary -from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a passport -from Frontenac recommending him to the English Governor, and with -personal letters for the two Frenchmen. - -Bayly’s rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports -from a friendly nation compelled him to do, but he flared out in open -accusations against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion -with rivals to the Company’s trade. A thousand fictions cling round -this part of Radisson’s career. It is said that the two Frenchmen -knocked down and were knocked down by the English Governor, that spies -were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that -Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped -through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the -Jesuit. - -All these are childish fictions directly contradicted by the facts of -the case as stated in the official minutes of the Company. No doubt -the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed, -but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September -17, of William Lyddell on _The Prince Rupert_, governor-elect for the -west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole -case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was -desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had -found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best -years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited -him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted -proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but -financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a -partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed £100 a -year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter -of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were -the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct -from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment -of all debts and a gratuity of some £400 to begin life anew if he would -go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson -quit the Company’s services in disgust. It was the old story of the -injustice he had suffered in Quebec—he, the creator of the wealth, was -to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce -his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of -October in 1674. - -As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an -international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from -the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on -the scope and influence and power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the -history of America. - -_Notes on Chapter VII._—For authorities on this chapter see Chapters -VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter will -clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson in -_Pathfinders of the West_, it was necessary to state frankly that his -movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to -locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the -official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals of -Hudson’s Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be found -after Chapter VIII and IX. One point in _Pathfinders of the West_, -all authorities differ as to the time when Radisson left the company, -Albanel’s Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, Gorst’s record -of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the date as late as -1676. My examinations of the Hudson’s Bay records show that the rupture -occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is Albanel’s Relation -1672? The passport from Frontenac, which Albanel delivered to Bayly—now -on record in Hudson’s Bay Company papers—is dated, Quebec, Oct. 7, -1673. If the passport only left Quebec in October, 1673, and Albanel -reached the bay in August, 1674—there is only one conclusion: the date -of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two years. One can easily understand -how this would occur in a journal made up of scraps of writing jotted -down in canoes, in tepees, everywhere and anywhere, and then passed by -couriers from hand to hand till it reached the Cramoisy printers of -Paris. - -[Illustration: Rupert House, Rupert River, James Bay, as it is To-day.] - -A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, relates: -“This day came _The Shaftsbury Pink_ ffrom Hudson Baye. Capt. -Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did -endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye -English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them.... Capt. -Gillam we expect to-morrow.” - -Later: “This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and -he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their -Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the -place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -1670-1870 - -“GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND”—LORDS OF THE OUTER MARCHES—TWO -CENTURIES OF COMPANY RULE—SECRET OATHS—THE USE OF WHISKEY—THE -MATRIMONIAL OFFICES—THE PART THE COMPANY PLAYED IN THE GAME OF -INTERNATIONAL JUGGLING—HOW TRADE AND VOYAGES WERE CONDUCTED - - -Just where the world’s traffic converges to that roaring maelstrom in -front of the Royal Exchange, London—on Lime Street, off Leadenhall -Street—stands an unpretentious gray stone building, the home of a -power that has held unbroken sway over the wilds of America for -two-and-a-half centuries. It is the last of those old companies granted -to royal favorites of European courts for the partitioning of America. - -To be sure, when Charles II signed away sole rights of trade and -possession to all countries bordering on the passage supposed to lead -from the Atlantic to the South Sea, he had not the faintest notion -that he was giving to “_the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading -on Hudson’s Bay_,” three-quarters of a new continent. Prince Rupert, -Albermarle, Shaftsbury, the Carteretts and half a dozen others had -helped him back to his throne, and with a Stuart’s good-natured belief -that the world was made for the king’s pleasure, he promptly proceeded -to carve up his possessions for his friends. Only one limitation was -specified in the charter of 1670—the lands must be those _not_ already -claimed by any Christian power. - -But Adventurers on booty bound would sail over the edge of the earth -if it were flat, and when the Hudson’s Bay Company found, instead of -a passage to the fabulous South Sea, a continental watershed whence -mighty rivers rolled north, east, south, over vaster lands than those -island Adventurers had ever dreamed—was it to turn back because these -countries didn’t precisely border on Hudson’s Bay? The Company had been -chartered as Lords of the Outer Marches, and what were Outer Marches -for, but to march forward? For a hundred years, the world heard very -little of these wilderness Adventurers except that they were fighting -for dear life against the French raiders, but when Canada passed to the -English, Hudson’s Bay canoes were threading the labyrinthine waterways -of lake and swamp and river up the Saskatchewan, down the Athabasca, -over the mountain passes to the Columbia. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades -were sweeping up the Ottawa to Abbittibbi, to the Assiniboine, to -MacKenzie River, to the Arctic Circle. Hudson’s Bay buffalo runners -hunted the plains from the Red River to the Missouri. Hudson’s Bay -Rocky Mountain brigades—one, two, three hundred horsemen, followed by a -ragged rabble of Indian retainers—yearly scoured every valley between -Alaska and Mexico in regular platoons, so much territory assigned to -each leader—Oregon to McLoughlin, the Snake Country to Ogden, the -Umpqua to Black or McLeod, the Buffalo Country to Ross or some other, -with instructions not to leave a beaver alive on the trail wherever -there were rival American traders. Hudson’s Bay vessels coasted from -the Columbia to Alaska. The Adventurers could not dislodge Baranoff -from Sitka, but they explored the Yukon and the Pelly, and the official -books show record of a farm where San Francisco now stands. Beginning -with a score of men, the Company to-day numbers as many servants as the -volunteer army of Canada. Railroads to Eastern ports now do the work of -the four or five armed frigates that used yearly to come for the furs, -but two company ships still carry provisions through the ice floes of -Hudson’s Bay, and on every navigable river of the inland North, floats -the flag of the Company’s steamers. The brigades of fur canoes can -yet be seen at remote posts like Abbittibbi; and the dog trains still -tinkle across the white wastes bringing down the midwinter furs from -the North. - - * * * * * - -The old Company has the unique distinction of being the only instance -of feudalism transplanted from Europe to America, which has flourished -in the new soil. Other royal companies of Virginia, of Maryland, of -Quebec, became part of the new democracy. Only the Hudson’s Bay Company -remains. The charter which by “the Grace of God” and the stroke of a -pen gave away three-quarters of America—was, itself, pure feudalism. -Oaths of secrecy, implicit obedience of every servant to the man -immediately above him—the canoemen to the steersman, the trader to -the chief factor, the chief factor to the governor, the governor to -the king—dependence of the Company on the favor of the royal will—all -these were pure feudalism. Prince Rupert was the first governor. The -Duke of York, afterwards King James, was second. Marlborough, the great -general, came third; and Lord Strathcona, the present governor, as High -Commissioner for Canada, stands in the relation of ambassador from the -colony to the mother country. Always the Company has been under the -favor of the court. - -Formerly, every shareholder had to make solemn oath: “_I doe sweare to -bee True & faithfull to ye Govern’r & Comp’y of Adventurers of England -Trading into Hudson’s Bay & to my power will support and maintain the -said comp’y & the privileges of ye same; all bye laws and orders not -repeated which have been or shall be made by ye said Govern’r & Company -I will to my best knowledge truly observe and keepe: ye secrets of ye -said company, which shall be given me in charge to conceale, I will -not disclose; and during the joint stock of ye said comp’y I will -not directly nor indirectly trade to ye limitts of ye said company’s -charter without leave of the Govern’r, the Deputy Govern’r and -committee, So help me God._” - -A similar oath was required from the governor. Once a year, usually in -November, the shareholders met in a general session called the General -Court, to elect officers—a governor, a deputy governor, and a committee -which was to transact details of business as occasion required. Each -officer was required to take oath of secrecy and fidelity. This -committee, it was, that appointed the captains to the vessels, the men -of the crews, the local governors for the fur posts on the bay, and -the chief traders, who were to go inland to barter. From all of these, -oaths and bonds of fidelity were required. He, who violated his oath, -was liable to forfeiture of wages and stock in the Company. In all -the minute books for two-and-a-half centuries, both of the committee -and the General Court which I examined, there were records of only one -director dismissed for breaking his oath, and two captains discharged -for illicit trade. Compared to the cut-throat methods of modern -business, whose promise is not worth the breath that utters it and -whose perjuries having become so common, people have ceased to blush, -the old, slow-going Company has no need to be ashamed. - -Each officer in his own sphere was as despotic as a czar, but the -despotism was founded on good will. When my Lord Preston did the -Company a good turn by sending Radisson back from Paris to London, the -committee of 1684 orders the warehouse keeper “_to deliver the furrier -as many black beaver skins as will make my lord a fine covering for -his bedd_”—not a bribe _before_ the good turn, but a token of good -will _afterwards_. When Mr. Randolph of New England arrests Ben Gillam -for poaching on the Company’s preserve up on Hudson Bay, the committee -orders a piece of plate to the value of £10 for Mr. Randolph. When -King Charles and the Duke of York interceded with France to forbid -interlopers, “_two pair of beaver stockings are ordered for the King -and the Duke of York_;” and the committee of April, 1684, instructs -“_Sir James Hayes do attend His Royal Highness at Windsor and present -him his dividend in gold in a faire embroidered purse_.” For whipping -“_those vermin, those enemies of all mankind, the French_,” the Right -Honorable Earl John Churchill (Marlborough) is presented with a -cat-skin counterpane. - -The General Court and weekly committee meetings were held at the very -high altars of feudalism—in the White Tower built by William the -Conqueror, or at Whitehall where lived the Stuarts, or at the Jerusalem -Coffee House, where scions of nobility met the money lenders and where -the Company seems to have arranged advances on the subscribed stock -to outfit each year’s ships. Often, the committee meetings wound up -with orders for the secretary “_to bespeake a cask of canary for ye -governor_,” or “_a hogshead of claret for ye captains sailing from -Gravesend_,” to whom “_ye committee wished a God Speed, a good wind and -a faire saile_.” - -When the Stuart line gave place to a new régime, the Company hastened -to King William at Kensington, and as the minutes of Oct. 1, 1690, -record—“_having the Honour to be introduced into His Majesty’s clossett -... the Deputy-Governor Sir Edward Dering delivered himself in these -words.... May it Please your Majesty—Your Majesty’s most loyal and -dutifull subjects, the Hudson’s Bay Company begg leave most humbly -to congratulate your Majesty’s Happy Returne home with honours and -safety. And wee doo daily pray to Heaven (that Hath God wonderfully -preserved your Royall person) that in all your undertakings, your -Majesty may bee as victorious as Caesar, as Beloved as Titus, and -(after all) have the glorious long reign and peacefull end of -Augustus.... We doo desire also most humbly to present to your Majesty -a dividend of three hundred guineas upon three hundred pounds stock -in the Hudson’s Bay Company now Rightfully devolved to your Majesty. -And altho we have been the greatest sufferers of any Company, from -these common enemies off all mankind, the French, yet when your -Majesty’s just arms shall have given repose to all Christendom, wee -also shall enjoy our share of those great Benefitts and doo not doubt -but to appeare often with this golden fruit in our hands—And the -Deputy-Governor upon his knees humbly presented to his Majesty, the -purse of gold ... and then the Deputy-Governor and all the rest had the -honour to kiss His Majesty’s Hand_.” - - * * * * * - -Holding its privilege by virtue of royal favor, the Company was -expected to advance British dominion abroad and resist all enemies. For -exactly one hundred years (1682-1782) it fought the ground inch by inch -against the French. From 1698, agents were kept in Russia and Holland -and Germany to watch the fur markets there, and when the question of -designating the bounds between Russian Alaska and British Columbia, -came up between England and Russia, it was on the Hudson’s Bay Company -that the British Government relied for the defense of its case. -Similarly, when the United States took over Louisiana, the British -Government called on the Company in 1807 to state what the limits ought -to be between Louisiana and British America. But perhaps the most -notoriously absurd part the Company ever played internationally was in -connection with what is known as “the Oregon question.” The bad feeling -over that imbroglio need not be recalled. The modern Washington and -Oregon—broadly speaking, regions of greater wealth than France—were -at stake. The astonishing thing, the untold inside history of the -whole episode was that after insisting on joint occupancy for years -and refusing to give up her claims, England suddenly kow-towed flat -without rhyme or reason. The friendship of the Company’s chief factor, -McLoughlin, for the incoming American settlers of Oregon, has usually -been given as the explanation. Some truth there may be in this, for -the settlers’ tented wagon was always the herald of the hunter’s end, -but the real reason is good enough to be registered as melodrama to -the everlasting glory of a martinet officer’s ignorance. Aberdeen was -the British minister who had the matter in hand. His brother, Captain -Gordon in the Pacific Squadron was ordered to take a look over the -disputed territory. In vain the fur traders of Oregon and Vancouver -Island spread the choicest game on his table. He could not have his -English bath. He could not have the comforts of his English bed. He had -bad luck deerstalking and worse luck fishing. Asked if he did not think -the mountains magnificent, his response was that he would not give the -bleakest hill in Scotland for all these mountains in a heap. Meanwhile, -the Hudson’s Bay Company was wasting candle light in London preparing -the British case for the retention of Oregon. Matters hung fire. Should -it be joint occupancy, “fifty-four-forty or fight,” or compromise? -Aberdeen’s brother on leave home was called in. - -“Oregon? Oregon?” Yes, Gordon remembered Oregon. Been there fishing -last year, and “the fish wouldn’t rise to the fly worth a d——! Let the -old country go!” This, in a country where fish might be scooped out in -tubfuls without either fly or line! - - * * * * * - -The committeemen meeting to transact the details of business were, of -course, paid a small amount, but coming together in the court, itself, -or in the jolly chambers of a gay gallant like Prince Rupert, or at the -Three Tunns, or at the Golden Anchor, great difficulty was experienced -in calling the gentlemen to order, and the law was early passed, “_yt -whensoever the committee shall be summoned, yt one hour after ye -Deputy-Governor turns up ye glass, whosoever does not appear before -the glass runs out, shall lose his committee money_.” The “_glass_,” -it may be explained, was the hourglass, not the one for the “cask of -canary.” Later on, fines were imposed to be put in the Poor Box, which -was established as the minutes explain, “a token of gratitude for God’s -great blessing to the company,” the proceeds to go to old pensioners, -to those wounded in service, or to wives and children of the dead. - -The great events of the year to the committee were the dispatching -of the boats, the home-coming of the cargoes and the public sales -of the furs. Between these events, long recesses were taken without -any evidence that the Company existed but a quiet distribution of -dividends, or a courier spurring post-haste from Southampton with word -that one of the Company’s ships had been captured by the French, the -Company’s cargo sold, the Company’s ship sunk, the Company’s servants -left rotting in some dungeon waiting for ransom. From January to -April, all was bustle preparing the ships, two in the first years, -later three and four and five armed frigates, to sail to the bay. Only -good ice-goers were chosen, built of staunchest oak or ironwood, high -and narrow at the prow to ride the ice and cut the floes by sheer -weight. Then captains and crews were hired, some captains sailing for -the Company as long as forty years. Goods for trade were stowed in the -hold, traps, powder, guns, hatchets, blankets, beads, rope; and the -committee orders the secretary “_to bespeake a good rat catcher to kill -the vermin that injure our beaver_,” though whether this member of the -crew was biped or quadruped does not appear. A surgeon accompanied -each ship. The secret signals left in duplicate with the posts on the -bay the year before were then given to the captains, for if any ship -approached the bay without these signals the forts had orders to fire -their cannon at the intruder, cut the harbor buoys, put out all lights -and do all they could to cause the interlopers’ wreck. If taken by -pirates, all signals were to be thrown overboard, and the captains -were secretly instructed how high a ransom they might in the name of -the Company offer their captors. On the day of sailing, usually in -early June, the Committee went down on horse-back to Gravesend. Lockers -were searched for goods that might be hidden for clandestine trade, -for independent trade, even to the extent of one muskrat, the Company -would no more tolerate than diamond miners will allow a private deal in -their mine. These searchers examined the ships for hidden furs when she -came home, just as rigorously as the customs officers examine modern -baggage on any Atlantic liner. The same system of search was exercised -among the workers on the furs of the Company’s warehouses, the men -being examined when they entered in the morning, and when they left at -night. For this, the necessity was and is yet plain. Rare silver fox -skins have been sold at auction for £200, £300, £400, even higher for a -fancy skin. Half a dozen such could be concealed in a winter overcoat. -That the searchers could no more prevent clandestine trade than the -customs can smuggling—goes without saying. Illicit trade was the pest -of the committeeman’s life. Captains and crews, traders and factors and -directors were alike dismissed and prosecuted for it. The Company were -finally driven to demanding the surrender of even personal clothing, -fur coats, mits, caps, from returning servants. On examination, this -was always restored. - -The search over, wages were paid to the seamen with an extra half-crown -for good luck. The committee then shook hands with the crew. A parting -cheer—and the boats would be gone for six months, perhaps forever, -for wrecks were frequent, so frequent that they are a story of heroism -and hardship by themselves. Nor have the inventions of modern science -rendered the dangers of the ice floes less. There are fewer Hudson’s -Bay Company ships among the floes now than in the middle period of its -existence, but half a dozen terrible wrecks mark its latter history, -one but a few years ago, when a $300,000 cargo went to the bottom; the -captain instead of being dismissed was presented by Lloyds with gold -plate for preventing another wreck in a similar jam the next year. -Pirates, were, of course, keener to waylay the ships home-bound with -furs than out-going, but armed convoys were usually granted by the -Government at least as far as the west Irish coast. - -One of the quaintest customs that I found in the minute books was -regarding the home-coming ships. The money, that had accrued from sales -during the ships’ absence, was kept in an iron box in the warehouse on -Fenchurch Street. It ranged in amount from £2,000 to £11,000. To this, -only the governor and deputy-governor had the keys. Banking in the -modern sense of the word was not begun till 1735. When the ships came -in, the strong box was hauled forth and the crews paid. - -After the coming of the cargoes the sales of the furs were held in -December, or March, by public auction if possible, but in years when -war demoralized trade, by private contract. This was the climax of the -year to the fur trader. Even during the century when the French raiders -swept the bay, an average of ten thousand beaver a year was brought -home. Later, otter and mink and marten and ermine became valuable. -These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’ hoofs and whale blubber -made up the lists of the winter sales. Before the days of newspapers, -the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange and sales held “by candle” -in lieu of auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle being lighted, pins stuck -in at intervals along the shaft, and bids shouted till the light -burned out. One can guess with what critical caress the fur fanciers -ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver fox, blowing open the -fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt had been damaged -in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from the fur world -meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it anyway, this creature -rare as twentieth century radium, that was neither blue fox nor gray, -neither cross nor black? Was it the black fox changing his winter coat -for summer dress just caught at the moment by the trapper, or the same -fellow changing his summer pelt from silver to black for winter? Was it -a turning of the black hairs to silver from old age, trapped luckily -just before old age had robbed the fur of its gloss? Was it senility -or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a Newton or a -Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from Royal Society -and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at the coffee -houses, not one could explain the silver fox. Or was the soul of the -fur trader, like the motto painted on his coat of arms by John Pinto -for thirty shillings, in December, 1679—_Pro Pelle Cutem_—not above the -value of a beaver skin? - -Terse business methods of to-day, where the sales are advertised in a -newspaper and afterward held apart from the goods, have robbed them of -their old-time glamor, for the sale was to the city merchant what the -circus is to the country boy, the event of the year. By the committee -of Nov. 8, 1680, “_Sir James Hayes is desired to choose 3 doz. bottles -of sack & 3 doz. of claret to be given the buyers at the sale & a -dinner to be spoke at the Stellyarde, Mr. Stone to bespeake a good dish -of fish, a lione of veale, 2 pullets and 4 ducks._” - -In early days when the Company had the field to itself, and sent out -only a score or two of men in two small ships, £20,000 worth of beaver -were often sold in a year, so that after paying back money advanced for -outfit and wages, the Company was able to declare a dividend of 50 -per cent. on stock that had been twice trebled. Then came the years of -the conflict with France—causing a loss in forts and furs of £100,543. -Though small cargoes of beaver were still brought home, returns were -swamped in the expenses of the fight. No dividends were paid for twenty -years. The capital stock was all out as security for loans, and the -private fortunes of directors pledged to keep the tradesmen clamoring -for payment of outfits quiet. Directors borrowed money on their own -names for the payment of the crews, and the officers of the Company, -governors, chief factors and captains were paid in stock. Then came -the peace of 1713 and a century’s prosperity, when sales jumped from -£20,000 to £30,000 and £70,000 a year. In five years all debts were -paid, but the Company had learned a lesson. To hold its ground, it -must strengthen grip. Instead of two small sloops, four and five armed -frigates were sent out with crews of thirty and forty and sixty men. -Eight men used to be deemed sufficient to winter at a fur post. Thirty -and forty and sixty were now kept at each post, the number of posts -increased, some of them built and manned like beleaguered fortresses, -and that forward march begun across America which only ended on the -borders of the Pacific and the confines of Mexico. Though the returns -were now so large from the yearly cargo, dividends never went higher -than 20 per cent., fell as low as six, and hardly averaged above eight. - -Then came the next great struggle of the Company for its life—against -the North-West Company in Canada and the American traders in the -Western States. Sales fell as low as £2,000. Oddly enough to-day, with -its monopoly of exclusive trade long since surrendered to the Canadian -Government, its charter gone, free traders at liberty to come or go, -and populous cities spread over two-thirds of its old stamping ground, -the sales of the Company yield as high returns as in its palmiest days. - -The reason is this: - -It was only in regions where there were rival traders, or where -colonization was bound to come, as in the Western States, that the fur -brigades waged a war of extermination against the beaver. Elsewhere, -north of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, where cold must forever bar -out the settler and leave the hunter in undisturbed possession of his -game preserve, the Company acted as a nursery for the fur-bearing -animals. Indians were taught not to kill in summer, not to kill the -young, to leave the mother untouched. Tales are told—and the tales -are perfectly true—of Hudson’s Bay fur traders taking a particularly -long-barreled old musket standing it on the ground and ordering the -poor, deluded Indian to pile furs to the top before he could have the -gun; but to make these tales entirely true it should be added that the -furs were muskrat and rabbit killed out of season not worth a penny -apiece in the London market and only taken to keep the Indians going -till a year of good hunting came. When arraigned before a committee -of the House of Commons, in 1857, charged with putting an advance -of 50 per cent. on all goods traded to the Indians, and with paying -ridiculously small prices for the rare skins in proportion to what -they had paid for the poor, the Company frankly acknowledged both -facts, but it was proved that 33 per cent. of the advance represented -expenses of carriage to the interior. As for the other charge, the -Company contended that it was wiser to take many skins that were -absolutely worthless and buy the valuable pelts at a moderate price; -otherwise, the Indians would die from want in bad years, and in good -years kill off the entire supply of the rare fur-bearing animals. Since -the surrender of the monopoly, countless rival traders have invaded -the hunting grounds of the Company. None has yet been able to wean the -Indians away from the old Company. It is a question if the world shows -another example of such a long-lived feudalism. - -Though a Hudson’s Bay servant could not take as much as one beaver -skin for himself, every man afield had as keen an interest in the -total returns as the shareholders in London. This was owing to the -bounty system. To encourage the servants and prevent temptations to -dishonesty, the Company paid bounty on every score (20) of made beaver -to captains, factors, traders, and trappers, in amounts ranging from -three shillings to sixpence a score. Latterly, this system has given -place to larger salaries and direct shareholding on the part of the -servants, who rise in the service. - -A change has also taken place in methods of barter. Up to 1820, beaver -was literally coin of the realm. Mink, marten, ermine, silver fox, -all were computed as worth so much or so many fractions of beaver. -A roll of tobacco, a pound of tea, a yard of blazing-red flannel, a -powderhorn, a hatchet, all were measured and priced as worth so many -beaver. This was the Indian’s coinage, but this, too, has given way to -modern methods, though the old system may perhaps be traced among the -far Northern tribes. The account system was now used, so much being -consigned to each factor, for which he was responsible. The trader, -in turn, advanced the Indian whatever he needed for a yearly outfit, -charging it against his name. This was repaid by the year’s hunt. If -the hunt fell short of the amount, the Indians stood in debt to the -Company. This did not in the least prevent another advance for the -next year. If the hunt exceeded the debt, the Indian might draw either -cash or goods to the full amount or let the Company stand in his debt, -receiving coins made from the lead of melted tea chests with 1, 2, 3 or -4 _B_—beaver—stamped in the lead, and the mystic letters N. B., A. R., -Y. F., E. M., C. R., H. H., or some other, meaning New Brunswick House, -Albany River, York Fort, East Main, Churchill River, Henley House—names -of the Company’s posts on or near the bay. And these coins have in turn -been supplanted by modern money. - -One hears much of the Indians’ slavery to the Company owing to the -debts for these advances, but any one who knows the Indians’ infinite -capacity for lounging in idleness round the fort as long as food lasts, -must realize that the Company had as much trouble exacting the debt as -the Indian could possibly have in paying it. - -A more serious charge used to be leveled against the fur traders—the -wholesale use of liquor by which an Indian could be made to give away -his furs or sell his soul. Without a doubt, where opposition traders -were encountered—Americans west of the Mississippi, Nor’Westers on the -Saskatchewan, French south of the bay, Russians in Alaska—liquor and -laudanum, bludgeon and bribe were plied without stint. Those days are -long past. For his safety’s sake, the fur trader had to relinquish the -use of liquor, and for at least a century the strictest rules have -prohibited it in trade, the old Russian company and the Hudson’s Bay -binding each other not to permit it. And I have heard traders say that -when trouble arose at the forts the first thing done by the Company was -to split open the kegs in the fort and run all liquor on the ground. - -The charge, however, is a serious one against the Company’s past, and I -searched the minutes for the exact records on the worst year. In 1708, -conflict was at its height against the French. The highest record of -liquor sent out for two hundred servants was one thousand gallons—an -average of five gallons a trader for the year, or less than two quarts -a month. In 1770, before the fight had begun with the Nor’Westers, -the Company was sending out two hundred and fifty gallons a year for -three hundred traders. In 1800, when Nor’Westers and Hudson’s Bay came -to open war and each company drove the other to extremes of outlawry, -neither had intended at the beginning, coureurs falling by the -assassin’s dagger, a Hudson’s Bay governor butchered on the open field, -Indians horsewhipped for daring to communicate with rivals, whole -camps demoralized by drugged liquor, the highest record was twelve -thousand six hundred gallons of brandy sent out for a force of between -4,000 or 5,000 men. This gives an average of three gallons a year for -each trader. So that however terrible the use of liquor proved in -certain disgraceful episodes between the two great British companies—it -must be seen that the orgies were neither general nor frequent. - - * * * * * - -It is astonishing, too, to take a map of North America and consider -what exploration stands to the credit of the fur traders. They were -first overland from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay, and first inland -from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi—thanks to Radisson. - -In the exploration of the Arctic, who stands highest? It was a matter -of paralyzing astonishment to the Company, itself, when I told them -I had counted up in their books what they had spent on the Northwest -Passage, and that before 1800 they had suffered dead loss on that -account of £100,000. Beginning with old Captain Knight in 1719, who -starved to death on Marble Island with his forty-three men, on down -to Hearne in 1771, and Simpson and Rae in later days—that story of -exploration is one by itself. The world knows of Franklins and -Nansens, but has never heard of the Company’s humble servants whose -bones are bleaching on the storm-beaten rocks of the desolate North. -Take that bleak desert of the North, Labrador—of which modern explorers -know nothing—by 1750 Captain Coates of the Hudson’s Bay had explored -its shores at a loss to the company of £26,000. - -Inland—by 1690, that ragamuffin London boy, Henry Kelsey, who ran away -with the Indians and afterward rose to greatness in the service, had -penetrated to the present province of Manitoba and to the Saskatchewan. -The MacKenzie River, the Columbia, the Fraser, the passes of the -Rocky Mountains, the Yukon, the Liard, the Pelly—all stand to the -credit of the fur trader. And every state north of Louisiana, west -of the Mississippi, echoed to the tramp of the fur traders’ horses -sweeping the wilderness for beaver. Gentlemen Adventurers, they called -themselves, but Lords of the Outer Marches were they, truly as any -robber barons that found and conquered new lands for a feudal king. - - * * * * * - -Old-fashioned feudalism marked the Company’s treatment of its -dependents. To-day, the Indian simply brings his furs to the trader, -has free egress to the stores, and goes his way like any other buyer. -A hundred years ago, bartering was done through a small wicket in the -gate of the fort palisades; but in early times, the governor of each -little fort felt the pomp of his glory like a Highland chief. Decking -himself in scarlet coat with profusion of gold lace and sword at belt, -he marched out to the Indian camp with bugle and fife blowing to the -fore, and all the white servants in line behind. Bartering was then -accomplished by the Indian chief, _giving_ the white chief the furs, -and the white chief formally presenting the Indian chief with a _quid -pro quo_, both sides puffing the peace pipe like chimney pots as a -token of good-fellowship. - -How these pompous governors—little men in stature some of them—kept -their own servants obedient and loyal in the loneliness of these -wilderness wilds, can only be ascribed to their personal prowess. Of -course, there were desertions, desertions to the wild life and to the -French overland in Canada and to the Americans south of the boundary, -but only once was payment withheld from the men of the far fur post on -account of mutiny, though many a mutiny was quelled in its beginnings -by the governor doffing his dignity and laying a sound drubbing on the -back of the mutineer. The men were paid by bills drawn on the home -office to the amount of two thirds of their wages, the other third -being kept against their return as savings. Many devices were employed -to keep the men loyal. Did a captain accomplish a good voyage? The home -committee ordered him a bounty of £150. Hearne, for his explorations -inland, over and above his wages was given a present of £200. Did a -man suffer from rigorous climate? The committee solemnly indites: “£4, -smart money, for a frozen toe.” Such luck as a French wood-runner -deserting from Canada to the Hudson’s Bay was promptly recognized by -the order: “To Jan Ba’tiste Larlée, £1-5, a periwig to keep him loyal.” -No matter to what desperate straits war reduced the Company’s finances, -it was never too poor to pension some wreck of the service, or present -gold plate to some hero of the fight, or give a handsome funeral to -some servant who died in harness—“funeral by torch light and linkmen, -to St. Paul’s Churchyard, company and crew in attendance, £31.” Though -Governor Semple had been little more than a year on the field when -he was murdered, the Company pensioned both his sisters for life. -The humblest servants in the ranks—men beginning on twenty shillings -a month, like Kelsey, and Grimmington, and Hearne, and old Captain -Knight—were urged and encouraged to rise to the highest positions -in the Company. The one thing required was—absolute, implicit, -unquestioning loyalty; the Company could do no wrong. Quite the -funniest instance of the Company’s fatherly care for its servants was -the matrimonial office. For years, especially in time of war, it was -almost impossible to secure apprentices at all, though the agents paid -£2 as bonus on signing the contract. At this period in the Company’s -history, I came across a curious record in the minutes. A General Court -was secretly called of which no entry was to be made in the minutes, -to consider the proposals of one, Mr. Andrew Vallentine, for the good -of the Company’s service. In addition to the shareholders’ general -oath of secrecy, every one attending this meeting had to take solemn -vows not to reveal the proceedings. What could it be about? I scanned -the general minutes, the committee books, the sub-committee records -of shippings and sailings and wars. It was not about France, for -proceedings against France were in the open. It was not a “back-stairs” -fund, for when the Company wanted favors it openly sent purses of -gold or beaver stockings or cat-skin counterpanes. But farther on in -the minutes, when the good secretary had forgotten all about secrecy, -I found a cryptic entry about the cryptic gentleman, Mr. Andrew -Vallentine—“that all entries about Mr. Andrew Vallentine’s office for -the service of the Company be made in a Booke Aparte,” and that 10 per -cent. of the regular yearly dividends go as dowries for the brides of -the apprentices, the ceremonies to be performed—not by any unfrocked -clergyman under the rose—but by the Honorable, the Very Reverend Doctor -Sacheverell of renown. The business with the gentleman of matrimonial -fame was not called “a marriage office.” No such clumsy herding of fair -ones to the altar, as in Virginia and Quebec, where brides were sent in -shiploads and exposed on the town square like slaves at the shambles. -The Company’s matrimonial venture was kept in dignified reserve, -that would send down no stigma to descendants. It was organized and -designated as a separate _company_; certainly, a company of two. Later -on, Mr. Vallentine’s office being too small for the rush of business, -the secretary, “_Mr. Potter is ordered to arrange a larger office for -Mr. Vallentine in the Buttery of the Company’s store house._” But all -the delightful possibilities hidden in Mr. Vallentine’s suggestive -name and in the oleaginous place which he chose for his matrimonial -mart—failed to make the course of true love run smooth. Mr. Vallentine -entangled the Company in lawsuits and on his death in 1731, the office -was closed. - -_Notes on Foregoing Chapters._—Groseillers’s name is given in a -variety of ways, the full name being Medard Chouart Groseillers—the -last translated by the English as “Goosebery,” which of course would -necessitate the name being spelled “Groseilliers.” - -The account of the passage of the ships across the Atlantic is drawn -from Radisson Journals, from his Petitions, and from the Journal of -Gillam as reported by Thomas Gorst, Bayly’s secretary. There are also -scraps about the trip in Sir James Hayes’ report of damage to _The -Eaglet_, which he submitted to the Admiralty. - -The relationship of Radisson to Groseillers and the French version -of the quarrel on the bay—are to be found in the life of Radisson -in _Pathfinders of the West_. Though I have searched diligently, I -have not been able to find a single authority, ancient or modern, -for the odd version given by several writers of Radisson and -Groseillers absconding overland to New France. The statement is sheer -fiction—neither more nor less, as the Minutes of Hudson’s Bay House -account for Radisson’s movements almost monthly from 1667 to 1674, when -he left London for France. - -A comical story is current in London about the charter. After the -monopoly was relinquished by the Company in 1870 and its territory -taken over by Canada, the old charter was, of course, of no importance. -For thirty years it disappeared. It was finally found jammed behind old -papers tumbled down the back of an old safe—and this was the charter -that deeded away three-quarters of America. - -Before a Parliamentary Commission on March 10, 1749, the Company made -the following statement concerning its stock: - -1676 October 16 It appears by the Company’s Books, that their stock -then was £10,500 1690 September The same being trebled is 21,000 ______ -Which made the Stock to be 31,500 1720 August 29 This Stock being -again trebled is 63,000 ______ Which made the Stock to be 94,500 And a -subscription then taken in of 10% amounting to Additional Stock 9,450 -______ Which makes the present Amount of the Stock to be 103,950 - -The minutes of the Company and Radisson’s journal alike prove that he -passed to France from England, in October, 1674. Whether Groseillers -came to England on the ship is not stated, therefore the question is -left open, but it is stated that Groseillers passed to France at the -same time, so that pretty story of Groseillers knocking Bayly’s head is -all fiction. - -I was not able to find that “Booke Aparte” in which entries were made -of Mr. Andrew Vallentine’s matrimonial mart. It may yet turn up in the -cellarful of old papers in the Company’s warehouse. Perhaps it is as -well that it should not, for some of the most honored names in Canadian -history came into the service of the Company at this time. - -Lyddell’s salary as governor of the west coast of the bay was to be -£100 per annum. Sailors were paid, in 1671, from £20 to £30 a year, -the surgeons £20 a year. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -1674-1685 - -IF RADISSON CAN DO WITHOUT THE ADVENTURERS, THE ADVENTURERS CANNOT DO -WITHOUT RADISSON—THE ERUPTION OF THE FRENCH ON THE BAY—THE BEGINNING OF -THE RAIDERS - - -While Radisson became once more a man without habitat or country, the -Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were in the very springtime of wonderful -prosperity. Despite French interlopers coming overland from the St. -Lawrence, the ships of 1679 brought home cargoes totaling 10,500 -beaver, 1,100 marten, 200 otter, 700 elk and a vast quantity of such -smaller furs as muskrat and ermine. Cash to the value of half the -Company’s capital lay in the strong box as a working fund, and by 1681 -dividends to the value of just twice the Company’s stock had been paid -to the shareholders. The first speculation in the stock began about -this time, the shares changing hands at an advance of 33 per cent. -and a new lot of shareholders coming in, among whom was the famous -architect—Christopher Wrenn. At this time, too, one, Mr. Phillips, was -expelled as a shareholder for attempting to conduct a private trade -through members of the crews. Prince Rupert continued to be governor -till the time of his death, in 1682, when James, Duke of York, was -chosen to succeed. At first, the governing committee had met only -before the ships sailed and after they returned. Committee meetings -were now held two or three times a week, a payment of 6s 8d being made -to each man for attendance, a like amount being levied as a fine for -absence, the fines to be kept in a Poor Box for the benefit of the -service. - -Bayly, who had been governor on the south coast of Hudson’s Bay, when -Radisson left, now came home in health broken from long exposure, to -die at Mr. Walker’s house on the Strand, whence he was buried with -full military honors, the crew of _The John and Alexander_ and the -Adventurers marching by “torch light” to St. Paul’s Churchyard. - -Hudson Bay—let it be repeated—can be compared in size only to the -Mediterranean. One governor could no more command all the territory -bordering it than one ruler could govern all the countries bordering -the Mediterranean. Nixon was commissioned to succeed Bayly as governor -of the South Shore—namely of Rupert and Moose Rivers, territory -inland about the size of modern Germany, which the new governor was -supposed to keep in order with a force of sixteen men from the crew -of _The John and Alexander_ and garrison of eight men at each of the -two forts—thirty-two men in all, serving at salaries ranging from $60 -(£12) to $100 (£20) a year, to police a barbarous pre-historic Germany; -and the marvel is, they did it. Crime was almost unknown. Mr. Nixon’s -princely salary as governor, poohbah, potentate, was £200 a year, and -it is ordered, May, 1680, “that a cask of canary be sent out as a -present to Governor Nixon.” - -On the West Coast, it will be remembered, Lyddell had gone out as -governor. That vague “West Coast”—though the Adventurers did not know -it—meant a region the size of Russia. Lyddell was now succeeded by -Sargeant, the bluffest, bravest, halest, heartiest of governors that -ever donned the gold lace and pompous insignia of the Adventurers. -Sargeant’s garrison never at any time numbered more than forty and -usually did not exceed twelve. His fort was on an island at the mouth -of Albany River, some one hundred miles north of Moose. It will be -recalled that Radisson had traveled three hundred miles farther up -the west coast to Port Nelson. The Company now decided to appoint -a governor for that region, too, and John Bridgar was commissioned -to go out in 1682 with Captain Gillam on the ship _Prince Rupert_—a -bad combination, these two, whose chief qualification seemed to be -swashbuckler valor, fearlessness of the sea, ability to break the -heads of their men and to drown all remorse pottle deep in liquor. -How did they rule, these little potentates of the wilds? With all the -circumstance and pomp of war, couriers running beforehand when they -traveled, drums beating, flags flying, muskets and cannon roaring -salutes, a bugler tootling to the fore of a governor dressed in -gaudiest regimentals, a line of white servants marching behind, though -they were so poor they wore Indian garb and had in their hearts the -hatred of the hireling for a tyrant; for over them the Company had -power of life and death without redress. All very absurd, it seems, at -this long distant time, but all very effective with the Indians, who -mistook noise for power and display for greatness. - -By royal edict, privateers were forbidden to go to Hudson Bay, whether -from England or New England. Instead of two small ships borrowed from -the Admiralty, the Adventurers now had four of their own and two -chartered yearly—_The Prudent Mary_, and _Albermarle_ frigate and -_Colleton_ yacht outward bound, _The Prince Rupert_ and _John and -Alexander_ and _Shaftsbury_—which was wrecked—homeward bound, or _vice -versa_. And there began to come into Company’s records, grand old names -of grand old mariners—Vikings of the North—Mike Grimmington, who began -before the mast of _The Albemarle_ at thirty shillings a month, and -Knight, of whose tragic fate more anon, and Walker, who came to blows -with Governor Sargeant, outward bound. Those were not soft days for -soft men. They were days of the primordial when the best man slept in -his fighting gear and the victory went to the strong. - -When Captain James had come out to follow up Hudson’s discoveries, he -had left his name to James Bay and discovered Charlton Island, some -forty miles from the South Shore. Now that the Company had so many -ships afloat, Charlton Island became the rendezvous. The ships, that -were to winter on the bay, went to their posts, but to Charlton Island -came the cargoes for those homeward bound. - - * * * * * - -To Port Nelson, then, came Governor Bridgar on _The Prince Rupert_ with -Captain Gillam, in August, of 1682. Mike Grimmington is now second -mate. Gillam must have been to Port Nelson before on trading ventures, -but Governor Bridgar’s commission was to establish that fort which -for two centuries was to be the battleground of Northern traders and -may yet be the great port of Northern commerce. The whole region was -called Nelson after Admiral Button’s mate, but it was to become better -known as Fort Bourbon, when possessed by the French; as York, when it -repassed to the English. - -Shifting shoals of sand-drift barred the sea from the main coast for -ten miles north and south, but across the shoals were gaps visible -at low tide, through which the current broke with the swiftness of a -river. Gillam ordered small boats out to sound and stake the ship’s -course by flags erected in the sand at half tide. Between these flags, -_The Prince Rupert_ slowly moved inland. Inside the sand-bar, the coast -was seen to be broken by the mouths of two great rivers—either one -a miniature St. Lawrence, on the north the Nelson, on the south the -Hayes. It was on the Hayes to the south that the Adventurers finally -built their fur post, but Bridgar and Gillam now pushed _The Prince -Rupert’s_ carved prow slowly up the northern river, the Nelson. The -stream was wide with a tremendous current and low, swampy, wooded -banks. Each night sails were reefed and men sent ashore to seek a good -site or sign of Indians. Night after night during the whole month of -September, John Calvert, Robert Braddon, Richard Phineas, Robert Sally -and Thomas Candy punted in and out of the coves along the Nelson, -lighting bonfires, firing muskets, spying the shore for footstep of -native. On the ship, Bridgar ordered the cannon fired as signals to -distant Indians and for the first time in history the roar of heavy -guns rolled across the swamps. Winter began to close in early. Ice -was forming. Nipping frosts had painted the swamp woods in colors of -fire. One afternoon toward October when _The Prince Rupert_ was some -seventeen miles from the sand-bar, gliding noiselessly with full-blown -sails before a gentle wind, the smoke of an Indian signal shot skyward -from the south shore. - -In vain Bridgar fired muskets all that afternoon and waved flags, -to call the savages to the ship. A solitary figure, seeming to be a -spy, emerged from the brushwood, gazing stolidly at the apparition -of the ship. Presently, two or three more figures were discovered -moving through the swamp. The next morning Governor Bridgar ordered -the gig-boat lowered, and accompanied by Gillam and an escort of six -sailors—rowed ashore. First impressions count much with the Indians. On -such occasion, Hudson’s Bay Company officers never failed of pompous -ostentation—profusion of gold lace, cocked hats for officers, colored -regimentals for underlings, a bugler to the fore, or a Scotchman -blowing his bagpipes, with a show of burnished firearms and helmets. - -On rowed the gig-boat toward the imperturbable figure on the shore. -Some paces out, the boat grated bottom and stuck in the sand. A sailor -had jumped to mid-waist in water to drag the craft in, when the stolid -figure on the sand suddenly came to life. With a leap, leveled musket -covering the incoming boat, the man had bounded to the water’s edge and -in purest English shouted—“Halt!” - -“We are Hudson’s Bay Company men,” protested Bridgar standing up. - -“But I,” answered the figure, “am Radisson, and I hold possession of -_all_ this region for France.” - -If the Frenchman had been Vesuvius suddenly erupted under some idling -tourists, or if a ghost arisen from the ground, the English could not -have been more astonished. They had thought they had finished with -the troublesome Frenchman, and behold him, here, in possession with a -musket leveled at their heads and three men commanding ambushed forces -behind. - -With a show of hollow courage, Bridgar asked permission to land -and salute the commander of the French forces. One can guess with -what love, they fell on each other’s necks. Radisson’s courage rose -recklessly as if the danger had been so much wine. These three men were -his officers, he said. His fort was some distance away. He had two -ships but expected more. How many men had he? Ah, there his English -failed, but his broken French conveyed the impression of forces that -could wipe the English out of existence. Gillam and Bridgar, who could -not speak one word of French, looked glum enough. To test this brave -show of valor, they invited him on board _The Prince Rupert_ to dine. -Radisson accepted with an alacrity that disarmed suspicion, but he took -the precaution of inviting two English sailors to remain on shore with -his French followers. What yarns were spun over the mess room table of -_The Prince Rupert_ that day! Radisson enquired for all his own friends -of London, and Bridgar in turn heard what Radisson had been doing in -the French navy all these eight years. Who knew Port Nelson better than -Radisson? They asked him about the current of the river. He advised -them to penetrate no farther for fear of a clash with the French forces -and to forbid their men marauding inland in order to avoid trouble with -the Indians. - -[Illustration: Copy of Robson’s drawing of York Harbor. The positions -of Radisson’s fort, Ben Gillam’s Island and the H. B. C. ship are -written in.] - -Could any one guess that the astute Frenchman, boasting of ships and so -recklessly quaffing toasts at the table of his enemies—was defenseless -and powerless in their hands? His fort was not on this river but on -the Hayes across the swamp to the south—a miserable collection of -log shacks with turf roofs, garrisoned by a mere handful of mutinous -sailors. His fear was not that the English would clash with the -French forces, but that they would learn how weak he was. And another -discovery added the desperation of recklessness to the game. Radisson -and Groseillers had come to the bay but a month before on two miserable -ships with twenty-seven men. Musketry firing had warned Radisson of -some one else at Port Nelson. Twenty-six miles up Nelson River on -Gillam Island, he had discovered to his amazement, poachers who were -old acquaintances—Ben Gillam, son of the Company’s captain, with John -Outlaw, come in _The Bachellors’ Delight_ from Boston, on June 21, to -poach on the Company’s fur preserve. It was while canoeing down stream -from the discovery of the poachers that Radisson ran full-tilt into -the Company’s ship. Here, then, was a pretty dilemma—two English ships -on the same river not twenty miles apart, the French south across the -swamp not a week’s journey away. Radisson was trapped, if they had -but known. His only chance was to keep _The Prince Rupert_ and _The -Bachellors’ Delight_ apart, and to master them singly. - -If Bridgar had realized Radisson’s plight, the Frenchman would have -been clapped under hatches in a twinkle, but he was allowed to leave -_The Prince Rupert_. Bridgar beached his ships on the flats and -prepared to build winter quarters. Ten days later, Radisson dropped -in again, “to drink health,” as he suavely explained, introducing -common sailors as officers and firing off muskets to each cup quaffed, -to learn whether the Company kept soldiers “on guard in case of a -surprise.” Governor Bridgar was too far gone in liquor to notice the -trick, but Captain Gillam rushed up the decks of _The Prince Rupert_ -with orders for the French to begone. Gillam and Radisson had been -enemies from the first. Gillam was suspicious. Therefore, it behooved -Radisson to play deeper. The next time he came to the ship he was -accompanied by the Captain’s son, Ben, the poacher, dressed as a -bushranger. There was reason enough now for the old captain to keep his -crew from going farther up the river. If Ben Gillam were discovered in -illicit trade, it meant ruin to both father and son. When some of his -crew remarked the resemblance of the supposed bushranger to the absent -son, Captain Gillam went cold with fright. - -Falsity, intrigue, danger, were in the very air. It lacked but the -spark to cause the explosion; and chance supplied the spark. - -Two of the Company men ranging for game came on young Gillam’s ship. -They dashed back breathless to Governor Bridgar with word that there -was a strange fort only a few miles away. Bridgar thought this must -be the French fort, and Captain Gillam had not courage to undeceive -him. Scouts were sent scurrying. Those scouts never returned. They had -been benighted in a howling blizzard and as chance would have it, were -rescued by Radisson’s spies. While he waited for their return, worse -disaster befell Bridgar. Storm and ice set the tide driving in Nelson -River like a whirlpool. _The Prince Rupert_ was jammed, ripped, crushed -like an eggshell and sunk with loss of all provisions and fourteen men, -including old Captain Gillam. Mike Grimmington, the mate, escaped. -Governor Bridgar was left destitute and naked to the enemy without -either food or ammunition for the remainder of his crew to face the -winter. The wretched man seems to have saved nothing from the wreck but -the liquor, and in this he at once proceeded to drown despair. It was -Radisson who came to his rescue. Nothing more was to be feared from -Bridgar. Therefore, the Frenchman sent food to the servants of his -former friends. Without his aid, the entire Hudson’s Bay crew would -have perished. - -Cooped up in the deplorable rabbit hutches that did duty as barracks, -and constantly besotted with liquor, Governor Bridgar was eking out a -miserable winter when he was electrified by another piece of chance -news. A thunderous rapping awakened the cabin one winter night. -When the door was opened, there stumbled in a disheveled, panting -Scotchman with an incoherent plea for help. The French were attacking -Ben Gillam’s fort. For the first time, Bridgar learned that the fort -up stream was _not_ French but English—the fort of Ben Gillam, the -poacher; and all his pot valor resolved on one last, desperate cast -of the dice. To be sure, the other ship was a poacher; but she was -English. If Bridgar united with her, he might beat Radisson. He would -at least have a ship to escape to the Company’s forts at the lower end -of Hudson Bay, or to England. Also, he owed his own and his crew’s life -to Radisson; but he owed his services to the Company, and the Company -could best be served by treachery to Radisson and alliance with that -scalawag sailor adventurer—Ben Gillam, whose ship sailed under as many -names as a pirate and showed flags as various as the seasons. Better -men than Bridgar forced to choose between the scalawag with the dollar -and honor with ruin, have chosen the scalawag with the dollar. - -Men sent out as scouts came back with unsatisfactory tales of having -failed to capture Ben Gillam’s ship, but they were loaded with food -for Bridgar from Radisson. Bridgar only waited till spies reported -that Radisson had left Gillam’s fort to cross the marsh to French -headquarters. Then he armed his men—cutlass, bludgeon, such muskets -as Radisson’s ammunition rendered available—and set out. It was a -forced tramp in midwinter through bitter cold. The men were an ill-clad -rabble. They were unused to this cold with frost that glittered sharp -as diamond-points, and had not yet learned snowshoe travel over the -rolling drifts. Frost-bitten, plunging to their armpits in snow, they -followed the iced river bed by moonlight and sometime before dawn -presented themselves at the main gate of Ben Gillam’s palisaded fort. -Never doubting but Gillam’s sentry stood inside, Bridgar knocked. The -gate swung open before a sleepy guard. In rushed Bridgar’s men. Bang -went the gates shut. In the confusion of half-light and frost smoke, -armed men surrounded the English. Bridgar was trapped in his own trap. -Not Gillam’s men manned the poacher’s fort, but Radisson’s French -sailors. Ben Gillam and his crew had long since been captured and -marched across the swamp to French headquarters. Bridgar and his crew -were the prisoners of the French in the poacher’s fort. - -The rest of the winter of 1682-83 belongs to the personal history of -Radisson and is told in his life. Between despair and drink, Bridgar -was a madman. Radisson carried him to the French fort on Hayes River, -whence in a few weeks he was released on parole to go back to his own -rabbit hutch of a barracks. When spring came, between poachers and -Company men, the French had more English prisoners than they knew what -to do with. To make matters worse, one of the French boats had been -wrecked in the ice jam. It was decided to send some of the English -prisoners on the remaining boat to Moose and Rupert River at the south -end of the bay, and to carry the rest on the poacher _Bachellors’ -Delight_ to Quebec. Outlaw and some of the other poachers would take -no chance of going back to New England to be arrested as pirates. -They went in _The Ste. Anne_ to the foot of James Bay and joined the -Hudson’s Bay Company. Bridgar, too, was to have gone to his company’s -forts on James Bay, but at the last moment he pretended to fear the -ice floes on such a slender craft and asked to go with Radisson on -_The Bachellors’ Delight_ to Quebec. Giving the twelve refugees on -_The Ste. Anne_ each four pounds of beef, two bushels of oatmeal and -flour, Radisson dispatched them for the forts of James Bay on August -14th. He had already set fire to Bridgar’s cabins on Nelson River -and destroyed the poachers’ fort on Gillam Island, Bridgar, himself, -asking permission to set the flame to Ben Gillam’s houses. Leaving -Groseillers’ son, Chouart, with seven Frenchmen to hold possession of -Port Nelson, Radisson set sail with his prisoners on _The Bachellors’ -Delight_. A few miles out, a friendly Englishman warned him of -conspiracy. Bridgar and Ben Gillam were plotting a mutiny to cut the -throats of all the Frenchmen and return to put the garrison at Port -Nelson to the sword; so when Bridgar asked for the gig-boat to attempt -going six hundred miles to the forts at the south end of the bay, -Radisson’s answer was to order him under lock the rest of the voyage. - -At Quebec, profound disappointment awaited Radisson. Frontenac had -given place to De la Barre as governor of New France, and De la Barre -knew that a secret treaty existed between France and England. He would -lend no countenance to Radisson’s raid. _The Bachellors’ Delight_ was -restored to young Gillam and Radisson ordered to France to report all -he had done. Young Gillam was promptly arrested in Boston for poaching -on Hudson Bay. Within a few years, he had turned pirate in earnest, or -been driven to piracy by the monopolistic laws that gave every region -for trade to some special favorite of the English crown. About the time -Captain Kidd of pirate fame was arrested at Boston, one Gillam of _The -Prudent Sarah_ was arrested, too. By wrenching off his handcuffs and -filing out the bars of his prison window with the iron of the handcuff, -Gillam almost escaped. He was leaping out of the prison window on old -Court Street when the bayonet of a guard prodded him back. With Captain -Kidd, he was taken to England and tried for crimes on the high seas. -There, he drops from history. - -[Illustration: Silver Fox Skins, Trapped by Hunters in the Employment -of J. K. Cornwall, Lesser Slave Lake Athabasca.] - -As for Bridgar, he no sooner whiffed Governor De la Barre’s fear of -consequences for what Radisson had done, than he set two worlds ringing -with vauntings of the vengeance England would take. Putting through -drafts on the Hudson’s Bay Company for money, he hired interpreters, -secretaries, outriders, and assumed pomp that would have done credit to -a king’s ambassador. Sailing to New England with Ben Gillam, he cut a -similar swath from Boston to New York, riding like a Jehu along the old -post road in a noisy endeavor to rehabilitate his own dignity. Then he -sailed for England where condign humiliation lay in wait. The Company -was furious. They refused to honor his drafts and would not pay him one -penny’s salary from the day he had surrendered to Radisson. The wages -of the captured servants, the Company honored in full, even the wages -of the dead in the wreck of _The Prince Rupert_. Bridgar was retained -in the service, but severely reprimanded. - -_Notes on Chapter IX._—Practically the entire contents of this chapter -are taken from the documents in Hudson’s Bay House, London. Details -of the Company’s affairs are from the Minute Books, of the fracas -with Radisson, from the affidavits of John Outlaw, who first went -to the bay as a poacher with young Gillam, and from the affidavits of -Bridgar’s crew. - -It has always been a matter of doubt whether Gillam Sr. survived the -wreck of _The Prince Rupert_. The question is settled by the fact that -his wages are “payable to an attorney for his heirs.” If he had lived, -it was ordered that he was to be arrested for complicity in piracy with -his son. - -The ultimate fate of Ben Gillam I found in the Shaftesbury collection -of papers bearing on Captain Kidd. His name is variously given as -“William” and “James,” but I think there can be little doubt of his -identity from several coincidences. In the first place, the Gillam -whom Mr. Randolph arrested for piracy (and was given a present by the -Company for so doing) was the Gillaum later arrested in connection -with Captain Kidd. Also Gillam’s boat was known under a variety of -names—_Bachellors’ Delight_, _Prudent Sarah_, and the master of _The -Prudent Sarah_ was arrested in connection with Captain Kidd. The -minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company show that the Boston owners of -Gillam’s boat sued for the loss of this trip against the Hudson’s Bay -Company, and lost their suit. This was the first test of the legality -of the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly, and the courts upheld it. - -Radisson’s life as given in _Pathfinders of the West_ and _Heralds of -Empire_ affords fuller details of the fray from the Frenchman’s point -of view. It is remarkable how slightly his record differs from the -account as contained in the official affidavits. - -As to the distance of Charlton Island from the main coast—it puzzled me -how the sailing directions for the ships that were to rendezvous there -gave the distance of the island from the main coast as anything from -twenty to eighty miles. The explanation is the point on the south coast -that is considered. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -1683-1685 - -THE ADVENTURERS FURIOUS AT RADISSON, FIND IT CHEAPER TO HAVE HIM AS -FRIEND THAN ENEMY AND INVITE HIM BACK—THE REAL REASON WHY RADISSON -RETURNED—THE TREACHERY OF STATECRAFT—YOUNG CHOUART OUTRAGED, NURSES HIS -WRATH AND THERE GAILY COMES ON THE SCENE MONSIEUR PÉRÉ—SCOUT AND SPY - - -The Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were dazed by the sudden eruption of -Radisson at Port Nelson. Their traders had gone there often enough to -have learned that the finest furs came from the farthest North. Here -was a region six hundred miles distant from the French bush-lopers, who -came overland from the St. Lawrence. Here were the best furs and the -most numerous tribes of Indian hunters. Radisson had found Port Nelson -for them. Now he had snatched the rich prize from their hands. - -Bad news travels fast. Those refugees, who had been shipped by the -French to the Company’s posts at the south of the bay, reached the -ships’ rendezvous at Charlton Island in time to return to England by -the home-bound vessels of 1683. Before Radisson had arrived in France, -Outlaw and the other refugees had come to London. The embassies of -France and England rang with what was called “the Radisson outrage.” -John Outlaw, quondam captain for Ben Gillam, the poacher, took oath in -London, on November 23, of all that Radisson had done to injure the -English, and he swore that Groseillers had showed a commission from -the Government of France for the raid. Calvert, Braddon, Phineas and -those seamen, who had gone up Nelson River with Bridgar—gave similar -evidence, and when Bridgar, himself, came by way of New England, the -clamor rose to such heights it threatened to upset the friendly treaty -between England and France. Lord Preston, England’s envoy to Paris, was -besieged with memorials against Radisson for the French Government. - -“I am confirmed in our worst fears by the news I have lately received,” -wrote Sir James Hayes of the Company, “Monsieur Radisson, who was at -the head of the action at Port Nelson is arrived in France the 8th of -this month (December, 1683) in a man-of-war from Canada and is in all -posthaste for Paris to induce the ministry to undermine us on Hudson’s -Bay. Nothing can mend at this time but to get His Majesty’s order -through my Lord Preston instantly to cause ye French King to have -exemplary justice done upon ye said Radisson.” - -At the same time, Hayes was urging Preston to bribe Radisson; in fact, -to do anything to bring him back to the service of the Hudson’s Bay -Company. - - * * * * * - -Radisson and Groseillers had meanwhile reached Paris only to find that -the great statesman, Colbert—on whose protection they had relied—was -dead. Fur traders of Quebec had the ear of the court—those monopolists, -who had time and again robbed them of their furs under pretense of -collections for the revenue. Both Radisson and Groseillers separately -petitioned the court for justice. If De la Barre had been right in -restoring the pirate vessel to Ben Gillam, what right had he to seize -their furs? One fourth for revenue did not mean wholesale confiscation. -The French Court retorted that Radisson and Groseillers had gone North -without any official commission. “True,” answered Groseillers in his -petition, “no more official than a secret verbal commission such as -Albanel the Jesuit had, when he came to us years ago, and that is no -good reason why we should be condemned for extending French dominion -and changing Nelson’s name to Bourbon.” Radisson’s petition openly -stated that while they carried no “official commission,” they had gone -North by the express order of the King, and that the voyage, itself, -was sufficient proof of their zeal for France. - -King Louis was in a quandary. He dare not offend the Hudson’s Bay -Company, for its chief shareholders were of the English court, and -with the English Court, Louis XIV had a secret treaty. To De la Barre -he sent a furious reprimand for having released Gillam’s pirate -vessel. “It is impossible to imagine what your conduct meant,” ran the -reproof, “or what you were about when you gave up the vessel captured -by Radisson and Groseillers, which will afford the English proof -of possession at Port Nelson. I am unwilling to afford the King of -England cause of complaint,” he explained, “but I think it important -to prevent the English establishing themselves on Nelson River.” In -brief, according to the shifty trickery of a royal code, Radisson -was to be reprimanded publicly but encouraged privately. Groseillers -dropped out of the contest disgusted. The French court sent for -Radisson. He was ordered to prepare to sail again to the bay on April -24, 1684, but this time, Radisson would have no underhand commission -which fickle statesmen might repudiate. He demanded restoration of -his confiscated furs and a written agreement that he should have -equal share in trading profits. The Department of the Marine haggled. -Preparations went on apace, but the Hudson’s Bay Company was not idle. -Sir James Hayes and Sir William Young and my Lord Preston—English envoy -to Paris—urged Radisson to come back to England on one hand, and on -the other threatened rupture of the treaty with France if “condign -punishment” were not visited on the same men. - -It is here what historians have called “Radisson’s crowning -treachery” takes place. “Prince of liars, traitors, adventurers and -bushrangers”—says one writer. “He received the marked displeasure of M. -Colbert,” explains another, though Colbert was dead. “He was blamable -for deserting the flag of France: the first time we might pardon him, -for he was the victim of grave injustice, but no excuse could justify -his second desertion. He had none to offer. It was an ineffaceable -stain,” asserts yet another critic. - -In a word, Radisson suddenly left France secretly and appeared in -England, the servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Why did he do it? -Especially, why did he do it without any business agreement with the -Company as to what his rewards were to be? Traitors sell themselves -for a _quid pro quo_, but there was no prospect of gain in Radisson’s -case. His own journals give no explanation. I confess I had always -thought it was but another example of the hair-brained enthusiast mad -to be back in his native element—the wilds—and shutting his eyes to all -precautions for the future. It was not till I had examined the state -papers that passed between the Hudson’s Bay Company and France that I -found the true explanation of Radisson’s erratic conduct. He was sent -for by the Department of the Marine, and told that the French had quit -all open pretentions to the bay. He was commanded to cross to England -at once and restore Port Nelson to the Hudson’s Bay Company. - -“Openly?” he might have asked. - -Ah, that was different! Not openly, for an open surrender of Port -Nelson would forever dispose of French claims to the bay. All Louis XIV -now wanted was to pacify the English court and maintain that secret -treaty. No, not openly; but he was commanded to go to England and -restore Port Nelson as if it were of his own free will. He had captured -it without a commission. Let him restore it in the same way. But -Radisson had had enough of being a scapegoat for state statecraft and -double dealing. He demanded written authority for what he was to do, -and the Department of Marine placed this commission in his hands: - -“In order to put an end to the Differences wch. exist between the two -Nations of the French & English touching the Factory or Settlement made -by Messrs. Groseillers and Radisson on Hudson Bay, and to avoid the -efusion of blood that may happen between the sd. two nations, for the -Preservation of that place, the expedient wch. appeared most reasonable -and advantageous for the English company will, that the sd. Messrs. -De Groseillers and Radisson return to the sd. Factory or habitation -furnished with the passport of the English Company, importing that -they shall withdraw the French wch. are in garrison there with all -the effects belonging to them in the space of eighteen months to be -accounted from the day of their departure by reason they cannot goe and -come from the place in one year.... The said gentlemen shall restore to -the English Company the Factory or Habitation by them settled in the -sd. country to be thenceforward enjoyed by the English company without -molestation. As to the indemnity pretended by the English for effects -seized and brought to Quebec ... that may be accommodated in bringing -back the said inventory & restoring the same effects or their value to -the English Proprietors.” - -This, then, was the reason for Radisson a second time deserting the -French flag. He was compelled by “the statecraft” of Louis XIV, and -this reason, as a man of honor, he could not reveal in his journals. - -On the 10th of May, 1684, Radisson landed in London. He was welcomed -by Sir James Hayes and forthwith carried in honor to Windsor, where -he took the oath of fidelity as a British subject—a fealty from which -he never swerved to the end of his life. In a week, he was ready to -leave. Three ships sailed this year, _The Happy Return_, under Captain -Bond; _The Success_, under Outlaw, who had been with Ben Gillam, and a -little sloop called _The Adventure_ for inland waters, under Captain -Geyer. Radisson went on board _The Happy Return_. Groseillers had long -since left France for Quebec, where he settled at Three Rivers with -his family. Favorable winds carried the ships forward without storm or -stop, to the straits, which luckily presented open water. Inside the -bay, ice and heavy seas separated the vessels. Sixty miles from Port -Nelson _The Happy Return_ was caught and held. Fearing that the French -at Nelson, under young Chouart Groseillers, might attack the English if -the other ships arrived first, Radisson asked permission of Governor -Phipps, who had superseded Bridgar, to take seven of the crew and row -the sixty miles ashore. It was a daring venture. Ice floes were tossing -in a heavy sea, but by rowing might and main, portaging over the ice -where the way was blocked, and seeking shelter on the lee side of a -floe when the wind became too rough, Radisson and his men came safely -to Port Nelson in forty-eight hours, spending only one night in the -gig-boat on the sea. Radisson was amazed to find the French fort on -Hayes River deserted. Indians presently told him the reason. Barely had -he left the bay the year before when the annual frigate of the English -company came to port. Young Chouart Groseillers trusted to the loyalty -of the Indians as a defense against the English till he learned that -the savages had been offered a barrel of gunpowder to massacre the -French. Then Chouart hastily withdrew up Hayes River above the first -rapids to the camping place of the Assiniboines, whose four hundred -warriors were ample protection. - -Young Groseillers’ anger at the turn of affairs knew no bounds. In his -fort were twelve thousand beaver skins and eight thousand other pelts -of the same value as beaver. To the expedition the year before, he -had contributed £500 of his own money, and the cargo of that voyage -had been confiscated at Quebec. Now, he had rich store of pelts to -compensate for the two years’ toil, and by the order of the French -Government—a secret back-stairs, treacherous order which could not -stand daylight and would brand him as a renegade—he was to turn these -furs over to the enemy. The young man was furious, and surrendered -his charge with an ill grace. Radisson had been commissioned to offer -the Frenchmen employment in the English Company at £100 a year for -Chouart, £50 for Durvall, Lamotte, Greymaire and the rest. They heard -his offer in sullen silence, for it meant they must forswear allegiance -to France. They preferred to remain free-lances and take chances of -crossing overland to Quebec two thousand miles through the wilderness. - -Then came what was truly the crowning treachery. A square deal is -safest in the long run. The man of double dealing forgets that he often -compels men, who would otherwise deal squarely, to meet him on his own -ground—double dealing; to stoop to the trickery that his dishonesty has -taught. - -Radisson had been assured that the Frenchmen left in Hudson Bay should -be free to do as they wished, or if they joined the English they should -be well treated; but when they evinced no haste to become English -subjects, Governor Phipps took his own counsel. By September, a new -fort had been built on Hayes River five miles from the mouth. The -Indians had come down stream with an enormous trade and Radisson had -made a treaty of peace between them and the English, which has lasted -to this day. Finally, the cargo of beaver was on board _The Happy -Return_. Sailors were chanting their sing-song as they ran round the -capstan bars heaving up anchor on September the 4th, when Governor -Phipps suddenly summoned a final council on board the decks of _The -Happy Return_. To this council came the unsuspecting Frenchmen from -the shore. Three—as it happened—had gone to the woods, but young -Groseillers and the rest clambered up the accommodation ladder for last -orders. No sooner were they on board, than sails were run out. _The -Happy Return_ spread her wings to the wind and was off for England -carrying the unwilling Frenchmen passengers. - -In a trice, hands were on pistols and swords out, but Radisson besought -the outraged Frenchmen to restrain their anger. What was their -strength against an armed crew of ruffians only too glad of a scuffle -to put them all to the sword? It was a sullen, sad home-coming for -the adventurer. Uncle and nephew were scarcely on speaking terms, and -the trick of Governor Phipps must have opened Radisson’s eyes to the -treatment he might expect now that he was completely in the power of -the English. The boat reached Portsmouth on October 23. Not waiting -for coach, Radisson took horse and rode fast and furious to London. -He was at once taken before the Company. He was publicly thanked for -his services, presented with a set of silver and given a present of a -hundred guineas. He became the lion of the hour. Nor did he forget his -French confrères. The committee at once voted each of the Frenchmen -twenty shillings a week for pocket money and ordered their board paid. -Later, Mr. Radisson is authorized to offer them salaries ranging from -£100 a year to £50 if they will join the Company. But they are in no -haste to join the Company, and strangely, when they evince intentions -of going across to France—a thousand obstructions arise as out of -the ground. They are watched—even threatened; politely, of course, -but threatened with arrest. Some suave-tongued gentleman points out -an advantageous marriage that young Chouart might make with some -well-dowered English belle, like his Uncle Radisson, who had married -Mary Kirke. Monsieur Chouart shrugs his shoulders. He hasn’t a very -high opinion of the way Radisson has managed his marriage affairs. - -But when they find that they can gain their liberty in no other way, -these young French knights of the wilderness, they accept service -in the English company to be sent to the bay forthwith, and take -out “papers of denizenation,” which can be broken with less damage -to conscience than an oath of fealty and the forswearing of France. -And all the while, they are burning with rage that bodes ill for -Governor Phipps’ trick on the deck of _The Happy Return_. Letters -came from France to Chouart, letters from one Duluth, who is pushing -north from Lake Superior; letters from one Comporté, who has offered -to go overland and “wipe the English from the bay”; messages from a -bush-loper, one Péré, who is useful to the king of France as a spy. To -Comporté, Chouart writes: “_I am not at liberty to do as I wish. All -the advantages offered do not for a moment cause me to waver. I shall -be happy to meet you by the route you travel. I will perish or be at -the place you desire me to go. It is saying enough. I will keep my -word._” To his mother at Three Rivers, the young Frenchman confesses: -“_Orders have been given to arrest me if I try to leave. I will cause -it to be known in France that I never wished to follow the English. -I will abandon this nation. I have been forced here by my Uncle’s -subterfuges. See M. Duluth in my behalf and M. Péré and all our good -friends._” “All our good friends,” are the bushrangers who are working -overland north from the St. Lawrence to intercept the trade of Hudson -Bay—especially “Mons. Péré.” - -And the same French Government that has compelled Radisson to go -back to England, issues orders to the Governor of New France—M. de -Denonville, “to arrest Radisson wherever he may be found,” “to reward -young Groseillers if he will desert from Hudson’s Bay,” and “to pay -fifty pistolles” to any man who seizes Radisson. And the reason for -this duplicity of statecraft? Plain enough. The Stuart throne is -tottering in England. When it falls, there falls also the secret treaty -with France. His Most Christian Majesty does not wish to relinquish -claim to one foot of ground in the North, and well might he not—it was -an empire as large as half Europe. - - * * * * * - -Meantime, the Company was proceeding on the even tenor of its ways. -Dividends of 50 per cent. were paid in ’83, the same in ’84, despite -interception of furs by the French overlanders. In the suit for loss by -the owners of Ben Gillam’s ship, the Company had emerged triumphant—its -monopoly vindicated, and in 1684, Captain Walker of the south coast -coming out of the bay on _The Diligence_, captured another pirate -ship, _The Expectation_, whose owners again tested the Company’s claim -to exclusive trade on the bay, by a lawsuit; and again the Company -came out a victor—its monopoly justified by the courts. Three of the -ships—_Happy Return_, Captain Bond; _Owners’ Good Will_, Captain -Lucas, and _Success_, Captain Outlaw—were yearly chartered from Sir -Stephen Evance, a rich goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder -in the Company. Besides these, there were _The Perpetuana Merchant_, -Captain Hume, with Smithsend as mate; _The Diligence_, Captain Walker; -the sloop _Adventure_, Captain Geyer, and one frigate; in all a fleet -of seven vessels, each carrying from twelve to twenty men plying -to and from the bay. It was in 1686 that the sloop was sent north -of Nelson to Churchill River, named after the great General—to open -trade on the river where Munck’s Danes had suffered such frightful -disaster. About this time, too, poor London boys began to go out as -apprentices—scullions, valets, general knockabouts—among whom was one -Henry Kelsey engaged at £8 a year, and his keep for Port Nelson. When -James, Duke of York, became king, the position of governor of the -Company was vacated, and Sir James Hayes, who seems always to have -been the Company’s emissary in all court matters, is directed by the -governing committee “_to bespeak the Lord John Churchill to dynner at -ye Rummor Tavernne in Queen’s Street_” on business for the company’s -very great interests. What that business was became evident at the -General Court of the Adventurers called on April 2, 1685, when my Lord -Churchill is elected governor by unanimous ballot. Phipps remains at -Nelson as local governor, Sargeant at Albany, Nixon at Moose. Bridgar -has been transferred to Rupert River, not important now, because -the French are luring the Indians away, and Radisson is general -superintendent of all trade, spending the winters in London to arrange -the furs for sale and to choose the out-going cargoes, going each -summer to the bay to barter with the Indians. - -_Notes on Chapter X._—With the exception of the two petitions filed -by Radisson and Groseillers in France, and of young Groseillers’ -letters—all the contents of this chapter are drawn from the official -records of the Hudson’s Bay House. Young Groseillers, by the way, is -usually called Jean Baptiste, but as he signs himself Chouart I have -referred to him by that name. - -The real reason why Radisson came back to England is so new to history -that I have given the instructions of the French Government in full. -Radisson refers to these instructions in his affidavit of 1697, a -document—which for State reasons—has never been given to the public -till now. The State reasons will become plainer as the record goes on. -Both governments were lying to sustain fictitious claims for damages. -Herewith in part, is Radisson’s affidavit, taken before Sir Robert -Jeffery, Aug. 23, 1697, left with the English commissioners of claims -against France the 5th of June, 1699: - -“Peter Esprit Radisson of the Parish of St. James in the County of -Middlesex Esqr. aged sixty-one years or thereabouts maketh oath that -he came into England in the year 1665 And in the year 1672 married one -of the Daughters of Sir John Kirke. And in the year 1667 this deponent -with his Brother in law Medard Chouart De Groseilier were designed -for a voyage in the service of the English to Hudson Bay, which they -undertook, this deponent going on board the ship _Eagle_ then commanded -by one Captain Wm. Stanard was hindered being disabled at sea by bad -weather, soe could not compleate the sd. intended Voyage, But the sd. -Grosilier proceeded in another English ship called the _Nonsuch_ and -arrived in the Bottom of Hudson’s Bay on a certaine River then which -Capt. Zachary Gillam commander of the sd. ship ... then named Rupert -River in Honor of His Highness Prince Rupert who was chiefly interested -in that expedition.... And this deponent alsoe saith that in the year -1668 He went from England ... to another voyage to Port Nelson on an -English ship called the _Wavero_ but was also obstructed ... and at -his returne found the sd. Grossilier safely arrived ... and in the -year 1669 this deponent went on the sd. ship the _Wavero_ commanded by -Captain Newland & arrived at Port Nelson ... and in the year 1670 the -sd. Grosilier was sent in an English Barke to Port Nelson ... and in -the year 1673 there arising some difference between the Hudson’s Bay -Company of England & this deponent, this deponent went unto France ... -and in the year 1682 there were two Barkes fitted out at Canada ... -sailed to Hudson’s Bay and arrived on Hayes River ... and took Port -Nelson and an English vessel which came from New England commanded by -one Benj. Gillam ... and gave the name of Bourbon to the said Port -Nelson ... and in the year 1683 he came from Canada to Paris by order -of Monsr. Colbert, who soone after dyed. And this deponent being at -Paris was there informed that the Lord Preston, Ambassador of the -King of England had given in a Memoriall ... against this Deponent -And after this deponent had been several times with the Marquis de -Seignlay & Monsr. Calliere (one of the Plenipotentiaries at the Treaty -of Peace) this Deponent found that the French had quitted all pretences -to Hudson Bay, And thereupon in the year 1684 in the month of Aprill, -this deponent by the special direction of the sd. Monsr. Calliere did -write the papers hereunto annexed ... ” (there follow the instructions -to return to England as given in the text) ... “which the sd. Monsr. -Calliere dictated ... and the sd. Monsr. Calliere acted in the sd. -affaire by the directions of the Superintendent of Marine affairs in -France.... And the deponent was commanded by the sd. Monsr. Calliere -... to goe to Port Nelson to withdraw the French from thence, And to -restore the same to the English who—he sd.—should be satisfied for the -wrong & damages done them by this deponent ... and this deponent went -in one of the Hudson’s Bay Company ships to Port Nelson and withdrew -the French that were there from that Place, and the sd. Place was then -put into possession of the English ... and the French that withdrew -were brought unto England.... - -(Signed) Pierre Esprit Radisson London.” - -August 1697. - -Those who wish a more detailed account of Radisson will find it in -_Pathfinders of the West_. Chouart’s letter will be found in the -appendix of the same volume. _Documents Relatifs a la Nouvelle France_, -Tome I (1492-1712), contains the petitions filed by Radisson and -Groseillers in France. - -It has been almost a stock criticism of the shallow nowadays to say -that an author has rejected original authorities, if the author refers -to printed records, or to charge that the author has ignored secondary -authorities, if the writer refers only to original documents. I may -say that I have not depended on secondary authorities in the case of -Radisson, because to refer to them would be to point out inaccuracies -in every second line—an ungrateful tack. But I have consulted and -possess in my own library every book that has ever been printed on the -early history of the Northwest. As for original documents, I spent six -months in London on records whose dust had not been disturbed since -they were written in the sixteen-hundreds. The herculean nature of this -laborious task can best be understood when it is realized that these -records are not open to the public and it is impossible to have an -assistant do the copying. The transcripts had to be done by myself, and -revised by an assistant at night. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -1685-1686 - -WHEREIN THE REASONS FOR YOUNG CHOUART GROSEILLERS’ MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE -TO OUR GOOD FRIEND “PÉRÉ” ARE EXPLAINED—THE FOREST ROVERS OF NEW FRANCE -RAID THE BAY BY SEA AND LAND—TWO SHIPS SUNK—PÉRÉ, THE SPY, SEIZED AND -SENT TO ENGLAND - - -It is now necessary to follow the fleet of seven ships—four large -frigates, three sloops for inland waters—to the bay. Radisson goes -as general superintendent with Captain Bond and Captain Lucas to -Nelson—the port farthest north. In these ships, too, go young Chouart -Groseillers and his French companions, bound for four years to the -Hudson’s Bay Company, albeit they have received and sent mysterious -messages to and from “our good friend, Monsieur Jan Péré,” of Quebec, -swearing they will meet him at some secret rendezvous or “perish in -the attempt.” What Chouart Groseillers and his friends—sworn to serve -the English company—mean by secret oaths to meet French bush-rovers -from Quebec—remains to be seen. Young Mike Grimmington is second mate -on Captain Outlaw’s ship, _The Success_, destined for the fort south -of Nelson—Albany, where bluff old Governor Sargeant holds sway from -his bastioned stronghold on the island at the mouth of Albany River. -Bridgar—quondam governor at Nelson—now goes with the small sloops bound -for the bottom of the bay—Moose and Charlton Island and Rupert River. - - * * * * * - -No Robin Hoods of legendary lore ever lived in more complete security -than the Gentlemen Adventurers of Hudson Bay. Radisson—the one man to -be feared as a rival—had been compelled by the French Court to join -them. So had his followers. The forts on the bay seemed immune from -attack. To the south, a thousand miles of juniper swamp and impassable -cataracts separated the English fur traders from the fur traders of -New France. To the west, was impenetrable, unknown wilderness. To the -north, the realm of iron cold. The Adventurers of Hudson Bay slumbered -secure on the margin of their frozen sea. Rupert and Moose—the forts -of the south—yearly collected 5,000 beaver pelts each, not counting as -many again of other rare furs. Albany—where the bay turns north—gave a -yearly quota of 3,500, and Nelson sent out as much as $100,000 worth of -beaver in a single year. The Adventurers had found a gold mine rich as -Spanish Eldorado. - -To be sure, the French fur traders, who had been led to the bay by -Radisson once, would now be able to find the way there for themselves, -but the French fur traders demanded four beavers in barter where -the English asked only two, and two French ships that had come up -under Lamartiniére commissioned “to seize Radisson,” could neither -find Radisson nor an Indian who would barter them a single pelt. -They dare not land at Nelson, for it was now English. Reefing sails, -Lamartiniére’s ships spent the summer of ’85 dodging the ice floes -and hiding round Digges’ Island at the inside end of the straits for -reasons that young Chouart Groseillers might have explained if he would. - -It was July before the fleet of Hudson’s Bay boats reached the straits. -Ice jam and tide-rip had presently scattered the fleet. As usual, the -smaller vessels showed their heels to danger and slipping along the -lee edge of the floes, came to the open water of the bay first. _The -Happy Return_, under Captain Bond with Monsieur Radisson, Monsieur -Chouart and his comrades; _The Success_, under Captain Outlaw; _The -Merchant Perpetuana_, under Captain Hume, with mates Smithsend and Mike -Grimmington looking anxiously over decks at the tumult of ramming ice -that swept past—came worming their way laboriously through the ice -floes, small sails only out, grappling irons hooked to the floating -icepans, cables of iron strength hauling and pulling the frigates up to -the ice, with crews out to their armpits in ice slush ready to loose -and sheer from the danger of undertow when the tide ripple came. - -On July 27, with the crews forespent and the ships badly battered, the -three emerged on the open water of Hudson Bay and steered to rest for -the night under shelter of the rocky shores off Digges’ Island. Like -ghosts from the gloom, shadows took form in the night mist—two ships -with foreign sails on this lonely sea, where all other ships were -forbidden. In a trice, the deathly silence of the sea is broken by the -roar of cannonading. It is Monsieur Radisson, on whose head there is -a price, who realizes the situation first and with a shout that they -are trapped by French raiders—by Lamartiniére—bids Captain Bond flee -for his life. Captain Bond needs no urgings. _The Happy Return’s_ -sails are out like the wings of a frightened bird and she is off like -a terrified quarry pursued by a hawk. Nor does Captain Outlaw on _The -Success_ wait for argument. With all candles instantly put out, he, -too, steers for the hiding of darkness on open water. _The Perpetuana_ -is left alone wedged between Lamartiniére’s two French ships. Hooked -gang planks seize her on both sides in a death grapple. Captain Hume, -Mates Smithsend and Mike Grimmington with half a dozen others are -surrounded, overpowered, disarmed, fettered and clapped under hatches -of the victorious ships. Before morning, _The Perpetuana_ had been -scuttled of her cargo. Fourteen of her crew have been bayoneted and -thrown overboard. A month later, cargo and vessel and captives are -received with acclaim at Quebec. Captain Hume is sent home to France in -December on a man-of-war to lie in a dungeon of Rochelle till he can -obtain ransom. So are Mr. Richard Alio and Andrew Stuckey—seamen. The -rest are to lie in the cells below Château St. Louis, Quebec, on fare -of bread and water for six months. - -[Illustration: Montagu House, Hayes River, where _The Dobbs_ and _The -California_ wintered in 1747—photographed from Henry Ellis’s Voyages.] - -Mike Grimmington is held and “tortured” to compel him to betray the -secrets of navigation at the different harbors of Hudson Bay, but Mate -Grimmington tells no tales; for he learns that rumors of raid are in -the air at Quebec. Though England and France are at peace, the fur -traders of Quebec are asking commission for one Chevalier de Troyes -with the brothers of the family Le Moyne, to raid the bay, fire the -forts, massacre the English. Smithsend by secret messenger sends a -letter with warnings of the designs to the Hudson’s Bay Company in -England, and Smithsend for his pains is sold with his comrades into -slavery in Martinique, whence he escapes before spring. Grimmington is -held prisoner for two years before a direct order from the French Court -sets him free. Other things, Grimmington hears in Quebec of the French -on the bay. - -All unsuspecting of plots at Quebec and pirate attacks on the Company’s -ships, the governors of the different forts on the bay awaited the -coming of the ships. From July, it was customary to keep harbor lights -out on the sand-bars, and station sentinels day and night to watch for -the incoming fleet. Secret codes of signals had been left the year -before with the forts. If the incoming ships did not display these -signals, the sentinels were ordered to cut the harbor buoys, put out -the lights, and give the alarm. If the signals were correct, cannon -roared a welcome, flags were run up, and pilots went out in small boats -to guide the ships in through sand-bars and bowlder reefs. - -At Albany, Governor Sargeant, whose wife and family were now with him -at the fort—had ordered a sort of lookout, or crow’s-nest, built of -scaffolding, on a hill above the fort. As far as known, not a single -Englishman had up to this time penetrated the wilds west of the bay. -One Robert Sanford had been ordered this very year to “go up into the -country,” but fear of French bush-rovers made him report that such a -course was very unsafe. It would be wiser and safer for the Company -to give handsome presents to the Indian chiefs. This would induce -them to bring their tribes down to the bay. So the sentinel at Albany -could hardly believe his senses one morning when from the eerie height -of his lookout he espied three men—three white men, steering a canoe -down the swift, tumultuous current of the rain-swollen river. They -were coming _not_ from the sea, but from the Upcountry. This was a -contingency the cutting of harbor buoys had not provided against. The -astounded sentinel ran to Sargeant with the alarm. Cannon were manned -and Governor Sargeant took his stand in the gate of the palisaded walls. - -Beaching their canoe, the three white men marched jauntily up to the -governor. The shaggy eyes of the bluff old governor took in the fact -that the newcomers were French—Frenchmen dressed as bush-lopers, but -with the manners of gentlemen, introducing themselves with the debonair -gayety of their race, Monsieur Péré, Monsieur Coultier de Comporté -and a third, whose name is lost to the records. Old Governor Sargeant -scratched his burly beard. England and France were at peace, very -much at peace when France had sent Radisson back; and he must treat -the visitors with courtesy; but what were gentlemen doing dressed as -bush-rovers? Hunting—taking their pleasure where they found it—knights -of the wildwoods—says my good friend, Jan Péré, doffing his fur capote -with a bow. Governor Sargeant hails good friend Péré into the fort, to -a table loaded with game and good wine and the hospitality of white -men lonely for companionship as a sail at sea. The wine passes freely -and stories pass freely, stories of the hunt and the voyage and of -Monsieur Radisson and his friends, whom the Governor expects back this -year—soon, very soon, any day now the ships may come. - -But at base, every Hudson’s Bay Company man is a trader. Governor -Sargeant evincing no zealous desire to extend his hospitality longer, -Monsieur Péré tactfully evinces no desire to stay. The gay adventurers -aver they are going to coast along the shore—that alkali shore between -the main coast of cedar swamps and the outer reef of bowlders—where -good sport among feathered game is to be expected. Once they are out -of sight from Albany, the three Frenchmen rest on their paddles and -confer. They had not counted on leaving _quite_ so soon. Still gay as -schoolboys on an escapade, that night as they sleep on shore under the -stars, they take good care to leave their canoe so that the high tide -carries it out to sea. What is to be done now—a thousand miles by -swamp from the nearest French fort? Presto—go back to the English fort, -of course; and back they trudge to Albany with their specious farce of -misadventure. - -Meanwhile, Outlaw on _The Success_, had arrived at Albany with the -tale of Lamartiniére’s raid and the loss of _The Perpetuana_. Before -Monsieur Jan Péré can feign astonishment—he is dumfounded at the news, -is Monsieur Péré—Governor Sargeant has clapped irons on his wrists -and irons on his feet. The fair-tongued spy is cast manacled into the -bastion that served as prison at Albany, and his two comrades are -transported across to Charlton Island to earn their living hunting till -they have learned that no one may tamper with the fur trade of the -English adventurers. What welcome Chouart Groseillers and his French -comrades received—is not told in Hudson’s Bay annals. They go north to -Nelson for the next four years, then drop from the pay lists of the -Company, and reappear as fur traders of New France. It would hardly be -stretching historic fact to infer that these daring French youths took -to the tall timbers. - -Over on Charlton Island, Péré’s comrades hunted as to the wildwoods -born; hunted so diligently that by September they had store enough of -food to stock them for the winter. By September the boats that met at -Charlton Island had sailed. No one was left to watch the Frenchmen. -They hastily constructed for themselves a large canoe, loaded it with -their provisions, set out under cover of night and reached the south -shore of James Bay, keeping well away from Moose and Rupert River. -Then they paddled for life upstream toward New France. By October, ice -formed, cutting the canoe. They killed a moose, cured the buckskin -above punk smoke, made themselves snowshoes and marched overland seven -hundred miles to the French fort at Michilimackinac. Word ran like -wildfire from Lake Superior to Quebec—Jan Péré was held in prison at -Albany. These were the rumors Mike Grimmington and Richard Smithsend -heard from their prison cells under Château St. Louis. If these two -spies can march overland in midwinter, cannot a band of bush-rovers -march overland to the rescue of Péré? France and England are at peace; -but Albany holds Péré in prison, and Quebec holds Mike Grimmington and -Smithsend in the cellar of the Château St. Louis. - - * * * * * - -Up on the bay, old Sargeant was puzzled what to do with Péré. All told, -there were only eighty-nine men on Hudson Bay at this time. It was -decided that Outlaw should remain for the winter with Sargeant, but -take Péré up to Captains Bond and Lucas at Nelson to be shipped home -to England, where the directors could decide on his fate. On October -27, Bond and Lucas arrived in London, and on October 29, the minutes -of the Company report “one Monsieur Jan Péré sent home by Governor -Sargeant as a French spy.” The full report of _The Perpetuana’s_ loss -was laid before the Company on the 30th. On November 4, Monsieur Péré -is examined by a committee. Within a week the suave spy suffers such a -change of heart, he applies on November 11 for the privilege of joining -the Company. Before the Company have given answer to that request, -comes a letter from Captain Hume dated December 13, Rochelle, France, -giving a full account of the wreck of _The Perpetuana_, the indignities -suffered at Quebec, stating that he is in a dungeon awaiting the -Company’s ransom. Captain Hume is ordered to pay what ransom is -necessary and come to England at once, but it is manifest that the -French spy, Jan Péré, must be held for the safety of the other English -prisoners at Quebec. The Company lodges a suit of £5,000 damages -against him, which will keep Péré in gaol till he can find bail, and -when he sends word to know the reason for such outrage, the minutes of -the Company glibly put on record “_that he hath damnified the company -very considerably_.” Unofficially, he is told that the safety of his -life depends on the safety of those English prisoners held at Quebec. -In January arrives Captain Hume, putting on record his affidavit of the -wreck of _The Perpetuana_. In February, 1686, comes that letter from -Smithsend which he smuggled out of his prison in Quebec, “_ye contents -to be kept private and secret_,” warning the Company that raiders are -leaving Canada overland for the bay. By March, Jan Péré is on his -knees to join the Company. The Company lets him stay on his knees in -prison. All is bustle at Hudson’s Bay House fitting out frigates for -the next summer. Eighteen extra men are to be sent to Albany, twelve to -Moose, six to Rupert. Monsieur Radisson is instructed to inspect the -large guns sent over from Holland to be sent out to the bay. Monsieur -Radisson advises the Company to fortify Nelson especially strongly, for -hence come the best furs. - -The Company is determined to be ready for the raid, but the straits -will not be clear of ice before July. - -_Notes on Chapter XI._—The contents of this chapter are taken from -the Minutes of the Company, Hudson’s Bay House. All French records -state that Hume was killed in the loss of _The Perpetuana_. As I have -his letter from Rochelle, dated December, 1685, this is a mistake. He -reached England, January, 1686, and his affidavit is in Hudson’s Bay -House. Captain Bond was severely censured by the Company for deserting -_The Perpetuana_. If he had not fled, the French would without a -doubt have dispatched Radisson on the spot. Some of the men of _The -Perpetuana_ spent two years imprisoned in Quebec. Up to this time, by -wreck and raid, including sloops as well as frigates—the Company had -lost thirteen vessels. Record of Péré is found also in French state -documents of this date. Smithsend escaped to England, February 14, -1686. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -1686-1687 - -PIERRE LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY - - -With Captain Outlaw’s crew adding strength to Albany, and Governor -Bridgar’s crew wintering at Rupert River, the Adventurers on Hudson -Bay once more felt secure. Like a bolt from the blue came the French -raiders into the midst of this security. - -It was one of the long summer nights on the 18th of June, 1686, -when twilight of the North merges with dawn. Fourteen cannon in all -protruded from the embrasures of the four stone bastions round Moose -Factory—the southwest corner of the bay; and the eighteen-foot pickets -of the palisaded square wall were everywhere punctured with holes for -musketry. In one bastion were three thousand pounds of powder. In -another, twelve soldiers slept. In a third were stored furs. The fourth -bastion served as kitchen. Across the middle of the courtyard was the -two-story storehouse and residence of the chief factor. The sentinel -had shot the strong iron bolts of the main gate facing the waterway, -and had lain down to sleep wrapped in a blanket without loading the -cannon it was his duty to guard. Twilight of the long June night—almost -the longest day in the year—had deepened into the white stillness that -precedes dawn, when two forms took shape in the thicket of underbrush -behind the fort, and there stepped forth clad in buckskin _cap-à-pie_, -musket over shoulder, war hatchet, powderhorn, dagger, pistol in belt -and unscabbarded sword aglint in hand, two French wood-lopers, the -far-famed _coureurs des bois_, whose scalping raids were to strike -terror from Louisiana to Hudson Bay. - -At first glance, the two scouts might have been marauding Iroquois -come this outrageous distance through swamp and forest from their -own fighting ground. Closer scrutiny showed them to be young French -noblemen, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville, age twenty-four, and his -brother, Sainte Hélène, native to the roving life of the bushranger, -to pillage and raid and ambuscade as the war-eagle to prey. Born in -Montreal in 1661 and schooled to all the wilderness perils of the -struggling colony’s early life, Pierre le Moyne, one of nine sons of -Charles le Moyne, at Montreal, became the Robin Hood of American wilds. - -Sending his brother Ste. Hélène round one side of the pickets to -peer through the embrasures of the moonlit fortress, Pierre le Moyne -d’Iberville skirted the other side himself and quickly made the -discovery that not one of the cannon was loaded. The tompion was in -every muzzle. Scarcely a cat’s-paw of wind dimpled the waters. The bay -was smooth as silk. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasined tread of -the two spies. There was the white silence, the white midnight pallor -of Arctic night, the diaphanous play of Northern lights over skyey -waters, the fine etched shadows of juniper and fir and spruce black as -crayon across the pale-amber swamps. - -With a quick glance, d’Iberville and his brother took in every detail. -Then they melted back in the pallid half-light like shadows. In a -trice, a hundred forms had taken shape in the mist—sixty-six Indians -decked in all the war-gear of savage glory from head-dress and -vermilion cheeks to naked red-stained limbs lithe as tiger, smooth and -supple as satin—sixty-six Indians and thirty-three half-wild French -soldiers gay in all the regimentals of French pomp, commanded by old -Chevalier de Troyes, veteran of a hundred wars, now commissioned to -demand the release of Monsieur Péré from the forts of the English fur -traders. Beside De Troyes, stood De la Chesnay, head of the Northern -Company of Fur Traders in Quebec, only too glad of this chance to raid -the forts of rivals. And well to the fore, cross in hand, head bared, -the Jesuit Sylvie had come to rescue the souls of Northern heathendom -from hell. - -Impossible as it may seem, these hundred intrepid wood-runners had -come overland from Montreal. While Grimmington and Smithsend were -still in prison at Quebec, d’Iberville and his half-wild followers had -set out in midwinter on a voyage men hardly dared in summer. Without -waiting for the ice to break up, leaving Montreal in March, they had -followed the frozen river bed of the Ottawa northward, past the Rideau -and Chaudiere Falls tossing their curtains of spray in midair where -the city of Ottawa stands to-day, past the Mattawa which led off to -the portages of Michilimackinac and the Great Lakes, up the palisaded -shores of the Temiscamingue to Lake Abbittibbi, the half-way watershed -between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. French silver mines, which -the English did not rediscover to the present century, were worked at -Temiscamingue. At Abbittibbi, a stockade was built in the month of May, -and three Canadians left to keep guard. Here, too, pause was made to -construct canoes for the voyage down the watershed of Moose River to -James Bay. Instead of waiting for the ice of the Ottawa to break up, -the raiders had forced their march to be on time to float down on the -swollen currents of the spring thaw to Moose Factory, four-hundred -miles from the height of land. - -And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had -proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied -to each man’s back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but -what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder, -the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague -promise of loot from the English wigwamming—as the Indians say—on the -Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic -daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest -in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by -spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting -windfall and dank forest growth around the bay? - -If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now. -Unknown cataracts, unknown whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless -rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of -rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d’Iberville’s canoe -was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and -two others only saved by d’Iberville, himself, leaping to the rescue -and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with -hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking -to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven -miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot -over ice-cold, slippery river bed. - -It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back -from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur -traders were really wigwamming on the bay—by which the Indians meant -“wintering.” Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes -were cast aside and _cached_. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees -invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur. -Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin; -for these men fought with all the Spartan ferocity of the Indian -fighter—that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in -defeat. - -Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened -powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sovereign -Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every -enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old -Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Dollard’s fight on the Long -Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there -was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or -perish! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood-rovers that -in at least one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts were fifty-thousand -crowns’ worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors. -De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious -onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each -flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild -yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and -his brothers, Ste. Hélène and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and -across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind -the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Hélène’s saber -split the fellow’s head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was -used to ram the main gate. Iberville’s Indians had hacked down the -rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the -sixteen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what -was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides -the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire -of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs -were evidently stored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by -sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three-thousand pounds of -powder. Flag unfurled, muskets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier -de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most -Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how -such an act was accomplished in time of peace, when the sole object of -the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Péré, imprisoned as a spy. - -Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of -the bay on Rupert’s River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions -of stone, with a dock where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships commonly -anchored for the summer. Northwestward of Moose, some hundred miles, -was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders’ -strength, forty paces back from the water. Unassailable by sea, it was -the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first. -Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Chevalier de -Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on -the 27th of June. - -[Illustration: Petition to the H. B. C. signed by Churchill, or -Marlborough.] - -Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By -sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe, -this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first -man to blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by -hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a -glimpse of Rupert’s bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians, -he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company’s -ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar -was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville -stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary. -Then he glided across the water to the schooner. - -Hand over fist, he was up the ship’s sides when the sleeping sentinel -awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville’s sword, -and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman’s feet. Iberville then -stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men -in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor -Bridgar, himself, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of -the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found -himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions -were dismantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry -poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a -distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The -bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense and barracks. -Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to -the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and -threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as -well as the enemy to eternity. “It was,” says the old chronicle, “with -an effect most admirable”—which depends on the point of view; for when -the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house inside, -gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville with his -followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down more bombs. -As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman dashed up -stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for her to -retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment he was -down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, followed by -the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had -been the factor’s room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders, -Iberville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a -woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left -for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is -now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a -bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called in the surgeon, and barring -the door from the outside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot. -The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship -and thirty prisoners. - -The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three -hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Péré -was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that -the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual, -Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the -soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was -sunset when the canoes launched out from Rupert River. To save time by -crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from -the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter -northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes -about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell -thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice -floes it was destruction. - -Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moynes’ -two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two. -There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice, -hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyageurs’ heads -out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered -through the iceslush the human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind -of canoe work for Iberville’s Indians. When daylight came through the -gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns -firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse, -portaging where there was ice, paddling where there was water. Four -days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian -wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his Indians and bush-lopers -below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the -boat with soldiers and cannon. - -Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian -coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave -sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all -sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty -yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside -the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair -that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment. -Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court -pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line, -and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out -to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Péré, a loyal -subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at -the hands of the English. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders -would have done without the excuse of Péré. The messenger came back -from Governor Sargeant with word that Péré had been sent home to France -by way of England long ago. (That Péré had been delayed in an English -prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender -of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in -time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider. -With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most -of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a -few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a -ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilderness of -forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat -empty-handed. - -Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the -raiders’ hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his -teeth clinched to the end, though the larder was lean and only enough -powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon. -When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner, -dashed from his post roaring out he was going to throw himself on the -mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with -the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two -English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting -their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to -hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies, -over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor, -imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without -an advance of pay anyway, they added in words that should go down to -posterity, “_for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make -it good_.” Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his guns -spitting defiance at the enemy. - -For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was -more parleying. Bridgar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to -tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled -to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped -against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then -Captain Outlaw came from the powder magazines with word there was no -more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to -desert _en masse_ to the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused to -beat a parley; so Dixon, the under factor, hung out a white sheet as -flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased firing -to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting iron -round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with word -of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out -with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank -healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if -his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums -beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers, -wives and servants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to -be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the -English ship. - -Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed -into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns’ -worth of beaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl of -barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither powder -nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, and it -was a wild scramble for home—_sauve qui peut_, as the old chronicler -relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec as carriers of -the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being turned adrift in -the desolate wilderness of the bay! It was October before Iberville’s -forest rovers were back in Montreal. - -From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port -Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these -were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the -woods, and the Hudson’s Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the -loot for the French raiders back to Quebec—suffered slim mercies from -their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of -burden for the small French garrison, and received no food but what -they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others -attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw’s -ship _Success_, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving six -were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were -set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever -heard of again. - -_Notes on Chapter XII._—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the -documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and the State Papers of the -Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remarkable how completely the State -papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. C. House are -the Minutes, Governor Sargeant’s affidavit, Bridgar’s report, Outlaw’s -oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw’s crew—namely, John -Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, Edmund Clough, -Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids now became an -international matter, duplicates of most of these papers are to be -found in the Public Records Office, London. All French historians give -some account of this raid of Iberville’s; but all are drawn from the -same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from one De Lery, -who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old English -chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant’s papers, as he relates -some details only to be found in Hudson’s Bay House. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -1686-1697 - -D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY (_Continued_) - - -The French were now in complete possession of the south end of Hudson -Bay. Iberville’s brother, Maricourt, with a handful of men remained -at Albany to guard the captured forts. Some of the English, who had -taken to the woods in flight, now found the way to Severn River, -half-way north between Albany and Nelson, where they hastily rushed -up rude winter quarters and boldly did their best to keep the Indians -from communicating with the French. Among the refugees was Chouart -Groseillers, who became one of the chief advisers at Nelson. Two of -his comrades had promptly deserted to the French side. For ten years, -Hudson Bay became the theater of such escapades as buccaneers might -have enacted on the Spanish Main. England and France were at peace. A -Treaty of Neutrality, in 1686, had provided that the bay should be held -in common by the fur traders of both countries, but the Company of the -North in Quebec and the English Adventurers of London had no notion of -leaving their rights in such an ambiguous position. Both fitted out -their raiders to fight the quarrel to the end, and in spite of the -Treaty of Neutrality, the King of France issued secret instructions -to the bush-rovers of Quebec “_to leave of the English forts on the -Northern Bay, not a vestige standing_.” If the bay were to be held in -common, and the English abandoned it, all rights would revert to France. - -The year 1687 saw the tireless Iberville back at Rupert River. The -Hudson’s Bay sloop, _The Young_, had come to port. Iberville seized -it without any ado and sent four spies over to Charlton Island where -_The Churchill_, under Captain Bond, was wintering. Three of the French -spies were summarily captured by the English fur traders and thrown -into the hold of the ship, manacled, for the winter. In spring, one was -brought above decks to give the English sailors a helping hand. The -fellow waited till six of the crew were up the ratlines, then he seized -an axe, tip-toed up behind two Englishmen, brained them on the spot, -rushing down the hatchway liberated his two comrades, took possession -of all firearms and at pistol point kept the Englishmen up the mast -poles till he steered the vessel across to Iberville at Rupert River, -where a cargo of provisions saved the French from famine. - -It was in vain that the English sent rescue parties south from Nelson -and Severn to recapture Albany. Captain Moon had come down from Nelson -with twenty-four men to Albany, reinforced by the crews of the two -ships, _Hampshire_ and _North-West Fox_, when Iberville came canoeing -across the ice floes with his Indian bandits. The English ships were -locked in the ice before the besieged fort. Iberville ambushed his men -in the tamarack swamps till eighty-two English had landed. Then, he -rushed the deserted vessels, took possession of one with its cargo of -furs, and as the ice cleared sailed gayly out of Albany for Quebec. The -astounded English set fire to the other ship and retreated overland -to Severn. At the straits, Iberville ran full-tilt into the fleet of -incoming English vessels, but that was nothing to disconcert this -blockade-runner, not though the ice closed round them all, holding -French and English prisoners within gunshot of each other. Iberville -ran up an English flag on his captured ship and had actually signaled -the captains of the English frigates to come across the ice and visit -him when the water cleared, and away he sailed. - -Perhaps success bred reckless carelessness on the part of the French. -From 1690 to ’93, Iberville was absent from the bay on the border -raids of Schenectady, and Pemaquid in New England. Mike Grimmington -of _The Perpetuana_ was at last released from captivity in Quebec and -came to England with rage in his heart and vengeance in his hands for -France. It was now almost impossible for the English Adventurers to -hire captains and crews for the dangerous work of their trade on the -bay. The same pensions paid by the State were offered by the Company in -case of wounds or death, and in addition a bonus of twenty shillings -a month was guaranteed to the sailors, of from £50 to £200 a year to -the captains. A present of £10 plate was given to Grimmington for his -bravery and he was appointed captain. Coming out to Nelson in ’93, -Grimmington determined to capture back Albany for the English. Three -ships sailed down to Albany from Nelson. The fort looked deserted. -Led by Grimmington, the sailors hacked open the gates. Only four -Frenchmen were holding the fort. The rest of the garrison were off -hunting in the woods, and in the woods they were forced to remain -that winter; for Grimmington ransacked the fort, took possession and -clapped the French under Mons. Captain Le Meux, prisoners in the hold -of his vessel. With Grimmington on this raid was his old mate in -captivity—Smithsend. Albany was the largest fort on the bay at this -time. As the two English captains searched the cellars they came on a -ghastly sight—naked, covered with vermin, shackled hands to feet and -chained to the wall was a French criminal, who had murdered first the -surgeon, then the priest of the fort. He, too, was turned adrift in the -woods with the rest of the garrison. - - * * * * * - -Mons. Le Meux, carried to England captive, is examined by the English -Adventurers. From his account, all the French garrisons are small and -France holds but lightly what she has captured so easily. Captain -Grimmington is given a tankard worth £36 for his distinguished -services. Captain Edgecombe of _The Royal Hudson’s Bay_, who, in spite -of the war, has brought home a cargo of twenty-two thousand beaver, is -given plate to the value of £20 as well as a gratuity of £100. Captain -Ford, who was carried prisoner to France by Iberville, is ransomed, and -_The Hampshire_ vessel put up at auction in France is bid in by secret -agents of the English company. Chouart Groseillers is welcomed home -to London, and given a present of £100 and allowed to take a graceful -farewell of the Company, as are all its French servants. The Company -wants no French servants on the bay just now—not even Radisson to whom -Mons. Péré, now escaped to France, writes tempting offers. Sargeant, -who lost Albany in 1686, is first sued for £20,000 damages for -surrendering the fort so easily, and is then rewarded £350 for holding -it so bravely. Phipps has refused point-blank to serve as governor -any longer at so dangerous a point as Nelson for so small a salary as -£200 a year. Phipps comes home. Abraham tries it for a year. He, too, -loses relish for the danger spot, and Walsh goes to Nelson as governor -with the apprentice boy Henry Kelsey, risen to be first lieutenant. In -spite of wars and raids and ambuscades, there is a dividend of 50 per -cent. in ’88, (the King refusing to receive it personally as it might -prejudice him with France) and of 50 per cent. in ’89, and of 25 per -cent. in ’90 on stock which had been trebled, which was equivalent to -75 per cent. dividends; and there are put on record in the Company’s -minutes these sentiments: “_being thoroughly sensible of the great -blessing it has pleased Almighty God to give the company by the arrival -of the shippes, the comp’y doo thinke fitt to show some testimony -of their Humble thankfulness for Gods so great a mercy and doo now -unanimously resolve that the sum of £100 bee sett aparte as charity -money to be distributed amongst such persons as shall dye or be wounded -in the companies’ service, their widows or children & the secretary is -to keep a particular account in the company’s books for the future_.” -Stock forfeited for the breaking of rules is also to go to wounded men -and widows. - -And the Company is equally generous to itself; no shilling pay for -committeemen now but a salary of £300 a year to each committeeman of -the weekly meetings on the Company’s business. - -The upshot of the frequent meetings and increasing dividends was—the -Company resolved on a desperate effort to recapture the lost forts. -The English now held—Nelson, the great fur emporium of the North; New -Severn to the South, which had been built by refugees from Albany, -burnt twice to escape bush-raiders and as promptly rebuilt when the -French withdrew; and Albany, itself, which Mike Grimmington had -captured back. - -The French held Moose and Rupert on the south of the bay. - -[Illustration: - -Terms of surrender between Le Moyne d’Iberville and Governor Walsh at -York Fort. These terms, the Hudson’s Bay Company averred in petitions, -were grossly violated by the French. Original in the H. B. C. Memorial -Books transferred to Public Records. ] - -James Knight, who had acted variously as apprentice, trader and captain -from the beginning of the Company—was now appointed commander of the -south end of the bay, with headquarters at Albany, at a salary of £400 -a year. Here, he was to resist the French and keep them from advancing -north to Nelson. New Severn, next north, was still to serve as a refuge -in case of attack. At Nelson, in addition to Walsh, Bailey—a new -man—Geyer, a captain, and Kelsey were to have command as officers. -Three frigates—_The Dering_, _The Hudson’s Bay_ and _The Hampshire_ -are commissioned to the bay with letters of marque to war on all -enemies, and three merchantmen—_The Prosperous_, _The Owner’s Love_ -and _The Perry_ are also to go to the bay. Mutinous of voyages to the -bay, seamen are paid in advance, and two hundred and twenty gallons of -brandy are divided among the ships to warm up courage as occasion may -require. - - * * * * * - -But Iberville was not the man to let his winnings slip through his -fingers. It had now become more than a guerrilla warfare between -gamesters of the wilderness. It was a fight for ascendency on the -continent. It was a struggle to determine which nation was to command -the rivers leading inland to the unknown West. If the French raiders -were to hold the forts at the bottom of the bay, they must capture the -great stronghold of the English—Nelson. - -Taking on board one hundred and twenty woodrangers, Iberville sailed -from Quebec on August 10, 1694. He had two frigates—_The Poli_ and -_Salamander_. By September 24, he was unloading his cannon below the -earthworks of one hundred great guns at Nelson. Steady bombardment -from his frigates poured bombs into the fort from September 25 to -October 14, and without ceasing, the fort guns sent back a rain of -fire and ball. Chateauguay, Iberville’s brother, landed to attempt -a rush with his bush-rovers by the rear. He was met at the pickets -by a spattering fire and fell shot as other brave sons of the Le -Moyne family fell—wounded in front, shouting a rally with his dying -breath. The death of their comrade redoubled the fury of the raiders. -While long-range guns tore up the earthworks and cut great gashes -in the shattered palisades to the fore, the bushrangers behind had -knocked down pickets and were in a hand-to-hand fight in the ditch -that separated the rows of double palisades. In the hope of saving -their furs, Walsh and Kelsey hung out a tablecloth as flag of truce. -For a day, the parley lasted, the men inside the pickets seizing the -opportunity to eat and rest, and spill all liquor on the ground and -bury ammunition and hide personal treasures. The weather had turned -bitterly cold. Winter was impending. No help could come from England -till the following July. Walsh did his best in a bad bargain, asking -that the officers be lodged till the ships came the next year, that the -English be allowed the same provisions as the French, that no injury be -offered the English traders during the winter, and that they should be -allowed to keep the Company’s books. - -Iberville was depending on loot to pay his men, and would not hear -of granting the furs to the English, but he readily subscribed to -the other conditions of surrender, and took possession of the fort. -When Iberville hastily sailed away to escape through the straits -before winter closed them, he left De la Forêst commander at Nelson, -Jeremie, interpreter. And De la Forêst quickly ignored the conditions -of surrender. He was not a good man to be left in charge. He was one -of those who had outfitted Radisson in ’83 and lost when Radisson -turned Nelson over to the English in ’84. Early next year, the English -ships would come. If De la Forêst could but torture some of the -English officers, who were his prisoners, into betraying the secret -signals of the ships, he might lure them into port and recoup himself -for that loss of ten years ago. Only four officers were kept in the -fort. The rest of the fifty-three prisoners were harried and abused -so that they were glad to flee to the woods. Beds, clothes, guns and -ammunition—everything, was taken from them. Eight or ten, who hung -round the fort, were treated as slaves. One Englishman was tied to a -stake and tortured with hot irons to compel him to tell the signals -of the English ships. But the secret was not told. No English ships -anchored at Port Nelson in the summer of ’95. The sail that hove on -the offing was a French privateer. In the hold of this, the English -survivors were huddled like beasts, fed on pease and dogs’ meat. The -ship leaked, and when the water rose to mid-waist of the prisoners, -they were not allowed to come above decks, but set to pumping the -water out. On the chance of ransom money, the privateer carried the -prisoners in irons to France because—as one of the sufferers afterward -took oath—“_we had not the money to grease the commander’s fist for -our freedom_.” Of the fifty-three Hudson’s Bay men turned adrift from -Nelson, only twenty-five survived the winter. - -So the merry game went on between the rival traders of the North, -French and English fighting as furiously for a beaver pelt as the -Spanish fought for gold. The English Adventurers’ big resolutions to -capture back the bay had ended in smoke. They had lost Nelson and now -possessed only one fort on the bay—Albany, under Governor Knight; -but one thing now favored the English. Open war had taken the place -of secret treaty between France and England. The Company applied to -the government for protection. The English Admiralty granted two -men-of-war, _The Bonaventure_ and _Seaforth_, under Captain Allen. -These accompanied Grimmington and Smithsend to Nelson in ’96, so when -Iberville’s brother, Serigny, came out from France with provisions on -_The Poli_ and _Hardi_ for the French garrisons at Nelson, he found -English men-of-war lined up for attack in front of the fort. Serigny -didn’t wait. He turned swift heel for the sea, so swift, indeed, that -_The Hardi_ split on an ice floe and went to the bottom with all hands. -On August 26, Captain Allen of the Royal Navy, demanded the surrender -of Nelson from Governor De la Forêst. Without either provision or -powder, La Forêst had no choice but to capitulate. In the fort, Allen -seized twenty thousand beaver pelts. - -Nelson or York—as it is now known—consisted under the French rule of -a large square house, with lead roof and limestone walls. There were -four bastions to the courtyard—one for the garrisons’ lodgings, one -for trade, one for powder, one for provisions. All the buildings were -painted red. Double palisades with a trench between enclosed the yard. -There were two large gates, one to the waterside, one inland, paneled -in iron with huge, metal hinges showing the knobs of big nail heads. -A gallery ran round the roof of the main house, and on this were -placed five cannon. Three cannon were also mounted in each bastion. -The officers’ mess room boasted a huge iron hearth, oval tables, wall -cupboards, and beds that shut up in the wall-panels. - -Captain Allen now retaliated on the French for their cruelty to English -captives by taking the entire garrison prisoners. Loaded with furs to -the water-line, the English ships left Bailey and Kelsey at Nelson and -sailed slowly for England. Just at the entrance to the straits—the -place already made so famous by Indian attack on Hudson’s crew, and -French raid on _The Perpetuana_, a swift-sailing French privateer bore -down on the fleet, singled out Allen’s ship which was separated from -the other, poured a volley of shot across her decks which killed Allen -on the spot, and took to flight before the other ship could come to the -rescue. Was this Iberville’s brother—Serigny—on his way home? It will -never be known, for as the ships made no capture, the action is not -reported in French records. - -The war had reduced the Hudson’s Bay Company to such straits that -several of the directors had gone bankrupt advancing money to keep the -ships sailing. No more money could be borrowed in England, and agents -were trying to raise funds in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the Company -presented the captains—Smithsend and Grimmington—with £100 each for -capturing York. The captured furs replenished the exhausted finances -and preparation was made to dispatch a mighty fleet that would forever -settle mastery of the bay. - -Two hundred extra mariners were to be engaged. On _The Dering_, -Grimmington, now a veteran campaigner, was to take sixty fighting men. -Captain Moon was to have eighteen on the little frigate, _Perry_. -Edgecombe’s _Hudson’s Bay_, frigate, was to have fifty-five; Captain -Fletcher’s _Hampshire_, sixty; the fire ship _Prosperous_ another -thirty under a new man, Captain Batty. These mariners were in addition -to the usual seamen and company servants. On _The Hudson’s Bay_ also -went Smithsend as adviser in the campaign. Every penny that could be -raised on sales of beaver, all that the directors were able to pledge -of their private fortunes, and all the money that could be borrowed by -the Adventurers as a corporate company, went to outfit the vessels for -what was to be the deciding campaign. With Bailey in control at Nelson -and old Governor Knight down at Albany—surely the French could be -driven completely from the bay. - - * * * * * - -Those captives that Allen’s ship had brought to England, lay in prison -five months at Portsmouth before they were set free. Released at last, -they hastened to France where their emaciated, ragged condition spoke -louder than their indignant words. Frenchmen languishing in English -prison! Like wildfire ran the rumor of the outrage! Once before when -Péré, the Frenchman, had been imprisoned on Hudson Bay, Iberville -had thrust the sword of vengeance into the very heart of the English -fastness. France turned again to the same Robin Hood of Canada’s rude -chivalry. Iberville was at this time carrying havoc from hamlet to -hamlet of Newfoundland, where two hundred English had already fallen -before his sword and seven hundred been captured. - -On the 7th of April, 1697, Scrigny, his brother, just home from Nelson, -was dispatched from France with five men-of-war—_The Pelican_, _The -Palmier_, _The Profound_, _The Violent_, _The Wasp_—to be placed under -Iberville’s command at Placentia, Newfoundland, whence he was to -proceed to Hudson Bay with orders, “to leave not a vestige remaining” -of the English fur trade in the North. - -The squadron left Newfoundland on July 8. By the 25th, the ships had -entered the straits amid berg and floe, with the long, transparent -daylight, when sunset merges with sunrise. Iberville was on _The -Pelican_ with Bienville, his brother, two hundred and fifty men and -fifty guns. The other brother, Serigny, commanded _The Palmier_, and -Edward Fitzmaurice of Kerry, a Jacobite, had come as chaplain. A gun -gone loose in the hold of _The Wasp_, created a panic during the -heavy seas of the Upper Narrows in the straits—the huge implement of -terror rolling from side to side of the dark hold with each wash of -the billows in a way that threatened to capsize the vessel—not a man -daring to risk his life to stop the cannon’s roll; and several gunners -were crushed to death before _The Wasp_ could come to anchor in a quiet -harbor to mend the damage. On _The Pelican_, Iberville’s ship, forty -men lay in their berths ill of scurvy. The fleet was stopped by ice at -Digges’ Island at the west end of the straits—a place already famous -in the raiders’ history. Here, the icepans, contracted by the straits, -locked around the vessels in iron grip. Fog fell concealing the ships -from one another, except for the ensigns at the mastheads, which showed -all the fleet anchored southward except Iberville’s _Pelican_. For -eighteen days the impatient raider found himself forcibly gripped to -the ice floes in fog, his ship crushed and banged and bodily lifted -until a powder blast relieved pressure, or holes drilled and filled -with bombs broke the ice crush, or unshipping the rudder, his own -men disembarked and up to the waist in ice slush towed _The Pelican_ -forward. - -On the 25th of August at four in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. -Iberville saw that _The Palmier_ had been carried back in the straits. -_The Wasp_ and _Violent_ had disappeared, but straight to the fore, -ice-jammed, were _The Profound_, and—Iberville could scarcely believe -the evidence of his eyes—three English men-of-war, _The Hampshire_, and -_Dering_, and _Hudson’s Bay_ closing in a circle round the ill-fated -and imprisoned French ship. Just at that moment, the ice loosened. -Iberville was off like a bird in _The Pelican_, not waiting to see what -became of _The Profound_, which escaped from the ice that night after -a day’s bombardment when the English were in the act of running across -the ice for a hand-to-hand fight. - -On the 3rd of September, Iberville anchored before Port Nelson. -Anxiously, for two days, he scanned the sea for the rest of his fleet. -On the morning of the fifth, the peaked sails of three vessels rose -above the offing. Raising anchor, Iberville hastened out to meet them, -and signaled a welcome. No response signaled back. The horrified watch -at the masthead called down some warning. Then the full extent of the -terrible mistake dawned on Iberville. These were not his consort ships -at all. They were the English men-of-war, _The Hampshire_, Captain -Fletcher, fifty-two guns and sixty soldiers; _The Dering_, Captain -Grimmington, thirty guns and sixty men; _The Hudson’s Bay_, Edgecombe -and Smithsend, thirty-two guns and fifty-five men—hemming him in a -fatal circle between the English fort on the land and their own cannon -to sea. - -One can guess the wild whoop of jubilation that went up from the -Englishmen to see their enemy of ten years’ merciless raids, now -hopelessly trapped between their fleet and the fort. The English -vessels had the wind in their favor and raced over the waves all sails -set like a war troop keen for prey. Iberville didn’t wait. He had -weighed anchor to sail out when he thought the vessels were his own, -and now he kept unswervingly on his course. Of his original crew, forty -were invalided. Some twenty-five had been sent ashore to reconnoiter -the fort. Counting the Canadians and Indians taken on at Newfoundland, -he could muster only one hundred and fifty fighting men. Quickly, ropes -were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery -decks. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen -below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation -for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the -impending battle. Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen -in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand -grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and -war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships -knocked keels. Iberville knew it was to be like those old-time raids—a -Spartan conflict—a fight to the death; death or victory; and he swept -right up to _The Hampshire_, Fletcher’s frigate, the strongest of the -foe, where every shot would tell. _The Hampshire_ shifted broadsides to -the French; and at nine in the morning, the battle began. - -_The Hampshire_ let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the -decks of _The Pelican_ and stripped the French bare of masts to the -hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s _Dering_ and Smithsend’s -_Hudson’s Bay_ circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of -musketry fire across _The Pelican’s_ stern. At one fell blast, forty -French were mowed down; but the batterymen below never ceased their -crash of bombs straight into _The Hampshire’s_ hull. - -Iberville shouted for the infantrymen to fire into _The Dering’s_ -forecastle, to pick off Grimmington if they could; and for the Canadian -sharp-shooters to rake the decks of _The Hudson’s Bay_. - -For four hours, the three-cornered battle raged. The ships were so -close, shout and counter-shout could be heard across decks. Faces were -singed with the closeness of the musketry fire. Ninety French had -been wounded. _The Pelican’s_ decks swam in blood that froze to ice, -slippery as glass, and trickled down the clinker boards in reddening -splashes. Grape shot and grenade had set the fallen sails on fire. -Sails and mastpoles and splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame -that would presently extend to the powder magazines and blow all to -eternity. Railings had gone over decks; and when the ship rolled, only -the tangle of burning débris kept those on deck from washing into the -sea. The bridge was crumbling. A shot had torn the high prow away; and -still the batterymen below poured their storm of fire and bomb into -the English hull. The fighters were so close, one old record says, and -the holes torn by the bombs so large in the hull of each ship that the -gunners on _The Pelican_ were looking into the eyes of the smoke-grimed -men below the decks of _The Hampshire_. - -For three hours, the English had tacked to board _The Pelican_, and for -three hours the mastless, splintered _Pelican_ had fought like a demon -to cripple her enemy’s approach. The blood-grimed, half-naked men of -both decks had rushed _en masse_ for the last leap, the hand-to-hand -fight, when a frantic shout went up! - -Then silence, and fearful confusion, and a mad panic back from the -tilting edges of the two vessels with cries from the wounded above the -shriek of the sea! - -The batteries of _The Hampshire_ had suddenly silenced. The great -ship refused to answer to the wheel. That persistent, undeviating -fire bursting from the sides of _The Pelican_ had done its work. _The -Hampshire_ gave a quick, back lurch. Before the amazed Frenchmen could -believe their senses, amid the roar of flame and crashing billows and -hiss of fires extinguished in an angry sea, _The Hampshire_, all sails -set, settled and sank like a stone amid the engulfing billows. Not a -soul of her two hundred and fifty men—one hundred and ninety mariners -and servants, with sixty soldiers—escaped. - -The screams of the struggling seamen had not died on the waves before -Iberville had turned the batteries of his shattered ship full force on -Smithsend’s _Hudson’s Bay_. Promptly, _The Hudson’s Bay_ struck colors, -but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and taking over -ninety prisoners, Grimmington on _The Dering_ showed swift heel and -gained refuge in Fort Nelson. - - * * * * * - -In the fury and heat of the fight, the French had not noticed the -gathering storm that now broke with hurricane gusts of sleet and rain. -The whistling in the cordage became a shrill shriek—warning a blizzard. -Presently the billows were washing over decks with nothing visible of -the wheel but the drenched helmsman clinging for life to his place. The -pancake ice pounded the ships’ sides with a noise of thunder. Mist -and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the wounded, -washed and tossed and jammed against the railing by the pounding -seas. _The Pelican_ could only drive through the darkness before the -storm-flaw, “the dead” says an old record, “floating about on the decks -among the living.” The hawser, that had towed the captive ship, snapped -like thread. Captor and captive in vain threw out anchors. The anchors -raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the two ships drove along the sands. -The deck of _The Pelican_ was icy with blood. Every shock of smashing -billows jumbled dead and dying _en masse_. The night grew black as -pitch. The little railing that still clung to the shattered decks of -_The Pelican_ was now washed away, and the waves carried off dead and -wounded. Tables were hurled from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and -the water was already to the bridge of the foundering ship, when the -hull began to split, and _The Pelican_ buried her prow in the sands, -six miles from the fort. - -All small boats had been shot away. The canoes of the Canadians -swamped in the heavy sea as they were launched. Tying the spars of -the shattered masts in four-sided racks, Iberville had the surviving -wounded bound to these and towed ashore by the others, half-swimming, -half-wading. Many of the men sprang into the icy sea bare to mid-waist -as they had fought. Guns and powderhorns carried ashore in the -swimmers’ teeth were all that were saved of the wreck. Eighteen more -men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they -had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires -kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed -raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted -fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became -targets for sharp-shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires. -Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked _Hudson’s Bay_ and Grimmington, -who had succeeded in taking _The Dering_ into harbor—put Governor -Bailey on guard. Their one hope was that Iberville might be drowned. - -It was at this terrible pass that the other ships of Iberville’s fleet -came to the rescue. They, too, had suffered from the storm, _The -Violent_ having gone to bottom; _The Palmier_ having lost her steering -gear, another ship her rudder. - -Nelson or York under the English was the usual four-bastioned fur post, -with palisades and houses of white fir logs a foot thick, the pickets -punctured for small arms, with embrasures for some hundred cannon. It -stood back from Hayes River, four miles up from the sea. The seamen -of the wrecked _Hudson’s Bay_ carried word to Governor Bailey of -Iberville’s desperate plight. Nor was Bailey inclined to surrender -even after the other ships came to Iberville’s aid. With Bailey in the -fort were Kelsey, and both Grimmington and Smithsend who had once been -captives with the French in Quebec. When Iberville’s messenger was led -into the council hall with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand -surrender, Smithsend advised resistance till the English knew whether -Iberville had been lost in the wreck. Fog favored the French. By the -11th, they had been able to haul their cannon ashore undetected by the -English and so near the fort that the first intimation was the blow -of hammers erecting platforms. This drew the fire of the English, and -the cannonading began on both sides. On the 12th, Serigny entered the -council again to demand surrender. - -“If you refuse, there will be no quarter,” he warned. - -“Quarter be cursed,” thundered the old governor. Then turning to his -men, “Forty pounds sterling to every man who fights.” - -But the Canadians with all the savagery of Indian warfare, had begun -hacking down palisades to the rear. - -Serigny came once more from the French. “They are desperate,” he -urged, “they must take the fort, or pass the winter like beasts in the -wilds.” Bombs had been shattering the houses. Bailey was induced to -capitulate, but game to the end, haggled for the best bargain he could -get. Neither the furs nor the armaments of the fort were granted him, -but he was permitted to march out with people unharmed, drums beating, -flags unfurled, ball in mouth, matches lighted, bag and baggage, fife -screaming its shrillest defiance—to march out with all this brave -pomp to a desolate winter in the wilds, while the bush-lopers, led -by Boisbriant, ransacked the fort. In the surrender, Grimmington -had bargained for his ship, and he now sailed for England with the -refugees, reaching the Thames on October 26. Bailey and Smithsend with -other refugees, resolutely marched overland in the teeth of wintry -blasts to Governor Knight at Albany. How Bailey reached England, I do -not know. He must have gone overland with French coureurs to Quebec; -for he could not have sailed through the straits after October, and he -arrived in England by December. - -That the blow of the last loss paralyzed the Company—need not be told. -Of all their forts on the bay, they now had only Albany, and were in -debt for the last year’s ships. They had not money to pay the captains’ -wages. Nevertheless, they borrowed money enough to pay the wages of -all the seamen and £20 apiece extra, for those who had taken part in -the fight. Just at this time, the Treaty of Ryswick put an end to war -between England and France, but, as far as the Company was concerned, -it left them worse than before, for it provided that the contestants on -the bay should remain as they were at the time, which meant that France -held all the bay except Albany. Before this campaign, the loss of the -English Adventurers from the French raiders had been £100,000. Now the -loss totaled more than £200,000. - -Chouart Groseillers had long since been created a nobleman for -returning to France. In spite of the peace, this enigmatical -declaration is found in the private papers of the King of France: - -“Owing to the peace, the King of England has given positive orders that -goods taken at Hudson Bay, must be paid for; but the French King relies -on getting out of this affair.” - -Iberville sailed away to fresh glories. A seigniory had been granted -him along the Bay of Chaleurs. In 1699, he was created Chevalier of -St. Louis. The rest of his years were passed founding the colony of -Louisiana, and he visited Boston and New York harbors with plans of -conquest in his mind, though as the Earl of Belomont reported “he -pretended it was for wood and water.” In the war of the Barbadoes, -Iberville had hoped to capture slaves for Louisiana, and he had -transported hundreds, but yellow fever raged in the South and Iberville -fell a victim to it on July 9, 1706, at Havana. He was, perhaps, the -most picturesque type of Canada’s wildwood chivalry, with all its -savage faults and romantic heroism. - -And His Majesty, the King of France, well pleased with the success -of his brave raiders sends out a dispatch that reads: “His Majesty -declines to accept the white bear sent to him from Hudson Bay, but he -will permit the fur traders to exhibit the animal.” - -_Notes on Chapter XIII._—The English side of the story related in this -chapter is taken from the records of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and of -the Public Records Office. The French side of the story, from the State -Papers of the Marine Archives. _Bacqueville de la Potherie_, who was -present in the fight of ’97, gives excellent details in his _Historie -de l’Amerique Septentrionale_ (1792). _Jeremie_, who was interpreter -at York, wrote an account, to be found among other voyages in the -_Bernard Collection of Amsterdam_. For side-lights from early writers, -the reader is referred to _Doc. Relatifs Nouvelle France_; _Oldmixon_; -_Doc. Hist. N. Y._; _Quebec Hist. So. Collection_ in which will be -found _Abbé Belmont’s Relation_ and _Dollier de Casson’s_. - - * * * * * - -It will be noticed that one of the conditions of surrender was that -the English should be permitted to march out “match-lighted; ball -in mouth.” The latter term needs no explanation. The ball was held -ready to be rammed down the barrel. With reference to the term -“match-lighted,” in the novel, “Heralds of Empire,” I had referred -to “matches” when the argus-eyed critic came down with the criticism -that “matches” were not invented until after 1800. I stood corrected -till I happened to be in the Tower of London in the room given over -to the collection of old armor. I asked one of the doughty old “beef -eaters” to take down a musket of that period, and show me exactly -what “match-lighted” must have meant. The old soldier’s explanation -was this: In time of war, not flint but a little bit of inflammable -punk did duty as “match-lighter.” This was fastened below the trigger -like the percussion cap of a later day. The privilege of surrendering -“match-lighted” meant with the punk below the trigger. I offer this -explanation for what it is worth, and as he is the keeper of the finest -collection of old armor in the world, the chances are he is right and -that matches preceded 1800. - - * * * * * - -At first sight, there may seem to be discrepancies in the numbers on -the English ships, but the 200 mariners were extra men, in addition to -the 50 or 60 seamen on each frigate, and the 50 or 60 servants on each -boat sent out to strengthen the forts. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -1688-1710 - -WHAT BECAME OF RADISSON? NEW FACTS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAMOUS -PATHFINDER - - -What became of Radisson? It seems impossible that the man, who set -France and England by the ears for a century, and led the way to the -pathfinding of half America, should have dropped so completely into -oblivion that not a scrap is recorded concerning the last twenty-five -years of his life. Was he run to earth by the bailiffs of London, like -Thackeray’s “Virginian?” Or did he become the lion tamed, the eagle -with its wings clipped, to be patronized by supercilious nonentities? -Or did he die like Ledyard of a heart broken by hope deferred? - -Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for -life through mountain torrents that would throw his savage pursuers -off the trail—we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London -bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake -Superior to the Great Northwest—he is a familiar figure, but not -stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles -the Second’s slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come -to Hudson Bay during Iberville’s raids, he drops as completely out of -history as if he had been lost in Milton’s Serbonian Bog. One historian -describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. -Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson’s -Bay Company—many of them undisturbed since Radisson’s time—can be -gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder’s life to the time of -his death. - -The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, -contains account of Radisson—an order for Alderman Portman to pay -Radisson and Groseillers £5 a year for expenses—chiefly wine and fresh -fruit, as later entries show. There were present at this meeting of -the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis -Stevenson’s heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, -married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the -earldom that came later, and with the reputation that “he would rob the -devil, himself, and the church altars.” It was Ashley, when Chancellor -of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of £100 to every man appointed -in the government services, though he concealed his peculations -under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade -of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley’s wife earned public -notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever -splintering in collision with some other carriage or going to bits -over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey -was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was commander of the -Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir -John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of fighting blood, -whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson’s Bay -Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of -London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the -handsomest conservatories in England. It was to Viner’s that Charles -the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the -giddy course, that danced the Stuart’s off the throne. Mr. Young was a -man of fashion as well as a merchant, so famous for amateur acting that -he often took the place of the court actors at a moment’s notice. - -[Illustration: - -Radisson’s House on Seething Lane in 1679. (1) St. Olave Hart’s Church; -(2) Radisson’s House: (3) Pepys’ House. ] - -These were Radisson’s associates, the Frenchman’s friends when he -came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with -the exploration of the North and the West to his credit. None knew -better than he, the money value of his discoveries. And Radisson -knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn -this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur -trade was a gamble—and everything on earth was gamble in the reign -of Charles—Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that -gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick -his pockets—politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of -course—and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned -into pounds sterling—politely, also, of course. Very generous, very -pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but -withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered -periwigs. - -Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the -sudden plunge from wilderness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, -Prince Rupert’s secretary, declares in a private document that the -French explorer at this time “_deluded_ the daughter of Sir John Kirke -into secretly marrying him,” so that Radisson may have been caught in -the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake’s progress was -complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump over the back -wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance in the world to -ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door and being married -properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless adventurer and a -Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich Puritan, may have -been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there is any truth at -all in the rumor repeated by Hayes. - -For seven years after he came to London, the love of wilderness places, -of strange new lands, clung to Radisson. He spent the summers on Hudson -Bay for the Company, opening new forts, cruising up the unknown coasts, -bartering with new tribes of Indians, and while not acting as governor -of any fur post, seems to have been a sort of general superintendent, -to keep check on the Company’s officers and prevent fraud, for when the -cargoes arrived at Portsmouth, orders were given for the Captains not -to stir without convoy to come to the Thames, but for “_Mr. Radisson -to take horse_” and ride to London with the secret reports. During the -winters in London, Sir John Robinson of the Tower and Radisson attended -to the sales of the beaver, bought the goods for the next year’s -ships, examined the cannon that were to man the forts on the bay and -attended to the general business of the Company. Merchants, who were -shareholders, advanced goods for the yearly outfit. Other shareholders, -who owned ships, loaned or gave vessels for the voyage. Wages were -paid as money came in from the beaver sales. So far, Radisson and his -associates were share and share alike, all laying the foundations of a -future prosperity. Radisson and his brother-in-law drew from the beaver -sales during these seven years (1667-1673) £287, about $2,000 each for -living expenses. - -But now came a change. The Company’s ships were bought and paid for, -the Company’s forts built and equipped—all from the sales of the -cargoes brought home under Radisson’s superintendence. Now that profits -were to be paid, what share was his? The King had given him a gold -chain and medal for his services, but to him the Company owed its -existence. What was his share to be? In a word, was he to be one of the -Adventurers or an outsider? Radisson had asked the Adventurers for an -agreement. Agreement? A year passed, Radisson hung on, living from hand -to mouth in London, receiving £10 one month, £2 the next, an average -of $5 a week, compelled to supplicate the Company for every penny he -needed—a very excellent arrangement for the Gentlemen Adventurers. It -compelled Radisson to go to them for favors, instead of their going -to Radisson; though from Radisson’s point of view, the boot may have -seemed to be on the wrong leg. Finally, as told in a preceding chapter -the committee met and voted him “£100 _per ann. from the time of his -arrival in London_, _and if it shall please God to bless this company -with good success_, _they will then resume the consideration of Mr. -Radisson_.” One hundred pounds was just half of one per cent. of the -yearly cargoes. It was the salary of the captains and petty governors -on the bay. - -Radisson probably had his own opinion of a contract that was to depend -more on the will of Heaven than on the legal bond of his partners. He -quit England in disgust for the French navy. Then came the raids on -Nelson, the order of the French Court to return to England and his -resumption of service with the Hudson’s Bay Company up to the time -Iberville drove the English from the bay and French traders were not -wanted in the English service. - -For changing his flag the last time, such abuse was heaped on Radisson -that the Hudson’s Bay Company was finally constrained to protest: -“_that the said Radisson doth not deserve those ill names the French -give him. If the English doe not give him all his Due, he may rely on -the justice of his cause._” - -Indeed, the English company might date the beginning of the French -raids that harried their forts for a hundred years from Radisson’s -first raid at Port Nelson; but they did not foresee this. - -The man was as irrepressible as a disturbed hornets’ nest—break up his -plans, and it only seemed to scatter them with wider mischief. How -the French Court ordered Radisson back to England has already been -told. He was the scapegoat for court intrigue. Nothing now was too -good for Radisson—with the English. The Adventurers presented him with -a purse “_for his extraordinary services to their great liking and -satisfaction_.” A dealer is ordered “_to keep Mr. Radisson in stock -of fresh provisions_,” and the Company desires “_that Mr. Radisson -shall have a hogshead of claret_” presumably to drown his memory of -the former treatment. My Lord Preston is given a present of furs for -persuading Radisson to return. So is “Esquire Young,” the gay merchant -of Cornhill, who was Radisson’s best friend in England, and Sir James -Hayes, who had been so furious against him only a few months before, -begs Monsieur to accept that silver tankard as a token of esteem from -the Adventurers (£10 4s, I found it cost by the account books.) - -Only one doubt seemed to linger in the minds of the Company. In spite -of King Louis’ edict forbidding French interlopers on Hudson’s Bay, -secret instructions of an opposite tenor were directing Iberville’s -raiders overland. If Radisson was to act as superintendent on the bay, -chief councillor at Port Nelson, the Company must have bonds as well -as oath for his fidelity, and so the entry in the minute books of 1685 -records: “_At this committee, Mons. Pierre Radisson signed and sealed -the covenants with the company, and signed a bond of £2,000 to perform -covenants with the company, dated 11 May.... Dwelling at the end of -Seething Lane in Tower Street._” - -I think it was less than ten minutes from the time I found that entry -when I was over in Seething Lane. It is in a part of old London -untouched by the Great Fire running up from the famous road to the -Tower, in length not greater than between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New -York. Opening off Great Tower Street, it ends at Crutched Friars. At -the foot of the lane is the old church of All Hallows Barking, whose -dial only was burned by the fire; at the top, the little antiquated -church of St. Olave Hart’s, whose motley architecture with leaning -walls dates from the days of the Normans. If Radisson lived “_at the -end of Seething Lane_,” his house must have been just opposite St. -Olave Hart’s, for the quaint church with its graveyard occupies the -entire left corner. In this lane dwelt the merchant princes of London. -Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, who thought his own style of -living “mighty fine”—as he describes it—preening and pluming himself -on the beautiful panels he had placed in his mansion, must have been a -near neighbor of Radisson’s; for in the diarist’s description of the -fire, he speaks of it coming to Barking Church “at the bottom of our -lane.” But a stone’s throw away is the Tower, in those days commanded -by Radisson’s friend, Sir John Robinson. The Kirkes, the Colletons, -Griffith the dandy of the balls, Sir Robert Viner, the rich Lord-Mayor; -Esquire Young of Cornhill—all had dwellings within a few minutes’ walk -of Seething Lane. - -The whereabouts of Radisson in London explain how the journals of his -first four voyages were lost for exactly two hundred years and then -found in the Pepys Collection of the Bodleian Library. He had given -them either directly or through the mutual friend Carterett, to his -neighbor Pepys, who was a keen collector of all matter appertaining to -the navy, and after being lost for years, the Pepys Collection only -passed to the Bodleian in recent days. - -The place where Radisson lived shows, too, that he was no back-stairs -sycophant hanging on the favor of the great, no beggarly renegade -hungry for the crumbs that fell from the tables of those merchant -princes. It proves Radisson a front-door acquaintance of the Gentlemen -Adventurers. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect who was a -share-holder in the Hudson’s Bay Company at this time, thought himself -well paid at £200 a year for superintending the building of St. Paul’s. -Radisson’s agreement on returning to the Adventurers from France, -was for a salary of £50 a year, paid quarterly, £50 paid yearly and -dividends—running as high as 50 per cent.—on £200 of stock—making in -all, practically the same income as a man of Wren’s standing. - -Second-rate warehouses and dingy business offices have replaced the -mansions of the great merchants on Seething Lane, but the two old -churches stand the same as in the days of Radisson, with the massive -weather-stained stone work uncouth, as if built by the Saxons, inner -pillars and pointed arches showing the work of the Normans. Both have -an antique flavor as of old wine. The Past seems to reach forward and -touch you tangibly from the moldering brass plates on the walls, and -the flagstone of the aisles so very old the chiseled names of the -dead below are peeling off like paper. The great merchant princes—the -Colletons, the Kirkes, the Robinsons, Radisson’s friends—lie in effigy -around the church above their graves. It was to St. Olave’s across the -way, Pepys used to come to hear Hawkins, the great Oxford scholar, -also one of the Adventurers—preach; and a tablet tells where the body -of Pepys’ gay wife lies. From the walls, a memorial tablet to Pepys, -himself, smiles down in beplumed hat and curled periwig and velvet -cloak, perhaps that very cloak made in imitation of the one worn in -Hyde Park by the King and of which he was—as he writes—“so mighty -proud.” The roar of a world’s traffic beats against the tranquil -walls of the little church; but where sleeps Radisson, the Catholic -and alien, in this Babylon of hurrying feet? His friends and his -neighbors lie here, but the gravestones give no clue of him. Pepys, -the annalist of the age, with his gossip of court and his fair wife -and his fine clothes—thought Radisson’s voyages interesting enough as -a curio but never seems to have dreamed that the countries Radisson -discovered would become a dominant factor in the world’s progress when -that royal house on whose breath Pepys hung for favor as for life, lay -rotting in a shameful oblivion. If the dead could dream where they lie -forgotten, could Radisson believe his own dream—that the seas of the -world are freighted with the wealth of the countries he discovered; -that “_the country so pleasant, so beautiful ... so fruitful ... so -plentiful of all things_”—as he described the Great Northwest when he -first saw it—is now peopled by a race that all the nations of Europe -woo; that the hope of the empire, which ignored him when he lived, is -now centered on “that fair and fruitful and pleasant land” which he -discovered? - -For ten years Radisson continued to go to the bay, Esquire Young acting -as his attorney to draw the allowance of £100 a year and the dividends -on £200 stock for Radisson’s wife, Mary Kirke. The minutes contain -accounts of wine presented to Mr. Radisson, of furs sent home as a gift -to Mistress Radisson, of heavy guns bought for the forts on the advice -of Mr. Radisson, of a fancy pistol delivered to Monsieur Radisson. Then -a change fell. - -The Stuarts between vice and folly had danced themselves off the -throne. The courtiers, who were Adventurers, scattered like straws -before the wind. The names of the shareholders changed. Of Radisson’s -old friends, only Esquire Young remained. Besides, Iberville was now -campaigning on the bay, sweeping the English as dust before a broom. -Dividends stopped. The Company became embarrassed. By motion of the -shareholders, Radisson’s pension was cut from £100 to £50 a year. In -vain Esquire Young and Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, now governor -of the Company, urged Radisson’s claims. The new shareholders did not -know his name. - -These were dark days for the old pathfinder. He must have been -compelled to move from Seething Lane, for a petition describes him as -in the Parish of St. James “in a low and mean condition” in great want -and mental distress lest his family should be driven to the poorhouse. -It was at this period three papers were put on file that forever place -beyond dispute the main facts of his life. He filed a suit in Chancery -against the Company for a resumption of his full salary pending the -discontinuance of dividends. He petitioned Parliament to make the -continuance of the Company’s charter dependent on recognition of his -rights as having laid the foundations of the Company. And he took an -oath regarding the main episodes of his life to be used in the treaty -of peace with France. A fighter he was to the end, though haunted by -that terrible Fear of Want which undermined his courage as no Phantom -Fright ever shook him in the wilderness. No doubt he felt himself -growing old, nearly seventy now with four children to support and -naught between them and destitution but the paltry payment of £12 10s a -quarter. - -Again the wheel of fortune turned. Radisson won his suit against the -Company. His income of £100 was resumed and arrears of £150 paid. -Also, in the treaty pending with France, his evidence was absolutely -requisite to establish what the boundaries ought to be between Canada -and Hudson Bay; so the Adventurers became suddenly very courteous, -very suave, very considerate of the old man they had kept standing -outside their office door; and the committee of August 17, 1697, bade -“_the secretary take coach and fetch Mr. Radisson who may be very -useful at this time as to affairs between the French and the Company_.” -The old war horse was once more in harness. In addition to his salary, -gratuities of £10 and £8 and £20 “for reliable services” are found in -the minutes. Regularly his £50 were paid to him at the end of each -year. Regularly, the £12 10s were paid each quarter to March 29, 1710. -When the next quarter came round, this entry is recorded in the minute -book: - -“_Att A Comitte the 12th July 1710_— - -_The Sec is ordered to pay Mr. Radisson’s widow as charity the sum of -six pounds._” - -Between the end of March and the beginning of July, the old pathfinder -had set forth on his last voyage. - -But I think the saddest record of all is the one that comes nineteen -years later: - - -“_24 Sept. 1729 Att A Comitte_— - -_The Sec. is ordered to pay Mrs. Radisson, widow of Mr. Peter Esprit -Radisson, who was formerly employed in the company’s service, the sum -of £10 as charity, she being very ill and in very great want, the -said sum to be paid her at such times as the Sec. shall think most -convenient._” - -This was the widow of the man who had explored the West to the -Mississippi; who had explored the North to Nelson River; who had twice -saved New France from bankruptcy by the furs he brought from the -wilderness, and who had laid the foundations of the most prosperous -chartered company the world has ever known. - -_Notes on Chapter XIV._—It need scarcely be explained that the data -for this chapter are all drawn from thousands of sheets of scattered -records in Hudson’s Bay House, London. Within the limits of this book, -it is quite impossible to quote all the references of this chapter. -Details of Radisson’s early life are to be found in “_Pathfinders of -the West_.” One of Radisson’s petitions has been given in a former -chapter. Another of his petitions runs as follows: - -“Copy of Peter Esprit Radisson’s peticon to ye Parleamt. presented ye -11th of March 1697-8. - -“To ye Hon’ble the Knights Citizens & Burgesses in Parliament -Assembled—— - -“The Humble Peticon of Peter Esprit Radisson Humbly sheweth - -“That your petitioner is a native of France, who with a brother of his -(since deceased) spent many years of their youths among the Indians in -and about Hudson’s Bay, by reason whereof they became absolute masters -of the trade and language of the said Indians in those parts of America - -“That about the year 1666 King Charles the Second sent yr. Pet’r and -his said brother with two ships on purpose to settle English colonies & -factories on the sd. Day, wh. they effected soe well by the said King’s -satisfaction that he gave each of them a gold chain & medell as a marke -of his Royale favour & recommended them to the Comp’y of Adventurers of -England Trading unto Hudson’s Bay to be well gratified and rewarded by -them for their services aforesaid. - -“That since the death of yr. Petr. Brother, the sd. compy have settled -on your Petr: six actions in the joint stock of ye sd. compy and one -hundred pounds per annum during yr. Petr: life - -“That your Petr is now 62 years of age (being grown old in the compys -service) & hath not recd any Benefits of the sd. six shares in the -compys stock for more than 7 years last past & hath had nothing but the -sd. 100 pds. Per annum to maintain himselfe and four small children all -borne in England. - -“That during the late Reign a Price was set upon your Petr head by the -French & several attempts were made upon him to assassinate him & that -for none other reasons but for quitting his owne country & serving the -compy. - -“That your Petr: dares not return to his Native country for the reasons -aforesaid: & seeing all his subsistance depends on the sd. compy & is -shortly to Determine with the life of your Petr and his four smalle -children must consequently fall to be maintained by the Alms of the -Parish altho’ the company hath had many thousand pounds effects by his -procurement & some that he conceives he had himselfe a good tytle to—— - -“Your Petr therefore most humbly prays that this House will comiserate -the condition of yr. Petr said children, and whereas he hath now the -said six actions & £100 only for his life, that you will Vouchsafe to -direct a provisoe in the Bill depending to grant the sd. annuity to be -paid quarterly & the dividends of the sd. Actions as often as any shall -become due to your Petr: his Heirs for Ever during the joint stock of -the said compy. - -“And yr. Petr shall forever pray - -“PETER ESPRIT RADISSON.” - -The occasion of this petition by Radisson was when the Stuarts had -lost the throne and the Company was petitioning for a confirmation of -its royal charter by an act of Parliament. “The many thousand pounds -which he conceived himself to have a title to,” refers to 1684, when -the French Court compelled him to turn over all the £20,000 in his fort -at Nelson to the English. That beaver had been procured in the trade -of goods for which Radisson and Groseillers and young Chouart and La -Fôrest and De la Chesnay and Dame Sorrell had advanced the money. As a -matter of fact, the Company never gave Radisson any stock. They simply -granted him the right to dividends on a small amount of stock—a wrong -which he was powerless to right as he dared not return to France. It -was during Iberville’s raids that the Company stopped paying Radisson -dividends or salary, when he filed a suit against them in Chancery and -won it. It is quite true the Company was unable to pay him at this -time, but then they had their own niggardly policy to thank for having -driven him across to France in the first place. - - * * * * * - -When the Company presented a bill of damages against France for the -raids, Radisson’s evidence was necessary to prove that the French King -gave up all claims to the bay when he ordered Radisson back to England, -so the old man was no longer kept cooling his heels in the outer halls -of the Company’s Council Room. The bill of damages was made up as -follows: - -1682—Port Nelson taken with Gov. Bridgar & Zechariah Gillam & -5 men perished. £25,000 1684—damage to trade at Nelson. 10,000 -1685—_Perpetuana_ taken with 14 seamen. 5,000 loss of life and wages. -1,255 1686—forts captured at the bottom of the bay 50,000 loss in -trade. 10,000 1688—loss of _Churchill_ Captain Bond _Young—Stimson_ -15,000 cargo to Canada. 70,000 1692—forts lost. 20,000 _______ £206,255 - -The French King had said, “You may rely on me getting out of this -affair,” and the bill of damages, however absurdly exaggerated, was -never paid. The French raiders proved an expensive experiment. - - * * * * * - -Radisson’s other affidavit was made to prove that the French had -quitted all pretensions to the bay when he was ordered back to Nelson. -The French responded by denying that he had ever been ordered back -to Nelson and by calling him “a liar,” “a renegade,” “a turn coat.” -To this, the English answered in formal memorial: “The Mr. Radisson -mentioned in this paper doth not deserve the ill names heaped upon -him,” following up with the proof that the French had sent him back to -England. - - * * * * * - -The real reason that the Company were so remiss to Radisson in -his latter days was their own desperate straits. Besides, the old -shareholders of the Stuart days had scattered like the wind. Radisson -was unknown to the new men, so completely unknown that in one committee -order his wife is spoken of as Madam Gwodet (Godey) instead of Mary -Kirke. Now Madam Godey was the damsel whom Lord Preston offered to -Radisson in marriage (with a dowry) despite the fact that he already -had a wife—if he would go back from Paris to London. De la Potherie -tells the story and adds that Radisson married her—another of the -numerous fictions about the explorer. This mass of notes may give the -impression that I am a protagonist of Radisson. My answer is that he -badly needs one, when such staunch modern defenders of his as Drs. -Bryce, and Dionne, and Judge Prudhomme refuse to excuse him for his -last desertion of the French flag. In that case, Radisson was as much a -victim of official red tape as Dreyfus in modern days. - - - - -PART III - -1700-1820 - -The Search for the North-West Passage, the Fall of France, the -Inlanders, the Coming of the Colonists and the Great Struggle with the -North-West Company of Montreal. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -1699-1720 - -THE FIRST ATTEMPT OF THE ADVENTURERS TO EXPLORE—HENRY KELSEY PENETRATES -AS FAR AS THE VALLEY OF THE SASKATCHEWAN—SANFORD AND ARRINGTON, -KNOWN AS “RED CAP,” FOUND HENLEY HOUSE INLAND FROM ALBANY—BESET FROM -WITHOUT, THE COMPANY IS ALSO BESET FROM WITHIN—PETITIONS AGAINST THE -CHARTER—INCREASE OF CAPITAL—RESTORATION OF THE BAY FROM FRANCE - - -The Peace of Ryswick in 1697, which decreed that war should cease on -Hudson Bay, and that France and England should each retain what they -chanced to possess at the time of the treaty—left the Adventurers of -England with only one fort, Albany, under doughty old Governor Knight, -and one outpost, New Severn, which refugees driven to the woods had -built out of necessity. - -Back in ’85 when Robert Sanford had been ordered to explore inland, he -had reported such voyages impracticable. The only way to obtain inland -trade, he declared, was to give presents to the Indian chiefs and -attract the tribes down to the bay. Now that the French had swept the -English from the bay, Sanford was driven to the very thing he had said -could not be done—penetrating inland to intercept the Indian fleets of -canoes before they came down to the French. With one Arrington, known -as Red Cap on the bay, and a man, John Vincent, Sanford year after year -went upstream from Albany through Keewatin toward what is now Manitoba. -By 1700, Henley House had been built one hundred and fifty miles inland -from Albany. The French war was proving a blessing in disguise. It had -awakened the sleeping English gentlemen of the bay and was scattering -them far and wide. The very year the French came overland, 1686, -Captain Abraham had sailed north from Nelson to Churchill—“a faire wide -river,” he describes it, naming it after the great Marlborough; and -now with only Albany as the radiating point, commanded by old Governor -Knight, sloops under the apprentice boy, young Henry Kelsey, under Mike -Grimmington and Smithsend, sailed across to the east side of the bay, -known as East Main (now known as Ungava and Labrador) and yearly traded -so successfully with the wandering Eskimo and Montagnais there that -in spite of the French holding the bay, cargoes of 30,000 and 40,000 -beaver pelts were sent home to England. - -But the honors of exploration at this period belong to the ragamuffin, -apprentice lad, Henry Kelsey. He had come straight to Nelson before the -French occupation from the harum-scarum life of a London street arab. -At the fur posts, discipline was absolutely strict. Only the governor -and chief trader were allowed to converse with the Indians. No man -could leave the fort to hunt without special parole. Every subordinate -was sworn to unquestioning obedience to the officer above him. Servants -were not supposed to speak unless spoken to. Written rules and -regulations were stuck round the fort walls thick as advertisements -put up by a modern bill poster, and the slightest infraction of these -martinet rules was visited by guardroom duty, or a sound drubbing at -the hands of the chief factor, or public court-martial followed by -the lash. It was all a part of the cocked hat and red coat and gold -lace and silk ruffles with which these little kings of the wilderness -sought to invest themselves with the pomp of authority. It is to the -everlasting credit of the Company’s governors that a system of such -absolute despotism was seldom abused. Perhaps, too, the loneliness -of the life—a handful of whites cooped up amid all the perils of -savagery—made each man realize the responsibility of being his -brother’s keeper. - -Henry Kelsey, the apprentice boy, fresh from the streets of London, -promptly ran amuck of the strict rules at Nelson. He went in and out -of the fort without leave, and when gates were locked, he climbed the -walls. In spite of rules to the contrary, he talked with the Indians -and hunted with them, and when Captain Geyer switched him soundly for -disobedience, he broke bars, jumped the walls, and ran away with a -party of Assiniboines. About this time, came the French to the bay. The -Company was moving heaven and earth to induce servants to go inland -for trade when an Indian runner brought a message on birch bark from -Kelsey. He had been up Hayes River with the Indians and now offered to -conduct an exploration on condition of pardon. Geyer not only pardoned -the young renegade but welcomed him back to the fort bag and baggage, -Indian wife and all the trumpery of an Indian family. The great Company -issued Kelsey a formal commission for discovery, and the next year on -July 15, 1691, as the Assiniboines departed from Deering’s Point where -they camped to trade at Nelson, Kelsey launched out in a canoe with -them. - -Radisson and young Chouart had been up this river some distance; but -as far as known, Kelsey was the first white man to follow Hayes River -westward as far as the prairies. The weather was exceedingly dry, game -scarce, grass high and brittle, the tracks hard to follow whether of -man or beast. Within a week, the Indians had gone up one hundred and -seventy miles toward what are now known as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, -but only two moose and one partridge had been killed, and provisions -were exhausted. Leaving the Indians, Kelsey pushed forward across -country following the trail of an encampment to the fore. At the end -of a thirty mile tramp through brushwood of poplars and scrub birch, -he came to three leather tepees. No one was in them. Men and women -were afield hunting. Ravenous with hunger, Kelsey ransacked provision -bags. He found nothing but dried grass and was fain to stay his -hunger with berries. At night the hunters came in with ten swans and -a moose. Here, Kelsey remained with them hunting till his party came -up, when all advanced together another one hundred and thirty miles -to the Assiniboine camping place. There were only twenty-six tents -of Assiniboines. In a fray, the main party of Assiniboine hunters -had slain three Cree women, and had now fled south, away from Cree -territory. By the middle of August, Kelsey and his hunters were on the -buffalo plains. All day, the men hunted. At night, the women went out -to bring in and dress the meat. Once, exhausted, Kelsey fell sound -asleep on the trail. When he awakened, there was not even the dust of -the hunt to guide him back to camp. From horizon to horizon was not -a living soul; only the billowing prairie, grass neck high, with the -lonely call of birds circling overhead. By following the crumpled grass -and watching the sky for the reflection of the camp fires at night, -Kelsey found his way back to the Assiniboines. Another time, camp fire -had been made of dry moss. Kelsey was awakened to find the grass round -him on fire and the stock of his musket blazing. With his jackknife -he made a rude gunstock for the rest of the trip. Hunting with an -Indian one day, the two came unexpectedly on a couple of grizzly bears. -The surprise was mutual. The bears knew no fear of firearms and were -disposed to parley, but the hunters didn’t wait. The Indian dashed for -a tree; Kelsey for hiding in a bunch of willows, firing as he ran. The -bears mistook the direction of the shot and had pursued the Indian. -Kelsey’s charge had wounded one bear, and with a second shot, he now -disabled the other, firing full in its face. The double victory over -the beast of prey most feared by the Indians gained him the name of -Little Giant—_Miss-top-ashish_. - -From Kelsey’s journal, it is impossible to follow the exact course of -his wanderings. Enemies, who tried to prove that the English Company -deserved no credit for exploration, declared that he did not go -farther than five hundred miles from the bay, seventy-one by canoe, -three hundred through woods overland, forty-six across a plain, then -eighty-one more to the buffalo country. From his own journal, the -distance totals up six hundred miles; but he does not mention any large -river except the Hayes, or large lake; so that after striking westward -he must have been north of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, but not -so far north and west as Athabasca. This would place his wanderings in -the modern province of Saskatchewan. - -It was the 24th of August before he joined Washa, chief of the -Assiniboines, and took up lodgings amid the eighty tents of the tribe. -Solemnly, the peace pipe was smoked and, on the 12th of September, -Kelsey presented the Assiniboine chief with the present of a lace coat, -a cap, a sash, guns, knives, powder and shot, telling the Indians -these were tokens of what the white men would do if the Indians proved -good hunters; but on no account must the tribes war on one another, -or the white man would give the enemy guns, which would exterminate -all fighters. Washa promised to bring his hunt down to the bay, -which tribal wars prevented for some years. Hudson’s Bay traders, -who followed up Kelsey’s exploration—aimed for the region now known -as Cumberland House, variously called Poskoyac and Basquia—westward -of Lake Winnipeg, so there is little doubt it was in this land that -the Hudson’s Bay boy first hunted and camped. With Kelsey, the result -was instant promotion. His wife went home to England, where she was -regularly paid his salary, and he rose to a position second only to the -venerable old Governor Knight, commander of the entire bay. - -Meanwhile, the French were having their own troubles in the captured -forts. War had broken out again, and was going against France in -Marlborough’s victories. The French might hold the bay, but not a -pound of provisions could be sent across seas on account of English -privateers. The French garrisons of Hudson Bay were starving. Indians, -who brought down pelts from the Pays d’en Haut or upcountry—could -obtain no goods in barter and having grown dependent on the whiteman’s -firearms, were in turn reduced to straits. - -Lagrange, a gay court adventurer, had come out in 1704 to Nelson, which -the French called Bourbon, with a troop of pleasure-seeking men and -women for a year’s hunting. For one year, the drab monotony of post -life was enlivened by a miniature Paris. Wines from the royal cellars -flowed like water. The reckless songs of court gallants rang among -the rafters, and the slippered feet of more reckless court beauties -tripped the light dance over the rough-timbered floors of the fur -post. It was a wild age, and a wild court from which they came to this -wilderness—reckless women and reckless men, whose God was Pleasure. -Who knows what court intrigue was being hidden and acted out at Port -Nelson? Poor butterflies, that had scorched their wings and lost their -youth, came here to masquerade! Soldiers of fortune, who had gambled -their patrimony in the royal court and stirred up scandal, rusticating -in a little log fort in the wilderness! The theme is more romantic than -the novelist could conceive. - -But war broke out, and Lagrange’s gay troop scattered like leaves -before the wind. Iberville was dead in Havana. La Fôrest of the -Quebec Fur Company had gone back to the St. Lawrence. Jeremie, the -interpreter, had gone to France on leave, in 1707, and now in 1708, -when the French garrisons were starving and the high seas scoured by -privateers—Jeremie came back as governor, under the king. He at once -dispatched men to hunt. Nine bushrangers had camped one night near -a tent of Crees. The Indians were hungry, sullen, resentful to the -whitemen who failed to trade guns and powder as the English had traded. -At the fort, they had been turned away with their furs on their hands. -It is the characteristic of the French trader that he frequently -descends to the level of the Indian. Jeremie’s nine men were, perhaps, -slightly intoxicated after their supper of fresh game and strong -brandy. Two Indian women came to the camp and invited two Frenchmen to -the Indian tents. The fellows tumbled into the trap like the proverbial -country jack with the thimblerigger. No sooner had they reached the -Indian tepees than they were brained. Seizing the pistols and knives of -the dead men, the Indians crept through the thicket to the fire of the -bush-rovers. With unearthly yells they fell on the remaining seven and -cut them to pieces. One wounded man alone escaped by feigning the rigor -of death, while they stripped him naked, and creeping off into hiding -of the bushes while the savages devoured the dead. Waiting till they -had gone, the wounded man crawled painfully back by night—a distance -of thirty miles—to Jeremie, at an outpost. Jeremie quickly withdrew -the garrison from the outpost, retreated within the double palisades -of Nelson (Bourbon) shot all bolts, unplugged his cannon and awaited -siege; but Indians do not attack in the open. Jeremie held the fort -till events in Europe relieved him of his charge. - - * * * * * - -In spite of French victories, as long as Mike Grimmington and Nick -Smithsend were bringing home cargoes of thirty thousand beaver a year, -the English Adventurers prospered. In fact, within twenty years of -their charter’s grant, they had prospered so exceedingly that they -no longer had the face to declare such enormous dividends, and on -September 3, 1690, it was unanimously decided to treble their original -stock from £10,500 to £31,500. The reasons given for this action were: -that there were furs of more value than the original capital of the -Company now in the Company’s warehouses; that the year’s cargo was of -more value than the original capital of the Company; that the returns -in beaver from Nelson and Severn alone this year exceeded £20,000; that -the forts and armaments were of great value, and that the Company had -reasons to expect £100,000 reparation from the French. - -Immediately after the decision, a dividend of 25 per cent. was declared -on the trebled stock. - -Such prosperity excited envy. The fur buyers and pelt workers and skin -merchants of London were up in arms. People began to question whether -a royal house, which had been deposed from the English throne, had any -right to deed away in perpetuity public domain of such vast wealth -to court favorites. Besides, court favorites had scattered with the -ruined Stuart House. Newcomers were the holders of the Hudson’s Bay -Company stock. What right had these newcomers to the privileges of such -monopoly? Especially, what was the meaning of such dividends, when the -Company regularly borrowed all the money needed for working operations? -As late as 1685, the Company had borrowed £2,000 at 6 per cent. from -its own shareholders, and after French disasters began to injure its -credit in the London market, it regularly sent agents to borrow money -in Amsterdam. - -The Company foresaw that the downfall of the Stuarts might affect its -monopoly and in 1697 had applied for the confirmation of its charter -by Parliament. Against this plea, London fur buyers filed a counter -petition: (1) It was too arbitrary a charter to be granted to private -individuals. (2) It was of no advantage to the public but a mere -stockjobbing concern, £100 worth of stock selling as high as £300, £30 -as high as £200. (3) Beaver purchased in Hudson Bay for 6d sold in -London for 6s. (4) Monopoly drove the Indians to trade with the French. -(5) The charter covered too much territory. - -To which the Company made answer that not £1,000 of stock had changed -hands in the last year, which was doubtless true; for ’97 was the -year of the great defeat. The climate would always prevent settlement -in Hudson Bay, and most important of all—England would have lost all -that region but for the Hudson’s Bay Company. In its mood at the time, -that was a telling argument with the English Parliament. Negotiations -were in progress with France for a permanent treaty of peace. If the -Hudson’s Bay Company were dissolved, to whom would all the region -revert but to those already in possession—the French? And if the -impending war broke out, who would defend the bay from the French but -the Company? - -By act of Parliament, the charter of the English Adventurers was -confirmed for a period of seven years. And more—when an act was passed -in 1708 to encourage trade to America, a proviso was inserted that the -territory of the Company should not be included in the freedom of trade. - -From the time France was beaten in the continental wars, the English -Adventurers never ceased to press their claims against France for the -restoration of all posts on Hudson Bay and the payment of damages -varying in amount from £200,000 to £100,504. Memorials were presented -to King William, memorials to Queen Anne. Sir Stephen Evance, the -goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder through taking stock in -payment for his ships chartered to the bay—had succeeded Marlborough as -governor in 1692, but the great general was still a friend at Court, -and when Evance retired in 1696, Sir William Trumbull, Secretary of -State, became governor. Old Governor Knight came from Albany on the -bay, in 1700, to go to France with Sir Bibye Lake and Marlborough to -press the claims of the English fur traders against France. For the -double claims of restoration and damages, France offered to trade all -the posts on the south shore for all the posts on the west shore. The -offer was but a parley for better terms. Both English and French fur -traders knew that the best furs came from the west posts. Negotiations -dragged on to 1710. It was subterraneously conveyed to the English fur -traders that France would yield on one point, but not on both: they -could have back the bay but not the indemnity; or the indemnity but -not the bay. The English fur traders subterraneously conveyed to the -commissioners in Holland, that they would accept the restoration of the -bay and write off the indemnity bill of £100,000 as bad debts. Such was -the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, as it affected the fate of the Hudson’s Bay -Company. - -One point was left unsettled by the treaty. Where was the boundary -between bushrangers of New France working north from the St. Lawrence, -and the voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company, working south from James -Bay? A dozen different propositions were made, but none accepted. The -dispute came as a heritage to modern days when Quebec and Ontario -wrangled out their boundaries, and Ontario and Manitoba competed -for Keewatin, and finally the new province of Saskatchewan disputed -Manitoba for a slice giving access to a seaport on Hudson Bay. - -The settlement came just in time to save the Company from bankruptcy. -The Adventurers had no money to pay their captains. Grimmington and -Smithsend accepted pay of £200 apiece in bonds. Yet this same Company -so often accused of avarice and tyranny to servants borrowed money to -pay £20 each to the seamen surviving the terrible disasters of ’97, and -donated a special gratuity to Captain Bailey for bringing the books of -Nelson safely home. Sir Stephen Evance became governor again in 1700 -and transferred £600 of his own stock to Captain Knight as wages for -holding Albany. Captains would now accept engagements only on condition -of being ransomed if captured, at the Company’s expense; and no ship -would leave port without a convoy of frigates. - -June 2, 1702, the secretary is ordered to pay the cost of making a -scarlet coat with lace, for _Nepanah-tay_, the Indian chief, come home -with Captain Grimmington. - -November 5, 1703, Captain Knight is ordered to take care of the little -Indian girl brought home by Captain Grimmington. It is ordered at the -same time that tradesmen’s bills shall be paid “as long as the money -lasts,” but that seamen’s wages be paid up to date. Orders are also -issued for the gunsmith “to stamp no barrell nor locks with ye compy’s -marker that are not in every way good and perfect.” - -Henry Kelsey is now employed at £100 per annum either “to go up -country”—meaning inland—or across to East Main (Labrador). When Mike -Grimmington is not on the bay in his frigate, he is sent to Russia with -beaver, bringing back cargoes of leather. Fullerton takes Knight’s -place at Albany, with a scale of wages running from £10 to £16 a year -for apprentices with a gratuity of 20s a month if they prove worthy; -and to Fullerton and the captains of the vessels are sent twenty-three -hogsheads of liquor to keep up their courage against the French in -1710. Outward bound the same year, Mike Grimmington, the veteran of a -hundred raids, falls desperately ill. Like the Vikings of the North, -he will not turn back. If vanquished, he will be vanquished with face -to foe. So he meets his Last Foe at sea, and is vanquished of Death -on June 15—within a few weeks of Radisson’s death—and is buried at -Harwich. Learning the news by coureur, the Governing Committee promptly -vote his widow, Anne, a gift of £100 and appoints the son, Mike -Grimmington, Jr., an apprentice. Sir Bibye Lake, who had helped to -secure the favorable terms of the peace treaty, is voted governor in -1713. - -In no year at this period did the sales of furs exceed £100,000 but -big cargoes are beginning to come in again, and the Company is able -to declare a dividend of 10 per cent. in 1718. Before the French war, -the forts had been nothing but a cluster of cabins palisaded. Now the -Adventurers determine to strengthen their posts. For the time, Rupert -and Severn are abandoned, but stone bastions are built in 1718 at Moose -and Albany and Nelson (now known as York) and Churchill. Inland from -Albany, Henley House is garrisoned against the French overlanders. At -East Main on Slude River a fort is knocked together of driftwood and -bowlder and lime. - -In spite of increased wages and peace, the Adventurers have great -difficulty procuring servants. The war has made known the real perils -of the service. Mr. Ramsay is employed in 1707 and Captain John -Merry in 1712 to go to the Orkneys for servants—fourteen able-bodied -seamen in the former year, forty in the latter, and for the first -time there come into the history of the Northwest the names of those -Orkney families, whose lives are really the record of the great domain -to which they gave their strength—the Belchers and Gunns, and the -Carruthers, and the Bannisters, and the Isbisters and the Baileys, -generation after generation, and the Mackenzies, and the Clarkes -and the Gwynnes’s. Some came as clerks, some as gunners, some as -bush-lopers. The lowest wage was 12s a month with a gratuity of £2 on -signing the contract. But this did not suffice to bring recruits fast -enough for the expanding work of the Company, and there comes jauntily -on the scene, in 1711, Mr. Andrew Vallentine of matrimonial fame with -secret contracts to supply the Company with apprentices if the Company -will supply the dowries for the brides of the said apprentices. As told -in a former chapter, “_all proposals to be locked up in ye Iron Chest -in a Booke Aparte_.” Dr. Sacheverell, the famous divine, performed the -marriage ceremonies; and from an item surreptitiously smuggled into -the general minutes of the Company’s records instead of “the Booke -Aparte,” I judge that the marriage portions were on a scale averaging -some £70 and £100 each. A Miss Evance is named as one of the brides, -so that the affair was no common listing of women for the marriage -shambles such as Virginia and Quebec witnessed, but a contract in which -even a relative of the Company’s governor was not ashamed to enter. -Business flourished—as told elsewhere. The marriage office had to have -additional apartments in “the Buttery” until about 1735, when lawsuits -and the death of Mr. Vallentine caused a summary shutting down of the -enterprise. It had accomplished its aim—brought recruits to the Company. - -By 1717 Kelsey, the aforetime apprentice, had become governor of -Churchill at £200 a year. One William Stewart and another apprentice, -Richard Norton, were sent inland from Churchill to explore and make -peace between the tribes. How far north they proceeded is not known—not -farther than Chesterfield Inlet, where the water ran with a tide like -the sea, and the Indians by signs told legends of vast mines. Kelsey -had heard similar tales of mines over on the Labrador coast. Thomas -Macklish, who had gone up Nelson River beyond Ben Gillam’s Island, -heard similar tales. Each of these explorers, the Company rewarded with -gratuities ranging from £20 to £100. There were legends, too, at Moose -and Rupert of great silver mines toward Temiscamingue—the field of the -modern cobalt beds. - -The Company determined to inaugurate a policy of search for mineral -wealth and exploration for a passage to the South Sea. Old Captain -Knight—now in his eighties—had gone back to the bay to receive the -posts from the French under Jeremie. He had returned to England and -was, in 1718, ordered on a voyage of exploration. He demanded stiff -terms for the arduous task. His salary was to be £400 per annum. -He was to have one-tenth profit of all minerals discovered and all -new trade established, which was not in furs, such as whale hunting -and fishing. He was to be allowed to accept such presents from the -evacuating French as he saw fit, and was not to be compelled to winter -on the bay. The contract was for four years with the proviso in case of -Knight’s death, Henry Kelsey was to be governor of all the bay. With a -Greenland schooner and a yawl for inland waters, Knight set sail on the -frigates bound from England, hopes high as gold miners stampeding to a -new field. - -_Notes on Chapter XV._—The Sandford first sent inland from Albany was -a relative of Captain Gillam and was at one time put on the lists for -dismissal owing to Ben Gillam’s poaching. - - * * * * * - -_Robson_ casts doubt on Kelsey having gone inland from Nelson, but -Robson was writing in a mood of spite toward his former employers. The -reasons given for his doubt are two-fold: (1) Kelsey could not have -gone five hundred miles in sixty days; (2) in the dry season of July, -Kelsey could not have followed any Indian trail. Both objections are -absurd. Forty miles a day is not a high average for a good woodsman -or canoe-man. As to following a trail in July, the very fact that the -grass was so brittle, made it easy to follow recent tracks. Night camp -fire and the general direction of the land would be guides enough for a -good pathfinder, let alone the crumpled grasses left behind a horde of -wandering Indians. - - * * * * * - -Kelsey’s Journal is to be found in the Parliamentary Report of 1749. At -the time, it was handed over to Parliament, it was taken from Hudson’s -Bay House, and is no longer in the records of the Company. The exact -itinerary of the journey, I do not attempt to give. Each reader, -especially in the West, can guess at it for himself. - - * * * * * - -It is about this time that Port Nelson became known as York, in honor -of the Duke of York, former governor. Heretofore, dispatches were -headed “Nelson.” Now, they are addressed to “York.” - - * * * * * - -The account of French occupation is to be found in French Marine -Archives and in the _Relation of Jeremie, Bernard’s Voyages_. - - * * * * * - -Governor Knight paid £277 to the French for provisions left at Nelson. -It was the cargo of furs he sent home in 1714 that enabled the Company -to pay its long-standing debts and declare a dividend by 1718. - - * * * * * - -As York may soon be Manitoba’s seaport, it is worth noting that in -1715 Captain Davies spent the entire summer beating about and failed -to enter Hayes River for the ice. For this failure, he was severely -reprimanded by the Company. - - * * * * * - -In 1695 the lease was signed for thirty-five years for the premises on -Fenchurch Street, occupied till the Company moved to present quarters -in Lime Street. - - * * * * * - -The first map of the bay drawn for the Company was executed in 1684, by -John Thornton, for which he was paid £4. - - * * * * * - -It was in 1686 that the famous Jan Péré, the spy, was discharged from -prison and escaped to France. - - * * * * * - -All trace of young Chouart is lost after 1689, when he came to London -from Nelson. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -1719-1740 - -OLD CAPTAIN KNIGHT BESET BY GOLD FEVER, HEARS THE CALL OF THE -NORTH—THE STRAITS AND BAY—THE FIRST HARVEST OF THE SEA AT DEAD MAN’S -ISLAND—CASTAWAYS FOR THREE YEARS—THE COMPANY BESET BY GOLD FEVER -INCREASES ITS STOCK—PAYS TEN PER CENT. ON TWICE-TREBLED CAPITAL—COMING -OF SPIES AGAIN - - -From the time of the first voyage up to Churchill River, in 1686, the -fur traders had noticed tribes of Indians from the far North, who wore -ornaments of almost pure copper. Chunks of metal, that melted down to -lead with a percentage of silver, were brought down to the fur post -at Slude River in Labrador on the east side of the bay. Vague tales -were told by the wandering Eskimo and Chippewyans at Churchill of a -vast copper mine somewhere on that river now known as Coppermine, and -of a metal for which the Indians had no name but which white man’s -avidity quickly recognized as gold dust coming from the far northern -realms of iceberg and frost known as Baffin’s Land. How true some of -these legends were has been proved by the great cobalt mines of modern -Ontario and placers of Alaska. But where lies the hidden treasure trove -from which the Indians brought down copper to Churchill, silver to -Slude River, and gold dust—if gold it was—from the snowy realm of the -Eskimo in the North? Those treasure stores have not yet been uncovered, -though science has declared that vast deposits of copper may be found -west of Chesterfield Inlet, and placers may at any time be uncovered in -Baffin’s Land. - -The Hudson’s Bay charter had been granted in the first place for -“the discovery of a passage to the South Sea.” At this time, there -was great agitation in Russia for the discovery of the Straits of -Anian, that were supposed to lead through America from Asia to Europe. -Vitus Bering’s expedition to find these straits resulted in Russia’s -discovery of Alaska. - -The English Adventurers now kept agents in Russia. They were aware -of the projects in the air at the Russian Court. Why not combine the -search for the passage to the South Sea with the search for the hidden -mines of Indian legends? Besides—the Company had another project in -the air. Richard Norton, the apprentice boy, had gone overland north -from Churchill almost as far as Chesterfield Inlet. Chesterfield -Inlet seemed to promise the passage to the South Sea; but what was -more to the point—the waters in this part of the bay offered great -opportunities for whale fisheries. With the threefold commission of -discovering mines, the passage to the South Sea, and a whale fishery, -old Captain Knight sailed from Gravesend on June 3, 1719, “_so God send -the good ships a successful Discovery and to return in safety—your -loving friends_”—ran the words of the commission. - -Four ships there were in the fleet that sailed this year: _The Mary_, -frigate, under Captain Belcher, with Mike Grimmington, Jr., now chief -mate, a crew of eighteen and a passenger list of new servants for York -and Churchill, among them Henry Kelsey, to be governor during Knight’s -absence from Churchill; the frigate _Hudson’s Bay_ under Captain Ward, -with twenty-three passengers for the south end of the bay; and the -two ships for Knight’s venture: _The Discovery_, Captain Vaughan; -_The Albany_, Captain Bailey, with fifty men, all told, bound for the -unknown North, the three men, Benjamin Fuller, David Newman and John -Awdry going as lieutenants to Captain Knight. Henry Kelsey had left his -wife in London. Each of the captains had given bonds of £2,000 to obey -Knight in all things. - -Knight himself is now eighty years of age—an old war horse limbering -up to battle at the smell of powder smoke—his ships loaded with -iron-hooped treasure casks to carry back the gold dust. The complete -frames of houses are carried to build a post in the North, and among -his fifty men are iron forgers, armorers, whalers from Dundee, and -a surgeon paid the unusual salary of £50 a year on account of the -extraordinary dangers of this voyage. Bailey was probably the son of -that Bayly, who was first governor for the Adventurers on the bay. A -seasoned veteran, he had passed through the famous siege of Nelson in -’97. When Knight had left Albany to come to England, Fullerton was -deputy and Bailey next in command. There was peace with France, but -that had not prevented a score of French raiders coming overland to -ambush the English. Bailey got wind of the raiders hiding in the woods -round Albany and shutting gates, bided his time. Word was sent to the -mate of his ship lying off shore, at the sound of a cannon shot to rush -to the rescue. At midnight a thunderous hammering on the front gates -summoned the English to surrender. Bailey gingerly opened the wicket at -the side of the gate and asked what was wanted. - -“Entrance,” yelled the raiders, confident that they had taken the -English by surprise. - -Bailey answered that the Governor was asleep, but he would go and -fetch the keys. The raiders rallied to the gate. Bailey put the match -lighters to the six-pounders inside and let fly simultaneous charges -across the platform where the raiders crowded against the gate. There -was instant slaughter, a wild yell, and a rush for cover in the woods, -but the cannon shot had brought the master of Bailey’s sloop running -ashore. Raiders and sailors dashed into each other’s faces, with the -result that the crew were annihilated in the dark. For some days the -raiders hung about the outskirts of the woods, burying the dead, -waiting for the wounded to heal, and hunting for food. A solitary -Frenchman was observed parading the esplanade in front of the fort. -Fullerton came out and demanded what he wanted. The fellow made no -answer but continued his solitary march up and down under the English -guns. Fullerton offered to accept him as a hostage for the others’ good -conduct, but the man was mute as stone. The English governor bade him -be off, or he would be shot. The strange raider continued his odd tramp -up and down till a shot from the fort window killed him instantly. -The only explanation of the incident was that the man must have been -crazed by the hardship of the raid and by the horrors of the midnight -slaughter. - -Bailey, then, was the man chosen as the captain of _The Albany_ and -Knight’s right-hand man. - -The ships were to keep together till they reached the entrance of the -straits, the two merchantmen under Ward and Belcher then to go forward -to the fur posts, Knight’s two ships straight west for Chesterfield -Inlet, where he was to winter. Two guineas each, the Adventurers gave -the crews of each ship that afternoon on June 3, at Gravesend, to drink -“_God-speed, a prosperous discovery, a faire wind, and a good sail_.” - - * * * * * - -As a railway is now being actually built after being projected on -paper for more than twenty-five years—from the western prairie to -a seaport on Hudson Bay, which has for its object the diversion of -Western traffic to Europe from New York to some harbor on Hudson Bay, -it is necessary to give in detail what the archives of the Hudson’s Bay -Company reveal about this route. Hudson Strait opens from the Atlantic -between Resolution Island on the north and the Button Islands on the -south. From point to point, this end of the strait is forty-five miles -wide. At the other end, the west side, between Digges’ Island and -Nottingham Island, is a distance of thirty-five miles. From east to -west, the straits are four hundred and fifty miles long—wider at the -east where the south side is known as Ungava Bay, contracting at the -west, to the Upper Narrows. The south side of the strait is Labrador; -the north, Baffin’s Land. Both sides are lofty, rocky, cavernous shores -lashed by a tide that rises in places as high as thirty-five feet and -runs in calm weather ten miles an hour. Pink granite islands dot the -north shore in groups that afford harborage, but all shores present -an adamant front, edges sharp as a knife or else rounded hard to have -withstood and cut the tremendous ice jam of a floating world suddenly -contracted to forty miles, which Davis Strait pours down at the east -end and Fox Channel at the west. - -Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill; one thousand feet, -a mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two -thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and -torn and ripped a way since the ice age preceding history, cutting a -great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to -secluded silent valleys moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day -Earth first saw light. Down these valleys pour the clear streams of -the eternal snows, burnished as silver against the green, setting the -silence echoing with the tinkle of cataracts over some rock wall, or -filling the air with the voice of many waters at noon-tide thaw. One -old navigator—Coates—describes the beat of the angry tide at the rock -base and the silver voice of the mountain brooks, like the treble and -bass of some great cathedral organ sounding its diapason to the glory -of God in this peopleless wilderness. - -Perhaps the kyacks of some solitary Eskimo, lashed abreast twos -and threes to prevent capsizing, may shoot out from some of these -bog-covered valleys like seabirds; but it is only when the Eskimos -happen to be hunting here, or the ships of the whalers and fur traders -are passing up and down—that there is any sign of human habitation on -the straits. - -Walrus wallow on the pink granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears -flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for -the great bulging black eye, bounds over the bowlders. Snow buntings, -whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads—flacker and clacker and -hold solemn conclave on the adjoining rocks, as though this were their -realm from the beginning and for all time. - -Of a tremendous depth are the waters of the straits. Not for nothing -has the ice world been grinding through this narrow channel for -billions of years. No fear of shoals to the mariner. Fear is of another -sort. When the ice is running in a whirlpool and the incoming tide -meets the ice jam and the waters mount thirty-five feet high and a -wind roars between the high shores like a bellows—then it is that the -straits roll and pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where -the ships go down. “Undertow,” the old Hudson’s Bay captains called -the suck of the tide against the ice-wall; and that black hole where -the lumpy billows seemed to part like a passage between wall of ice -and wall of water was what the mariners feared. The other great danger -was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing -and plunging like fighting stallions, with the ice blocks going off -like pistol shots or smashed glass. No child’s play is such navigating -either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern -ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the -whaling fleets have navigated these straits for two hundred years. - -Westward of the straits, the shores dropped to low, sandy reaches at -Mansfield Island. Another five hundred miles across the bay brought the -ships to Churchill and York (Nelson). - -Here, then, came Captain Knight’s fleet. And the terrific dangers of -his venture met him—as it were—on the spot. The records do not give -the exact point of the disaster, but one may guess without stretching -imagination that it was in the Upper Narrows where thirty-five feet of -lashing tide meet a churning wall of ice. - -The ships were embayed, sails lowered, rudders unshipped, and anchors -put out for the night. Night did not mean dark. It meant the sunlight -aslant the ice fields and pools in hues of fire that tinted the green -waves and set rainbows playing in the spray. Gulls wheeled and screamed -overhead. Cascades tinkled over the ice walls. There was the deep -stillness of twilight calm, then the quiver of the ship’s timbers -forewarning the rising tide, then the long, low undertone of the ocean -depths gathering might to hurl against the iron forces of the ice. The -crews had been rambling over the ice but were now recalled to be on -the watch as the tide rose. Some were at the windlass ready to heave -anchors up at first opening of clear water; others ready to lower boats -and tow from dangers; others again preparing blasts of powder to blow -up the ice if the tide threatened to close the floes in a squeeze. -Captain Ward’s men must have been out on the ice, for it happened in -the twinkling of an eye as such wrecks always happened, and not a man -was lost. Two icepans reared up, smashed together, crushed the frigate -_Hudson’s Bay_, like an eggshell and she sank a water-logged wreck -before their eyes. Ward’s crew were at once taken on board by Belcher, -and when the ice loosened, carried on down to York and Albany. There -was a lawsuit against the Company for the wages of these men wrecked -outward bound and kept in idleness on the bay for thirteen months. The -matter was compromised by the Company paying ten months’ wages instead -of thirteen. - - * * * * * - -Captain Knight waited only long enough at Churchill to leave the fort -provisions. Then he set out on his quest to the north. This could -scarcely be described as foolhardy, for his ships carried the frames -for houses to winter in the North. From this point on, the story must -be pieced together of fragments. From the time Captain Knight left -Churchill, in 1719, his journal ceases. No line more came from the -game old pathfinder to the Company. The year 1719 passed, 1720, 1721, -still no word of him. Surely, he must have passed through the Straits -of Anian to the South Sea and would presently come home from Asia laden -with spices and gold dust for the Company. But why didn’t he send back -one of the little whaling boats to Churchill with word of his progress; -or why didn’t some of the men come down from the whaling station he -was to establish at Chesterfield Inlet? Henry Kelsey takes a cruise -on the sloop _Prosperous_ from York, in 1719, but finds no trace of -him. Hancock has been cruising the whaling seas on _The Success_ that -same summer, but he learns nothing of Knight. The whole summer of -1721, while whaling, Kelsey is on the lookout for the peaked sails of -Knight’s ships; but he sees never a sail. Napper is sent out again on -the sloop _Success_, but he runs amuck of a reef four days from Nelson -River and loses his ship and almost his life. - -Three full years were long enough for Knight to have circumnavigated -the globe. By 1721, the Company was so thoroughly alarmed that it -bought _The Whalebone_, sloop—John Scroggs, master—and sent it from -Gravesend on the 31st of May to search for Knight. Two years Scroggs -searched the northwest coast of the bay, but the northwest coast of the -bay is one thousand miles in and out, and Scroggs missed the hidden -hole-in-the-wall that might have given up the secret of the sea. Norton -traveling inland with the Indians hears disquieting stories, and some -whalers chancing North, in 1726, discover a new harbor at the bottom of -which lie cannon, anchors, bits of iron, but it is not till fifty years -later that the story is learned in detail. - -Here it is: - -Knight steered for that western arm of the sea known as Chesterfield -Inlet. It was here that Norton had heard legends of copper mines and -seen evidences of tide water. Just south of Chesterfield Inlet is -a group of white quartz islands the largest five by twenty miles, -known as Marble Island, from the fact that it is bare of growth as a -gravestone. Bedford whalers of modern days have called it by another -name—Dead Man’s Island. - -At the extreme east is a hole-like cavity in the rock wall where -Eskimos were wont to shoot in with their bladder boats and hide from -the fury of the northeast gale. One night as the autumn storms raged, -the Indians were amazed to see two huge shadows emerge from the lashing -hurricane like floating houses—driving straight as an arrow for the -mark to certain destruction between an angry sea and the rock wall. -If there were cries for help, they were drowned by the shrieks of the -hurricane. In the morning, when the storm had abated, the Indians saw -that the shadows had been whitemen’s ships. The large one had struck on -the reefs and sunk. The other was a mass of wave-beaten wreckage on the -shore, but the white men were toiling like demons, saving the timbers. -Presently, the whites began to erect a framework—their winter house. To -the wondering Eskimos, the thing rose like magic. The Indians grasped -their kyacks and fled in terror. - -It need scarcely be told—these were Knight’s treasure-seekers, wrecked -without saving a pound of provisions on an island bare as a billiard -ball twenty miles from the mainland. How did the crews pass that -winter? Their only food must have been such wild cranberries as they -could gather under the drifting snows, arctic hares, snowbirds, -perhaps the carcass of an occasional dead porpoise or whale. When the -Indians came back in the summer of 1720, there were very few whitemen -left, but there was a great number of graves—graves scooped out of -drift sand with bowlders for a tombstone. The survivors seemed to be -starving. They fell like wild beasts on the raw seal meat and whale oil -that the Eskimos gave them. They seemed to be trying to make a boat out -of the driftwood that had been left of that winter’s fuel. The next -time the Eskimos visited the castaways, there were only two men alive. -These were demented with despair, passing the time weeping and going -to the highest rock on the island to watch for a sail at sea. Their -clothes had been worn to tatters. They were clad in the skins of the -chase and looked like madmen. From the Indians’ account, it was now -two years from the time of the wreck. What ammunition had been saved -from the ships, must have been almost exhausted. How these two men kept -life in their bodies for two winters in the most bitterly cold, exposed -part of Hudson Bay, huddling in their snow-buried hut round fires of -moss and driftwood, with the howling north wind chanting the death song -of the winding sheet, and the scream of the hungry were-wolf borne to -their ears in the storm—can better be imagined than described. - -Why did not they try to escape? Possibly, because they were weakened -by famine and scurvy. Surely Bering’s Russians managed better when -storm cast them on a barren island while they were searching this same -mythical passage. They drifted home on the wreckage. Why could not -these men have tried to escape in the same way? In the first place, -they did not know they were only twelve miles from the main coast. Cast -on Marble Island in the storm and the dark, they had no idea where they -were, except that it was in the North and in a harbor facing east. Of -the two last survivors, one seemed to be the armorer, or else that -surgeon who was to receive £50 for the extraordinary dangers of this -voyage, for he was constantly working with metal instruments to rivet -the planks of his raft together. But he was destined to perish as his -comrades. When his companion died, the man tried to scoop out a grave -in the sand. It was too much for his strength. He fell as he toiled -over the grave and died among the Eskimo tents. So perished Captain -Knight and his treasure-seekers, including the veteran Bailey—as -Hudson had perished before them—taken as toll of man’s progress by the -insatiable sea. Not a secret has been wrested from the Unknown, not a -milepost won for civilization from savagery, but some life has paid -for the secret to go down in despair and defeat; but some bleaching -skeleton of a nameless failure marks where the mile forward was won. -The lintel of every doorway to advancement is ever marked with some -blood sacrifice. - -Whalers in 1726, saw the cannon and anchors lying at the bottom of the -harbor, also casks with iron hoops—that were to bring back the gold -dust. Hearne, in 1769, could count where the graves had been scraped up -by the wolves, and he gathered up the skeletons along the beach to bury -them in a common grave. Latterly, oddly enough, that island was the -rendezvous of Northern whalers—where they came from the far North to -bury their dead and set up crosses for those who lie in the sea without -a grave. It was known as Dead Man’s Island. - - * * * * * - -After giving an account of three wrecks in four years, I hope it may -not seem inconsistent to say that I believe the next century will see -a Hudson’s Bay route to Europe. What—you say—after telling of three -wrecks in four years? Yes—what Atlantic port does not have six wrecks -in ten years? New York and Montreal have more. If the Hudson’s Bay -route is not fit for navigation, the country must make it fit for -navigation. Of telegraphs, shelters, light-houses, there is not now -one. Canals have been dug for less cause than the Upper Narrows of -Hudson Straits. If Peter the Great had waited till St. Petersburg -was a fit site for a city, there would have been no St. Petersburg. -He made it fit. The same problem confronts northwest America to-day. -It is absurd that a population of millions has no seaport nearer than -two thousand miles. Churchill or York would be seaports in the middle -of the continent. Of course, there would be wrecks and difficulties. -_The wrecks are part of the toll we pay for harnessing the sea. The -difficulties are what make nations great._ One day was the delay -allowed the fur ships for the straits. Who has not waited longer than -one day to enter New York harbor or Montreal? - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile, moneybags at home were counting their shekels. A wild -craze of speculation was sweeping over England. It was a fever of -getting-something-for-nothing, floating wild schemes of paper capital -to be sold to the public for pounds, shillings and pence. In modern -language it would be called “wild-catting.” The staid “old Worthies”—as -the Adventurers were contemptuously designated—were caught by the -craze. It was decided on August 19, 1720, to increase the capital of -the Company from £31,500 to £378,000 to be paid for in subscriptions of -10 per cent. installments. Before the scheme had matured, the bubble -of speculation had collapsed. Money could neither be borrowed nor -begged. The plan to enlarge the stock was dropped as it stood—with -subscriptions to the amount of £103,950 paid in—which practically meant -that the former capital of £31,500 had been trebled and an additional -10 per cent. levied. - -On this twice-trebled capital of £103,950, dividends of 5 per cent. -were paid in 1721; of 8 per cent. in 1722; of 12 per cent. in 1723 and -’24; of 10 per cent. from 1725 to 1737, when the dividends fell to 8 -per cent. and went up again to 10 per cent. in 1739. From 1723, instead -of leaving the money idle in the strong box, it was invested by the -Company in bonds that bore interest till their ships came home. From -1738, the Bank of England regularly advanced money for the Company’s -operations. Sir Bibye Lake was governor from the time he received such -good terms in the French treaty. The governor’s salary is now £200, the -deputy’s £150, the committeemen £100 each. - -It was in February, 1724, that a warehouse was leased in Lime Street at -£12 a year, the present home of the Company. - -In four years, the Company had lost four vessels. These were replaced -by four bigger frigates, and there come into the service the names -of captains famous on Hudson Bay—Belcher, and Goston, and Spurell, -and Kennedy, and Christopher Middleton, and Coates, and Isbister, -with officers of the names of Inkster, and Kipling, and Maclish, and -MacKenzie, and Gunn, and Clement. Twice in ten years, Captain Coates is -wrecked in the straits, on the 26th of June, 1727, outward bound with -all cargo and again on the frigate _Hudson’s Bay_ in 1736, when “_we -sank_,” relates Coates, “_less than ten minutes after we were caught by -the ice_.” - -From being an apprentice boy traveling inland to the Indians, Richard -Norton has become governor of Churchill, with an Indian wife and -half-Indian sons sent to England for education. Norton receives orders, -in 1736, once more to explore Chesterfield Inlet where Knight had -perished. Napper on _The Churchill_, sloop, and Robert Crow on _The -Musquash_ carry him up in the summer of 1737. Napper dies of natural -causes on the voyage, but Chesterfield Inlet is found to be a closed -arm of the sea, not a passage to the Pacific; and widow Napper is -voted fifty guineas from the Company. Kelsey dies in 1729, and widow -Kelsey, too, is voted a bounty of ten guineas, her boy to be taken as -apprentice. - -In 1736, Captain Middleton draws plans for the building of a fine new -post at Moose and of a stone fort at Eskimo Point, Churchill, which -shall be the strongest fort in America. The walls are to be sixteen -feet high of solid stone with a depth of twenty-four feet solid masonry -at base. On the point opposite Eskimo Cape, at Cape Merry, named after -the deputy governor, are to be blockhouses ten feet high with six great -guns mounted where watch is to be kept night and day. - -Moose will send up the supply of timber for Churchill, and the Company -sends from London sixty-eight builders, among whom is one Joseph -Robson, at £25 a year, who afterward writes furious attacks on the -Company. Barely is Moose completed when it is burned to the ground, -through the carelessness of the cook spilling coals from his bake oven. - -Two things, perhaps, stirred the Company up to this unwonted activity. -Spies were coming overland from St. Lawrence—French explorers working -their way westward, led by La Vérendrye. “_We warn you_,” the Company -wrote to each of its factors at this time, “_meet these spies very -civily but do not offer to detain them and on no account suffer such to -come within the gates nor let the servants converse with them, and use -all legal methods to make them depart and be on your guard not to tell -the company’s secrets_.” - -Then in 1740, came a bolt from the blue. Captain Christopher Middleton, -their trusted officer, publicly resigned from the service to go into -the King’s navy for the discovery of a Northwest Passage through -Hudson Bay. - -_Notes on Chapter XVI._—Of Baffin’s Land, Dr. Bell, who personally -explored Hudson Bay in 1885 for the Dominion Government, says: “These -ancient grounds probably contain rich placer gold in the valleys of the -streams.” The mica mines of Baffin’s Land were being mined in 1906. - - * * * * * - -The name of the captain, who perished with Knight, is our friend Bailey -of the Iberville siege; not Barlow, as all modern histories copying -from Hearne and 1749 Parl. Report give. The minutes of the H. B. C. -show that Barlow is a misprint for Berley, and Berley for Bailey, which -name is given repeatedly in the minutes in connection with this voyage. - - * * * * * - -The account of Bering’s efforts to find the Straits of Anian and of his -similar fate will be found in “_Vikings of the Pacific_.” - - * * * * * - -All the printed accounts of Knight’s disaster say he wintered at -Churchill in 1719-20. This is wrong, as shown by the unprinted -records of H. B. C. He sailed at once for the North. All printed -accounts—except Hearne’s—give the place of disaster as the west end of -Marble Island. This is a mistake. It was at the east end as given in -the French edition of Hearne. Hearne it is, who gives the only account -of Bailey’s defense of Albany in 1704, only Hearne calls Bailey, -Barlow, which the records show to be wrong. - - * * * * * - -An almost Parallel wreck to that of Knight’s took place at Gull Island -off Newfoundland twenty-five years ago. A whole shipload of castaways -perished on a barren island in sight of their own harbor lights, only -in the case of Gull Island, the castaways did not survive longer than -a few weeks. They lived under a piece of canvas and subsisted on -snow-water. - - * * * * * - -It was not till 1731 that Knight’s Journals as left at Churchill were -sent home to London. They cease at 1719. - - * * * * * - -Richard Norton first went North by land in 1718. His next trip was -after Knight’s death; his next, by boat as told in this chapter. - - * * * * * - -In 1723, Samuel Hopkins was sent home in irons from Albany for three -times absconding over the walls to the woods without Governor Myatt’s -leave. Examined by the committee, he would give no excuse and was -publicly dismissed with loss of wages. Examined later privately, he -was re-engaged with honor—which goes to prove that Myatt may have been -one of those governors, who ruled his men with the thick end of an oar. - - * * * * * - -At this period, servants for the first time were allowed to go to the -woods to trap and were given one half the proceeds of their hunt. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -1740-1770 - -THE COMPANY’S PROSPERITY AROUSES OPPOSITION—ARTHUR DOBBS AND THE -NORTHWEST PASSAGE AND THE ATTACK ON THE CHARTER—NO NORTHWEST PASSAGE IS -FOUND BUT THE FRENCH SPUR THE ENGLISH TO RENEWED ACTIVITY - - -For fifty years, the Company had been paying dividends that never went -lower than 7 per cent. and generally averaged 10. These dividends -were on capital that had been twice trebled. The yearly fur sales -yielded from £20,000 to £30,000 to the Adventurers—twice and three -times the original capital, which—it must be remembered—was not all -subscribed in cash. French hunters had been penetrating America from -the St. Lawrence. Bering had discovered Alaska on the west for Russia. -La Vérendrye had discovered the great inland plains between the -Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for France. It was just beginning to -dawn on men’s minds what a vast domain lay between the plantations of -the Atlantic seaboard and the Western Sea. It was inevitable that men -should ask themselves whether Charles II. had any right to deed away -forever that vast domain to those court favorites and their heirs known -as the Hudson’s Bay Company. To be sure, Parliament had confirmed the -charter when the Stuart House fell; but the charter had been confirmed -for only seven years. Those seven years had long since expired, and -the original stock of the fur company had passed from the heirs of the -original grantees to new men—stock speculators and investors. With -the exception of royalty, there was not a single stockholder of the -Hudson’s Bay Company by 1740, who was an heir of the original men named -in the original charter. Men asked themselves—had these stockholders -any right to hold monopoly against all other traders over a western -domain the size of half Europe? The charter had been granted in the -first place as a reward for efforts to find passage to the South Sea. -What had the Company done to find a passage to the Pacific? Sent Knight -and his fifty men hunting gold sands in the North, where they perished; -and dispatched half a dozen little sloops north of Chesterfield Inlet -to hunt whales. This had the Adventurers done to earn their charter, -and ever since sat snugly at home drawing dividends on twice-trebled -capital equal to 90 per cent. on the original stock, intrenched behind -the comfortable feudal notion that it was the manifest design of an -All Wise Providence to create this world for the benefit of the few who -can get on top and exploit the many to the profit of the aforesaid few. - -We, whose modern democracy is working ten-fold worse injustice by -favors to the few against the many, must have a care how we throw -stones at that old notion. Feudalism in the history of the race—had -its place. It was the system by which the bravest man led the clan and -ruled because he was fittest to rule as well as to protect. Of all -those rivals now yelping enviously at the Company’s privileges—which -could point to an ancestor, who had been willing to brave the perils -of a first essay to Hudson Bay? We have seen how even yet the Company -could obtain servants only by dint of promising bounties and wives and -dowries; how the men under command of the first navigators balked and -reared and mutinied at the slightest risk; how—in spite of all we can -say against feudalism—it was the spirit of feudalism, the spirit of the -exclusive favored few, that faced the first risks and bought success by -willing, reckless death, and later fought like demons to hold the bay -against France. - - * * * * * - -It was one Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and scholar, who voiced the -general sentiment rising against the privileges of the Company. Dobbs -had been bitten by that strange mania which had lured so many and was -yet to lure more brave seamen to their death. He was sure there was a -Northwest Passage. Granted that; and the sins of the fur traders became -enormities. Either they had not earned their charter by searching the -Northwest Passage, or if they had found it, they had kept the discovery -a secret through jealousy of their trade. Dobbs induced the Admiralty -to set aside two vessels for the search. Then he persuaded Captain -Middleton, who had for twenty years navigated Hudson Bay, to resign the -service of the Company and lead the government expedition of 1741-2. - -Around this expedition raged a maelstrom of ill feeling and false -accusations and lies. The Company were jealous of their trade and -almost instantly instructed their Governing Committee to take secret -means to prevent this expedition causing encroachment on their rights. -This only aroused the fury of the Admiralty. The Company were given -to understand that if they did not do all they could to facilitate -Middleton’s search, they might lose their charter. On this, the Company -ordered their factors on the bay to afford Middleton every aid, but -judging from the factors’ conduct, it may be surmised that secret -instructions of another nature were sent out. - -When Middleton came to Churchill in July on _The Furnace Bomb_ and -_Discovery_, he found buoys cut, harbor lights out and a governor mad -as a hornet, who forbade the searchers to land, or have any intercourse -with the Indians. Taking two Indians as guides, Middleton proceeded -north as far as 66°—in the region of Rowe’s Welcome beyond Chesterfield -Inlet. Here, he was utterly blocked by the ice, and the expedition -returned to England a failure. - -It was at this point the furor arose. It was charged that the Company -had bribed Middleton with £5,000 not to find a passage; that he had -sailed east instead of west; that he had cast the two Indian guides -adrift at Marble Island with scant means of reaching the main shore -alive; and that while wintering in Churchill he had been heard to say, -“That the Company need not be uneasy, for if he did find a passage, no -one on earth would be a bit the wiser.” The quarrel, which set England -by the ears for ten years and caused a harvest of bitter pamphlets that -would fill a small library—need not be dealt with here. - -Middleton knew there was no passage for commercial purpose. That the -Admiralty accepted his verdict may be inferred from the fact that he -was permanently appointed in the king’s service; but Dobbs was not -satisfied. He hurled baseless charges at Middleton, waged relentless -pamphlet war against the Company and showered petitions on Parliament. -Parliament was persuaded to offer a reward of £20,000 to any one -finding a passage to the Pacific. Dobbs then formed an opposition -company, opened subscriptions for a capital of £10,000 in one hundred -shares of £100 each for a second expedition, and petitioned the king -for a grant of all lands found adjacent to the waters discovered, _with -the rights of exclusive trade. Exclusive trade!_ There—the secret was -out—the cloven hoof! It was not because they had not earned their -charter, that the Adventurers had been assailed; but because rivals, -themselves, wanted rights to exclusive trade. To these petitions, the -Company showered back counter-memorials; and memorials of special -privileges becoming the fashion, other merchants of London, in 1752, -asked for the grant of all Labrador; to which the Company again -registered its counter-memorial. - -The furor materialized in two things: the expedition of the Dobbs -Company to find the Northwest Passage in 1746-47, and the Parliamentary -Inquiry, in 1748-49, to look into the rights and workings of the -Adventurers’ charter. - -_The Dobbs_ galley, under Captain Moore was one hundred and eighty -tons; _The California_, Captain Smith, one hundred and forty tons; -and to the crews of both, rewards for the discovery of the Passage to -the South Sea were to be given ranging from £500 for the captains to -£200 to be divided among the sailors. Henry Ellis went as agent for the -Dobbs Company. The name of _The California_ was indicative of where -these argonauts hoped to sail. Oddly enough, that Captain Middleton, -whom the Dobbs forces had so mercilessly belabored—accompanied the -explorers some distance westward from the Orkneys on _The Shark_ as -convoy against French pirates. After leaving Middleton, one of the -vessels suffered an experience that very nearly finished Arthur Dobbs’ -enterprise. “Nothing had occurred,” writes Ellis, “till the 21st of -June, at night, when a terrible fire broke out in the great cabin of -_The Dobbs_, and quickly made progress to the powder room, where there -were not less than thirty-six or forty barrels of powder besides other -combustibles. It is impossible to express the consternation. Every one -on board had every reason to expect that moment was their last. You -might hear all varieties of sea-eloquence, cries, prayers, curses, -scolding, mingled together. Water was passed along by those who still -preserved their reason, but the crew were for hoisting out the boats. -Lashings were cut, but none had patience to hoist them out. The ship -was head to wind, the sails shaking and making a noise like thunder, -then running right before the wind and rolling, every one on deck -waiting for the blast to put an end to our fears.” - -The fire was put out before it reached the powder, but one can guess -the scare dampened the ardor of the crew. Very little ice was met in -Hudson Straits and by August 19, the vessels were at Marble Island. -The season was too late to go on north, so the ships sailed to winter -at York (Nelson) on Hayes River. Here, the usual quarrels took place -with the Hudson’s Bay people—buoys and flag signals being cut down as -the ships ran through the shoals of Five-Fathom Hole, five miles up -Hayes River. A fort called Montague House was built for the winter on -the south side, the main house being a two-story log-barracks, the -outbuildings, a sort of lean-to, or wooden wigwam banked up with snow, -where the crews could have quarters. The harbor was frozen over by -October 8. Heavy fur clothing was then donned for the winter, but in -spite of precautions against scurvy—exercise, the use of spruce beer, -outdoor life—four men died from the disease before ice cleared from -Hayes River in June. - -It need not be told here that no passage was found. As the boats -advanced farther and farther north of Rowe’s Welcome toward Fox -Channel, the hopelessness of the quest became apparent. Before them -lay an ice world, “As gloomy a prospect,” writes Ellis, “as ever -astonished mortal eyes. The ragged rocks seemed to hang above our -heads. In some places there were falls of water dashing from cliff to -cliff. From others, hung icicles like the pipes of a vast organ. But -the most overwhelming things were the shattered crags at our feet, -which appeared to have burst from the mountains through the power of -the frost—amazing relics of the wreck of nature.” In October of 1747, -the ships were back on the Thames. - - * * * * * - -If Dobbs’ Expedition had found a Northwest Passage, the history of -the Adventurers would close here. With the merchants of London a -unit against the charter and the Admiralty open to persuasion from -either side, there can be no doubt that the discovery of a way to -China through Hudson Bay would have sounded the death knell of the -Company. But the Dobbs Expedition was a failure. The Company’s course -was vindicated, and when the Parliamentary Committee of 1748-49 met, -affairs were _judiciously_ and I must believe _intentionally steered_ -away from the real question—the validity of the charter—to such side -issues as the Northwest Passage, the state of the Indians, whether the -country could be inhabited or not, questions—it will be noticed—on -which no one was competent to give evidence but the Company itself. -Among other evidence, there was quietly laid on the table the journals -of one Joseph La France, a French wood-rover who had come overland -from Michilimackinac to Hudson Bay. This record showed that France -was already on the field in the West. La Vérendrye and his sons were -on their way to the Rockies. Three forts were already built on the -Assiniboine. Such evidence could have only one influence on Parliament. -If Parliament took away the charter from the Company—declared, in fact, -that the charter was not legal—who would hold the vast domain against -France? The question of the abstract right did not come up at all. Does -it ever in international affairs? The question was one for diplomacy, -and diplomacy won. It was better for England that the Adventurers -should remain in undisturbed possession; and the Company retained its -charter. - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile, that activity among the French fur traders stirred up the -old Company as all the home agitation could not. Each of the forts, -Churchill farthest north, York on Hayes River, Albany, and Henley -House up Albany River, Moose (Rupert lay dismantled these years) -and Richmond Fort on the east side of the bay, were strengthened by -additions to the garrisons of from thirty to fifty men. Each of the -four frigates sent out by the Company had a crew of fifty men, among -whom was one young sailor, Samuel Hearne, of whom more anon. Every -year took out more cannon for the forts, more builders for Churchill, -now a stone-walled fort strong as Quebec. Joseph Isbister, who had -been governor at Albany and made some inland voyages from Churchill, -was permanently appointed, from 1770, as agent at Quebec to watch what -rival fur traders were doing; and when he died, Hugh Findlay succeeded -him. A new house was rushed up on Severn River in 1756, to attract -those Indians of Manitoba where the French were established. Lest other -merchants should petition for Labrador, the Slude River Station was -moved to Richmond Fort and Captain Coates appointed to survey the whole -east coast of Hudson Bay, for which labor he was given a present of -£80. Poor Coates! This was in 1750. Within a year, he is hauled up for -illicit trade and dismissed ignominiously from the service; whereat he -suicides from disgrace. Eight years later, Richmond Fort is closed at -a loss of £20,000, but it has shut the mouths of other petitioners for -Labrador. - -It is in 1757, too, that the Company inaugurates its pension -system—withholding 5 per cent. of wages for a fund. As if Joseph La -France’s journal had not been alarming enough, there comes overland -to Nelson, in 1759, that Jan Ba’tiste Larlée, a spy whom the English -engage and vote a wig (£1 5s) “_to keep him loyal_.” - -At Henley House up Albany River, pushing trade to attract the Indians -away from the French, is that Andrew Graham, whose diary gives such -a picture of the period. Richard Norton of Churchill is long since -dead. Of his half-breed sons educated in England, William has become -a captain; Moses, from being sailor under Middleton, wins distinction -as explorer of Chesterfield Inlet and rises to become governor at -Churchill. Among the recruits of the increasing garrisons are names -famous in the West—Bannister’s and Spencer’s and Flett’s. By way of -encouraging zeal, the Company, in 1770, increases salaries for chief -traders to £130 a year, for captains to £12 a month with a gratuity -of £100 if they have no wreck. Each chief trader is to have added to -his salary three shillings for every twenty beaver sent home from -his department; each captain, one shilling sixpence for every twenty -beaver brought safely to England. As these bounties amounted to £108 -and £150 a year, they more than doubled salaries. I am sorry to say -that at this period, brandy began to be plied freely. French power had -fallen at Quebec in 1759. French traders were scattered through the -wilds—birds of passage, free as air, lawless as birds, too, who lured -the Indians from the English by the use of liquor. If an English trader -ventured among Indians, who knew the customs of the French, and did not -proffer a keg of watered brandy, he was apt to be forthwith douched -“_baptized_”—the Indians called it. - -But the greatest activity displayed by the English at this time was -inland from the bay. If Joseph La France could come overland from -Lake Superior, English traders could be sent inland. Andrew Graham is -ordered to keep his men at Severn and Albany moving up stream. One -Isaac Butt is paid £14 for his voyaging, and in 1756 the Company votes -£20 to Anthony Hendry for his remarkable voyage from York to the Forks -of the Saskatchewan—the first Englishman to visit this now famous -region. Hendry’s voyage merits a detailed account in the next chapter. - -_Notes to Chapter XVII._—The list of governors at this period is: Sir -Bibye Lake, 1712-1743; Benjamin Pitt, 1743-1746, when he died; Thomas -Knapp, 1746-1750; Sir Atwell Lake, 1750-1760; Sir William Baker, -1760-1770; Bibye Lake, Jr., 1770-1782. - -The controversy between the Company and Dobbs fills volumes. Ellis -and Dobbs need not be taken seriously. They were for the time maniacs -on the subject of a passage that had no existence except in their own -fancy. Robson is different. - -Having been a builder at Churchill, he knew the ground, yet we find -him uttering such absurd charges as that the Company purposely sent -Governor Knight to his death and were glad “that the troublesome fellow -was out of the way.” This is both malicious and ignorant, for as Robson -knew, the Northwest Passage played a very secondary part in Knight’s -fatal voyage. The Company just as much as Knight was infatuated with -the lure of gold-dust. Perhaps, it will some day prove not so foolish -an infatuation. Gold placers have been found in Klondike. Indian legend -says they also exist in the ices of the East. - - * * * * * - -The Parliamentary Report for 1749 is an excellent example of -investigating “off the beat.” The only thing of value in the report is -Joseph La France’s Journal. It is valuable not as a voyage—for this -trip was well tracked from the days of Radisson and Iberville—but as -a description of the French posts on the Saskatchewan, which Hendry -visited—Pachegoia or Pasquia or the Pas and Bourbon—and as helping to -identify the Indians, whom Hendry met. - - * * * * * - -La Vérendrye voyages are not given here, because not relative to the -subject. His life will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.” - - * * * * * - -The Canadian Archives give Hendry’s name as Hendey. It is spelt Hendry -in the H. B. C. minutes. - - * * * * * - -In 1746 the warehouse on Lime Street was purchased for £550. This -year, too, comes a letter to the Company from Captain Lee of Virginia, -warning that a French pirate of two hundred and fifty men, which -captured him, is on the lookout for the fur ships. - - * * * * * - -Sharpe was the lawyer who engineered the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1749. -I find his charges in the Minutes £250 and £505. - - * * * * * - -John Potts was the trader of Richmond, when Coates was captain. - - * * * * * - -In 1766, Samuel Hearne’s name appears as on the pay roll of _The Prince -Rupert_. - - * * * * * - -Whale fisheries were now flourishing on the bay, for which each captain -received a bounty of 25 per cent. on net proceeds. - - * * * * * - -In 1769, the Company issued as standard of trade 3 marten, 1 beaver; -2 fox, 3 beaver; gray fox, 4 beaver; white fox, ½ beaver; 1 otter, 1 -beaver. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -1754-1755 - -THE MARCH ACROSS THE CONTINENT BEGINS—THE COMPANY SENDS A MAN TO -THE BLACKFEET OF THE SOUTH SASKATCHEWAN—ANTHONY HENDRY IS THE FIRST -ENGLISHMAN TO PENETRATE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN—THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN TO -WINTER WEST OF LAKE WINNIPEG—HE MEETS THE SIOUX AND THE BLACKFEET AND -INVITES THEM TO THE BAY - - -Nothing lends more romantic coloring to the operations of the fur -traders on Hudson Bay than the character of the men in the service. -They were adventurers, pure and simple, in the best and the worst -sense of that term. Peter Romulus, the foreign surgeon, rubbed elbows -with Radisson, the Frenchman. A nephew of Sir Stephen Evance—come out -under the plain name, Evans—is under the same roof as a niece of the -same governor of the Company, who has come to the bay as the doweried -wife of an apprentice. Younger sons of the English gentry entered the -service on the same level as the Cockney apprentice. Rough Orkney -fishermen—with the thick burr of the North in their accent, the iron -strength of the North in their blood, and a periphery of Calvinistic -self-righteousness, which a modern gatling gun could not shoot -through—had as bedfellows in the fort barracks soft-voiced English -youths from the south counties, who had been outlawed for smuggling, -or sent to the bay to expiate early dissipations. And sometimes this -curious conglomeration of human beings was ruled in the fort—ruled with -the absolute despotism of the _little_ king, of course—by a drunken -half-breed brute like Governor Moses Norton, whose one qualification -was that he could pile up the beaver returns and hold the Indians’ -friendship by being baser and more uncivilized than they. The theme is -one for song and story as well as for history. - -Among the flotsam and jetsam cast on Hudson Bay in the seventeen -hundred and fifties was one Anthony Hendry, a boy from the Isle of -Wight. He had been outlawed for smuggling and sought escape from -punishment by service on the bay. He came as bookkeeper. Other -servants could scarcely be driven or bribed to go inland with the -Indians. Hendry asked permission to go back to their country with the -Assiniboines, in 1754. James Isham was governor of York Fort at the -time. He was only too glad to give Hendry permission. - -Four hundred Assiniboines had come in canoes with their furs to the -fort. Leather wigwams spread back from the Hayes River like a town of -mushrooms. Canoes lay in hundreds bottom-up on the beach, and where -the reddish blue of the campfire curled up from the sands filling -the evening air with the pungent smell of burning bark, Assiniboine -voyageurs could be seen melting resin and tar to gum the splits in the -birch canoes. Hunters had exchanged their furs for guns and ammunition. -Squaws had bartered their store of pemmican (buffalo) meat for gay -gewgaws—red flannels and prints, colored beads, hand mirrors of -tin—given at the wicket gate of the fort. - -Young Hendry joined the encampment, became acquainted with different -leaders of the brigades, and finally secured an Assiniboine called -Little Bear as a guide to the country of the Great Unknown River, -where the French sent traders—the Saskatchewan. It was the end of June -before the Indians were ready to break camp for the homeward voyage. -By looking at the map, it will be seen that Nelson and Hayes rivers -flow northeast from the same prairie region to a point at the bay -called Port Nelson, or Fort York. One could ascend to the country of -the Assiniboines by either Hayes River or Nelson. York Fort was on -Hayes River. The Indians at that time usually ascended the Hayes River -halfway, then crossed westward to the Nelson by a chain of rivers and -lakes and portages, and advanced to the prairie by a branch of the -Nelson River known as Katchawan to Playgreen Lake. Playgreen Lake is -really a northern arm of Lake Winnipeg. Instead of coming on down to -Lake Winnipeg, the Assiniboines struck westward overland from Playgreen -Lake to the Saskatchewan at Pasquia, variously known as Basquia and -Pachegoia and the Pas. By cutting across westward from Playgreen Lake -to the main Saskatchewan, three detours were avoided: (1) the long -detour round the north shore of Lake Winnipeg; (2) the southern bend -of Saskatchewan, where it enters the lake; (3) the portage of Grand -Rapids in the Saskatchewan between Lake Winnipeg and Cedar Lake. It is -necessary to give these somewhat tedious details as this route was to -become the highway of commerce for a hundred years. - -Up these waters paddled the gay Indian voyageurs, the foam rippling -on the wake of their bark canoes not half so light as the sparkling -foam of laugh and song and story from the paddlers. Over these long -lonely portages, silent but for the wind through the trees, or the hoot -of the owl, or flapping of a loon, or a far weird call of the meadow -lark—a mote in an ocean of sky—the first colonists were to trudge, -men and women and children, who came to the West seeking that freedom -and room for the shoulder-swing of uncramped manhood, which home lands -had denied. Plymouth Rock, they call the landing place of the Pilgrim -Fathers. Every portage up Hayes River was a Plymouth Rock to these -first colonists of the West. - -On June 26, then, 1754, Hendry set out with the Assiniboines for the -voyage up Hayes River. At Amista-Asinee or Great Stone Rock they -camped for the first night, twenty-four miles from York—good progress -considering it was against stream at the full flood of summer rains. -Fire Steel River, Wood Partridge River, Pine Reach—marked the camps for -sixty miles from York. Four Falls compelled portage beyond Pine Reach, -and shoal water for another twenty-five miles set the men tracking, the -crews jumping out to wade and draw the lightened canoes up stream. - -July 1, Hendry was one hundred and thirteen miles from York. Terrific -rains, hot and thundery, deluged the whole flotilla, and Hendry learned -for the first time what clouds of huge inland mosquitoes can do. -Mosquito Point, he called the camp. Here, the Hayes broke into three or -four branches. Hendry’s brigade of Assiniboines began to work up one of -the northwestward branches toward the Nelson. The land seemed to be -barren rock. At camping places was neither fish nor fowl. The voyageurs -took a reef in their belts and pressed on. Three beaver afforded some -food on Steel River but “we are greatly fatigued,” records Hendry, -“with carrying and hauling our canoes, and we are not well fed; but the -natives are continually smoking, which I find allays hunger.” Pikes and -ducks replenished the provision bags on Duck Lake beyond Steel River. -Twenty canoes of Inland Indians were met at Shad Falls beyond Cree -Lake, on their way to York. With these Hendry sent a letter to Governor -Isham. It was July 20 before Hendry realized that the labyrinth of -willow swamps had led into Nelson River. It must have been high up -Nelson River, in some of its western sources east of Playgreen Lake, -for one day later, on Sunday the 21st, he records: “We paddled two -miles up the Nelson and then came to Keiskatchewan River, on which the -French have two houses which we expect to see to-morrow.” He was now -exactly five hundred miles from York. “The mosquitoes are intolerable, -giving us peace neither day nor night. We paddled fourteen miles up the -Keiskatchewan west, when we came to a French house. On our arrival, two -Frenchmen came to the waterside and in a very genteel manner invited -me into their house, which I readily accepted. One asked if I had -any letter from my master and why I was going inland. I answered I -had no letter and was out to view the country; that I meant to return -this way in spring. He told me his master and men were gone down to -Montreal with the furs, and that they must detain me until his return. -However, they were very kind, and at night I went to my tent and told -Little Bear my leader. He only smiled and said: “They dare not detain -you.” Hendry was at the Pas on the Saskatchewan. If he had come up the -Saskatchewan from Lake Winnipeg, he would have found that the French -had another fort at the mouth of the river—Bourbon. - -From now on, he describes the region which he crossed as Mosquito -Plains. White men alone in the wilderness become friends quickly. In -spite of rivalry, the English trader presented the French with tobacco; -the French in turn gave him pemmican of moose meat. On Wednesday, July -24, he left the fort. Sixteen miles up the Saskatchewan, Hendry passed -Peotago River, heavily timbered with birch trees. Up this region the -canoes of the four hundred Assiniboines ascended southward, toward the -western corner of the modern province of Manitoba. As the river became -shoal, canoes were abandoned seventy miles south of the Saskatchewan. -Packs strapped on backs, the Indians starving for food, a dreary march -began across country southwest over the Mosquito Plains. “Neither bird -nor beast is to be seen. We have nothing to eat,” records Hendry after -a twenty-six miles tramp. At last, seventy miles from where they had -left the canoes, one hundred and forty from the Saskatchewan, they came -on a huge patch of ripe raspberries and wild cherries, and luckily in -the brushwood killed two moose. This relieved the famine. Wandering -Assiniboines chanced to be encamped here. Hendry held solemn conference -with the leaders, whiffed pipes to the four corners of the universe—by -which the deities of North, South, East and West were called to witness -the sincerity of the sentiments—and invited these tribes down to York; -but they only answered, “we are already supplied by the French at -Pasquia.” - -One hundred miles south of Pas—or just where the Canadian Northern -Railroad strikes west from Manitoba across Saskatchewan—a delightful -change came over the face of the country. Instead of brackish swamp -water or salt sloughs, were clear-water lakes. Red deer—called by the -Assiniboines _waskesaw_—were in myriads. “I am now,” writes Hendry as -he entered what is now the Province of Saskatchewan, “entering a most -pleasant and plentiful country of hills and dales with little woods.” - -Many Indians were met, but all were strong partisans of the French. -An average of ten miles a day was made by the marchers, hunting red -deer as they tramped. On August 8, somewhere near what is now Red Deer -River, along the line of the Canada Northern, pause was made for a -festival of rejoicing on safe return from the long voyage and relief -from famine. For a day and a night, all hands feasted and smoked and -danced and drank and conjured in gladness; the smoking of the pipe -corresponding to our modern grace before meals, the dancing a way of -evincing thanks in rhythmic motion instead of music, the drinking -and conjuring not so far different from our ancestors’ way of giving -thanks. The lakes were becoming alkali swamps, and camp had to be -made where there was fresh water. Sometimes the day’s march did not -average four miles. Again, there would be a forced march of fifteen. -For the first time, an English fur trader saw Indians on horseback. -Where did they get the horses? As we now know, the horses came from -the Spaniards, but we must not wonder that when Hendry reported having -seen whole tribes on horseback, he was laughed out of the service as a -romancer, and the whole report of his trip discredited. The Indians’ -object was to reach the buffalo grounds and lay up store of meat for -the winter. They told Hendry he would presently see whole tribes of -Indians on horseback—Archithinues, the famous Blackfoot Confederacy of -Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans and Sarcees. - -On the 15th of August, they were among the buffalo, where to-day the -great grooves and ruts left by the marching herds can still be seen -between the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboine Rivers toward Qu’ Appelle. -For the most part, the Indians hunted the buffalo with bow and arrow, -and at night there was often a casualty list like the wounded after a -battle. “_Sunday—dressed a lame man’s leg and he gave me for my trouble -a moose nose, which is considered a great delicacy among the Indians._” -“_I killed a bull buffalo_,” he writes on September 8, “_he was nothing -but skin and bones. I took out his tongue and left his remains to the -wolves, which were waiting around in great numbers. We cannot afford -to expend ammunition on them. My feet are swelled with marching, but -otherwise I am in perfect health. So expert are the natives buffalo -hunting, they will take an arrow out of the buffalo when the beasts are -foaming and raging and tearing the ground up with their feet and horns. -The buffalo are so numerous, like herds of English cattle that we are -obliged to make them sheer out of our way._” - -Sometimes more dangerous game than buffalo was encountered. On -September 17, Hendry writes: “_Two young men were miserably wounded by -a grizzly bear that they were hunting to-day. One may recover but the -other never can. His arm is torn from his body, one eye gouged out and -his stomach ripped open._” The next day the Indian died. - -The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas toward the land -of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the -French House. To Hendry’s surprise they came to a large river with -high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South -Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of -Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four -hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty -in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose -parchment skin—like the bull-boats of the Missouri—the Assiniboines -rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River -and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and -persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort. - -As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins -and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth-hole smoked the skins. Beating -and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. -For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry -remarks how in the fall of the year, the women sat in the doors of -their wigwams “knitting moose leather into snow shoes” made of seasoned -wood. It was October before the Indians of the far Western plains were -met. These were the famous Blackfeet for the first time now seen by an -English trader. They approached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with -bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. -Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He -thought the mineral iron. What he saw was probably an outcropping of -coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as -ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver—which -were plentiful beyond the fur trader’s hopes. When, on October the -11th, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatchewan, which -the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches -were forks of one and the same great river—the Saskatchewan, or as the -French called it, Christinaux. The Indian names for the two branches -were Keskatchew and Waskesaw. - -For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible -southwest. On October the 14th, four riders came out to conduct Hendry -to an encampment of three hundred and twenty-two tents of Blackfeet -Indians “_pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where we -were conducted to the leader’s tent_.” This was the main tribe of which -Hendry had already met the outrunners. “_The leader’s tent was large -enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo -skin attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down -on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) set -several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their -custom. Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh -was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo -tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader -who lives on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with their -furs. They would receive in return, powder, shot, guns and cloth. -He made little answer: said it was far off and his people could not -paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents which we pitched a -quarter of a mile outside their lines._” Again invited to the leader’s -tent the next morning, Hendry heard some remarkable philosophy from -the Indian. “_The chief told me his tribe never wanted food as they -followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who frequented -the settlements often starved on their journey, which was exceedingly -true_,” added Hendry. Reciprocal presents closed the interview. The -present to the Assiniboine chief was a couple of girl slaves, one of -whom was murdered at York ten years afterward by an Indian in a fit of -jealousy. - -Later, Hendry learned that the Assiniboines did not want these -Blackfeet of the far West to come down to the bay. Neither would the -Assiniboines hunt except for food. Putting the two facts together, -Hendry rightly judged that the Assiniboines acted as middlemen between -the traders and the Blackfeet. - -By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling -wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional -moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered; his journal says, -“eight hundred and ten miles west of York,” moving back and forward -north and south of the river; but a comment added by Andrew Graham on -the margin of the journal, says he was in latitude 59°. This is plainly -a mistake, as latitude 59° is six degrees away from the Saskatchewan; -but eight hundred and ten miles from York along the Saskatchewan would -bring Hendry in the region between the modern Edmonton and Battleford. -It is to Hendry’s credit that he remained on good terms with the -Assiniboines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become -the butt of the children who infested the tents like imps; but he -hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch -the best of them. Consequently, there is not a note in his journal of -that doleful whine which comes from the weakling run amuck of hard life -in a savage land. - -When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader -instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson -Bay. Almost the entire winter, camp moved from bend to bend or branch -to branch of the North Saskatchewan, heading gradually eastward. Toward -spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. -Among these were “green scalps” and many women captives from those -Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags -from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. -One hears much twaddle of the red man’s noble state before he was -contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West -before they had met any white men but himself, and the disposal of -those captives is a criterion of the red man’s noble state. Whenever -one was not wanted—the present of a girl, for instance, resented by a -warrior’s jealous wives—she was summarily hacked to pieces, and not a -passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver -caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in -itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception -as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life. - -By spring, Hendry’s camp had dwindled down to a party of twelve. He now -had only two pounds of powder in his possession, but his party were -rich in furs. As the time approached to build canoes, the Assiniboines -began gathering at the river banks. Young men searched the woods for -bark. Old men whittled out the gun’els. Women pounded pemmican into -bags for the long voyage to the bay. The nights passed in riotous feast -and revel, with the tom-tom pounding, the conjurers performing tricks, -the hunters dancing, the women peeping shyly into the dance tent. At -such times, one may guess, Hendry did not spare of his scant supplies -to lure the Indians to York Fort, but he did not count on the effects -of French brandy when the canoes would pass the French posts. - -Ice was driving in the river like a mill race all the month of April. -Swans and geese and pigeons and bluejays came winging north. There was -that sudden and wondrous leap to life of a dormant world—and lo!—it was -summer, with the ducks on the river in flocks, and the long prairie -grass waving like a green sea, and the trees bleak and bare against -the vaporous sky now clothing themselves in foliage as in a bridal veil -shot with sunlight. - -The great dog feast was solemnly held. The old men conjured the powers -of the air to bless them a God-speed. Canoes were launched on April 28, -and out swung the Assiniboines’ brigade for Fort York. It was easier -going down stream than up. Thirty and forty miles a day they made, -passing multitudes of Indians still building their canoes on the river -banks. At every camp, more fur-laden canoes joined them. Hendry’s heart -must have been very happy. He was bringing wealth untold to York. - -Four hundred miles down stream, the Blackfeet Indians were met and -with great pow-wow of trading turned their furs over to the crafty -Assiniboines to be taken down to York. There were now sixty canoes in -the flotilla and says Hendry “not a pot or kettle among us.” Everything -had been bartered to the Blackfeet for furs. Six hundred miles from -their launching place, they came to the first French post. This -distance given by Hendry is another pretty effective proof that he had -wintered near Edmonton, if not beyond it, for this post was not the -Pas. It was subordinate to Basquia or Pasquia. - -Hendry was invited into the French post as the guest of the master. -If he had been as crafty as he was brave, he would have hurried his -Indians past the rival post, but he had to live and learn. While he was -having supper, the French distributed ten gallons of brandy among the -Assiniboines. By morning, the French had obtained the pick of the furs, -one thousand of the best pelts, and it was three days before the amazed -Hendry could coax the Indians away from his polite hosts. Two hundred -miles more, brought the brigade to the main French post—the Pas. Nine -Frenchmen were in possession, and the trick was repeated. “The Indians -are all drunk,” deplores Hendry, “but the master was very kind to me. -He is dressed very genteel but his men wear nothing but drawers and -striped cotton shirts ruffled at the hand and breast. This house has -been long a place of trade and is named Basquia. It is twenty-six feet -long, twelve wide, nine high, having a sloping roof, the walls log on -log, the top covered with willows, and divided into three rooms, one -for trade, one for storing furs, and one for a dwelling.” - -Four days passed before the Indians had sobered sufficiently to go on, -and they now had only the heavy furs that the French would not take. On -June 1, the brigade again set out for York. Canoes were lighter now. -Seventy miles a day was made. Hendry does not give any distances on his -return voyage, but he followed the same course by which he had come, -through Deer Lake and Steel River to Hayes River and York, where all -arrived on the 20th of June. - -To Hendry’s profound disgust, he was not again permitted to go inland. -In fact, discredit was cast on his report. “Indians on horseback!” The -factors of the bay ridiculed the idea. They had never heard of such a -thing. All the Indians they knew came to the fort in canoes. Indeed, -it was that spirit of little-minded narrowness that more than anything -else lost to the Company the magnificent domain of its charter. If the -men governing the Company had realized the empire of their ruling as -fully as did the humble servants fighting the battles on the field, -the Hudson’s Bay Company might have ruled from Atlantic to Pacific in -the North, and in the West as far south as Mexico. But they objected -to being told what they did not know. Hendry was “frozen” out of the -service. The occasion of his leaving was even more contemptible than -the real cause. On one of his trading journeys, he was offered very -badly mixed brandies, probably drugged. Being a fairly good judge of -brandies from his smuggling days, Hendry refused to take what Andrew -Graham calls “such slops from such gentry.” He quit the service in -disgust. - -The Company, as the minutes show, voted him £20 gratuity for his -voyage. Why, then, did the factors cast ridicule on his report? -Supposing they had accepted it, what would have been entailed? They -must capture the furs of that vast inland country for their Company. To -do that, there must be forts built inland. Some factor would be ordered -inland. Then, there would be the dangers of French competition—very -real danger in the light of that brandy incident. The factors on the -bay—Norton and Isham—were not brave enough men to undertake such -a campaign. It was easier sitting snugly inside the forts with a -multitude of slave Indians to wait on their least want. So the trade of -the interior was left to take care of itself. - -_Notes on Chapter XVIII._—Hendry’s Journal is in Hudson’s Bay Company’s -House, London. A copy is also in the Canadian Archives. Andrew Graham -of Severn has written various notes along the margin. If it had not -been for Graham, it looks much as if Hendry’s Journal would have -been lost to the Company. Hendry gives the distances of each day’s -travel so minutely, that his course can easily be followed first to -Basquia, then from Basquia to the North Saskatchewan region. Graham’s -comment that Hendry was at 59° north is simply a slip. It is out of -the question to accept it for the simple reason Hendry could not -have gone eight hundred and ten miles _southwest_ from York, as his -journal daily records, and have been within 6° of 59°. Besides his own -discovery that he had been crossing branches of the Saskatchewan all -the time and his account of his voyage down the Saskatchewan to the -Pas, are unmistakable proofs of his whereabouts. Also he mentions the -Eagle Indians repeatedly. These Indians dwelt between the north and -south branches of the Saskatchewan. Whether the other rivers that he -crossed were the Assiniboine or the Qu’ Appelle or the Red Deer of Lake -Winnipegosis—I do not know. - -I had great trouble in identifying the Archithinue Indians of Hendry’s -Journal till I came on Matthew Cocking’s Journal over the same ground. -Dec. 1, 1772, Cocking says: “This tribe is named Powestic Athinuewuck, -Waterfall Indians. There are four tribes or nations which are all -Equestrian Indians, viz: - -(1) Mithco Athinuewuck, or Bloody Indians. - -(2) Koskiton Wathesitock, or Black Footed Indians. - -(3) Pegonow, or Muddy Water Indians. - -(4) Sassewuck, or Woody Country Indians.” - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -1770-1800 - -EXTENSION OF TRADE TOWARD LABRADOR, QUEBEC AND ROCKIES—HEARNE -FINDS THE ATHABASCA COUNTRY AND FOUNDS CUMBERLAND HOUSE ON THE -SASKATCHEWAN—COCKING PROCEEDS TO THE BLACKFEET—HOWSE FINDS THE PASS IN -ROCKIES - - -While Anthony Hendry, the English smuggler, was making his way up the -Saskatchewan to the land of the Blackfeet—the present province of -Alberta—the English Adventurers were busy making good their claim to -Labrador. Except as a summer rendezvous, Rupert, the oldest of the -Company’s forts, at the southeast corner of the bay—had been abandoned, -but far up the coast of Labrador on the wildest part of this desolate -shore, was that fort which the Company was shortly forced to dismantle -at great loss—Richmond. When Captain Coates was sent to cruise the east -coast of Hudson Bay, thirty men under John Potts and Mr. Pollexfen, had -been left on Richmond Gulf to build a fort. There was no more dangerous -region on the bay. It was here Hudson’s crew had been attacked by -the Eskimos, and here the Eskimos yearly came to winter and hunt the -white whale. Between the rugged main shore and the outer line of barren -islands was usually open water. Camped on the rocky islets, the timid -Eskimos were secure from Indian foe, and if the white whale fisheries -failed, they had only to scud across the open water or portage over -the ice to the mainland and hunt partridge on Richmond Gulf. From one -hundred and fifty to three hundred Eskimos yearly wintered within -trading distance of Richmond. - -Quickly, storehouses, barracks, wareroom and guardroom were erected -just inside the narrow entrance from Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf, and -round all thrown a ten-foot palisade. This was in 1749. Coates had -been attracted to Richmond Gulf—which he calls Artiwinipack—by its -land-locked, sheltered position and the magnificent supply of lumber -for building. The Eskimo whale fisheries were farther south at Whale -River and East Main, with winter lodges subordinate to Richmond. The -partridges of the wooded slopes promised abundance of food, and there -was excellent fox and beaver trapping. Compared to the other rocky -barrens of northern Labrador, Richmond Harbor seemed Paradise, “_but -oh, my conscience_,” wrote Captain Coates, “_there is so profound -silence, such awful precipices, no life, that the world seems asleep. -The land is so tremendous high that wind and water reverberate between -the cliffs entering two miles to our gulf. Inside are mountains, -groves, cascades and vales adorned with trees. On the Hudson Bay side -nothing is seen but barren rocks. Inside, all is green with stately -woods.... On the high mountains is only snow moss; lower, a sort of -rye grass, some snow drops and violets without odor, then rows of -evergreens down to the very sea. On the right of the gulf is Lady -Lake’s Grove under a stupendous mountain, whence falls a cascade -through the grove to the sea. In short, such is the elegant situation -of Richmond Fort that it is not to be paralleled in the world._” - -Such were the high hopes with which Richmond Fort was founded. To-day -it is a howling wilderness silent as death but for the rush of waters -heard when white men first entered the bay. Partridge there were in -plenty among the lonely evergreens, and game for trapping; but not -the warmest overtures of Chief Factor Potts and Mr. Pollexfen and Mr. -Isbister, who yearly came up from Albany, could win the friendship of -the treacherous Eskimos. They would not hunt, and the white men dare -not penetrate far enough inland to make their trapping pay. Potts kept -his men whale fishing off Whale River, but in five years the loss to -the Company had totaled more than £24,000. The crisis came in 1754. -Day and night, the stealthy shadow of Eskimo spies moved through the -evergreens of the gulf. In vain Potts gave the chiefs presents of -gold-laced suits, beaver hats with plumes, and swords. “They _shaked_ -my hands,” he records, “and hugged and embraced and smiled”; but the -very next trapper, who went alone to the woods, or attempted to drive -his dog train south to Whale River, would see Eskimos ambushed behind -rocks and have his _cache_ rifled or find himself overpowered and -plundered. One day in February, Mr. Pollexfen had gone out with his men -from Whale River trapping. When they returned in the afternoon they -found the cook boy had been kidnapped and the house robbed of every -object that could be carried away—stores of ammunition, arms, traps, -food, clothes, even the door hinges and iron nails of the structure. - -Waiting only till it was dark, the terrified hunters hitched their dog -sleighs up, tore off all bells that would betray flight, and drove -like mad for the stronger fort of Richmond. Potts hurriedly sent out -orders to recall his trappers from the hills and manned Richmond for -siege. It was four days before all the men came under shelter, and -nightly the Eskimos could be heard trying to scale the palisades. The -fort was so short of provisions, all hands were reduced to one meal a -day. Potts called for volunteers, to go to the rescue of the kidnapped -cook—a boy, named Matthew Warden; and thirteen men offered to go. The -Eskimos had taken refuge on the islands of the outer shore. Frost-fog -thick as wool lay on the bay. Eskimos were seen lurking on the hills -above the fort. A council was held. It was determined to catch three -Eskimos as hostages for the cook’s safety rather than risk the lives -of thirteen men outside the fort. Some ten days later, when a few men -ventured out for partridges, the forest again came to life with Eskimo -spies. Potts recalled his hunters, sent two scouts to welcome the -Eskimos to the fort and placed all hands on guard. Three Indians were -conducted into the house. In a twinkling, fetters were clapped on two, -and the third bade go and fetch the missing white boy on pain of death -to the hostages. The stolid Eskimo affected not to understand. Potts -laid a sword across the throats of the two prisoners and signaled the -third to be gone. The fellow needed no urging but scampered. “I had our -men,” relates Potts, “one by one pass through the guardroom changing -their dresses every time to give the two prisoners the idea that I had -a large garrison. They seemed surprised that I had one hundred men, -but they spoke no word.” The next day, the fettered prisoners drew -knives on their guard, seized his gun and clubbed the Company men from -the room. In the scuffle that followed, both Eskimos were shot. The -danger was now increased a hundredfold. Friendly Montagnais Indians, -especially one named Robinson Crusoe, warned Potts that if the shooting -were known, nothing could save the fort. The bodies were hidden in the -cellar till some Montagnais went out one dark night and weighting the -feet with stones, pushed them through a hole in the ice. How quickly -white men can degenerate to savagery is well illustrated by the conduct -of the cooped-up, starving garrison. Before sending away the dead -bodies, they cut the ears from each and preserved them in spirits of -alcohol to send down by Indian scouts to Isbister at Moose with a -letter imploring that the sloop come to the rescue as soon as the ice -cleared. For two months the siege lasted. Nothing more was ever heard -of the captured boy, but by the end of May, Isbister had sent a sloop -to Richmond. As told elsewhere, Richmond was dismantled in 1778 and the -stores carried down to Whale River and East Main. - -Important changes had gradually grown up in the Adventurer’s methods. -White servants were no longer forbidden to circulate with the Indians -but encouraged to go out to the hunting field and paid bounties on -their trapping. Three men had been sent out from York in January, 1772, -to shoot partridges for the fort. It was a mild, open winter. The men -carried provisions to last three weeks. Striking back through the marsh -land, that lies between Hayes and Nelson Rivers, they camped for the -first night on the banks of the Nelson. The next morning, Tuesday, -the 7th of January, they were crossing the ice of the Nelson’s broad -current when they suddenly felt the rocking of the tide beneath their -feet, looked ahead, saw the frost-smoke of open water and to their -horror realized that the tidal bore had loosened the ice and they were -adrift, bearing out to sea. In vain, dogs and men dashed back for the -shore. The ice floe had separated from the land and was rushing seaward -like a race horse. That night it snowed. The terrified men kept watch, -hoping that the high tide would carry the ice back to some of the long, -low sand-bars at Port Nelson. The tide did sway back the third day but -not near enough for a landing. This night, they put up their leather -tents and slept drifting. When they awakened on Friday the 10th, they -were driving so direct for the shore that the three men simultaneously -dashed to gain the land, leaving packs, provisions, tent and sleighs; -but in vain. A tidal wave swept the floe off shore, and when they -set back for their camp, they were appalled to see camp kit, sleds, -provisions, all—drive past afloat. The ice floe had broken. They were -now adrift without food or shelter, James Ross carrying gun, powder -bag and blanket over his shoulders as he had risen from sleep, Farrant -wearing only the beaver coat in which he had slept, Tomson bereft of -either gun or blanket. - -[Illustration: Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake, One of the Northernmost -Posts of the Fur Trade.] - -This time, the ebb carried them far into the bay where they passed the -fourth night adrift. The next day, wind and the crumbling of the ice -added to their terrors. As the floe went to pieces, they leaped from -float to float trying to keep together on the largest icepan. Farrant -fell through the slush to his armpits and after being belted tightly -in his beaver coat lay down behind a wind-break of ice blocks to die. -Their only food since losing the tent kit had been some lumps of sugar -one of them had chanced to have in his pockets. During Saturday night -the 11th of January, the ice grounded and great seas began sweeping -over the floe. When Ross and Tomson would have dragged Farrant to -a higher hummock of the ice field, they found that he was dead. On -Monday, the weather grew cold and stormy. Tomson’s hands had swollen so -that he could not move a muscle and the man became delirious, raving -of his Orkney home as they roamed aimlessly over the illimitable ice -fields. That night, the seventh they had been adrift, just as the -moon sank below the sea, the Orkneyman, Tomson, breathed his last. - -Ross was now alone. A great ice floe borne down by a wash of the tide, -swept away Tomson’s body. Ross scrambled upon the fresh drift and -hoping against hope, scarcely able to believe his senses, saw that the -new icepan extended to the land. Half blinded by sun glare, hands and -feet frozen stiff, now laughing hysterically, now crying deliriously, -the fellow managed to reach shore, but when the sun set he lost all -sense of direction and could not find his way farther. That night, his -hands were so stiff that he could not strike a light on his flint, but -by tramping down brushwood, made himself a bed in the snow. Sunrise -gave him his bearings again and through his half-delirium he realized -he was only four miles from the fort. Partly walking, partly creeping, -he reached York gates at seven that night. One of the dogs had followed -him all the way, which probably explains how he was not frozen sleeping -out uncovered for nine nights. Hands and feet had to be amputated, but -his countrymen of Orkney took up a subscription for him and the Company -gave him a pension of £20 a year for life. The same amount was bestowed -on the widows of the two dead men. It is not surprising that Hudson -Bay became ill-omened to Orkneymen who heard such tales of fur hunting -as have been related of Richmond and York. - -But the Company was now on the eve of the most momentous change in its -history. Anthony Hendry had reported how the French traders had gone up -the Saskatchewan to the tribes of equestrian Indians; and Hendry had -been cashiered for his pains. Now a new fact influenced the Company. -French power had fallen at Quebec, in 1759. Instead of a few French -traders scattered through the West, were thousands of wildwood rovers, -half-Indian, half-French, voyageurs and bush-lopers, fled from the new -laws of the new English régime to the freedom of the wilderness. Beyond -Sault Ste. Marie, the long hand of the law could not reach. Beyond the -Sault, was law of neither God nor man. To make matters worse, English -merchants, who had flocked to Montreal and Quebec, now outfitted these -French rovers and personally led them to the far hunting field of the -_Pays d’en Haut_—a term that meant anything from Lake Superior to the -Pole. The English Adventurers sent more men up stream—up the Moose -toward Quebec as far as Abbittibbi, up the Albany toward what is now -Manitoba past Henley House as far as Osnaburg, across what is now -Keewatin toward Lake Superior as far as New Brunswick House. The catch -of furs showed a decrease every year. Fewer Indians came to the bay, -fewer hunters to the outlying fur posts. Dividends dropped from 10 to 8 -and from 8 to 6 and from 6 to 5 per cent. Instead of 100,000 beaver a -year there came to the London market only 40,000 and 50,000 a year. - -To stand on the rights of monopoly conferred by an ancient charter -while “interlopers and pedlars,” as the Company called them—ran -away with the profits of that monopoly, was like standing on your -dignity with a thief while he picked your pockets. The “smug ancient -gentlemen,” as enemies designated the Company, bestirred themselves -mightily. Moses Norton, governor of Churchill, was no more anxious -to fight the French Canadians on the hunting field now than he had -been in the days of Anthony Hendry, but being half-Indian he knew -all the legends of the Indians—knew that even if the French already -had possession of the Saskatchewan, north of the Saskatchewan was an -unclaimed kingdom, whence no white man had yet set foot, as large again -as the bounds of Hudson Bay. - -Besides, the Company had not forgotten those legends of minerals in the -North which had lured Captain Knight to his death. Chippewyan Indians -still came to Churchill with huge masses of amorphous copper strung on -necklaces or battered into rough pots and pans and cooking utensils. -Whence came that copper? Oddly enough, the world cannot answer that -question yet. The Indians said from “a Far-Away-Metal River” that -ran to a vast sea where the tide ebbed and flowed. Once more hopes -of finding a Northwest Passage rose; once more hopes of those metals -that had led Knight to ship-wreck. Norton suggested that this time -the search should be made by land. Serving as a clerk on a brig at -Churchill was a well-educated young Englishman already mentioned—Samuel -Hearne. - -The yearly boats that came to Churchill in 1769, commissioned Hearne -for this expedition, whose ostensible object was the finding of the -Metal River now known as the Coppermine but whose real object was the -occupation of a vast region not yet preempted by the Canadians. The -story of Hearne’s travels would fill a volume. Norton, the governor, -was a curious compound of ability and sham, strength and vice. Born -of an Indian mother and English father, he seemed to have inherited -all the superstitions of one and vices of the other. He was educated -in England and married an English woman. Yet when he came to the -wilderness, he had a seraglio of native wives that would have put a -Mormon to the blush. These he kept apart in rudely but gorgeously -furnished apartments to which he alone possessed the keys. At the -mess-room table, he wearied the souls of his officers by long-winded -and saintly sermons on virtue which were expounded as regularly as the -night supper came round. Did some blackleg expiating dissipations by -life in the wilds judge Norton’s sermons by his conduct and emulate -his example rather than his precepts, Norton had the culprit tied to -the triangle and flogged till his back was raw. An Indian is never a -hypocrite. Why would he be? His code is to do as he wishes, to follow -his desires, to be stronger than his enemies, to impose on the weak. -He has no religion to hold a higher example up like a mirror that -reflects his own face as loathsome, and he has no science to teach him -that what religion calls “evil” means in the long run, wretchedness -and rottenness and ruin. But the hypocrisy in Norton was the white man -strain—the fig leaf peculiar to civilized man—living a lie so long -that he finally believes the lie himself. Knowledge of white man’s -science, Norton had; but to the Indian in him, it was still mystery; -“medicine,” a secret means to kill an enemy, arsenic in medicine, -laudanum in whiskey, or poison that caused convulsions to an Indian who -refused either a daughter for the seraglio or beaver at Norton’s terms. -A white man who could wield such power was to the Indians a god, and -Norton held them in the hollow of his hand. Equally successful was the -half-breed governor managing the governing committee of the Hudson’s -Bay Company in London; for he sent them enormous returns in beaver at -small outlay. - -Seven great guns roared their God-speed as the fort gates opened and -Hearne sped out by dog train for his inland trip north on November 6, -1769. Norton waved a farewell and Hearne disappeared over the rolling -drifts with two Indians as guides, two white men as packers to look -after provisions. Striking northwest, Hearne was joined by other -traveling Indians. Bitterly cold weather set in. One Indian guide -deserted the first night out and the other proved himself an impudent -beggar, who camped when it was cold and camped when it was wet and -paused to hunt when it was fair, but laid up no stock of provisions, -giving Hearne plainly to understand that the whole Indian cavalcade -looked to the white men’s sleighs for food. The travelers did not make -ten miles a day. At the end of the month Hearne wakened one morning to -find his stores plundered and gales of laughter ringing back as the -Indians marched off with their booty. Not even guns were left. Rabbit -and partridge-snaring saved the three white men from starving as they -retreated. They were safe inside the fort once more by December 11. -Hearne’s object setting out in midwinter had been to reach the North -before summer, and nothing daunted, he again set forth with five fresh -guides on February 23, 1770, again depending on snares for food. April -saw the marchers halted on the borders of the Barren Lands, scouring -the wide wastes of treeless swamps and rock for game. Caribou had -retreated inland and not yet begun their traverse to the bay. Until -wild fowls came winging north, the camp lived on snow water, tobacco -and such scraps of leather and dried meat as had not already been -devoured. A chance herd of wandering deer relieved the famine till -June, when rations were again reduced; this time, to wild cranberries. -Then the traverse of the caribou herds came—a rush of countless myriads -with the tramp of an army and the clicking of a multitude of horns -from west to east for weeks. Indians had gathered to the traverse in -hundreds. Moss served as fuel. Provisions were abundant. Hearne had -almost decided to winter with the wandering Chippewyans when they again -began to plunder his store of ammunition. Wind had smashed some of the -survey instruments, so he joined a band of hunters on their way to the -fort, which he reached on November 25. - -Hearne had not found “Far-Away-Metal-River,” nor the copper mines, -nor the Northwest Passage, but he had found fresh tribes of Indians, -and these were what Norton wanted. December 7, 1770, less than a -month from his home-coming, Hearne was again dispatched by Norton. -Matonabbee, a famous guide of the Chippewyans, accompanied the explorer -with a retinue of the Indian’s wives to draw sleds and handle baggage. -Almost as notable as Norton was Matonabbee, the Chippewyan chief—an -Indian of iron constitution and iron will, pitiless to his wives, -whom he used as beasts of burden; relentless in his aims, fearless -of all Indians, a giant measuring more than six feet, straight as an -arrow, supple as willow, hard as nails. Imperturbable and good-natured -Matonabbee set the pace at winged speed, pausing for neither hunger nor -cold. Christmas week was celebrated by fasting. Matonabbee uttered no -complaint; and the white man could not well turn back when the Indian -was as eager for the next day’s march as if he had supped sumptuously -instead of going to bed on a meal of moss water. Self-pity, fear, -hesitation, were emotions of which the guide knew nothing. He had -undertaken to lead Hearne to “Far-Away-Metal-River,” and only death -could stop him. - -In the Barren Lands, caribou enough were killed to afford the whole -company provisions for six months; and the marchers were joined by -two hundred more Indians. Wood became scarcer and smaller as they -marched north. Matonabbee halted in April and ordered his wives to -camp while the men made dugouts for the voyage down stream. The boats -were heavy in front to resist the ice jams. If Hearne had marveled -at the large company now following Matonabbee to a hard, dangerous -hunting field he quickly guessed good reasons when wives and children -were ordered to head westward and await the warrior’s return at Lake -Athabasca. Women are ordered away only when there is prospect of -war, and Hearne could easily surmise whence the Chippewyans annually -obtained eleven thousand of their best beaver pelts. The sun no longer -set. It was continual day, and on June 12, 1771, the swamps of the -Barrens converged to a narrow, rocky river bed whence roared a misty -cataract—“Far-Off-Metal-River”—the Coppermine River, without any sign -of the ebbing tide that was to lead to the South Sea. When Hearne -came back to his Indian companions from the river bed, he found them -stripped and daubed in war paint, gliding as if in ambush from stone -to stone down the steep declivity of the waterfall. Then far below the -rapids, like the tops of big bowlders, appeared the rounded leather -tent-peaks of an Eskimo camp. The Eskimos were apparently sound asleep, -for it was midnight though as light as day. - -Before Hearne could collect his senses or alarm the sleeping victims, -he had been left far to the rear by his villainous comrades. Then -occurred one of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of the -Hudson’s Bay Company. Such of the horrors as are tellable, I have told -elsewhere in the account of Hearne’s travels. The raiders fell on the -Eskimos like wolves on the sheepfold. Not content with plundering the -camp of beaver pelts, they speared, stabbed, bludgeoned, men, women, -children, old and young, till the river ran red with innocent blood. -Rushing forward, Hearne implored Matonabbee to stop the slaughter. -Matonabbee’s response was a shout of laughter. What were the weak for -but to be the victims of the strong? What did these fool-Eskimos toil -for but to render tribute of their toil to him, who had the force to -take? The doctrine was not a new one. Neither is it yet old; only -we moderns do our bludgeoning with financial coercion, competition, -monopoly or what not, instead of the butt end of a gun, or stone spear; -and it would be instructive to know if philosophers in a thousand years -will consider our methods as barbarous as we consider the savages of -two hundred years ago. - -The tortures of that raid have no place in a history of the Hudson’s -Bay Company. They are told in Hearne’s life, and they haunted the -explorer like a bloody nightmare. One day later, on July 17, Hearne -stood on the shores of the Arctic ocean—the first white man to witness -the tossing ice floes of that green, lone, paleocrystic sea; but his -vision was not the exaltation of an explorer. It was a hideous memory -of young girls speared bodily through and through and left writhing -pinioned to the ground; of young boys whose hearts were torn out and -devoured while warm; of old men and women gouged, buffeted, beaten -to death. It does not make a pretty picture, that doctrine of the -supremacy of strength, the survival of the fit, the extermination of -the weak—it does not make a pretty picture when you reduce it to terms -of the physical. How quickly wild-beast savagery may reduce men to the -level of beasts was witnessed as Hearne rested on the shores of the -Arctic—a musk ox was shot. The warriors tore it to pieces and devoured -it raw. - -Retreating up the shelving rocks of the Coppermine twenty miles, Hearne -found what he thought were the copper mines from which the Indians made -their metal weapons. The company then struck westward for the famous -Athabasca region where the wives were to camp for the winter. Athabasca -proved a hunter’s paradise as it has been ever since Hearne discovered -it. Beaver abounded in the swampy muskegs. Buffalo roamed to the south. -Moose yards were found in the wooded bluffs; mink, marten, fox, every -fur bearer which the English Adventurers sought. In spring, a flotilla -carried the Indians down to Churchill, where Hearne arrived on June 30, -1772. - -The geographical importance of Hearne’s discovery—the fact that he had -found a region half the size of European Russia and proved that not a -narrow strip of land lay between the Atlantic and Pacific but a vast -continent—was eclipsed by the importance of his discoveries for the fur -traders. The region must be occupied by the English Company before the -French Canadians found it. Old Moses Norton sick unto death hastened -to send word to the governing committee in London, and the governing -committee voted Hearne a present of £200, £10 a year for a valet, £130 -a year as a salary, and promotion as governor on Norton’s death, which -occurred on December 29, 1773. - -The death of Norton was of a piece with his life. The bully fell ill of -some deadly intestinal trouble that caused him as excruciating tortures -as ever his poisons had caused his victims. Calling the officers of the -fort, he publicly made his will, leaving all his savings to his wife -in England but directing that she should yearly set aside £10 for the -clothing of his Indian wives at Churchill. As the Indian women stood -round the dying tyrant’s bed his eye detected an officer whispering to -one of the young Indian wives. With a roar, Norton leaped to his feet -in the bed. - -“You —— —— ——,” he roared, “I’ll burn you alive! I’ll burn you alive——” - -The effort cost the bully his life. He fell back dead—he whose hand -had tyrannized over the fort for fifty years, a mass of corrupting -flesh which men hurriedly put out of sight. Hearne was called from the -Saskatchewan to become governor and undertake the opening of the inland -trade. Hearne’s report on his trip to the Coppermine and Athabasca -was received at London in November, 1772. In May of 1773, the minutes -recorded “that the company having under consideration the interruptions -to the trade from the Canadian Pedlars as reported by Isaac Batts at -Basquia, do decide on mature deliberation to send Samuel Hearne to -establish a fort at Basquia with Mr. Cocking.” They were accompanied -by Louis Primo, John Cole and half a dozen French renegades, who had -been bribed to desert from the Canadians—in all seventeen men. Hearne -did better than he was instructed. Leaving Batts, Louis Primo and the -Frenchmen at Basquia to compete against the Canadians, he established -Cumberland House far above, on the Saskatchewan, at Sturgeon Lake, -where the Indians could be intercepted before they came down to the -French posts. Traders inland were paid £40 a year with a bounty of £2 -when they signed their contract and a bonus of a shilling for every -twenty beaver. - -When Hearne was recalled to Churchill to become governor, Matthew -Cocking was left superintendent of inland trade. Cocking had earned -laurels for himself by a voyage almost as important as Hearne’s. The -very week that Hearne came back to Churchill at the end of June, -1772, from the Athabasca, Cocking had set out from York for the South -Saskatchewan. He accompanied the Assiniboines returning from their -yearly trip to the bay. By the end of July he had crossed the north end -of Lake Winnipeg and gone up the Saskatchewan to Basquia. Louis Primo, -the renegade Frenchman, was met leading a flotilla of canoes down to -Hudson Bay, and it must have afforded Cocking great satisfaction to see -that the activity of the Hudson’s Bay Company had forced the French -Canadians to desert both their posts on the lower Saskatchewan. He -passed the empty houses on the banks of the river where the leaders of -the French-Canadians had had their forts, Findlay’s and Frobisher’s and -Curry’s. Leaving canoes somewhere eastward of the Forks, Cocking struck -south for the country of the Blackfeet at the foothills of the Rockies, -near what is now the International Boundary. The South Saskatchewan -was crossed at the end of August in bull-boats—tub-like craft made of -parchment stretched on willows. In the Eagle Hills, Cocking met French -traders, who had abandoned civilized life and joined the Indian tribes. -The Eagle Hills were famous as the place where the Indians got tent -poles and birch bark before crossing the plains to the east and south. -Cocking spent the winter with the Blackfeet and the Bloods and the -Piegans and the Sarcees, whom he names as the Confederacy of Waterfall -Indians, owing to the numerous cataracts on the upper reaches of Bow -River. He was amazed to find fields of cultivated tobacco among the -Blackfeet and considered the tribe more like Europeans than any Indians -he had ever met. The winter was spent hunting buffalo by means of the -famous “pounds.” Buffalo were pursued by riders into a triangular -enclosure of sticks round a large field. Behind the fences converging -to a point hid the hunters, whose cries and clappings frightened the -herds into rushing precipitately to the converging angle. Here was -either a huge hole, or the natural drop over the bank of a ravine, -where the buffalo tumbled, mass after mass of infuriated animals, -literally bridging a path for the living across the bodies of the dead. -The Blackfeet hunters thought nothing of riding for a hundred miles -to round up the scattered herds to one of these “pounds” or “corrals.” -All that Hendry had said of the Blackfeet twenty years before, Cocking -found to be true. All were riders—men, women, children—the first -tribes Cocking had yet met where women were not beasts of burden. The -tribe had earthen pots for cooking utensils, used moss for tinder, and -recorded the history of the people in rude drawings on painted buffalo -robes. In fact, Cocking’s description of the tribal customs might be an -account of the Iroquois. The Blackfeet’s entire lives were spent doing -two things—hunting and raiding the Snakes of the South for horses. Men -and women captives were tortured with shocking cruelty that made the -Blackfeet a terror to all enemies; but young captives were adopted into -the tribe after the custom followed by the Iroquois of the East. Of -food, there was always plenty from the buffalo hunts; and game abounded -from the Saskatchewan Forks to the mountains. - -[Illustration: Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing for the North.] - -When Cocking tried to persuade the Blackfeet to come down to the fort -with furs, they were reluctant. They did not understand canoe travel -and could not take their horses, and why should they go down? The -Assiniboines would trade the furs for firearms to be brought to the -Blackfeet. Cocking pointed out that with more firearms, they could -be masters of the entire country and by dint of presenting cocked -hats and swords and gold-laced red coats to the chiefs, induced them to -promise not to trade with “the Canadian Pedlars.” “We have done all in -our power to keep them from trading with François or Curry, who lie at -the Portage (the Rapids) of the Saskatchewan to intercept the natives -coming to us.” - -On May 16, 1773, Cocking set out to return to the fort. For the first -time, a few young Blackfeet joined the canoes going to York. At the -Forks, two rival camps were found, that of Louis Primo who had come -over to the Hudson’s Bay from the French, and old François working for -the French Canadians. The English traders had no liquor. Four gallons -of rum diluted with water won the Indians over to old François, the -Canadian, who picked out one hundred of the rarest skins and was only -hindered taking the entire hunt because he had no more goods to trade. -François’ house was a long log structure divided into two sections, -half for a kitchen and mess room, half for a trading room, and the -furs were kept in the loft. Outside, were two or three log cabins for -François’ white men, of whom he had twenty. Round all ran ten-foot -stockades against which lay the great canoes twenty-four feet long, -twenty-two inches deep, which carried the furs to Lake Superior. -Cocking, who was used to factors ruling like little kings, was shocked -to find old François “an ignorant Frenchman, who did not keep his men -at proper distance and had no watch at night. It surprises me,” he -writes, “to observe what a warm side the natives hath to the French -Canadians.” - -Down at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Saskatchewan, Cocking -received another shock. Louis Primo and those Frenchmen bribed to join -the Hudson’s Bay, who had gone on from the Forks ahead of Cocking, were -to join him at the last portage of the Saskatchewan to go down to York. -He found that they had gone back to the French bag and baggage with -all their furs and goods supplied by the Hudson’s Bay and were already -halfway down to Lake Superior. Spite of being only “an ignorant old -Frenchman,” François had played a crafty game. By June 18, Cocking was -back at York. - -But the Company did not content itself with occasional expeditions -inland. Henceforth “patroons of the woods,” as they were called, were -engaged to live inland with the Indians and collect furs. Fifty-one -men were regularly kept at Cumberland House, and a bonus of £20 a year -regularly paid to the patroons. Whenever a Frenchman could be bribed -to come over to the Hudson’s Bay traders, he was engaged at £100 a -year. Bonuses above salaries amounted to £200 a year for the factors, -to £40 for the traders, to £80 for traveling servants. The Company now -had a staff of five hundred white men on the field and ten times as -many Indians. In 1785, Robert Longmore is engaged to explore inland up -Churchill River as far as Athabasca, where, in 1799, Malcolm Ross is -permanently placed as chief trader at £80 a year. In 1795, Joseph Howse -is sent inland from York to explore the Rockies, where he gives his -name to a pass, and “it is resolved that forts shall be erected in this -country too.” John Davidson explores the entire coast of Labrador on -the east; and on the west of Hudson Bay Charles Duncan reports finally -and, as far as the Company is concerned, forever—_there is no navigable -Northwest Passage_. In all, the Company has spent £100,000 seeking that -mythical passage, which is now written off as total loss. Up at Marble -Island, the sea still takes toll of the brave, and James Mouat, the -whaler, is buried in 1773, beside Captain Knight. At this stage too, -I am sorry to say, 12,000 gallons of brandy are yearly sent into the -country. - -It was in 1779 that _The King George_ ship beat about the whole summer -in the ice without entering York and was compelled to unload its cargo -at Churchill, for which Captain Fowler was suspended and lost his -gratuity of £100. - -Such strenuous efforts brought big rewards in beaver, seventy, and -eighty, and ninety thousand a year to London, but the expenses of -competition had increased so enormously that dividends had fallen from -10 to 5 per cent. I suppose it was to impress the native mind with the -idea of pomp, but about this time I find the Company furnished all its -officers with “brass-barreled pistols, swords with inlaid handles, -laced suits and cocked hats.” A more perfect example of the English -mind’s inability to grasp American conditions could not be found than -an entry in the expense book of 1784 when the Company buys “150 tracts -on _the Country Clergyman’s Advice to Parishioners_” for distribution -among North American Indians, who could not read any language let alone -English. - -It was no longer a policy of drift but drive, and in the midst of this -came the shock of the French war. All hands were afield from Churchill -but thirty-nine white servants one sleepy afternoon on August 8, 1782, -and Governor Hearne was busy trading with some Indians whom Matonabbee -had brought down, when the astounding apparition appeared of a fleet -at sea. No appointed signals were displayed by the incoming ships—they -were _not_ Company ships, and they anchored five miles from the fort -to sound. Churchill had not heard of war between France and England. No -alarm was felt. The fort had been forty years in building and was one -of the strongest in America, constructed of stone with forty great guns -and an outer battery to prevent approach. Probably intending to send -out a boat the next morning, Hearne went comfortably to bed. At three -in the morning, which was as light as day, somebody noticed that four -hundred armed men had landed not far from the fort and were marching in -regular military order for the gates. Too late, a reveille sounded and -bells rang to arms. Hearne dashed out with two men and met the invaders -halfway. Then he learned that the fleet was part of the French navy and -the four hundred invaders regular marines under the great officer—La -Perouse. Resistance was impossible now. The guns of the fort were not -even manned. The garrison was too small to permit one man to a gun. At -six in the morning, the British flag was lowered and a white tablecloth -of surrender run up on the pole. Hearne and the officers were taken -on board prisoners of war. Then the rough soldiery ran riot. Furs, -stores, documents—all were plundered, and a second day spent blowing up -the fortifications. Buildings were burned but the French were unable -to do serious damage to the walls. Matonabbee the great chief looked -on in horror. He had thought his English friends invincible, and now -he saw his creed of brute strength turned upon them and upon himself. -No longer he smiled contemptuously at the horror. It was one thing -to glory in the survival of the strong—another to be the under dog. -Matonabbee drew away outside the walls and killed himself. Old Norton’s -widows and children were scattered. On one the hardships fell with -peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured as a -white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal soldiery and -perished of starvation outside the walls. - -Hearne has been blamed for two things in this surrender, for not making -some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to -warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have -invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were -enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to -York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent -out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led -the enemy to wreck among reefs and sand-bars. - -On the third day, the three French men-of-war set sail for York, -leaving Churchill in flames. Outward bound, one of the Company ships -was sighted coming into Churchill. The French gave chase till seven in -the evening, but the English captain led off through such shoal water -the French desisted with a single chance volley in the direction of the -fleeing fur ship. - -On August 20, the Company ship lying at York observed a strange fleet -some twenty miles off shore landing men on Nelson River behind York, -which faced Hayes River. From plans taken at Churchill, La Perouse -had learned that York was weakest to the rear. There were in the fort -at that time sixty English and twelve Indians with some twenty-five -cannon and twelve swivel guns on the galleries. There was a supply of -fresh water inside the fort with thirty head of cattle; but a panic -prevailed. All the guns were overset to prevent the French using them, -and the English ship scudded for sea at nightfall. - -The French meanwhile had marched across the land behind York and now -presented themselves at the gates. The governor, Humphry Martin, -welcomed them with a white flag in his hand. Umfreville, who gives the -account of the surrender, was among the captured. His disgust knew no -bounds. “The enemy’s ships lay at least twenty miles from the factory -in a boisterous sea,” he writes, “and could not co-operate with the -troops on shore. The troops had no supplies. Cold, hunger and fatigue -were hourly working in our favor. The factory was not in want of a -single thing to withstand siege. The people showed no fear but the -reverse. Yet the English governor surrendered without firing a gun.” - -The French did not attempt to occupy the forts, which they had -captured, but retired with the officers as prisoners, and with the -plunder. By October the Company had received letters from the prison -at Dinan Castle, France, asking for the ransom of the men. By May, the -ransomed men were in London, and by June back at their posts on the bay. - -_Notes to Chapter XIX._—As stated elsewhere, Cocking classified the -Blackfeet Confederacy as Waterfall Indians, composed of Powestic -Athinuewuck, Mithco Athinuewuck, (Blood); Koskiton Wathesitock -(Blackfeet); Pegonow (Piegan); Sassewuck (Sarcee). Cocking’s Journal -is in the Hudson’s Bay Company House, London, and in the Canadian -Archives, Ottawa. - -The account of Hearne’s Voyages will be found in “Pathfinders of the -West,” or in the accounts by himself, (1) the report submitted to the -H. B. C., (2) his published journals in French and English, of which I -used the French edition of 1799, which is later and fuller than either -his report to the H. B. C. or the English book. - - * * * * * - -I find the beaver receipts of this period as follows: - -A. F. (Albany Fort) 21,454 M. R. (Moose) 8,860 E. M. (East Main) 7,626 -YF. & SF. (York & Severn) 37,861 C. R. (Churchill) 9,400 - -Churchill and York, of course, included the inland trade. - - * * * * * - -In 1777, the minutes record the dismissal of Thomas Kelsey for ill -behavior at P. of Wales (Churchill); the last of Henry Kelsey’s line. - - * * * * * - -In 1779, December, the warehouse of Lime Street was burned and all the -records without which this history could not have been written—narrowly -escaped destruction. - - * * * * * - -In 1797, communication was opened by way of London with the Russian fur -traders of the west coast. In this year, too, 95,000 beaver was the -total. - - * * * * * - -The sums paid to ransom the officer, ran all the way from £6,000 to -£4,000, so that it is no wonder, though receipts were large, there were -no dividends this year. - - * * * * * - -I find in the minutes of 1777, Samuel Hearne orders £20 yearly to -_Sarah La Petite_, from which one may guess that Samuel had personal -reasons for giving such a black picture of Moses Norton. - - * * * * * - -In 1780, Andrew Graham, whose journals give a great picture of this -period, asks that his Indian boy be sent home. - - * * * * * - -In 1782, the following names, famous in Manitoba history, came into the -lists of the officers of the Company: Clouston, Ballantine, Linklater, -Spencer, Sutherland, Kipling, Ross, Isbister, Umfreville. - - * * * * * - -It was in 1787 that the fearful ravages of smallpox reduced the Indian -population. This year of plague deserves a chapter by itself, but space -forbids. No “black death” of Europe ever worked more terrible woe than -the contagion brought back from the Missouri by wandering Assiniboines. - - * * * * * - -The account of the siege of Richmond by the Eskimos is taken from -Pott’s report to the Company. A copy of this the _Winnipeg Free Press_ -recently published as a letter. The description of Richmond is from -Captain Coates’ account. Strange that this Richmond should have gone -back to the state of desolation in which Coates found it. It was Coates -who named all the places of this region. - - * * * * * - -Nearly every great mineral discovery of America was preceded by the -predictions of the fur trader. It will be interesting to watch if -Hearne’s copper mine is ever re-discovered. - - * * * * * - -The story of Ross and Tomson and Farrant, I found first in the minutes -of H. B. C. House and then in Umfreville’s account of life at York. - - * * * * * - -I have throughout referred to Prince of Wales Fort as Churchill, as the -constant changing of names confuses the reader. - - * * * * * - -From the records it is impossible to tell whether the post Whale River -was Little Whale, or Great Whale. Judging from the fact that the -journey was performed by dog-sled in a night, to Richmond, it must have -been the nearer post. - - * * * * * - -I have not referred to the mistake in latitude made by Hearne in his -journey North, for which so many critics censure him. It would be -interesting to know how many men would have been in a condition to -take any observation at all after a week’s sleepless marching and the -horrors of the massacre. - - * * * * * - -Hearne’s picture will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.” - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -1760-1810 - -“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS”—A NEW RACE OF WOOD-ROVERS THRONGS TO THE -NORTHWEST—BANDITS OF THE WILDS WAR AMONG THEMSELVES—TALES OF BORDER -WARFARE, WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR—THE NEW NORTHWEST COMPANY CHALLENGES THE -AUTHORITY AND FEUDALISM OF THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY - - -La Perouse’s raid on Churchill and York was the least of the -misfortunes that now beset the English Adventurers. Within a year -from the French victory, the English prisoners had been ransomed from -France and the dismantled forts were rebuilt. It was a subtler foe -that menaced the Hudson’s Bay Company. Down at Abbittibbi, halfway to -Quebec—in at Henley House and Martin’s Falls and Osnaburg House on -the way from Albany to the modern Manitoba—up the Saskatchewan, where -Cocking and Batts and Walker held the forts for trade—between Churchill -and Athabasca, where Longmore and Ross had been sent on Hearne’s -trail—yes, even at the entrance to the Rockies, where Mr. Howse and -the astronomer Turner had found a pass leading from the headwaters of -the Saskatchewan, constantly there emerged from the woods, or swept -gayly up in light birch canoes, strange hunters, wildwood rovers, -free-lances, men with packs on their backs, who knocked nonchalantly at -the gates of the English posts for a night’s lodging and were eagerly -admitted because it was safer to have a rival trader under your eye -than out among the Indians creating bedlam by the free distribution of -rum. - -“Pedlars,” the English called these newcomers, who overran the sacred -territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company as though royal charters were a -joke and trading monopolies as extinct as the dodo. It was all very -well to talk of the rights of your charter, but what became of your -rights if interlopers stole them while you talked about them? And what -was the use of sending men to drum up trade and bring Indians down -to the bay with their furs, if pedlars caught the Indians halfway -down at portage, carrying place and hunting rendezvous, and in spite -of the fact that those Indians owed the English for half-a-dozen -years’ outfit—rifled away the best of the furs, sometimes by the free -distribution of rum, sometimes by such seditious talk as that “the -English had no rights in this country anyway and the Indians were -fools to become slaves to the Hudson’s Bay Company?” - -This was a new kind of challenge to feudalism. Sooner or later it was -bound to come. The ultimate umpire of all things in life is—Fact. Was -the charter valid that gave this empire of trade to a few Englishmen, -or was it buncombe? “The Pedlars” didn’t talk about their rights. -_They took them._ That was to be supreme test of the English Company’s -rights. Somebody else took the rights, and there were good reasons why -the Hudson’s Bay Company did not care to bring a question of its rights -before the courts. When the charter was confirmed by act of Parliament -in 1697, it was specified for only seven years. At the end of that -period the Company did not seek a renewal. Request for renewal would -of itself be acknowledgment of doubt as to the charter. The Company -preferred “to have and to hold,” rather than risk adverse decision. -They contented themselves with blocking the petitions of rivals for -trade privileges on the bay, but the eruption of these wildwood -rovers—“The French Canadian Pedlars”—was a contingency against which -there seemed to be no official redress. - -It remained only for the old Company to gird itself to the fray—a fight -with bandits and free-booters and raiders in a region where was law -of neither God nor man. Sales had fallen to a paltry £2,000 a year. -Dividends stopped altogether. Value of stock fell from £250 to £50. The -Company advertised for men—more men. Agents scoured the Orkneys and -the Highlands of Scotland for recruits, each to sign for five years, -a bounty of £8 to be paid each man. Five ships a year sailed to the -bay. Three hundred “patroons” were yearly sent into the woods, and when -their time expired—strange to relate—they did not return to Scotland. -What became of them? Letters ceased to come home. Inquiries remained -unanswered. The wilderness had absorbed them and their bones lay -bleaching on the unsheltered prairie where the arrow of Indian raider -inspired by “the Pedlars” had shot them as they traversed the plains. -No wonder service with the Hudson’s Bay Company became ill-omened in -the Orkneys and the Highlands! In spite of the bounty of £8 a man, -their agents were at their wits’ ends for recruits. - -When Hendry had gone up the Saskatchewan in 1754, he had seen the -houses of French traders. French power fell at Quebec in 1759, and -the French wood-rovers scattered to the wilds; but when Cocking went -up the Saskatchewan in 1772, what was his amazement to find these -French rovers organized under leadership of Scotch merchants from -Montreal—Curry, and Frobisher, and McTavish, and Todd, and McGill, and -McGillivrays. - -Under French rule, fur trade had been regulated by license. Under -English rule was no restriction. First to launch out from Montreal -with a cargo of goods for trade, was Alexander Henry, senior, in 1760. -From the Michilimackinac region and westward, Henry in ten years, from -1765 to 1775, brought back to Montreal such a wealth of furs, that -peltry trade became a fever. No capital was needed but the capital of -boundless daring. Montreal merchants advanced goods for trade. One went -with the canoes as partner and commander. Three thousand dollars worth -of goods constituted a load. Frenchmen were engaged as hunters and -voyageurs—eight to a canoe, and before the opening of the century, as -many as five hundred canoes yearly passed up the Ottawa from Montreal -for the _Pays d’en Haut_, west of Lake Superior, ten and twenty canoes -in a brigade. In this way, Thomas Curry had gone from Lake Superior -to Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Winnipeg up the Saskatchewan, in 1766, as -far as the Forks, bribing that renegade Louis Primo, to steal the furs -bought by Cocking for the Hudson’s Bay, and to lead the brigade on -down to Montreal. One voyage sufficed to yield Curry $50,000 clear, -a sum that was considered a fortune in those days, and enabled him -to retire. The fur fever became an epidemic, a mania. James Finlay of -Montreal, in 1771, pushed up the Saskatchewan beyond the Forks, or -what is now Prince Albert. Todd, McGill & Company outfitted Joseph and -Benjamin Frobisher for a dash north of the Saskatchewan in 1772-5, -where, by the luckiest chance in the world, they met the Chippewyan -and Athabasca Indians on their way to Churchill with furs for the -Hudson’s Bay Company. The Frobishers struck up friendship with “English -Chief”—leader of the Indian brigades—plied the argument of rum night -and day, bade the Indians ignore their debts to the English company, -offered to outfit them for the next year’s hunt and bagged the entire -cargo of furs—such an enormous quantity that they could take down only -half the cargo that year and had to leave the other half cached, to the -everlasting credit of the Indian’s honesty and discredit of the white -man’s. Henceforth, this post was known as Portage de Traite. It led -directly from the Saskatchewan to the Athabasca and became a famous -meeting place. Portage “of the Stretched Frog” the Indians called it, -for the Frobishers had been so keen on the trade that they had taught -the Indians how to stretch skins, and the Indians had responded in -mischief by tacking a stretched frog skin on the door of the cabin. -Pushing yet farther toward Athabasca, the Frobisher brothers built -another post norwestward, Isle à la Crosse, on an island where the -Indians met for the sport of lacrosse. - -Besides the powerful house of McTavish, Frobisher, Todd, McGill and -McGillivray, were hosts of lesser traders who literally peddled their -goods to the Indians. In 1778, these pedlars pooled their stock and -outfitted Peter Pond to go on beyond the Frobisher posts to Athabasca. -Here, some miles south of the lake, Pond built his fort. Pond was a -Boston man of boundless ambition and energy but utterly unscrupulous. -While at Athabasca, he heard from the Indians rumors of the Russian -fur traders on the Pacific Coast and he drew that famous map of the -interior, which was to be presented to the Empress of Russia. He seems -to have been cherishing secret designs of a great fur monopoly. - -Fur posts sprang up on the waterways of the West like mushrooms. Rum -flowed like water—50,000 gallons a year “the pedlars” brought to -the Saskatchewan from Montreal. Disorders were bound to ensue. At -Eagle Hills near Battleford, in 1780, the drunken Crees became so -obstreperous in their demands for more liquor that the three terrified -traders cooped up in their house tried to save themselves by putting -laudanum in the liquor. An Indian was drugged to death. The sobered -Crees sulky from their debauch, arose to a man, rammed the doors, -stabbed the three whites and seven half-breed traders to death, burnt -the fort and sent coureurs running from tribe to tribe across the -prairie to conspire for a massacre of all white traders in the country. -Down on the Assiniboine at what is now known as Portage la Prairie, -where the canoemen portaged across to Lake Manitoba and so to Lake -Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, were three strong trading houses under -two men called Brice and Boyer. With them were twenty-three Frenchmen. -Three different companies had their rendezvous here. The men were -scattered in the three houses and off guard when one night the darkness -was made hideous by the piercing war cry of the Assiniboines. Before -lights could be put out, the painted warriors had swooped down on two -of the houses. The whites were butchered as they dashed out—eleven -men in as many seconds. The third house had warning from the shots at -the others. Brice and Boyer were together. Promptly, lights were put -out, muskets rammed through the parchment windows and chinks of the -log walls, and a second relay of loaded weapons made ready. When the -Assiniboines attempted to rush the third house, they were met with a -solid crash of musketry that mowed down some thirty warriors and gave -the assailants pause. With checked ardor, the Indians retreated to the -other houses. They could at least starve the white men out, but the -white men wisely did not wait. While the Assiniboines rioted, drunk -on the booty of rum in the captured cabins, Brice ordered all liquor -spilt in his house. Taking what peltries he could, abandoning the rest, -Brice led a dash for the river. Darkness favored the fugitive whites. -Three only of the retreating men fell under the shower of random -arrows—Belleau, Facteau, Lachance. Launching canoes with whispers and -muffling their paddles, the white men rowed all night, hid by day, and -in three days were safe with the traders at the Forks, or what is now -Winnipeg. - -Up at Athabasca, Pond, the indomitable, was setting a bad example for -lawless work. Wadin was his partner; Le Sieur, his clerk. No greater -test of fairness and manhood exists than to box two men in a house -ten by ten in the wilderness, with no company but their own year in, -year out. Pond was for doing impossibles—or what seemed impossibles -at that day. He had sent two traders down Big River (the MacKenzie) -as far as Slave Lake. The Indians were furiously hostile. Wadin, the -Swiss partner, opposed all risks. Lonely, unstrung and ill-natured, -Pond conceived that hatred for his partner which men, who have been -tied too close to an alien nature, know. The men had come to blows. -One night the quarrel became so hot, Le Sieur withdrew from the house. -He had gone only a few steps when he heard two shots. Rushing back, he -found the Swiss weltering in his blood on the floor. “Be off! Never -let me see your face again,” shouted the wounded man, catching sight -of Pond. Those were his last words. It is a terrible commentary on -civilization that the first blood shed in the Athabasca was that of a -white man slain by a white man; but the Athabasca was three thousand -miles away from punishment and the merry game had only begun. Later, -Pond was tried for this crime, but acquitted in Montreal. - -Roving Assiniboines had visited the Mandanes of the Missouri, this -year. They brought back with them not only stolen horses, but an -unknown, unseen horror—the germ of smallpox—which ran like a fiery -scourge for three years, from Red River and the Assiniboine to the -Rockies, sweeping off two-thirds of the native population. Camp after -camp, tribe after tribe, was attacked and utterly destroyed, leaving -no monument but a heap of bleaching bones scraped clean by the wolves. -Tent leather flapped lonely to the wind, rotting on the tepee poles -where Death had spared not a soul of a whole encampment. In vain the -maddened Indians made offerings to their gods, slew their children to -appease this Death Demon’s wrath, and cast away all their belongings. -Warriors mounted their fleetest horses and rode like mad to outrace -the Death they fancied was pursuing them. Delirious patients threw -themselves into the lakes and rivers to assuage suffering. The epidemic -was of terrible virulence. The young and middle-aged fell victims most -readily, and many aged parents committed suicide rather than live on, -bereft of their children. There was an end to all conspiracy for a -great uprising and massacre of the whites. The whites had fled before -the scourge as terrified as were the Indians and for three years there -was scarcely a fur trader in the country from the Missouri to the -Saskatchewan. - -During the interval, the merchants of Montreal had put their heads -together. Division and internecine warfare in the face of Indian -hostility and the Hudson’s Bay traders steady advancement inland, were -folly. The Montrealers must unite. The united traders were known as -the Northwest Company. The Company had no capital. Montreal partners -who were merchants outfitted the canoes with goods. Men experienced -in the trade led the brigades westward. The former gave credit for -goods, the latter time on the field. The former acted as agents to -sell the furs, the latter as wintering partners to barter for the -furs with the Indians. To each were assigned equal shares—a share -apiece to each partner, or sixteen shares in all, in the first place; -later increased to twenty and forty-six and ninety-six shares as the -Company absorbed more and more of the free traders. As a first charge -against the proceeds were the wages of the voyageurs—£100 a year, -five times as much as the Hudson’s Bay Company paid for the same -workers. Then the cost of the goods was deducted—$3,000 a canoe—and -in the early days ninety canoes a year were sent North. Later, when -the Nor’Westers absorbed all opposition, the canoes increased to five -hundred. The net returns were then divided into sixteen parts and the -profits distributed to the partners. By 1787, shares were valued at -£800 each. At first, net returns were as small as £40,000 a year, but -this dividend among only sixteen partners gave what was considered -a princely income in those days. Later, net returns increased to -£120,000 and £200,000, but by this time the number of partners was -ninety-six. Often the yearly dividend was £400 a share. As many as -200,000 beaver were sold by the Nor’Westers in a year, and the heaviest -buyer of furs at Montreal was John Jacob Astor of New York. Chief among -the Eastern agents, were the two Frobisher brothers, Benjamin and -Joseph—McGill, Todd, Holmes, and Simon McTavish, the richest merchant -of Montreal, nicknamed “the Marquis” for his pompous air of wearing -prosperity. Chief among the wintering partners were Peter Pond, the -American of Athabasca fame, the McGillivrays, nephews of McTavish; the -MacLeods, the Grants, the Camerons, MacIntoshes, Shaws, McDonalds, -Finlays, Frasers, and Henry, nephew of the Henry who first went to -Michilimackinac. - -Not only did the new company forthwith send ninety canoes to the North -by way of Lake Superior, but one hundred and twenty men were sent -through Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to Detroit, for the fur region -between Lake Huron and the Mississippi. It was at this period that -the Canadian Government was besieged for a monopoly of trade west of -Lake Superior, in return for which the Nor’Westers promised to explore -the entire region between the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean. When -the Government refused to grant the monopoly, the Nor’Westers stopped -asking for rights. They prepared _to take them_. - -In Montreal, the Nor’Westers were lords in the ascendant, socially -and financially, living with lavish and regal hospitality, keeping -one strong hand on their interests in the West, the other hand on -the pulse of the government. Some of the partners were members of -the Assembly. All were men of public influence, and when a wintering -partner retired to live in Montreal, he usually became a member of -the governing clique. The Beaver Club with the appropriate motto, -“Fortitude in Distress,” was the partners’ social rendezvous, and -coveted were the social honors of its exclusive membership. Governors -and councillors, military heroes and foreign celebrities counted it -an honor to be entertained at the Beaver Club with its lavish table -groaning under weight of old wines from Europe and game from the -_Pays d’en Haut_. “To discuss the merits of a beaver tail, or moose -nose, or bear’s paw, or buffalo hump”—was the way a Nor’West partner -invited a guest to dinner at the Beaver Club, and I would not like to -testify that the hearty partners did not turn night into day and drink -themselves under the mahogany before they finished entertaining a -guest. Most lordly of the grandees was, of course, “the Marquis,” Simon -McTavish, who built himself a magnificent manor known as “the Haunted -House,” on the mountain. He did not live to enjoy it long, for he died -in 1804. Indeed, it was a matter of comment how few of the ninety-six -partners lived to a good old age in possession of their hard-earned -wealth. - -“No wonder,” sarcastically commented a good bishop, who had been on -the field and seen how the wealth was earned, “when the devil sows the -seed, he usually looks after the harvest.” - -But it was not all plain sailing from the formation of the Company. -Pond and Pangman, the two Boston men, who had been in the North when -the partnership was arranged, were not satisfied with their shares. -Pond was won over to the Nor’Westers, but Pangman joined a smaller -company with Gregory, and MacLeod, and Alexander MacKenzie, and Finlay. -MacKenzie, who was to become famous as a discoverer, was sent to Isle -à la Crosse to intercept furs on the way to Hudson Bay. Ross was sent -up to oppose Peter Pond of the Nor’Westers in Athabasca. Bostonnais -Pangman went up the Saskatchewan to the Rockies, with headquarters at -what is now Edmonton, and the rest of what were known as the Little -Company faithfully dogged the Nor’Westers’ footsteps and built a -trading house wherever Indians gathered. - -Failing to establish a monopoly by law, the Nor’Westers set themselves -to do it without law. The Little Company must be exterminated. Because -Alexander MacKenzie later became one of the Nor’Westers, the details -have never been given to the public, but at La Crosse where he waited -to barter for the furs coming from the North to the Hudson’s Bay, the -Nor’Westers camped on his trail. The crisis in rivalry was to meet the -approaching Indian brigades. The trader that met them first, usually -got the furs. Spies were sent in all directions to watch for the -Indians, and spies dogged the steps of spies. It was no unusual thing -for one side to find the Indians first and for a rival spy to steal the -victory by bludgeoning the discoverer into unconsciousness or treating -him to a drink of drugged whiskey. In the scuffle and maneuver for the -trade, one of Alexander MacKenzie’s partners was murdered, another of -his men lamed, a third narrowly escaping death through the assassin’s -bullet being stopped by a powderhorn; but the point was—MacKenzie got -the furs for the Little Company. The Nor’Westers were beaten. - -Up at Athabasca, Pond, the Nor’Wester was opposed by Ross, the Little -Company man. Hearne, of Hudson’s Bay, had been to Athabasca first of -all explorers, but Pond was the first of the Montreal men to reach -the famous fur region of the North, and he did not purpose seeing -his labors filched away by the Little Company. When Laroux brought -the Indians from Slave Lake to the Nor’Westers and Ross attempted to -approach them, there was a scuffle. The Little Company leader fell -pierced by a bullet from a revolver smoking in the hand of Peter Pond. -Did Pond shoot Ross? Was it accidental? These questions can never be -answered. This was the second murder for which Pond was responsible -in the Athabasca, and ill-omened news of it ran like wildfire south -to Isle à la Crosse and Portage de Traite where Alexander MacKenzie -and his cousin Roderick were encamped. Nor’Westers and Little Company -men alike were shocked. For the Montreal men to fight among themselves -meant alienation of the Indians and victory for the Hudson’s Bay. -Roderick MacKenzie of the Little Company and William McGillivray of the -Nor’Westers decided to hasten down to Montreal with the summer brigades -and urge a union of both organizations. Locking canoes abreast, with -crews singing in unison, the rival leaders set out together, and the -union was effected in 1787 by the Nor’Westers increasing their shares -to admit all the partners of the Gregory and MacKenzie concern. Pond -sold his interests to the MacGillivrays and retired to Boston. - -The strongest financial, social and political interests of Eastern -Canada were now centered in the Northwest Company. There were ways of -discouraging independent merchants from sending pedlars to the North. -Boycott, social or financial, the pulling of political strings that -withheld a government passport, a hint that if the merchant wanted a -hand in the trade it would be cheaper for him to pool his interests -with the Nor’Westers than risk a $3,000 load on his own account—kept -the field clear or brought about absorption of all rivals till 1801. -Then a Dominique Rousseau essayed an independent venture led by his -clerk, Hervieux. Grand Portage on Lake Superior was the halfway post -between Montreal and the _Pays d’en Haut_—the metropolis of the -Nor’Westers’ domain. Here came Hervieux’s brigade and pitched camp some -hundred yards away from the Nor’West palisades. Hardly had Hervieux -landed when there marched across to him three officers of the Northwest -Company, led by Duncan McGillivray, who ordered the newcomers to be off -on pain of death, as all the land here was Northwest property. Hervieux -stood his ground stoutly as a British subject and demanded proof that -the country belonged to the Northwest Company. To the Nor’Westers, such -a demand was high treason. McGillivray retorted he would send proof -enough. The partners withdrew, but there sallied out of the fort a -party of the famous Northwest bullies—prize fighters kept in trim for -the work in hand. Drawing knives, they cut Hervieux’s tents to shreds, -scattered his merchandise to the four winds and bedrubbed the little -men, who tried to defend it, as if they had been so many school boys. - -“You demand our title to possession? You want proofs that we hold this -country? Eh? Bien! Voila! There’s proof! Take it; but if you dare to go -into the interior, there will be more than tents cut! Look out for your -throats.” - -Totally ruined, Hervieux was compelled to go back to Montreal, where -his master in vain sued the Nor’Westers. The Nor’Westers were not -responsible. It was plain as day: they had not ordered those bullies to -come out, and those bullies were a matter of three thousand miles away -and could not be called as witnesses. - -Determined not to be beaten, Rousseau attempted a second venture in -1806, this time two canoes under fearless fellows led by one Delorme, -who knew the route to the interior. He instructed Delorme to avoid -clashing with the Nor’Westers by skirting round their headquarters -on Lake Superior, if necessary by traveling at night till beyond -detection. Delorme was four days’ march beyond Lake Superior when -Donald McKay, a Nor’Wester, suddenly emerged from the underbrush -leading a dozen wood-rovers. Not a word was said. No threats. No -blustering. This was a no-man’s-land where there was no law and -everyone could do as he liked. McKay liked to do a very odd thing just -at this juncture, just at this place. His bush-lopers hurried on down -stream in advance of Delorme’s canoes and leveled a veritable barricade -of trees across the trail. Then they went to the rear of Delorme and -leveled another barricade. Delorme didn’t attempt to out-maneuver his -rivals. At most he had only sixteen men, and that kind of a game meant -a free fight and on one side or the other—murder. He sold out both his -cargoes to McKay at prices current in Montreal, and retreated from the -fur country, leaving the sardonic Nor’Westers smiling in triumph. These -were some of the ways by which the Nor’Westers dissuaded rivals from -invading the _Pays d’en Haut_. On their part, they probably justified -their course by arguing that rivalry would at once lead to such murders -as those in the Athabasca. In their secret councils, they well knew -that they were keeping small rivals from the field to be free for the -fight against the greatest rival of all—the Hudson’s Bay Company. - -[Illustration: - -CHART Showing the Routes of HUDSON and MUNK ] - -_Footnote to Chapter XX._—The contents of this chapter are taken -primarily from the records of the Hudson’s Bay House; secondarily, -from the Journals of the Nor’West partners as published by Senator -Masson, Prof. Coues, and others; also, and most important, from such -old missionary annals as those of the Oblates and other missionaries -like Abbé Dugas, Tassé, Grandin, Provencher and others. In the most of -cases, the missionary writer was not himself the actor (there are two -exceptions to this) but he was in direct contact with the living -actor and took his facts on the spot, so that his testimony is even -more non-partisan than the carefully edited Masson essay and records. -I consider these various missionary legends the most authentic source -of the history of the period, though their evidence is most damning -to both sides. These annals are exclusively published by Catholic -organizations and so unfortunately do not reach the big public of which -they are deserving. - -The exact way in which the N. W. C. was formed, I found very -involved in the Masson essay. A detailed account of all steps in the -organization is very plainly given in the petitions of the Frobisher -Brothers, Peter Pond and McGill to Gov. Haldimand for a monopoly of the -fur trade. The petitions are in the Canadian Archives. A curious fear -is revealed in all these petitions—that the Americans may reach and -possess the Pacific Coast first. As a matter of fact that is exactly -what Grey and Lewis and Clarke did in the Oregon region. - -From the H. B. C. Archives I find the following data on this era: Batts -and Walker and Peter Fidler held the mouth of the Saskatchewan for the -English; one Goodwin worked south from Albany almost to Lake Superior -and west to modern Manitoba; half a dozen French run-aways from the N. -W. C. were engaged as spies at £100 a year; the Martin Falls House is -built inland from Albany in 1782; in spite of ignominious surrender, -Hearne and Humphrey Martin go back as Governors of Churchill and -York; Edward Umfreville leaves the H. B. C. (wages £141) and joins -the N. W. C.; Martin and Hearne, La Perouse’s prisoners, were dropped -at Stromness in November, whether on the way to France or back from -France, I can’t tell; their letters do not reach the H. B. C. till -March, 1783; William Paulson is surgeon at East Main; no dividends from -1782 to 1786; Joseph Colen succeeds Martin at York in ’86; William Auld -succeeds Hearne at Churchill in ’96; James Hourie is massacred by the -Indians of East Main; H. B. C. servants from the growing dangers become -mutinous, six are fined at East Main for mutiny; four at York fined £4 -each, namely Magnus Tait, Alex. Gunn, John Irvine, Benj. Bruce, two at -Churchill £20 each, Robert Pexman and Henry Hodges. Andrew Graham, the -old factor of Severn, being now destitute at Edinburg, is given thirty -guineas in 1801. - - -Transcriber’s Notes - -Page 186—changed accomodated to =accommodated= Page 242—changed -Palcentia to =Placentia= Page 263—changed pursuading to =persuading= -Page 272—changed quittting to =quitting= Page 319—changed proceeeds to -=proceeds= Page 366—changed suggetsed to =suggested= Page 407—changed -necesssary to =necessary= - -The variant spellings of the following name has been left as printed: -Grossilier, Grosilier, Groseilier, Groseillers. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT -NORTHWEST, VOLUME I (OF 2) *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Laut</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The conquest of the great Northwest, Volume I (of 2)</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>being the story of the Adventurers of England known as the Hudson's Bay Company, new pages in the history of the Canadian northwest and western states</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Agnes C. Laut</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 20, 2022 [eBook #69591]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Fiona Holmes, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, VOLUME I (OF 2) ***</div> - - - -<div class="transnote"> -<h2>Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - -<p>A number of the variants in spelling have been left, e.g. gayly/gaily. - -<p>Much of the hyphenation has been standardised.</p> - -<p>Changes made are noted at the <a href="#end_note" title="Go to the End Note">end of the book.</a></p> -</div> - - - -<div class="figcenter" id="cover"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" width="1918" height="2560"> -</div> - -<p class="p4"></p> - -<h1> THE CONQUEST OF - THE GREAT NORTHWEST</h1> - - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_frontis"> -<img src="images/i_frontis.jpg" alt="" width="397" height="650"> -<p class="center p120">Collier’s famous picture of Hudson’s Last Hours.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p4"></p> - - -<h2> THE CONQUEST OF THE<br> - GREAT NORTHWEST</h2> - -<p class="center"> <em>Being the story of the ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND<br> - known as THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. New pages<br> - in the history of the Canadian Northwest and Western States.</em></p> - -<p class="center p80"> BY</p> - -<p class="center p140"> AGNES C. LAUT</p> - -<p class="center p120"> <em>Author of “Lords of the North,”<br> - “Pathfinders of the West,” etc.</em></p> - -<p class="center p120"> IN TWO VOLUMES<br> - <span class="smcap">Volume I</span></p> - -<p class="p4"></p> - -<p class="center p80"> TORONTO<br> - THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY<br> - LIMITED</p> - - -<p class="p4"></p> - -<div class="title-page"> -<p class="center"> Copyright, 1908, by - THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY</p> - -<p class="center"> Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England</p> - -<p class="center"> <em>All Rights Reserved</em></p> -</div> - -<p class="p4"></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"> <em>TO</em> - G. C. L. - and - C. M. A. -</p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS OF VOLUME I</h2> - -<table class="toc"> -<tr> -<td class="tdc1" colspan="2">PART I</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"> CHAPTER I</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small><small>PAGE</small></small></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Henry Hudson’s First Voyage</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Hudson’s Second Voyage</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Hudson’s Third Voyage</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Hudson’s Fourth Voyage</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The Adventures of the Danes on Hudson Bay—Jens - Munck’s Crew</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="tdc1" colspan="2">PART II</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Radisson, the Pathfinder, Discovers Hudson Bay and - Founds the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> The Adventures of the First Voyage—Radisson Driven - Back Organizes the Hudson’s Bay Company and - Writes his Journals of Four Voyages—The Charter - and the First Shareholders—Adventures of Radisson - on the Bay—The Coming of the French and the - Quarrel</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_111">111</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">“Gentlemen Adventurers of England”—Lords of the - Outer Marches—Two Centuries of Company Rule—Secret - Oaths—The Use of Whiskey—The Matrimonial - Offices—The Part the Company Played in the Game - of International Juggling—How Trade and Voyages - Were Conducted</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">If Radisson Can Do Without the Adventurers, the Adventurers - Cannot Do Without Radisson—The Eruption - of the French on the Bay—The Beginning of the - Raiders </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The Adventurers Furious at Radisson, Find it Cheaper to - Have him as a Friend than Enemy and Invite him - Back—The Real Reason Why Radisson Returned—The - Treachery of Statecraft—Young Chouart Outraged, - Nurses his Wrath and Gayly Comes on the - Scene Monsieur Péré—Scout and Spy</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Wherein the Reasons for Young Chouart Groseiller’s - Mysterious Message to Our Good Friend “Péré” are - Explained—The Forest Rovers of New France Raid - the Bay by Sea and Land—Two Ships Sunk—Péré, - the Spy, Seized and Sent to England </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville Sweeps the Bay</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">D’Iberville Sweeps the Bay (<em>continued</em>) </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_228">228</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">What Became of Radisson?—New Facts on the Last - Days of the Famous Pathfinder </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="tdc1" colspan="2">PART III</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The First Attempts of the Adventurers to Explore—Henry - Kelsey Penetrates as far as the Valley of the - Saskatchewan—Sanford and Arrington, Known as - “Red Cap,” Found Henley House Inland from Albany—Beset - from Without, the Company is also Beset - from Within—Petitions Against the Charter—Increase - of Capital—Restoration of the Bay from France</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Old Captain Knight, Beset by Gold Fever, Hears the Call of - the North—The Straits and Bay—The First Harvest - of the Sea at Dead Man’s Island—Castaways for - Three Years—The Company, Beset by Gold Fever, - Increases its Stock—Pays Ten Per Cent. on Twice - Trebled Capital—Coming of Spies Again </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The Company’s Prosperity Arouses Opposition—Arthur - Dobbs and the Northwest Passage and the Attack on - the Charter—No Northwest Passage is Found, but - the French Spur the English to Renewed Activity</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVIII</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The March Across the Continent Begins—The Company - Sends a Man to the Blackfeet of the South - Saskatchewan—Anthony Hendry is the First Englishman - to Penetrate to the Saskatchewan—The First Englishman - to Winter West of Lake Winnipeg—He Meets the - Sioux and the Blackfeet and Invites them to the Bay </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIX</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Extension of Trade toward Labrador, Quebec and - Rockies—Hearne Finds the Athabasca Country and Founds - Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan—Cocking - Proceeds to the Blackfeet—Howse Finds the Pass in - Rockies <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[xii]</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_355">355</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XX</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">“The Coming of the Pedlars”—A New Race of Wood-rovers - Throngs to the Northwest—Bandits of the - Wilds War Among Themselves—Tales of Border Warfare, - Wassail and Grandeur—The New Northwest - Company Challenges the Authority and Feudalism of - the Hudson’s Bay Company </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td> -</tr> - -</table> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<p class="p4"></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ADDENDA">ADDENDA</h2> -</div> -<table class="adden"> -<tr> -<td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small><small>PAGE</small></small></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Map of Hudson’s First and Second Voyages</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Map of Hudson’s Third Voyage—Hudson River</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Map showing Hudson’s and Munck’s Voyages</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_408">408</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiii"></a>[xiii]</span></td> -</tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> -</div> - -<table class="toi"> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> Collier’s Famous Picture of Hudson’s Last Hours</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_frontis"><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small><small>FACING<br> PAGE</small></small></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Prince Rupert </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">James II, Duke of York </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660 </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Albany from an Old Print </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> - -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">The Duke of Marlborough </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Le Moyne d’Iberville</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Iberville’s Ship Run Aground Off Nelson in a Hurricane </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Churchill Harbor as Drawn by Munck </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian - Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Bienville</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Photograph of the Copy of Radisson’s Voyage </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Rupert House</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Copy of Robson’s Drawing of York Harbor</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_170">170</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Silver Fox Skins </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Montagu House</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Petition of the H. B. C. Signed by Churchill, or Marlborough</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Terms of Surrender Between Le Moyne d’Iberville and - Governor Walsh at York Fort </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Radisson’s House</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing </td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv"></a>[xv]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">It</span> <span class="allsmcap">HAS</span> become almost a truism to say that no complete account of -the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers has yet been written. I have often -wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they -meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to -Rupert’s Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer -Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas -of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death -carving a path through the wilderness—were not to be checked by the -mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of -their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the -unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It -was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched -and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana. -This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they followed -the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north -were MacKenzie River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser and <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvi"></a>[xvi]</span> the -Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to -these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River. -Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Oregon down as far as the -Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson’s -Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft, -and founding their fur empire of wildwood rovers, took toll of the -wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever -collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the -Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe—California, -Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson’s -Bay Adventurers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and -three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now -run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death -across Nevada deserts, Hudson’s Bay trappers had long before marched in -dusty caravans sweeping the wilderness of beaver. Where San Francisco -stands to-day, the English Adventurers once owned a thousand-acre farm. -By a bold stroke of statecraft, they had hoped to buy up Mexico’s bad -debts and trade those debts for proprietary rights in California. The -story of why they failed is theme for novelist or poet rather than -historian. Suffice to say, their Southern Brigades,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvii"></a>[xvii]</span> disguised as -Spanish horsemen, often went south as far as Monterey. <em>Yet more!</em> -The Hudson’s Bay Adventurers had a station half way across the Pacific -in Hawaii.</p> - -<p>In all, how large was their fur empire? Larger, by actual measurement, -much larger, than Europe. Now what person would risk reputation by -saying no complete account had yet been written of all Europe? The -thing is so manifestly impossible, it is absurd. Not one complete -account, but hundreds of volumes on different episodes will go to the -making of such a complete history. So is it of the vast area ruled by -the Hudson’s Bay Company. The time will come when each district will -demand as separate treatment as a Germany, or a France or an Italy in -its history. All that can be attempted in one volume or one series of -volumes is the portrayal of a single movement, or a single episode, -or a single character. In this account, I have attempted to tell the -story of the Company only as adventurer, pathfinder, empire-builder, -from Rupert’s Land to California—feudal lord beaten off the field -by democracy. Where the empire-builder merges with the colonizer and -pioneer, I have stopped in each case. In Manitoba, the passing of the -Company was marked by the Riel Rebellion; in British Columbia, by the -mad gold stampede; in Oregon, by the terrible Whitman <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xviii"></a>[xviii]</span> massacres; in -California, by the fall of Spanish power. All these are dramas in -themselves worthy of poet or novelist; but they are not germane to the -Adventurers. Therefore, they are not given here. Who takes up the story -where I leave off, must hang the narrative on these pegs.</p> - -<p>Another intentional omission. From the time the Adventurers wrote off -£100,000 loss for search of the North-West Passage, Arctic Exploration -has no part in this story. In itself, it is an enthralling story; but -to give even the most scrappy reference to it here would necessitate -crowding out essential parts of the Adventurers’ record—such as -McLoughlin’s transmontane empire, or the account of the South Bound -Brigades. Therefore, latter day Arctic work has no mention here. For -the same reason, I have been compelled to omit the dramatic story of -the early missions. These merit a book to themselves.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Throughout—with the exception of four chapters, I may say -altogether—I have relied for the thread of my narrative on the -documents in Hudson’s Bay House, London; the Minute Books of some two -hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, -the Daily Journals kept by chief factors at every post and sent to -London from 1670. These documents are in tons. They are not <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xix"></a>[xix]</span> open to -the public. They are unclassified; and in the case of Minute Books -are in duplicates, “the Foule Minutes”—as the inscription on the old -parchment describes them—being rough, almost unreadable, notes jotted -down during proceedings with interlinings and blottings to be copied -into the Minute Books marked “Faire Copie.” In some cases, the latter -has been lost or destroyed; and only the uncorrected one remains. It is -necessary to state this because discrepancies will be found—noted as -the story proceeds—which arise from the fact that some volumes of the -corrected minutes have been lost. The Minute Books consist variously -from one to five hundred pages each.</p> - -<p>Beside the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, there is a great -mass of unpublished, unexploited material bearing on the Company in -the Public Records Office, London. I had some thousands of pages of -transcripts of these made which throw marvelous side light on the -printed records of Radisson; of Iberville; of Parl. Report 1749; of the -Coltman Report and Blue Book of 1817-22; and the Americans in Oregon.</p> - -<p>In many episodes, the story told here will differ almost unrecognizably -from accepted versions and legends of the same era. This is not -by accident. Nor is it because I have <em>not</em> consulted what -one writer <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xx"></a>[xx]</span> sarcastically called to my attention as “the secondary -authorities”—the words are his, not mine. Nearly all these authorities -from earliest to latest days are in my own library and interlined -from many readings. Where I have departed from old versions of famous -episodes, it has been because records left in the handwriting of the -actors themselves compelled me; as in the case of Selkirk’s orders -about Red River, Ogden’s discoveries in Nevada and Utah and California, -Thompson’s explorations of Idaho, Howse’s explorations in the Rockies, -Ogden’s robbery of the Americans, the Americans’ robbery of him.</p> - -<p>I regret I have no clue to any Spanish version of why Glen Rae blew -out his brains in San Francisco. On this episode, I have relied on the -legends current among the old Hudson’s Bay officers and retold so well -by Bancroft.</p> - -<p>To Mr. C. C. Chipman, commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to Mr. -William Ware, the secretary, and Lord Strathcona-and-Mount-Royal, the -Governor—I owe grateful thanks for access to the H. B. C. documents.</p> - -<p>On the whole, the record of the Adventurers, is not one to bring the -blush of regret to those jealous for the Company’s honor. It is a -record of daring and courage and adventuring and pomp—in the best <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xxi"></a>[xxi]</span> -sense of the words—and of intrigue and statecraft and diplomacy, too, -not always in the best sense of the words—which must take its place in -the world’s history far above the bloody pageantry of Spanish conqueror -in Mexico and Peru. It is the one case where Feudalism played an -important and successful rôle in America, only in the end to be driven -from the stage by Young Democracy.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1610-1631</p> - -<p>Being an Account of the Discoveries in the Great Sea of the North -by Henry Hudson and the Dane, Jens Munck. How the Search for the -North-West Passage Led to the Opening of two Regions—New York and the -North-West Territories.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_CONQUEST_OF_THE_GREAT_NORTHWEST">THE CONQUEST OF<br> -THE GREAT NORTHWEST</h2> -</div> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1607</p> - -<p class="center">HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Practical</span> men scorn the dreamer, especially the mad-souled dreamer who -wrecks life trying to prove his dream a reality. Yet the mad-souled -dreamer, the Poet of Action whose poem has been his life, the Hunter -who has chased the Idea down the Long Trail where all tracks point one -way and never return—has been a herald of light for humanity.</p> - -<p>Of no one is this truer than the English pilot, Henry Hudson.</p> - -<p>Hudson did not set out to find the great inland waters that bear his -name—Hudson River and Hudson Bay. He set out to chase that rainbow -myth—the Pole—or rather the passage across the Pole. To<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> him, as to -all Arctic explorers, the call had become a sort of obsession. It was -a demon, driving him in spite of himself. It was a siren whom he could -not resist, luring him to wreck, which he knew was certain. It was a -belief in something which reason couldn’t prove but time has justified. -It was like a scent taken up by a hound on a strange trail. He could -not know where it would lead but because of Something in him and -Something on the Trail, he was compelled to follow. Like the discoverer -in science, he could not wait till his faith was gilt-edged with profit -before risking his all on the venture. Call it demon or destiny! At its -voice he rose from his place and followed to his death.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The situation was this:</p> - -<p>Not a dozen boats had sailed beyond the Sixtieth degree of north -latitude. From Sixty to the Pole was an area as great as Africa. This -region was absolutely unknown. What did it hide? Was it another new -world, or a world of waters giving access across the Pole from Europe -to Asia? The Muscovy Company of England, the East India Company of -Holland, both knew the Greenland of the Danes; and sent their ships to -fish at Spitzbergen, east of Greenland. But was Greenland an island, -or a great continent? Were Spitzbergen and Greenland<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span> parts of a vast -Polar land? Did the mountains wreathed there in eternal mists conceal -the wealth of a second Peru? Below the endless swamps of ice, would men -find gold sands? And when one followed up the long coast of the east -shore—as long as from Florida to Maine—where the Danish colonies had -perished of cold centuries ago—what beyond? A continent, or the Pole, -or the mystic realm of frost peopled by the monsters of Saga myth, -where the Goddess of Death held pitiless sway and the shores were lined -with the dead who had dared to invade her realm? Why these questions -should have pierced the peace of Henry Hudson, the English pilot, and -possessed him—can no more be explained than the Something on the Trail -that compels Something in the hound.</p> - -<p>Like other dreamers, Hudson had to put his dreams in harness; hitch his -Idea to every day uses, The Muscovy Company trading to Russia wanted -to find a short way across the Pole to China. Hudson had worked up -from sailor to pilot and pilot to master on the Dutch traders, and was -commissioned to seek the passage. The Company furnished him with a crew -of eleven including his own boy, John. It would be ridiculous if it -were not so pathetic—these simple sailors undertaking a venture that -has baffled every great navigator since time began.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span></p> - -<p>Led by Hudson with the fire of a great faith in his eyes, the men -solemnly marched to Saint Ethelburge Church off Bishopgate Street, -London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God’s aid. Back to the -muddy water-front opposite the Tower; a gold coin for last drinks; a -hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company pompous in -self-importance and lace ruffles—and the little crew steps into a -clumsy river boat with brick-red sails. One gentleman opines with a -pinch of snuff that it may be “this many a day before Master Hudson -returns.” Riffraff loafers crane necks to see to the last. Cursing -watermen clear the course by thumping other rivermen out of the way. -The boat slips under the bridge down the wide flood of the yeasty -Thames through a forest of masts and sails of as many colors as -Joseph’s coat.</p> - -<p>It is like a great sewer of humanity, this river tide with its city’s -traffic of a thousand years. Farmers rafting down loads of hay, market -women punting themselves along with boat loads of vegetables, fishing -schooners breasting the tide with full-blown sails, high-hulled -galleons from Spain, flat-bottomed, rickety tubs from the Zee, gay -little craft—barges with bunting, wherries with lovers, rowboats with -nothing more substantial than silk awnings for a sail—jostle and -throng and bump each other as Hudson’s crew<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> shoots down with the tide. -Not a man of the crew but wonders—is he seeing it all for the last -time?</p> - -<p>But here is the Muscovy Company’s ship all newly rigged waiting at -Gravesend, absurdly small for such a venture on such a sea. Then, in -the clanking of anchor chains and sing-song of the capstan and last -shouts of the noisy rivermen, apprehensions are forgotten. Can they but -find a short route to China, their homely little craft may plough back -with as rich cargo as ever Spanish caravel brought from the fabulous -South Sea. The full tide heaves and rocks and bears out; a mad-souled -dreamer standing at the prow with his little son, who is very silent. -The air is fraught with something too big for words. May first, 1607, -Hudson is off for the Pole. He might as well have been following the -Flying Dutchman, or ballooning to the moon.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The city along the banks of the Thames has presently thinned to towns. -The towns slide past into villages. The villages blur into meadow lands -with the thatch roof of the farmer’s cot; and before night, the last -harbor light has been left in the offing. The little ship has headed -her carved prow north. The billows of the North Sea roll to meet her. -Darkness falls with no sound but the swish of the waters against the -ports, the hum of the wind through the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> rigging, and the whirring flap -of the great sails shifting to catch the breeze.</p> - -<p>For six weeks, north, northwest, they drove over the tumbling world -of waters, sliding from crest to trough, from blue hollow to curdling -wave-top, ploughing a watery furrow into the region of long, white -light and shortening nights, and fogs that lay without lifting once in -twenty days. The farther north they sailed, the tighter drew the cords -of cold, like a violin string stretched till it fairly snapped—air -full of pure ozone that set the blood jumping and finger-tips tingling! -Green spray froze the sails stiff as boards. The rigging became ropes -of ice, the ship a ghost gliding white through the fogs. At last came -a squall that rolled the mists up like a scroll, and straight ahead, -high and lonely as cloud-banks, towered the white peaks of Greenland’s -mountains. Though it was two o’clock in the morning, it was broad -daylight, and the whole crew came scrambling up the hatches to the -shout of “Land!” Hudson enthusiastically named the mountain “God’s -Mercy”; but the lift of mist uncurtained to the astonished gaze of the -English sailors a greater wonder than the mountains. North, south, -east, west, the ship was embayed in an ice-world—ice in islands and -hills and valleys with lakes and rivers of fresh water flowing over -the surface. Birds flocked overhead with lonely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> screams at these -human intruders on a realm as white and silent as death; and where one -crystal berg was lighted to gold by the sun, a huge polar bear hulked -to its highest peak and surveyed the newcomers in as much astonishment -at them as they felt at him. Truly, this was the <em>Ultima Thule</em> of -poet’s dream—beyond the footsteps of man. Blue was the sky above, blue -the patches of ocean below, blue the illimitable fields of ice, blue -and lifeless and cold as steel. The men passed that day jubilant as -boys out of school. Some went gunning for the birds. Others would have -pursued the polar bear but with a splash the great creature dived into -the sea. The crew took advantage of the pools of fresh water in the -ice to fill their casks with drinking water. For the next twenty-four -hours, Hudson crept among the ice floes by throwing out a hook on the -ice, then hauling up to it by cable.</p> - -<p>By night the sea was churning the ice in choppy waves, with a growl of -wind through the mast, and the crew wakened the next morning to find a -hurricane of sleet had wiped out the land. The huge floes were turning -somersets in the rough sea with a banging that threatened to smash -the little ship into a crushed egg shell. Under bare poles, she drove -before the wind for open sea.</p> - -<p>As she scudded from the crush of the tumbling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> ice, Hudson remarked -something extraordinary in the conduct of his ship. Veering about, -sails down, there was no mistaking it—<em>she was drifting against -the wind</em>! As the storm subsided, it became plainer: the wind was -carrying in one direction, the sea was carrying in another. Hudson had -discovered that current across the Pole, which was to play such an -important part with Nansen three hundred years later. Icebergs were -floating <em>against</em> the wind, too, laboriously, with apparently -aimless circlings round and round, but circles that carried them -forward against the wind, and the ship was presently moored to a great -icepan drifting along with the undertow.</p> - -<p>Then the curse of all Arctic voyagers fell on the sea—fog thick to the -touch as wool, through which the icebergs glided like phantoms with a -great crash of waters, where the surf beat on the floes. Never mind! -Their anchor-hold acts as a breakwater. They are sheltered from the -turmoil of the waves outside the ice. And they are still headed north. -And they are up to Seventy-three along a coast, which no chart has -ever before recorded, no chart but the myths of death’s realm. As the -coast might prove treacherous if the ice began thumping inland, Hudson -names the region “Hold Hope,” which may be interpreted, “Keep up your -Courage.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_035"> -<img src="images/i_035.jpg" alt="" width="416" height="650"> -<p class="caption">Prince Rupert, from a Photograph in the Ottawa -Archives, after Painting by Vandyke.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span></p> - -<p>Ice and fog, fog and ice, and the eternal silences but for the thunder -of the floes banging the ports; up to Seventy-five by noon of June 25, -when the sailors notice that the floundering clumsy grampus are playing -mad pranks about the ship. The glistening brown backs race round -the prow and somerset bodily out of the water in a very deviltry of -sauciness! Call it sailors’ superstition, but when the grampus schools -play, your Northern crew looks for storm, and by noon of June 26, the -storm is there pounding the hull like thunder and shrieking through the -rigging. Not a good place to be, between land and ice in hurricane! -Hudson scampers for the sea, still north, but driven out east by the -trend of Greenland’s coast along an unbroken barrier of ice that seems -to link Greenland to Spitzbergen.</p> - -<p>No passage across the Pole this way! That is certain! But there is a -current across the Pole! That, too, is certain! And Greenland is as -long as a continent. So driving before the storm, Hudson steers east -for Spitzbergen. In July, it is warmer, but heat brings more ice, and -the man at the masthead on the lookout for land up at Seventy-nine -could not know that a submerged iceberg was going to turn a somerset -directly under the keel. There was a splintering crash. Something -struck the keel like a cannon shot. Up reared the little boat on end -like a frightened horse. When the waters plunged<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span> down two great bergs -had risen one on each side of the quivering ship and a jagged gash -gaped through the timbers at water line. Water slushed over decks in a -cataract. The yardarms are still dipping and dripping to the churning -seas when the crew leaps out to a man, some on the ice, some in small -boats, some astraddle of driftwood to stop the leak in the bottom. As -they toil—and they toil in desperation, for the safety of the ship is -their only possibility of reaching home—they notice it again—wood -drifting <em>against</em> the wind, the undertow of some great unknown -Polar Current.</p> - -<p>Hudson cannot wait for this current to carry him toward the Pole, -as Nansen did. Up he tacks to Eighty-two, within eight degrees of -the baffling Pole, within four degrees of Farthest North reached by -modern navigators. When he finds Spitzbergen locked by the ice to the -north, he tries it by the south. But the ice seems to become almost -a living enemy in its resistance. Hudson had anchored to a drifting -floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began -running—the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The -fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind -stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant -destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew -rowed for dear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main -force, but their puny human strength was as child’s play against the -great powers of the elements. Backwash had carried rowers and ship and -small boats within a stone’s throw of the ramming icebergs when a faint -air breathed through the fog. Moistening their fingers, the sailors -held up hands to catch the motion of any breeze. No mistake—it was -a fair wind—right about sails there—the little ship turned tail to -the ice and was off like a bird, for says the old ship’s log: “<em>it -pleased God to give us a gale, and away we steered</em>.”</p> - -<p>The battle for a passage seemed hopeless. Hudson assembled the crew on -decks and on bended knees prayed God to show which way to steer. Of no -region had the sailors of that day greater horror than Spitzbergen. -They began to recall the fearful disasters that had befallen Dutch -ships here but a few years before. Those old sailors’ superstitions of -the North being the realm of the Goddess of Death, came back to memory. -That last narrow escape from the ice-crush left terror in the very -marrow of their bones. In vain, Hudson once more suggested seeking the -passage by Greenland. To the crew, the Voice of the North uttered no -call. Glory was all very well, but they didn’t want glory. They wanted -to go home. What was the good of chasing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> an Idea down the Long Trail -to a grave on the frozen shores of Death?</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>When men begin to reason that way, there is no answer. You can’t -promise them what you are not sure you will ever find. The Call is -only to those who have ears to hear. You must have hold of the end of -a <span class="smcap">Golden Thread</span> before you can follow the baffling mazes of -a discoverer’s faith, and these men hadn’t faith in anything except a -full stomach and a sure wage. After all, their arguments were the same -as the obstructions presented against every expedition to the Pole -to-day, or for that matter, to any other realm of the Unknown. It was -like asking the inventor to show his invention in full work before he -has made it, or the bank to pay its dividends before you contribute -to its capital. What reason could Hudson give to justify his faith? -Standing on the quarter deck with clenched fists and troubled face, he -might as well have argued with stones, or pleaded for a chance with -modern money bags as talked down the expostulations of the mutineers. -They were men of the kidney who will always be on the safe side. As -the world knows—there was no passage across the Pole suitable for -commerce. There was no justification for Hudson’s faith. Yet it was the -goal of that faith, which led him on the road to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> greater discoveries -than a dozen passages across the Pole.</p> - -<p>Faith has always been represented as one of three sister graces; -cringing, meek-spirited, downtrodden damsels at their best. In view of -all she has accomplished for the world in religion, in art, in science, -in discovery, in commerce, Faith should be represented as a fiery-eyed -goddess with the forked lightnings for her torch, treading the mountain -peaks of the universe. From her high place, she alone can see whence -comes the light and which way runs the Trail. Step by step, the battle -has been against darkness, every step a blow, every blow a bruise -driving back to the right Trail; every blood mark a milestone in human -progress from lowland to upland.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>But Hudson’s men were obdurate to arguments all up in air. They will -<em>not</em> seek the passage by Greenland. Hudson must turn back. -To a great spirit, obstructions are never a stop. They are only a -delay. Hudson sets his teeth. You will see him go by Greenland one -day yet—mark his word! Meantime, home he sails through what he calls -“slabbie” weather, putting into Tilbury Docks on the 15th of September. -If money bags counted up the profits of that year’s trip, they would -write against Hudson’s name in the Book of Judgment—Failure!</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1608</p> - -<p class="center">HUDSON’S SECOND VOYAGE</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Henceforth</span> Hudson was an obsessed man. First, <em>he</em> possessed the -Idea. Now the <em>Idea</em> possessed him. It was to lead him on a course -no man would willingly have followed. Yet he followed it. Everything, -life or death, love or hate, gain or loss, was to be subservient to -that Idea.</p> - -<p>That current drifting across the Pole haunted him as it was to haunt -Nansen at a later date. By attempting too much, had he missed all? -He had gone to Spitzbergen in the Eighties. If he had kept down to -Nova Zembla Islands in the Seventies, would he have found less ice? -The man possessed by a single idea may be a trial to his associates. -To himself, he is a torment. Once he becomes baffled, he is beset by -doubts, by questions, by fears. If his faith leaves him, his life goes -to pieces like a rope of sand. Hudson must have been beset by such -doubts now. It is the place where the adventurer leaves the milestones<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> -of all known paths and has not yet found firm footing for his own -feet. Hundreds, thousands, have struck out from the beaten Trail. Few, -indeed, have blazed a new path. The bones of the dead bleach on the -shores of the realm ruled by the Goddess of the Unknown. It is the -place where the beginner sets out to be a great artist, or a great -scientist, or a great discoverer. Thousands have set out on the same -quest who should have rested content at their own ingle-nook, happy -at the plow; not good plowmen spoiled. The beginner balances the -chances—a thousand to one against him! Is his vision a fool’s quest, a -will-o’-the-wisp? Is the call the tickling of his own restless vanity; -or the voice of a great truth? He can learn only by going forward, -and the going forward may take him over a precipice—may prove him a -fool. This was the place Hudson was at now. It is a place that has been -passed by all the world’s great.</p> - -<p>Nine Dutch boats had at different times passed between Nova Zembla and -the main coast of Russia. To be sure, they had been blocked by the ice -beyond, but might not Hudson by some lucky chance follow that Polar -Current through open water? The chances were a thousand to one against -him. Who but a fool would take the chance? Nansen’s daring plan to -utilize the ice-drift <em>to lift</em> his ship above the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span> ice-crush—did -not occur to Hudson. Except for that difference, the two explorers—the -greatest of the early Arctic navigators and the greatest of the -modern—planned very much the same course.</p> - -<p>This time, the Muscovy Company commissioned Hudson to look out for -ivory hunting as well as the short passage to Asia. Three men only of -the old crew enlisted. Hudson might enjoy risking his life for glory. -Most mortals prefer safety. Of the three who re-enlisted one was his -son.</p> - -<p>Keeping close to the cloud-capped, mountainous shores of Norway, the -boat sighted Cape North on June 3, 1608. Clouds wreathed the mountains -in belts and plumes of mist. Snow-fields of far summits shone gold in -sudden bursts of sunshine through the cloud-wrack. Fjords like holes -in the wall nestled at the foot of the mountains, the hamlets of the -fisher folk like tiny match boxes against the mighty hills. To the -restless tide rocked and heaved the fishing smacks—emblems of man’s -spirit at endless wrestle with the elements. As Hudson’s ship climbed -the waves, the fishermen stood up in their little boats to wave a -God-speed to these adventurers bound for earth’s ends. Sails swelling -to the wind, Hudson’s vessel rode the roll of green waters, then dipped -behind a cataract of waves, and dropped over the edge of the known -world.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span></p> - -<p>Driftwood again on that Polar Current up at Seventy-five, driftwood and -the endless sweep of moving ice, which compelled Hudson “<em>to loose -from one floe</em>” and “<em>bear room from another</em>” and anchor on -the lee of one berg to prevent ramming by another; “<em>divers pieces -driving past the ship</em>,” says Hudson—just as it drove past Nansen’s -<em>Fram</em> on the same course.</p> - -<p>To men satiated of modern life, the North is still a wonder-world. -There are the white silences primeval as the morn when God first -created Time. There is “<em>the sun sailing round in a fiery -ring</em>”—as one old Viking described it—instead of sinking below the -horizon; nightless days in summer and dayless nights in winter. There -is the desolation of earth’s places where man may never have dominion -and Death must always veil herself unseen. Polar bears floundered over -the ice hunting seals. Walrus roared from the rocks in herds till the -surf shook—ivory for the Muscovy Company; and whales floated about the -ship in schools that threatened to keel the craft over—more profit for -the Muscovy traders.</p> - -<p>What wonder that Hudson’s ignorant sailors began to feel the marvel of -the strange ice-world, and to see fabulous things in the light of the -midnight sun? One morning a face was seen following the ship, staring -up from the sea. There was no doubt of it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> Two sailors saw it. Was it -one of the monsters of Saga myth, that haunted this region? The watch -called a comrade. Both witnessed the hideous apparition of a human -face with black hair streaming behind on the waves. The body was like -a woman’s and the seamen’s terror had conjured up the ill omen of a -mermaid when wave-wash overturned its body, exhibiting the fins and -tail of a porpoise—“skin very white”—mermaid without a doubt, portent -of evil, though the hair may have been floating seaweed.</p> - -<p>Sure enough, within a week, ice locked round the ship in a vise. The -floes were no brashy ice-cakes that could be plowed through by a -ship’s prow with a strong, stern wind. They were huge fields of ice, -five, ten, twenty and thirty feet deep interspread with hummocks and -hillocks that were miniature bergs in themselves. Across these rolling -meadows of crystal, the wind blew with the nip of midwinter; but when -the sun became partly hidden in fiery cloud-banks, the scene was a -fairy land, sea and sky shading off in deepest tinges to all the tints -of the rainbow. Where the ocean showed through ice depths, there was -a blue reflection deep as indigo. Where the clear water was only a -surface pool on top of submerged ice, the sky shone above with a light -green delicate as apple bloom. Where the ice was a broken mass of an -adjacent glacier sliding down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span> to the sea through the eternal snows of -some mountain gorge, a curious phenomenon could sometimes be observed. -The edge of the ice was in layers—each layer representing one year’s -snowfall congealed by the summer thaw, so that the observer could count -back perhaps a century from the ice layers. Other men tread on snow -that fell but yesterday. Hudson’s crew were treading on the snowfall of -a hundred years as though this were God’s workshop in the making and a -hundred years were but as a day.</p> - -<p>Beyond the floating ice fields, the heights of Nova Zembla were -sighted, awesome and lonely in the white night, gruesome to these -men from memory of the fate that befell the Dutch crews here fifteen -years previously. Rowing and punting through the ice-brash, two men -went ashore to explore. They saw abundance of game for the Muscovy -gentlemen; and at one place among driftwood came on the cold ashes of -an old fire. It was like the first print of man’s footstep found by -Robinson Crusoe. Startled by signs of human presence, they scanned the -surrounding landscape. On the shore, a solitary cross had been erected -of driftwood. Then the men recalled the fate of the Dutch crew, that -had perished wandering over these islands in 1597. What fearful battles -had the white silences witnessed between<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span> puny men explorers and the -stony Goddess of Death? What had become of the last man, of the man who -had erected the cross? Did his body lie somewhere along the shores of -Nova Zembla, or had he manned his little craft like the Vikings of old -and sailed out lashed to the spars to meet death in tempest? The horror -of the North seemed to touch the men as with the hands of the dead whom -she had slain.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_049"> -<img src="images/i_049.jpg" alt="" width="644" height="650"> -<p class="caption">HUDSON’S VOYAGES of 1607-1608</p> -<p class="caption">To Pass across the Pole from EUROPE to ASIA.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>The report that the two men carried back to Hudson’s boat did not raise -the spirits of the crew. One night the entire ship’s company but Hudson -and his son had gone ashore to hunt walrus. Such illimitable fields -of ice lay north that Hudson knew his only chance must be between the -south end of Nova Zembla (he did not know there were several islands -in the group) and the main coast of Asia. It was three o’clock in the -morning. The ice began to drive landward with the fury of a whirlpool. -Two anchors were thrown out against the tide. Fenders were lowered to -protect the ship’s sides. Captain and boy stood with iron-shod poles -in hand to push the ice from the ship, or the ship from the ice. The -men from the hunt saw the coming danger and rushed over the churning -icepans to the rescue. Some on the ice, some on the ship, with poles -and oars and crowbars, they pushed and heaved away the icepans, and -ramming their crowbars down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -crevices wrenched the ice to splinters or swerved it off the sides of -the ship. Sometimes an icepan would tilt, teeter, rise on end and turn -a somerset, plunging the sailors in ice water to their arm pits. The -jam seemed to be coming on the ship from both directions at once, for -the simple reason the ship offered the line of least resistance. Twelve -hours the battle lasted, the heaving ice-crush threatening to crush the -ship’s ribs like slats till at last a channel of open water appeared -just outside the ship’s prison. But the air was a dead calm. Springing -from icepan to icepan, the men towed their ship out of danger.</p> - -<p>Rain began to drizzle. The next day a cold wind came whistling through -the rigging. The ship lay in a land-locked cove of Nova Zembla. Hudson -again sent his men ashore to hunt, probably also to pluck up courage. -Then he climbed the lookout to scan the sea. It was really to scan -his own fate. It was the old story of the glory-seeker’s quest—a -harder battle than human power could wage; a struggle that at the last -only led to a hopeless <em>impasse</em>. The scent on the Trail and the -eagerness in the hound leading only to a blind alley of baffled effort -and ruin! Every great benefactor of humanity has come to this <em>cul -de sac</em> of hope. It is as if a man’s highest aim were only in the -end a sort of trap whither some impish will-o’-the-wisp has impelled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span> -him. The thing itself—a passage across the Pole—didn’t exist any -more than the elixir of life which laid the foundations of chemistry. -The question is how, when the great men of humanity come to this blind -wall, did they ever have courage to go on? For the thing they pursued -was a phantom never to be realized; but strangely enough, in the -providence of God, the phantom pursuit led to greater benefits for the -race than their highest hopes dared to dream.</p> - -<p>No elixir of life, you dreamer; but your mad-brained search for the -elixir gave us the secrets of chemistry by which man prolongs life -if he doesn’t preserve eternal youth! No fate written on the scroll -of the heavens, you star-gazer; but your fool-astrology has given -us astronomy, by which man may predict the movements of the stars -for a thousand years though he cannot forsee his own fate for a -day! No North-West Passage to Asia, you fevered adventurers of the -trackless sea; but your search for a short way to China has given -us a New World worth a thousand Chinas! Go on with your dreams, you -mad-souled visionaries! If it is a will-o’-the wisp you chase, your -will-o’-the-wisp is a lantern to the rest of humanity!</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Climbing the rigging to the topmast yardarm, Hudson scanned the sea. -His heart sank. His<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span> hopes seemed to congeal like the eternal ice of -this ice-world. The springs of life seemed to grow both heavy and cold. -Far as eye could reach was ice—only ice, while outside the cove there -raged a tempest as if all the demons of the North were blowing their -trumpets.</p> - -<p>“There is no passage this way,” said Hudson to his son. Then as if hope -only dies that it may send forth fresh growth like the seed, he added, -“But we must try Greenland again, on the west side this time.” It was -ten o’clock at night when the men returned laden with game; but they, -too, had taken counsel among themselves whether to go forward; and the -memory of that dead crew’s cross turned the scales against Hudson. -It was only the 5th of July, but they would not hear of attempting -Greenland this season. From midnight of the 5th to nine o’clock of the -6th, Hudson pondered. No gap opened through the white wall ahead. The -Frost Giants, whose gambols may be heard on the long winter nights when -the icecracks whoop and romp, had won against Man. “<em>Being void of -hope</em>,” Hudson records, “<em>the wind stormy and against us, much ice -driving, we weighed and set sail westward</em>.” Home-bound, the ship -anchored on the Thames, August 26.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1609</p> - -<p class="center">HUDSON’S THIRD VOYAGE</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">While</span> Hudson was pursuing his phantom across Polar seas, Europe had -at last awakened to the secret of Spain’s greatness—colonial wealth -that poured the gold of Peru into her treasury. To counteract Spain, -colonizing became the master policy of Europe. France was at work -on the St. Lawrence. England was settling Virginia, and Smith, the -pioneer of Virginia, who was Hudson’s personal friend, had explored the -Chesapeake.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_055"> -<img src="images/i_055.jpg" alt="" width="387" height="600"> -<p class="caption">James II, Duke of York, Second Governor of the Hudson’s -Bay Company.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>But the Netherlands went a step farther. To throw off the yoke of -Spain, they maintained a fleet of seventy merchantmen furnished as -ships of war to wage battle on the high seas. Spanish colonies were -to be attacked wherever found. Spanish cities were to be sacked as -the buccaneers sacked them on the South Sea. Spanish caravels with -cargoes of gold were to be scuttled and sunk wherever met. It was to -be brigandage—brigandage pure and simple—from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> the Zuider Zee to -Panama, from the North Pole to the South.</p> - -<p>Hudson’s voyages for the Muscovy merchants of London to find a short -way to Asia at once arrested the attention of the Dutch. Dutch and -English vied with each other for the discovery of that short road to -the Orient. For a century the chance encounter of Dutch and English -sailors on Arctic seas had been the signal for the instant breaking -of heads. Not whales but men were harpooned when Dutch and English -fishermen met off Nova Zembla, or Spitzbergen, or the North Cape.</p> - -<p>Hudson was no sooner home from his second voyage for the English than -the Dutch East India Company invited him to Holland to seek passage -across the Pole for them. This—it should be explained—is the only -justification that exists for writing the English pilot’s name as -Hendrick instead of Henry, as though employment by the Dutch changed -the Englishman’s nationality.</p> - -<p>The invitation was Hudson’s salvation. Just at the moment when all -doors were shut against him in England and when his hopes were utterly -baffled by two failures—another door opened. Just at the moment when -his own thoughts were turning toward America as the solution of the -North-West Passage, the chance came to seek the passage in America.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -Just when Hudson was at the point where he might have abandoned his -will-o’-the-wisp, it lighted him to a fresh pursuit on a new Trail. It -is such coincidences as these in human life that cause the poet to sing -of Destiny.</p> - -<p>But the chanciness of human fortune did not cease because of this -stroke of good luck. The great merchants of the Netherlands heard his -plans. His former failures were against him. Money bags do not care to -back an uncertainty. Having paid his expenses to come to Holland, the -merchant princes were disposed to let him cool his heels in the outer -halls waiting their pleasure. The chances are they would have rejected -his overtures altogether if France and Belgium had not at that time -begun to consider the employment of Hudson on voyages of discovery. The -Amsterdam merchants of the Dutch East India Company suddenly awakened -to the fact that they wanted Hudson, and wanted him at once. Again -Destiny, or a will-o’-the-wisp as impish as Puck—had befriended him.</p> - -<p>At Amsterdam, he was furnished with two vessels, the <em>Good Hope</em> -as an escort part way; the <em>Half Moon</em> for the voyage itself—a -flat-bottomed, tub-like yacht such as plied the shallows of Holland. -In his crew, he was unfortunate. The East India Company, of course, -supplied him with the sailors of their own<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> boats—lawless lascars; -turbaned Asiatics with stealthy tread and velvet voices and a dirk -hidden in their girdles; gypsy nondescripts with the hot blood of the -hot tropics and the lawless instincts of birds of plunder. Your crew -trained to cut the Spaniard’s throat may acquire the habit and cut the -master’s throat, too. Along with these sailors, Hudson insisted on -having a few Englishmen from his former crews, among whom were Colman -and Juet and his own son. Juet acted as astronomer and keeper of the -ship’s log. From Juet and Van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England in -whose hands Hudson’s manuscripts finally fell—are drawn all the facts -of the voyage.</p> - -<p>On March 25 (April 6, new style), 1609, the cumbersome crafts swung out -on the hazy yellow of the Zuider Zee. Motlier ships were about Hudson, -here, than on the Thames, for the Dutch had an enormous commerce with -the East and the West Indies. Feluccas with lateen sails and galleys -for oarsmen had come up from the Mediterranean. Dutch pirates of the -Barbary Coast—narrow in the prow, narrow in the keel, built for -swift sailing and light cargoes—had forgathered, sporting sails of a -different design for every harbor. Then, there were the East Indiamen, -ponderous, slow-moving, deep and broad, with cannon bristling through -the ports like men-of-war,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> and tawny Asiatic faces leering over -the taffrail. Yawls from the low-lying coast, three-masted luggers -from Denmark, Norwegian ships with hideous scaled griffins carved on -the sharp-curved prows, brigs and brigantines and caravels and tall -galleons from Spain—all crowded the ports of the Netherlands, whose -commerce was at its zenith. Threading his way through the motley craft, -Hudson slowly worked out to sea.</p> - -<p>All went well till the consort, <em>Good Hope</em>, turned back north of -Norway and the <em>Half Moon</em> ploughed on alone into the ice fields -of Nova Zembla with her lawless lascar crew. This was the region where -other Dutch crews had perished miserably. Here, too, Hudson’s English -sailors had lost courage the year before. And here Dutch and English -always fought for fishing rights. The cold north wind roared down in -gusts and flaws and sudden bursts of fury. Against such freezing cold, -the flimsy finery of damasks and calico worn by the East Indians was no -protection. The lascars were chilled to the bone. They lay huddled in -their berths bound up in blankets and refused to stir above decks in -such cold. Promptly, the English sailors rebelled against double work. -The old feud between English and Dutch flamed up. Knives were out, and -before Hudson realized, a mutiny was raging about his ears.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p> - -<p>If he turned back, he was ruined. The door of opportunity to new -success is a door that shuts against retreat. His friend, Smith of -Virginia, had written to him of the great inlet of the Chesapeake in -America. South of the Chesapeake was no passage to the South Sea. Smith -knew that; but north of the Chesapeake old charts marked an unexplored -arm of the sea. When Verrazano, the Italian, coasted America for France -in 1524, he had been driven by a squall from the entrance to a vast -river between Thirty-nine and Forty-one (the Hudson River); and the -Spanish charts of Estevan Gomez, in 1525, marked an unknown Rio de -Gamos on the same coast. Hudson now recalled Smith’s advice—to seek -passage between the James River and the St. Lawrence.</p> - -<p>To clinch matters came a gust driving westward over open sea. Robert -Juet, seeking guidance from the heavenly bodies, notices for the first -time in history, on May 19, that there is a spot on the sun. If Hudson -had accomplished nothing more, he had made two important discoveries -for science—the Polar Current and the spot on the sun. Geographers -and astronomers have been knighted and pensioned for less important -discoveries.</p> - -<p>West, southwest, drove the storm flaw, the <em>Half Moon</em> scudding -bare of sails for three hundred miles.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span> Was it destiny again, or his -dæmon, or his Puck, or his will-o’-the-wisp, or the Providence of -God—that drove Hudson contrary to his plans straight for the scene of -his immortal discoveries? Pause was made at the Faroes for wood and -water. There, too, Hudson consulted with his officers and decided to -steer for America.</p> - -<p>Once more afloat, June saw the <em>Half Moon</em> with its lazy lascars -lounging over rails down among the brown fogs of Newfoundland. Here -a roaring nor’-easter came with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The -scream of wind through the rigging, the growlers swishing against the -keel, then the thunder of the great billows banging broadsides—were -like the burst of cannon fire over a battlefield. The foremast snapped -and swept into the seas as the little <em>Half Moon</em> careened over -on one side, and the next gust that caught her tore the other sails to -tatters, but she still kept her prow headed southwest.</p> - -<p>Fogs lay as they nearly always lie on the Grand Banks, but a sudden -lift of the mist on June 25 revealed a sail standing east. To the -pirate East Indian sailors, the sight of the strange ship was like -the smell of powder to a battle horse. Loot! Spanish loot! With a -whoop, they headed the <em>Half Moon</em> about in utter disregard of -Hudson, and gave chase. From midday to dark the <em>Half Moon</em> played -pirate,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> cutting the waves in pursuit, careening to the wind in a way -that threatened to capsize boat and crew, the fugitive bearing away -like a bird on wing. This little by-play lasted till darkness hid the -strange ship, but the madcap prank seemed to rouse the lazy lascars -from their torpor. Henceforth, they were alert for any lawless raid -that promised plunder.</p> - -<p>Back about the <em>Half Moon</em> through the warm June night. Dutch and -English forgathered in the moonlight squatting about on the ship’s -kegs spinning yarns of bloody pirate venture, when Spanish cargoes -were scuttled and Spanish dons tossed off bayonet point into the sea, -and Spanish ladies compelled to walk the plank blindfolded into watery -graves. What kind of venture did they expect in America—this rascal -crew?</p> - -<p>Then the fogs of the Banks settled down again like wool. Here and -there, like phantom ships were the sails of the French fishing fleet, -or the black-hulled bateaux, or the rocking Newfoundland dories.</p> - -<p>A long white curl of combing waves, and they have sheered off from the -Wreckers’ Reef at Sable Island.</p> - -<p>Slower now, and steady, the small boats sounding ahead, for the water -is shallow and the wind shifty. In the calm that falls, the crew -fishes lazily over decks for cod. Through the fog and dark of July 16, -something ahead looks like islands. The boat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> anchors for the night, -and when gray morning breaks, the <em>Half Moon</em> lies off what is now -known as Penobscot Bay, Maine.</p> - -<p>Two dugouts paddled by Indians come climbing the waves. Dressed in -breechcloths of fur and feathers, the savages mount the decks without -fear. The lascars gather round—not much promise of plunder from such -scant attire! By signs and a few French words, the Indians explain that -St. Lawrence traders frequent this coast. The East India cut-throats -prick up their ears. Trade—what had these defenceless savages to trade?</p> - -<p>That week Hudson sailed up the river and sent his carpenters ashore to -make fresh masts, but the East India men rummaged the redskins’ camp. -Great store of furs, they saw. It was not the kind of loot they wanted. -Gold was more to their choice, but it was better than no loot at all.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_065"> -<img src="images/i_065.jpg" alt="" width="476" height="650"> -<p class="caption">New Amsterdam or New York from an Old Print of 1660.</p> -<p class="caption">Albany from an Old Print.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>The <em>Half Moon</em> was ready to sail on the 25th of July. In spite -of Hudson’s commands, six sailors went ashore with heavy old-fashioned -musketoons known as “murderers.” Seizing the Indian canoes, they opened -fire on the camp. The amazed Indians dashed for hiding in the woods. -The sailors then plundered the wigwams of everything that could be -carried away. This has always been considered a terrible blot against -Hudson’s fame. The only <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>explanation given by Juet in the ship’s -log is, “<em>we drave the savages from the houses and took the spoyle -as they would have done of us</em>.” Van Meteren, the Dutch consul -in London, who had Hudson’s account, gives another explanation. He -declares the Dutch sailors conducted the raid in spite of all the force -with which Hudson could oppose them. The English sailors refused to -enforce his commands by fighting, for they were outnumbered by the -mutineers. No sooner were the mutineers back on deck than they fell -to pummeling one another over a division of the plunder. Any one, who -knows how news carries among the Indians by what fur traders describe -as “the moccasin telegram,” could predict results. “The moccasin -telegram” bore exaggerated rumors of the outrage from the Penobscot -to the Ohio. The white man was a man to be fought, for he had proved -himself a treacherous friend.</p> - -<p>Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land, warned off the reefs -through fog by <em>a great rutt or rustling of the tide</em>, the pirate -sailors now disregarding all commands, the <em>Half Moon</em> drifted -lazily southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nantucket, a lonely -cry sounded from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some -Christian had been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hudson sent -his small boat ashore. A camp of Indians<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> was found dancing in a frenzy -of joy at the apparition of the great “winged wigwam” gliding over the -sea. A present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the -brim.</p> - -<p>Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in -shady nooks—the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding -goldenrod; and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at -the roots of a great oak. Robert Juet’s ship log records that “<em>the -Indian country of great hills</em>”—Massachusetts—was “<em>a very sweet -land</em>.”</p> - -<p>On August 7, Hudson was abreast New York harbor; but a mist part -heat, part fog, part the gathering purples of coming autumn—hid the -low-lying hills. Sliding idly along the summer sea, mystic, unreal, -lotus dreams in the very August air, the world a world of gold in the -yellow summer light—the <em>Half Moon</em> came to James River by August -18, where Smith of Virginia lived; but the mutineers had no mind to go -up to Jamestown settlement. There, the English would outnumber them, -and English law did not deal gently with mutineers. A heat hurricane -sent the green waves smashing over decks off South Carolina, and in -the frantic fright of the ship’s cat dashing from side to side, the -turbaned pirates imagined portent of evil. Perhaps, too, they were -coming too near the Spanish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span> settlements of Florida. All their bravado -of scuttled Spanish ships may have been pot-valor. Any way, they -consented to head the boat back north in a search for the passage above -the Chesapeake.</p> - -<p>Past the swampy Chesapeake, a run up the Delaware burnished as a -mirror in the morning light; through the heat haze over a glassy sea -along that New Jersey shore where the world of pleasure now passes -its summers from Cape May and Atlantic City to the highlands of New -Jersey—slowly glided the <em>Half Moon</em>. Sand reefs gritted the -keel, and the boat sheered out from shore where a line of white foam -forewarned more reefs. Juet, the mate, did duty at the masthead, -scanning the long coast line for that inlet of the old charts. The -East India men lay sprawled over decks, beards unkempt, long hair tied -back by gypsy handkerchiefs, bizarre jewels gleaming from huge brass -earrings. Some were paying out the sounding line from the curved beak -of the prow. Others fished for a shark at the stern, throwing out pork -bait at the end of a rope. Many were squatted on the decks unsheltered -from the sun, chattering like parrots over games of chance.</p> - -<p>A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead—of shoals! A grit of the -keel over pebbly bottom! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of -watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> islands turbid -and muddy as if it came from some great river—September 2, they -have found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of -New York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by -Hudson’s name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. -The ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points -to the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to -the south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right -with a lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie -Coney Island and Long Island. The East India men laugh with glee. It’s -a fine land. It’s a big land. This is better than risking the gallows -for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut -boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship’s log does -not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren’s record, but I -don’t think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a -leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the <em>Half Moon</em> -anchored at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the -Goddess of Liberty waves her great arm to-day.</p> - -<p>Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch -sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the -Pole know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought -Spain—would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he -never so wildly, Hudson’s wildest dream could not have forseen that the -river he had discovered would one day throb to the multitudinous voices -of a world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth.</p> - -<p>In Hudson’s day, Spain was the leader of the world’s commerce against -whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty -million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the -penniless pilot dreamer, discovered, the commerce of a hundred million -people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been -made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national -incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s -greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume -of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the -pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal -mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied -in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. The <em>Half -Moon</em> then glided a pace inland. Three great rivers seemed to open -before her—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> Hudson, East River and one of the channels round -Staten Island. On the 4th, while the small boat went ahead to sound, -some sailors rowed ashore to fish. Tradition says that the first white -men to set foot on New York harbor landed on Coney Island, though there -is no proof it was not Staten Island, for the ship lay anchored beside -both. The wind blew so hard this night that the anchor dragged over -bottom and the <em>Half Moon</em> poked her prow into the sands of Staten -Island, “<em>but took no hurt, thanks be to God</em>,” adds Juet.</p> - -<p>Signal fires—burning driftwood and flames shot up through hollow -trees—had rallied the Indian tribes to the marvel of the house afloat -on the sea. Objects like beings from heaven seemed to live on the -house—so the poor Indians thought, and they began burning sacrificial -fires and sent runners beating up the wise men of all the tribes. A -religious dance was begun typifying welcome. Spies watching through the -foliage came back with word that one of the Manitous was chief of all -the rest, for he was dressed in a bright scarlet cloak with something -on it bright as the sun—they did not know a name for gold lace worn by -Hudson as commander. When the Manitou with the gold lace went ashore at -Richmond, Staten Island, Indian legend says that the chiefs gathered -round in a circle under the oaks and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span> chanted an ode of welcome to the -rhythmic measures of a dance. The natives accompanied Hudson back to -the <em>Half Moon</em> with gifts of maize and tobacco—“<em>a friendly -people</em>,” Hudson’s manuscript describes them.</p> - -<p>Two days passed in the Narrows with interchange of gifts between -whites and Indians. On the morning of the 6th, Hudson sent Colman and -four men to sound what is now known as Hell Gate. The sailors went -on to the Battery—the southernmost point of New York City as it is -to-day—finding <em>lands pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly -oaks</em>, the air crisp with the odor of autumn woods. With the yellow -sun aslant the painted autumn forests, it was easy to forget time. -The day passed in idle wanderings. At dusk rain began to fall. This -extinguished “the match-lighters” of the men’s muskets. Launching their -boat again, they were rowing back to the <em>Half Moon</em> through a -rain fine as mist when two canoes with a score of warriors suddenly -emerged from the dusk. Both parties paused in mutual amazement. Then -the warriors uttered a shout and had discharged a shower of arrows -before the astonished sailors could defend themselves. Was the attack -a chance encounter with hostiles, or had “the moccasin telegram” -brought news of the murderous raid on the Penobscot? One sailor fell -dead shot through the throat. Two of the other four men were injured.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -The dead man was the Englishman, Colman. This weakened Hudson against -the Dutch mutineers. Muskets were wet and useless. In the dark, the -men had lost the ship. The tide began to run with a high wind. They -threw out a grapnel. It did not hold. All night in the rain and dark, -the two uninjured men toiled at the oars to keep from drifting out -to sea. Daylight brought relief. The enemy had retreated, and the -<em>Half Moon</em> lay not far away. By ten of the morning, they reached -the ship. The dead man was rowed ashore and buried at a place named -after him—Colman’s Point. As the old Dutch maps have a Colman’s Punt -marked at the upper end of Sandy Hook, that is supposed to have been -the burial place. A wall of boards was now erected round the decks -of the <em>Half Moon</em> and men-at-arms kept posted. Indians, who -came to trade that day, affected ignorance of the attack but wanted -<em>knives</em> for their furs. Hudson was not to be tricked. He refused, -and permitted only two savages on board at a time. Two he clothed in -scarlet coats like his own, and kept on board to guide him up the -channel of the main river.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_075"> -<img src="images/i_075.jpg" alt="" width="399" height="600"> -<p class="caption">The Duke of Marlborough, One of the First Governors of -the Hudson’s Bay Company.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>The farther he advanced, the higher grew the shores. First were the -ramparts, walls of rock, topped by a fringe of blasted trees. Then the -coves where cities like Tarrytown nestle to-day. Then the forested -peaks of the Highlands and West Point<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> and Poughkeepsie, with the -oaks to the river’s edge. Mist hung in wreaths across the domed green -of the mountain called Old Anthony’s Nose. Mountain streams tore down -to the river through a tangle of evergreens, and in the crisp, nutty -autumn air was the all pervasive resinous odor of the pines. Mountains -along the Hudson, which to-day scarcely feel the footfall of man -except for the occasional hunter, were in Hudson’s time peopled by -native mountaineers. From their eerie nests they could keep eagle eye -on all the surrounding country and swoop down like birds of prey on -all intruders. As the white sails of the <em>Half Moon</em> rattled and -shifted and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of -smoke rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak -like watch fires—the signals of the mountaineers. From the beginning -of time they had dwelt secure on these airy peaks. What invader was -this, gliding up the river-silences, sails spread like wings?</p> - -<p>By the 13th of September, the <em>Half Moon</em> had passed Yonkers. -On the morning of the 15th, it anchored within the shadow of the -Catskills. On the night of the 19th, it lay at poise on the amber -swamps, where the river widens near modern Albany. Either their -professions of friendship had been a farce from the first, or they -were afraid to be carried into the land of the Mohawks, but the two -savages,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> who had come as guides, sprang through the porthole near -Catskill and swam ashore, running along the banks shouting defiance.</p> - -<p>Below Albany, Hudson went ashore with an old chief of the country. -“<em>He was chief of forty men</em>,” Hudson’s manuscript records, -“<em>whom I saw in a house of oak bark, circular in shape with arched -roof. It contained a great quantity of corn and beans, enough to load -three ships, besides what was growing in the fields. On our coming into -the house, two mats were spread to sit upon and food was served in red -wooden bowls. Two men were dispatched in quest of game, who brought in -a pair of pigeons. They likewise killed a fat dog and skinned it with -great haste with shells. The land is the finest for cultivation that -ever I in my life set foot upon.</em>” Hudson had not found a passage to -China, but his soul was satisfied of his life labor.</p> - -<p>Above Albany, the river became shoaly. Hudson sent his men forward -twice to sound, but thirty miles beyond Albany the water was too -shallow for the <em>Half Moon</em>.</p> - -<p>How far up the river had Hudson sailed? Juet’s ship log does not give -the latitude, but Van Meteren’s record says 42° 40’. Beyond this, on -September 22, the small boat advanced thirty miles. Tradition says -Hudson ascended as far as Waterford.</p> - -<p>While the boats were sounding, the conspirators<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> were at their usual -mischief. Indian chiefs had come on board. They were taken down to the -cabin and made gloriously drunk. All went merrily till one Indian fell -insensible. The rest scampered in panic and came back with offerings -of wampum—their most precious possession—for the chief’s ransom. -When they secured him alive, they brought more presents—wampum and -venison—in gratitude. To this escapade of the mischief-making crew, -moccasin rumor added a thousand exaggerations which came down in Indian -tradition to the beginning of the last century. After the drunken -frenzy—legend says—the white men made a great oration promising to -come again. When they returned the next year, they asked for as much -land as the hide of a bullock would cover. The Indians granted it, but -the white men cut the buffalo hide to strips narrow as a child’s finger -and so encompassed all the land of Manahat (Manhattan). The whites then -built a fort for trade. The name of the fort was New Amsterdam. It grew -to be a mighty city. Such are Indian legends of New York’s beginnings. -They probably have as much truth as the story of Rome and the wolf.</p> - -<p>On September 23, the <em>Half Moon</em> turned her prow south. The Hudson -lay in all its autumn glory—a glassy sheet walled by the painted -woods,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> now gorgeous with the frost tints of gold and scarlet and -carmine. The ship anchored each night and the crew wandered ashore -hatching pirate plots. Finally they presented their ultimatum to -Hudson—they would slay him if he dared to steer for Holland. Weakened -by the death of Colman, the English were helpless against the Dutch -mutineers. Perhaps they, too, were not averse to seizing the Company’s -ship and becoming sea rovers along the shores of such a land. At least -one of them turned pirate the next voyage. Twice, the <em>Half Moon</em> -was run aground—at Catskill and at Esopus—probably intentionally, or -because Hudson dared not send his faithful Englishmen ahead to sound.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_081"> -<img src="images/i_081.jpg" alt="" width="490" height="652"> -<p class="caption">Hudson’s Third Voyage 1609, Discovery of Hudson River</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Near Anthony’s Nose, the wind is compressed with the force of a huge -bellows, and the ship anchored in shelter from the eddying gale. Signal -fires had rallied the mountain tribes. As the ship lay wind-bound on -the night of October 1, the Indians floating about in their dugouts -grew daring. One climbed the rudder and stole Juet’s clothes through -the cabin window. Juet shot him dead red-handed in the act, and gave -the alarm to the rest of the crew. With a splash, the Indians rushed -for shore, paddling and swimming, but a boat load of white men pursued -to regain the plunder. A swimmer caught Juet’s boat to upset it. The -ship’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> cook slashed the Indian’s arm off, and he sank like stone. -It was now dark, but Hudson slipped down stream away from danger. Near -Harlem River the next afternoon, a hundred hostiles were seen ambushed -on the east bank. Led by the guides who had escaped going up stream, -two canoes glided under <em>The Half Moon’s</em> rudder and let fly a -shower of arrows. Much as Hudson must have disliked to open his powder -magazines to mutineers, arms were handed out. A spatter of musketry -drove the Indians a gunshot distant. Three savages fell. Then there was -a rally of the Indians to shoot from shore near what is now Riverside -Drive. Hudson trained his cannon on them. Two more fell. Persistent -as hornets, out they sallied in canoes. This time Hudson let go every -cannon on that side. Twelve savages were killed.</p> - -<p><em>The Half Moon</em> then glided past Hopoghan (Hoboken) to safer -anchorage on the open bay. It was October 4th before she passed through -the Narrows to the Sea. Here, the mutiny reached a climax. Hudson -could no more ignore threats. The Dutch refused to steer the ship to -Holland, where punishment would await them. Juet advised wintering in -Newfoundland, where there would be other Englishmen, but Hudson allayed -discontent by promising not to send the guilty men to Holland if they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -would steer the ship to England; and to Dartmouth in Devon she came on -November 7, 1609.</p> - -<p>What was Hudson’s surprise to learn he had become an enormously -important personage! The Muscovy Gentlemen of London did not purpose -allowing his knowledge of the passage toward the Pole to pass into the -service of their rivals, the Dutch. Hudson was forbidden to leave his -own country and had to send his report to Holland through Van Meteren, -the consul. <em>The Half Moon</em> returned to Holland and was wrecked -a few years later on her way to the East Indies. It is to be hoped -Hudson’s crew went down with her. The odd thing was—while Hudson -was valued for his knowledge of the Polar regions, the discovery of -Hudson River added not one jot to his fame. In fact, one historian of -that time declares: “<em>Hudson achieved nothing at all in 1609. All -he did was to exchange merchandise for furs.</em>” Nevertheless, the -merchants of Amsterdam were rigging out ships to establish a trading -factory on the entrance of that newly discovered river. Such was the -founding of New York. Money bags sneer at the dreamer, but they are -quick to transmute dreams into gold, though three hundred years were to -pass before any of the gold drawn from his dreams was applied toward -erecting to Hudson a memorial.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1610</p> - -<p class="center">HUDSON’S FOURTH VOYAGE</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Three</span> years almost to a day from the time he set out to pursue his -Phantom Dream along an endless Trail, Hudson again set sail for the -mystic North. This time the Muscovy Gentlemen did not send him as a -company, but three members of that company—Smith, Wolstenholme and -Digges—supplied him with the bark, <em>The Discovery</em>. In his -crew of twenty were several of his former seamen, among whom was the -old mate, Juet. Provisions were carried for a year’s cruise. One -Coleburne went as adviser; but what with the timidity of the old crew -and the officious ignorance of the adviser stirring up discontent by -fault-finding before the boat was well out of Thames waters—Hudson was -obliged to pack Coleburne back on the first craft met home-bound. The -rest of the crew comprised the usual proportion of rogues impressed -against their will for a voyage, which regular seamen feared.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p> - -<p>Having found one great river north of the Chesapeake, Hudson’s next -thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot and -Frobisher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as the -Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hudson steered <em>The Discovery</em> in -April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow of -Hekla’s volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign of -foul weather. Twice <em>The Discovery</em> was driven back by storm, and -the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging -discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled -at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had -found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to -listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised -the men “to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need -firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by -Greenland.” And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn -against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining -that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was -Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round -Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that -led to the South Sea.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span></p> - -<p>It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if -the crew had been terrified by Juet’s tales of ice north of Asia, they -were panic-stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains -are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson -had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents -of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean’s spacious area, -but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for -four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To -make matters worse, up these passages jammed with icebergs washed hard -as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the -southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous “furious -overfall,” the nightmare of northern seamen—a cataract of waters -thirty feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the -ice. It is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless and tireless.</p> - -<p>Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to -an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits -are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky -islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth -of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a -cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> literally ground -out of Labrador’s rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two -hundred miles from the ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This -is known as the Second Narrows. The mountainous, snow-clad shores -converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning -maelstrom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos -flings the Atlantic tide.</p> - -<p>Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and -accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade -captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of provisions for -the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for -mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called “ice ropes” were used. -Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve -chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder—were the regulation -requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special -rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker-board -sky—deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green -lights the sign of ice—was the invariable indication of distant ice. -“Never go on either at night or in a fog when you have sighted such a -sky”—was the rule. “Get your ice tackle ready at the straits.” “Stand -away from the indraught between a big iceberg and the tide, for if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -once the indraught nails you, you are lost.” “To avoid a crush that -will sink you in ten minutes, run twenty miles inside the soft ice; -that will break the force of the tide.” “Be careful of your lead night -and day.”</p> - -<p>But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All -was new to the seamen in Hudson’s day. All that was known to the -northern navigator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping to -a floe, hauling up to it <em>and worming a way through the ice with a -small sail</em>.</p> - -<p>Carried with the current southward from Greenland, sometimes slipping -into the long “tickles” of water open between the floes, again watching -their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg, -or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer’s heat and -therefore less likely to ram the hull—<em>The Discovery</em> came to -Ungava Bay, Labrador, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic -seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian missionaries told me when -I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual -measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been -ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on -their long journey southward.</p> - -<p>An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson’s ship. There was an -avalanche of falling seas. “<em>Into the ice we put for safety</em>,”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -says the record. “<em>Some of our men fell sick. I will not say it was -for fear, though I saw small sign of other grief.</em>” Just westward -lay a great open passage—now known as Hudson Strait, so the island in -Ungava Bay was called <em>Desire Provoked</em>. Plainly, they could not -remain anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, -and the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the -bay.</p> - -<p>Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a sea. -Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off the -streets of London to act as secretary—now played the tale-bearer, -fomenting trouble between master and crew. “Our master,” says Prickett, -one of Digges’ servants who was on board, “was in despair.” Taking out -his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they -had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly -to them—would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for -all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been -seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way -home. On both sides was equal danger—ice. To the west, was land. They -could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home, -the width of the ocean.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span></p> - -<p>The crew were divided, but the ice would not wait for arguments and -see-sawings. It was crushing in on each side of <em>The Discovery</em> -with an ominous jar of the timbers. All hands were mustered out. By the -usual devices in such emergencies—by blowing up the ice at the prow, -towing away obstructions, rowing with the ship in tow, all fenders -down to protect the sides, the steel-shod poles prodding off the -icebergs—<em>The Discovery</em> was hauled to open water. Then, as if -it were the very sign that the crew needed—water opened to the west! -There came a spurt of wind. <em>The Discovery</em> spread her sails to -the breeze and carried the vacillating crew forward. For a week they -had lain imprisoned. By the 11th of July they were in Hudson Straits on -the north side and had anchored at Baffin’s Land, which Hudson named -<em>God’s Mercy</em>.</p> - -<p>That night the men were allowed ashore. It was a desolate, silent, -mountainous region that seemed to lie in an eternal sleep. Birds -were in myriads—their flacker but making the profound silence more -cavernous. When a sailor uttered a shout, there was no answer but -the echo of his own voice, thin and weird and lonely, as if he, too, -would be swallowed up by those deathly silences. Men ran over the ice -chasing a polar bear. Others went gunning for partridge. The hills -were presently rocketing with the crash and echo of musketry. Prickett -climbed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> a high rock to spy ahead. Open water lay to the southwest. -It was like a sea—perhaps the South Sea; and to the southwest Hudson -steered past Charles and Salisbury Islands, through “<em>a whurling -sea</em>”—the Second Narrows—between two high headlands, Digges -island on one side, Cape Wolstenholme on the other, eventually putting -into Port Laperriere on Digges Island. Except for two or three -government stations where whaling captains forgather in log cabins, -the whole region from Ungava Bay to Digges Island, four hundred miles, -practically the whole length of the Straits on the south—is as -unexplored to-day as when Hudson first sailed those waters.</p> - -<p>The crew went ashore hunting partridge over the steep rocks of the -island and examining stone caches of the absent Eskimo. Hudson took a -careful observation of the sea. Before him lay open water—beyond was -sea, a sea to the south! Was it the South Sea? The old record says -he was proudly confident it was the South Sea, for it was plainly -a sea as large as the Baltic or Mediterranean. Fog falling, cannon -were set booming and rocketing among the hills to call the hunters -home. It was now August 4. A month had passed since he entered the -Straits. If it took another month to go back through them, the boat -would be winter-bound<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> and could not reach England. There was no time -to lose. Keeping between the east coast of the bay with its high -rocks and that line of reefed islands known as The Sleepers, <em>The -Discovery</em> pushed on south, where the lookout still reported “<em>a -large sea to the fore</em>.” This is a region, which at this late day -of the world’s history, still remains almost unknown. The men who have -explored it could be counted on one hand. Towering rocks absolutely -bare but for moss, with valley between where the spring thaw creates -continual muskeg—moss on water dangerous as quicksands—are broken by -swampy tracks; and near Richmond, where the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company -maintained a post for a few years, the scenery attains a degree of -grandeur similar to Norway, groves covering the rocky shores, cataracts -shattering over the precipices and lonely vistas opening to beautiful -meadows, where the foot of man has never trod. But for some unknown -reason, game has always been scarce on the east side of Hudson Bay. -Legends of mines have been told by the Indians, but no one has yet -found the mines.</p> - -<p>The fury of Juet the rebellious old mate, now knew no bounds. The ship -had victuals for only six months more. Here was September. Navigation -would hardly open in the Straits before June. If the boat did not -emerge on the South Sea, they would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> all be winter-bound. The waters -began to shoal to those dangerous reefs on the south where the Hudson’s -Bay traders have lost so many ships. In hoisting anchor up, a furious -over-sea knocked the sailors from the capstan. With a rebound the -heavy iron went splashing overboard. This was too much for Juet. The -mate threw down his pole and refused to serve longer. On September 10, -Hudson was compelled to try him for mutiny. Juet was deposed with loss -of wages for bad conduct and Robert Bylot appointed in his place. The -trial showed Hudson he was slumbering over a powder mine. Half the crew -was disaffected, plotting to possess themselves of arms; but what did -plots matter? Hudson was following a vision which his men could not see.</p> - -<p>By this time, Hudson was several hundred miles south of the Straits, -and the inland sea which he had discovered did not seem to be leading -to the Pacific. Following the south shore to <em>the westernmost bay -of all</em>—James Bay on the west—Hudson recognized the fact that it -was not the South Sea. The siren of his dreams had sung her fateful -song till she had lured his hopes on the rocks. He was land-bound and -winter-bound in a desolate region with a mutinous crew.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_095"> -<img src="images/i_095.jpg" alt="" width="421" height="600"> -<p class="caption">Le Moyne D’Iberville The famous bushranger who raided -the English forts from New England to Hudson Bay and rose to be the -first naval commander of France.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>The water was too shallow for the boat to moor.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> The men waded -ashore to seek a wintering place. Wood was found in plenty and the -footprint of a savage seen in the snow. That night, November 2, it -snowed heavily, and the boat crashed on the rocks. For twelve hours, -bedlam reigned, Juet heading a party of mutineers, but next day the -storm floated the keel free. By the 10th of November, the ship was -frozen in. To keep up stock of provisions, Hudson offered a reward for -all game, of which there seemed an abundance, but when he ordered the -carpenters ashore to build winter quarters, he could secure obedience -to his commands only by threatening to hang every mutineer to the -yardarm. In the midst of this turmoil, the gunner died. Henry Greene, -the vagabond secretary, who received no wages, asked for the dead man’s -heavy great coat. Hudson granted the request. The mutineers resented -the favoritism, for it was the custom to auction off a dead man’s -belongings at the mainmast, and in the cold climate all needed extra -clothing. Greene took advantage of the apparent favor to shirk house -building and go off to the woods with a rebellious carpenter hunting. -Furious, Hudson turned the coveted coat over to Bylot, the new mate.</p> - -<p>So the miserable winter dragged on. Snow fell continuously day after -day. The frost giants set the ice whooping and crackling every night -like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span> artillery fire. A pall of gloom was settling over the ship that -seemed to benumb hope and benumb effort. Great numbers of birds were -shot by loyal members of the crew, but the ship was short of bread -and the cook began to use moss and the juice of tamarac as antidotes -to scurvy. As winter closed in, the cold grew more intense. Stone -fireplaces were built on the decks of the ship. Pans of shot heated -red-hot were taken to the berths as a warming pan. On the whole, Hudson -was fortunate in his wintering quarters. It was the most sheltered part -of the bay and had the greatest abundance of game to be found on that -great inland sea. Also, there was no lack of firewood. Farther north on -the west shore, Hudson’s ship would have been exposed to the east winds -and the ice-drive. Here, he was secure from both, though the cold of -James Bay was quite severe enough to cover decks and beds and bedding -and port windows with hoar frost an inch thick.</p> - -<p>Toward spring came a timid savage to the ship drawing furs on a -toboggan for trade. He promised to return after so many sleeps from -the tribes of the South, but time to an Indian may mean this year or -next, and he was never again seen. As the ice began to break up in May, -Hudson sent men fishing in a shallop that the carpenters had built, -but the fishermen plotted to escape in the small boat. The next<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span> time, -Hudson, himself, led the fishermen, threatening to leave any man proved -guilty of plots marooned on the bay. It was an unfortunate threat. The -men remembered it. Juet, the deposed mate, had but caged his wrath and -was now joined by Henry Greene, the secretary, who had fallen from -favor. If these men and their allies had hunted half as industriously -as they plotted, there would have been food in plenty, but with -half the crew living idly on the labors of the others for a winter, -somebody was bound to suffer shortage of food on the homeward voyage. -The traitor thought was suggested by Henry Greene that if Hudson and -the loyal men were, themselves, marooned, the rest could go home with -plenty of food and no fear of punishment. The report could be spread -that Hudson had died. Hudson had searched the land in vain for Indians. -All unconscious of the conspiracy in progress, he returned to prepare -the ship for the home voyage.</p> - -<p>The rest of <em>The Discovery’s</em> record reads like some tale of -piracy on the South Sea. Hudson distributed to the crew all the bread -that was left—a pound to each man without favoritism. There were tears -in his eyes and his voice broke as he handed out the last of the food. -The same was done with the cheese. Seamen’s chests were then searched -and some pilfered biscuits distributed. In Hudson’s cabin were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> stored -provisions for fourteen days. These were to be used only in the last -extremity. As might have been expected, the idle mutineers used their -food without stint. The men who would not work were the men who would -not deny themselves. When Hudson weighed anchor on June 18, 1611, for -the homeward trip, nine of the best men in the crew lay ill in their -berths from overwork and privations.</p> - -<p>One night Greene came to the cabin of Prickett, who had acted as a -sort of agent for the ship’s owners. Vowing to cut the throat of any -man who betrayed him, Greene burst out in imprecations with a sort of -pot-valour that “<em>he was going to end it or mend it; go through with -it or die</em>”; the sick men were useless: there were provisions for -half the crew but not all——</p> - -<p>Prickett bade him stop. This was mutiny. Mutiny was punished in England -by death. But Greene swore he would rather be hanged at home than -starve at sea.</p> - -<p>In the dark, the whole troop of mutineers came whining and plotting -to Prickett. The boat was only a few days out of winter quarters and -embayed in the ice half way to the Straits. If such delays continued, -what were fourteen days’ provisions for a voyage? Of all the ill men, -Prickett, alone, was to be spared to intercede for the mutineers with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -Sir Dudley Digges, his master. In vain, Prickett pleaded for Hudson’s -life. Let them wait two days; one day; twelve hours! They called him -a fool! It was Hudson’s death, or the death of all! The matter must -be put through while their courage was up! Then to add the last touch -to their villainy, they swore on a Bible to Prickett that what they -contemplated was for the object of saving the lives of the majority. -Prickett’s defense for countenancing the mutiny is at best the excuse -of a weakling, a scared fool—he couldn’t save Hudson, so he kept -quiet to save his own neck. It was a black, windy night. The seas were -moaning against the ice fields. As far as human mind could forestall -devilish designs, the mutineers were safe, for all would be alike -guilty and so alike pledged to secrecy. It must be remembered, too, the -crew were impressed seamen, unwilling sailors, the blackguard riffraff -of London streets. If the plotters had gone to bed, Prickett might -have crawled above to Hudson’s cabin, but the mutineers kept sleepless -vigil for the night. At daybreak two had stationed themselves at the -hatch, three hovered round the door of the captain’s cabin. When Hudson -emerged from the room, two men leaped on him to the fore, a third, -Wilson the bo’swain, caught and bound his arms behind. When Hudson -demanded what they meant,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> they answered with sinister intent that he -would know when <em>he</em> was put in the shallop. Then, all pretense -that what they did was for the good of the crew was cast aside. They -threw off all disguise and gathered round him with shouts, and jeers, -and railings, and mockery of his high ambitions! It was the old story -of the Ideal hooted by the mob, crucified by little-minded malice, -misunderstood by evil and designing fools! The sick were tumbled out -of berths and herded above decks till the shallop was lowered. One man -from Ipswich was given a chance to remain but begged to be set adrift. -He would rather perish as a man than live as a thief. The name of the -hero was Phillip Staffe. With a running commentary of curses from Henry -Greene, Juet, the mate, now venting his pent-up vials of spleen, eight -sick men were lowered into the small boat with Hudson and his son. Some -one suggested giving the castaways ammunition and meal. Juet roared -for the men to make haste. Wilson, the guilty bo’swain, got anchors up -and sails rigged. Ammunition, arms and cooking utensils were thrown -into the small boat. <em>The Discovery</em> then spread her sails to -the wind—a pirate ship. The tow rope of the small boat tightened. -She followed like a despairing swimmer, climbing over the wave-wash -for a pace or two; then some one cut the cable. The castaways<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> were -adrift. The distance between the two ships widened. Prickett looking -out from his porthole below, caught sight of Hudson with arms bound -and panic-stricken, angry face. As the boats drifted apart the old -commander shouted a malediction against his traitor crew.</p> - -<p>“Juet will ruin you all——”</p> - -<p>“Nay, but it is that villain, Henry Greene,” Prickett yelled back -through the porthole, and the shallop fell away. Some miles out of -sight from their victims, the mutineers slackened pace to ransack the -contents of the ship. The shallop was sighted oars going, sails spread, -coming over a wave in mad pursuit. With guilty terror as if their -pursuers had been ghosts, the mutineers out with crowded sails and fled -as from an avenging demon! So passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail -on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair—loss of -vision, of faith in his dream? Did life suddenly seem to him a cruel -joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell?</p> - -<p>What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his -fate. Barely the shadow of a legend illumines his last hours; though -Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yarns of the first -Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came -overland to the bay<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> fifty years later, he found an old house “<em>all -marked by bullets</em>.” Did Hudson take his last stand inside that -house? Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the -powers of darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores -with the bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish -fables of a “ship with sails” having come to the bay; but many ships -came in those fifty years: Button’s to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, -the Dane’s, to meet a fate worse than Hudson’s.</p> - -<p>Hudson’s shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves -of those old sea Vikings, who rode out to meet death on the billow. -A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his -child and the ragged castaways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice -fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with -bound arms and face to fate, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. -They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a -Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more -than he could have dreamed—this pathfinder of two empires’ commerce. -He had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his Idea -down the Long Trail. What more could the most favored child of the gods -ask? With one’s task done, better to die in harness than rot in some -garret of obscurity,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age—the -fate of so many great benefactors of humanity!</p> - -<p>It needed no prophet to predict the end of the pirate ship with such a -crew. They quarreled over who should be captain. They quarreled over -who should be mate. They quarreled over who should keep the ship’s log. -They lost themselves in the fog, and ran amuck of icebergs and disputed -whether they should sail east or west, whether they had passed Cape -Digges leading out of the Straits, whether they should turn back south -to seek the South Sea. They were like children lost in the dark. They -ran on rocks, and lay ice-bound with no food but dried sea moss and -soup made of candle grease boiled with the offal left from partridge. -Ice hid the Straits. They steered past the outlet and now steered back -only to run on a rock near the pepper-colored sands of Cape Digges. -Flood tide set them free. They wanted to land and hunt but were afraid -to approach the coast and sent in the small boats. It was the 28th of -July. As they neared the breeding ground of the birds, Eskimo kyacks -came swarming over the waves toward them. That day, the whites rested -in the Indian tents. The next day Henry Greene hurried ashore with six -men to secure provisions. Five men had landed to gather scurvy (sorrel) -grass and trade with the fifty Indians along the shore.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> Prickett being -lame remained alone in the small boat. Noticing an Eskimo boarding the -boat, Prickett stood up and peremptorily ordered the savage ashore. -When he sat down, what was his horror to find himself seized from -behind, with a knife stroke grazing his breast. Eskimo carry their -knives by strings. Prickett seized the string in his left hand and so -warded off the blow. With his right hand he got his own dagger out of -belt and stabbed the assailant dead. On shore, Wilson the bo’swain, and -another man had been cut to pieces. Striking off the Indians with a -club, Greene, the ringleader, tumbled to the boat with a death wound. -The other two men leaped down the rocks into the boat. A shower of -arrows followed, killing Greene outright and wounding the other three. -One of the rowers fainted. The others signaled the ship for aid, and -were rescued. Greene’s body was thrown into the sea without shroud or -shrift. Of the other three, two died in agonies. This encounter left -only four well men to man the ship home. They landed twice among the -numberless lonely islands that line the Straits and hunted partridge -and sea moss for food. Before they had left the Straits, they were -down to rations of half a bird a day. In mid-ocean they were grateful -for the garbage of the cook’s barrel. Juet, the old mate, died of -starvation in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span> sight of Ireland. The other men became so weak they -could not stand at the helm. Sails flapped to the wind in tatters. -Masts snapped off short. Splintered yardarms hung in the ragged -rigging. It was like an ocean derelict, or a haunted craft with a -maimed crew. In September, land was sighted off Ireland and the joyful -cry of “a sail” raised; but a ship manned by only four men with a tale -of disaster, which could not be explained, aroused suspicion. <em>The -Discovery</em> was shunned by the fisher folk. Only by pawning the -ship’s furniture could the crew obtain food, sailors and pilot to take -them to Plymouth. Needless to say, the survivors were at once clapped -in prison and Sir Thomas Button sent to hunt for Hudson; but Hudson -had passed to his unknown grave leaving as a monument the two great -pathways of traffic, which he found—Hudson River and the northern -inland sea, which may yet prove the Baltic of America.</p> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center">DATA FOR HUDSON’S VOYAGES</p> -</div> -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Purchas’ Pilgrims</em> contains the bulk of the data regarding -Hudson’s voyages. The account of the first voyage is written by -Hudson, himself, and by one of the company, John Playse, Playse -presumably completing the log-book directly from Hudson’s journal. -This is supplemented by facts taken from Hudson’s manuscripts (long -since lost) now to be found in <em>Edge’s Discovery of the Muscovy -Merchants</em> (Purchas III, 464) and <em>Fotherby’s</em> statement -concerning Hudson’s journals (Purchas III, 730), the whole being -concisely stated with ample proofs in the <em>Hakluyt Society’s</em> -1860 publication on Hudson by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> Doctor Asher. The account of the second -voyage is given by Hudson, himself. On the third voyage, the journal -was kept by Juet, the mate. The story of the last voyage is told in -<cite>An Abstract of Hudson’s Journals</cite> down to August 1610; and in an -account written by that Prickett who joined the mutineers, plainly to -excuse his own conduct. Matter supplementary to the third voyage may -be found outside <em>Purchas</em> in such Dutch authorities as <em>Van -Meteren</em> and <em>De Laet</em> and <em>Lambrechtsen</em> and <em>Van -der Donck</em>. Also in <em>Heckewelder</em> and <em>Hessel Gerritz</em>. -Every American historian who has dealt with the discovery of Hudson -River draws his data from these sources. <em>Yates</em>, <em>Moulton</em>, -<em>O’Callaghan</em>, <em>Brodhead</em> are the earliest of the old -American authorities. Supplementary matter concerning the fourth and -last voyage is to be found in almost any account of Arctic voyaging -in America, though nothing new is added to what is told by Hudson, -himself, and by Prickett. Both the <em>New York Historical Society</em> -and the <em>Hakluyt Society</em> of England have published excellent -and complete transcripts of Hudson’s Voyages with translations of -all foreign data bearing on them including the voyages of <em>Estevan -Gomez</em> and <em>Verrazano</em> past New York harbor. For data bearing -on the navigation of Hudson Straits, the two reports of the Canadian -Government on two expeditions sent to ascertain the feasibility of -such a route—are excellent; but not so good, not so detailed and -beautifully unguarded as the sailing records kept by the old sea -captains in the service of the Hudson’s Bay furriers. The Government -reports are too guarded. Besides, the ships stayed only one season in -the straits; but these old fur company captains sailed as often as -forty times to the bay—eighty times in all through the straits; and I -have availed myself of Captain Coat’s sailing directions especially. -In the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, London, are literally shelf -loads of such directions. That modern enterprise will ultimately -surmount all difficulties of navigation in the straits cannot be -doubted. What man sets himself to do—he does; but the difficulties -are not child’s play, nor imaginary ones created by politicians who -oppose a Hudson Bay route to Europe. One has only to read the record -of three hundred years’ sailing by the fur traders to realize that -the straits are—to put it mildly—a trap for ocean goers. Still it -is interesting to note, it is typical of the dauntless spirit of the -North, that a railroad is actually being built toward Hudson Bay. Not -the bay, but the straits, will be the crux of the difficulty.</p> - -<p>When I speak of “Wreckers’ Reef” Sable Island, it is not a figure of -speech, but a fact of those early days—that false lights were often -placed on Sable Island to lure ships on the sand reefs. Men, who waded -ashore, were clubbed to death by pirates: See Canadian Archives.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span></p> - -<p>The Indian legends of Hudson’s Voyage to New York are to be found in -early missionary annals: see New York History, 1811.</p> - -<p>The report of the Canadian Geologic Survey of Baffins Land and the -North was issued by Mr. A. P. Low as I completed this volume.</p> - -<p>All authorities—as seen by the map—place Hudson’s wintering quarters -off Rupert River. From the Journals, it seems to me, he went as far -west as he could go, and did not come back east, which would make -his wintering quarters off Moose. This would explain “the old house -battered with bullets,” which Radisson records.</p> - -<p>My authority for data on Moose Factory is Bishop Horden.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1619</p> - -<p class="center">THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY—JENS MUNCK’S CREW</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Though</span> Admiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after -Hudson’s death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost -mariner—the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the -bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his -mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson’s -crew. Hudson’s old ship, <em>The Discovery</em>, was used with a larger -frigate called <em>The Resolution</em>. No sooner had the ships gone into -winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected -the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium -of the fur trade for three hundred years—became literally a camp of -the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not -enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned, and -for a second time Hudson’s ship, <em>The Discovery</em>, carried back -disheartened<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> survivors to England. Button’s long absence had raised -hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes -were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease.</p> - -<p>In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him -at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes -were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged -persistence. The English adventurers, who had sent Button and Gibbon, -now fitted out Bylot, Hudson’s former mate. With him went a young man -named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They -found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea, -but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which -Baffin’s name has been given.</p> - -<p>The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a -breathing space. Where England left off, the trail of discovery was -taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt -the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norsemen had coasted the ice fields -from Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the Vinelands and Marklands -farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost -colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish -fireside.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span></p> - -<p>King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the -outfitting of two ships for discovery in America. <em>The Unicorn</em>, -named after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of -forty-eight including chaplain and surgeon. <em>The Lamprey</em> was a -little sloop with sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a -commander and that fell without question on the fittest man in the -Danish navy—Jens Munck, such a soldier of fortune as the novelist -might delight to portray.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_113"> -<img src="images/i_113.jpg" alt="" width="737" height="650"> -<p class="caption">Iberville’s Ship run aground off Nelson in a -Hurricane—from La Potherie.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Munck’s father was a nobleman, who had suicided in prison, disgraced -for misuse of public funds. Munck’s mother was left destitute. At -twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier -of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor -to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to -be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout -with fate. The Dutch vessel was attacked off Bahia by the French and -totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into -the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the -Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to -bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless, -crawling ashore like a bedraggled water rat, here was the boy, utterly -alone in a <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>strange land among a strange people speaking a strange -tongue.</p> - -<p>Such an experience would have set most boys swallowing a lump in their -throat. The little Dane was too glad to get the water out of his throat -and to set his feet on dry land for any such nonsense. For a year he -worked with a shoemaker for his board, and incidentally picked up a -knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese over the cobbler’s last. The most -of young Danish noblemen gained such knowledge from tutors and travel. -Then Munck became apprentice to a house painter. Not a yelp against -fate did the plucky young castaway utter, and what is more marvel, -he did not lose his head and let it sink to the place where a young -gentleman’s feet ought to be—namely the pavement. Toiling for his -daily bread among the riffraff and ruff-scuff of a foreign port, Munck -kept his head up and his face to the future; and at last came his -chance.</p> - -<p>Munck was now about eighteen years old. Some Dutch vessels had come -to Bahia without a license for trade. Munck overheard that the harbor -authorities intended to confiscate both vessels. It was Munck’s -opportunity to escape, and he seized it with both hands. Jostling among -the sailors of the water-front, keeping his intentions to himself,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span> -Munck waited till it was dark. Then, he stripped, tied his clothes -to his back, and swam out to warn the Dutch of their danger. The -vessels escaped and carried Munck with them to Europe. Within five -years he was sailing ships for himself to Iceland and Nova Zembla -and Russia—keeping up that old trick of picking up odds and ends, -knowledge of people and things and languages wherever he went. Before -he was thirty he had joined the Danish navy and was appointed to -conduct embassies to Spain, and Russia where his knowledge of foreign -languages held good. When the traders of Copenhagen and King Christian -looked for a commander to explore and colonize Hudson Bay, Munck was -the man.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Sunday, May 16, 1619, the ships that were to add a second Russia -to Denmark, sailed for Hudson Bay. Sailors the world over hate the -Northern seas. Some of Munck’s crews must have been impressed men, for -one fellow promptly jumped overboard and suicided rather than go on. -Another died from natural causes, so Munck put into Norway for three -extra men.</p> - -<p>Greenland was sighted in twenty days—a quick run in those times and -evidence that Munck was a swift sailor, who took all risks and pushed -ahead at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span> any cost, for the Hudson’s Bay fur trade captains considered -seven weeks quick time from London to the Straits of Hudson Bay. A -current sweeps south from Greenland. Lashing his ships abreast, Munck -ran into the center of a great field of soft slob ice, that would keep -the big bergs off and protect the hulls from rough seas. Then lowering -all sails, he drifted with the ice drive. It came on to blow. Slob ice -held the ships safe, but sleet iced the rigging and deck till they were -like glass and life lines had to be stretched from side to side to give -hand hold, every wave-wash sending the sailors slithering over the icy -decks as if on skates. Icicles as long as a man’s arm would form on the -cross-trees in a single night. The ropes became like bolts—cracking -when they were bent, but when the heat of mid-day came, both ships were -in a drip of thaw.</p> - -<p>What with the slow pace of the ice drift and the heaviness of the -ships from becoming ice-logged, it was the middle of July before they -reached the Straits. Eskimos swarmed down to the islands of Ungava -Bay, but seemed afraid to trade with Munck’s crew. It was on one of -the islands here that the Eskimo two centuries later massacred an -entire crew of Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders, who had been wrecked -by the ice jam and escaped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> across the floes to the island. It was, -perhaps, as well for Munck that the treacherous natives took themselves -off, bounding over the waves in skin boats, so light they could be -carried by one hand over the ice floes. The collision of the Atlantic -tide with the eastward flowing current of the Straits created such a -furious sea as Munck had never seen. It was no longer safe to keep -<em>The Lamprey</em> lashed to the frigate, for one wave wash caused by -an overturning iceberg lifted the little ship almost on the masts of -<em>The Unicorn</em>.</p> - -<p>The ships then began worming their way slowly through the ice drift. -A grapnel would be thrown out on an ice floe. Up to this, the ships -would haul by ropes. Both crews stood on guard at the deck rails with -the long iron-shod ice poles in their hands, prodding and shoving off -the huge masses when the ice threatened a crush. Six hours ebb and six -hours flow was the rate of the tide, but where the Straits narrowed and -the inflow beat against the ice jam, the incoming tide would sometimes -last as long as nine hours. This was the time of greatest danger, for -beaten between tide and ice, the Straits became a raging whirlpool. -It was then the ships had to sheer away from the lashing undertow of -the big bergs and stood out unsheltered to the crush and jam of the -drive. Sometimes, a breeze and open<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span> passage gave them free way from -the danger. At other times, the maelstrom of the advancing tide caught -them in dead calm. Then the men had to leap out on the icepan and tow -the ships away. Soaked to their armpits in ice water, toiling night -and day, one day exposed to heat that was almost tropical, the next -enveloped in a blizzard of sleet, the two crews began to show the -effects of such terrible work. They were so completely worn out, Munck -anchored on the north shore to let them rest. At Icy Cove off Baffin’s -Land, one seaman—Andrew Staffreanger—died. Where he was buried, Munck -remarked that the soil showed signs of mica and ore. To-day—it is -interesting to note—those mica mines are being worked in Baffin’s Land.</p> - -<p>One night toward the end of July, ice swept on the ships from both -sides. Suddenly the crew were tumbled from their berths by the dull -rumbling as of an earthquake. The boards of the cabin floors had -sprung. Ice had heaped higher than the yardarms—the ships were like -toys, the sport of grim Northern giants. When the ships were examined, -a gash was found in the keel of <em>The Lamprey</em> from stem to stern -as broad as one’s hand. Barely was this mended when the rudder was -smashed from <em>The Unicorn</em>. A great icepan tossed up on end and -shivered down in splinters that crashed over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> the decks like glass. -A moment later a rolling sea swept the ships, sending the sailors -sprawling, while the scuppers spouted a cataract of waters. Munck -felt beaten. Again he ran to the north shore for shelter. While the -sailors rested, the chaplain held services and made “offerings to God” -beseeching His help. Munck, meanwhile, went ashore and set up the arms -of the Danish King—a superfluous proceeding, as Baffin had already set -up the arms of England here.</p> - -<p>On the ebb of the tide the sea calmed, and Munck succeeded in passing -the most dangerous part of the Straits—the Second Narrows. An east -wind cleared the sea of ice. Sails full blown, Munck’s ships shot out -on the open water of Hudson Bay in the first week of September. Munck -was six weeks traversing the Straits. It should not have taken longer -than one.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through -the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small -creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing -breakers <em>The Unicorn</em> steered for the haven. A sunken rock -protruded in midcurrent. Munck sheered off, entered, drove upstream -and found himself in a land-locked lagoon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> such as he could not have -discovered elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its -shores. By chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of -Hudson Bay, called by the Indians, River-of-the-Strangers or Danish -River, now known as Churchill.</p> - -<p>Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for -the deliverance. But the little <em>Lamprey</em> was still out, and the -storm raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, -the men waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to -guide <em>The Lamprey</em> to the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out -in a long fine cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were -kept burning and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as -blew the men off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning -of September 9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling -billows. The sailors of <em>The Unicorn</em> ran up their ensign, -hurrahed and heaped more driftwood. By night the little <em>Lamprey</em> -came beating over the waves and shot into the harbor with flying colors.</p> - -<p>The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the -season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the -sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> the harbor -that tore strips in the ship’s hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved -farther up stream to a point since known as Munck’s Cove.</p> - -<p>To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of -Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water’s -edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or -ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing -ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six -hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men -were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the -leaky keels.</p> - -<p>It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his -officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was -closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless—a second -Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony -that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_123"> -<img src="images/i_123.jpg" alt="" width="743" height="650"> -<p class="left">Churchill Harbor as drawn by Munck, the Dane, from the -Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1897. Note the woods close to the sea -front, long since destroyed; drawn about 1620.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, -every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. -Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply -paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea -how to protect themselves <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>against it. Later navigators compelled -to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, -tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet -of solid snow. Had Munck’s men used furs instead of happing themselves -up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have -wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces, -but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but -huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and -heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths.</p> - -<p>Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the -phials in the surgeon’s medicine chests went to pieces in nightly -pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst -their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after -night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the -shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice—as if giants had been -gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck’s -adventures may be told in his own words:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At -next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.</p> - -<p>October 30—Ice everywhere covers the river. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span> is such a heavy -fall of snow, it is impossible for the men to go into the open country -without snowshoes.</p> - -<p>November 14—Last night a large black dog came to the ship across the -ice but the man on the watch shot him by mistake for a black fox. I -should have been glad to have caught him alive and sent him home with -a present of goods for his owner.</p> - -<p>November 27—All the glass bottles broken to pieces by the frost.</p> - -<p>December 10—The moon appeared in an eclipse. It was surrounded by a -large circle and a cross appeared therein.</p> - -<p>December 12—One of my surgeons died and his corpse had to remain -unburied for two days because the frost was so terrible no one dared -go on shore.</p> - -<p>December 24, 25—Christmas Eve, I gave the men wine and beer, which -they had to boil, for it was frozen to the bottom. All very jolly but -no one offended with as much as a word. Holy Christmas Day we all -celebrated as a Christian’s duty is. We had a sermon, and after the -sermon we gave the priest an offertory according to ancient custom. -There was not much money among the men, but they gave what they had, -some white fox skins for the priest to line his coat.</p> - -<p>January 1, New Year’s Day—Tremendous frost. I ordered a couple of -pints of wine to the bowl of every man to keep up spirits.</p> - -<p>January 10—The priest and the other surgeon took to their beds. A -violent sickness rages among the men. My head cook died.</p> - -<p>January 21—Thirteen of us down with sickness. I asked the surgeon, -who was lying mortally ill, whether any remedy might be found in his -chest. He answered he had used as many remedies as he knew and if God -would not help, there was no remedy.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span></p> - -<p>It need scarcely be explained that lack of exercise and fresh -vegetables had brought scurvy on Munck’s crew. In accordance with the -spirit of the age, the pestilence was ascribed not to man’s fault but -to God’s Will.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>January 23—This day died my mate, Hans Brock, who had been in bed -five months. The priest sat up in his berth to preach the sermon, -which was the last he ever gave on this earth.</p> - -<p>January 25—Had the small minute guns discharged in honor of my mate’s -burial, but so exceedingly brittle had the iron become from frost that -the cannon exploded.</p> - -<p>February 5—More deaths. I again sent to the surgeon for God’s sake to -do something to allay sickness, but he only answered as before, if God -did not help there was no hope.</p> - -<p>February 16—Nothing but sickness and death. Only seven persons now in -health to do the necessary work. On this day died a seaman, who was as -filthy in his habits as an untrained beast.</p> - -<p>February 17—Twenty persons have died.</p> - -<p>February 20—In the evening, died the priest. Have had to mind the -cabin myself, for my servant is also ill.</p> - -<p>March 30—Sharp frost. Now begins my greatest misery. I am like a -lonely wild bird, running to and fro waiting on the sick.</p> - -<p>April 1st—Died my nephew, Eric Munck, and was buried in the same -grave as my second mate. Not one of us is well enough to fetch water -and fuel. Have begun to break up our small boats for fuel. It is with -great difficulty I can get coffins made.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span></p> - -<p>April 13—Took a bath in a wine-cask in which I had mixed all the -herbs I could find in the surgeon’s chest, which did us all much good.</p> - -<p>April 14—Only four beside myself able to sit up and listen to the -sermon for Good Friday, which I read.</p> - -<p>May 6—Died John Watson, my English mate. The bodies of the dead lie -uncovered because none of us has strength to bury them.</p> -</div> - -<p>Doom seemed to settle over the ship when Munck, himself, fell ill in -June. On the floor beside his berth, lay the cook’s boy dead. In the -steerage were the corpses of three other men. On the deck lay three -more dead, “for”—records Munck—“nobody had strength to throw them -overboard.” Besides himself, two men only had survived. These had -managed to crawl ashore during ebb tide and had not strength to come -back.</p> - -<p>Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese -and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north. -Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes -drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland -region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. -Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched -on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. -Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> hungry wolves, who -gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the -water’s edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not -be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; -the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the -flacker of vulture wings and the lapping—the tireless lapping of the -tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist -brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the -Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. -Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental -and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied—two pints of wine and a -pint of whiskey a day—only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the -thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. -The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums....</p> - -<p>Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his -last words:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the -sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will -bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal, -forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my -soul to God....”</p> - -<p> -“<span class="smcap">Jens Munck.</span>”<br> -</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span></p> - - -<p>The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the -deck’s edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore -alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and -labored weakness, they helped him down the ship’s ladder. On land, the -three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept -the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout -within reach. This was the very thing they had needed—green food. From -the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel -grass, they recovered.</p> - -<p>On the 18th of June, they were able to walk out at ebb tide to the -ships on the flats. By the 26th they could take broth made of fish and -fresh partridge. “In the name of Jesus after prayer and supplication to -God, we set to work to rig <em>The Lamprey</em>,” records Munck. The dead -were thrown overboard. So were all ballast and cargo. Consequently, -when the tide came in, the sloop was so light it floated free above the -ice-break of rocks and logs constructed the year before. Munck then -had holes drilled in the hull of <em>The Unicorn</em> to sink her till -he could come back for the frigate with an adequate crew. “On the 16th -of July,” writes Munck, just a year from the time they had entered -Hudson Straits, “Sunday in the afternoon, we set sail from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> there in -the name of God.” Neither a kingdom nor a Northwest Passage had they -found for King Christian of Denmark, but only hardships unspeakable, -the inevitable fate of every pioneer of the New World, as though Nature -would test their mettle before she began rearing a new race of men, -pioneers of a new era in the world’s long history.</p> - -<p>If it had been difficult for crews of sixty-five to navigate the ice -floes, what was it for an emaciated crew of three? Forty miles out -from Churchill, a polar bear strayed across the ice sniffing at <em>The -Lamprey</em> when the ship’s dog sprang over in pursuit with the bold -spirit of the true Great Dane. Just then the ice floe parted from -the sloop, and for two days they could hear the faithful dog howling -behind in dismay. A gale came banging the ship against the ice and -smashed the rudder, but Munck out with his grapnel, fastened <em>The -Lamprey</em> to the ice and drifted with the floe almost as far as the -Straits. A month it took to cross the bay to Digges Island at the west -end of the Straits. For a second time, the brave mariner worked his way -through the Straits by the old trick of throwing out the grapnel and -hauling himself along the floes. This time he was drifting <em>with</em> -the ice, not <em>against</em> it, and the passage was easier. Once out -of the Straits, such a gale was raging “<em>as would blow a man off -his legs</em>,” records<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> Munck, but the wind carried him forward. Off -Shetland a ship was signaled for help, but the high seas prevented its -approach and the little <em>Lamprey</em> literally shot into a harbor of -Norway, on September 20th. Not a soul was visible but a peasant, and -Munck had to threaten to blow the fellow’s brains out before he would -help to moor the ship. With the soil of Europe once more firmly under -their feet, the poor Danes could no longer restrain their tears. They -fell on their knees thanking God for the deliverance from “the icebergs -and dreadful storms and foaming seas.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_133"> -<img src="images/i_133.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="388"> -<p class="caption">Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian -Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson—photographed from the copy of La -Potherie in Archives, Ottawa, Canada.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>As Munck did not record the latitude of his wintering -harbor—presumably to keep his ship in hiding till he could go for -it—doubt arose about the port being Churchill. This doubt was -increased by an erroneous account of his voyage published in France, -but the identity of Munck’s Cove with Churchill has been trebly proved. -The drawing which Munck made of the harbor is an exact outline of -Churchill. Besides, eighty years afterward when the Hudson’s Bay Fur -Company established their fort at Churchill, brass cannon were dug from -the river flats stamped with the letter C 4—Christian IV. Strongest -confirmation of all were the Indian legends. The savages called the -river, River of Strangers, because when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> they came down to the shore -in the summer of 1620, they found clothing and the corpses of a race -they had never seen before. When they beheld the ship at ebb tide, -they could hardly believe their senses, and when they found it full of -plunder, their wonder was unspeakable. But the joy was short-lived. -Drying the cargo above their fires, kegs of gunpowder came in contact -with a spark. Plunder and plunderers and ship were blown to atoms. -Henceforth, Churchill became ill omened as the River-of-the-Strangers.</p> - -<p>The same erroneous French account records that Munck suicided from -chagrin over his failure. This is a confusion with Munck’s father. The -Dane had seen enough to know while there was no Northwest Passage, -there was an unclaimed kingdom for Denmark, and he had planned to come -back to Churchill with colonists when war broke out in Europe. Munck -went back to the navy and was in active service to within a few hours -of his death on June 3, 1628.</p> - -<p>Many nameless soldiers go down to death in every victory. The -exploration of America was one long-fought battle of three hundred -years in which countless heroes went down to nameless graves in what -appeared to be failure. But it was not failure. Their little company, -their scouts, the flanking movement—met defeat, but the main body -moved on to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> victory. The honor was not the less because their division -was the one to be mowed down in death. So it was with Jens Munck. His -crews did their own little part in their own little unknown corner, and -they perished miserably doing it. They could not foresee the winning of -a continent from realms as darkly unknown as Hades behind its portals. -Not the less is the honor theirs.</p> - -<p>By what chances does Destiny or Providence direct the affairs of -nations and men? If Munck had not been called back to the navy and -had succeeded in bringing the colonists as he planned back to Hudson -Bay, Radisson would not have captured that region for the Hudson’s Bay -Company. Though Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the bay, one -might almost say if Munck had succeeded, as far as the Northwest is -concerned, there would have been no British North America.</p> - - -<p>NOTES ON MUNCK</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>Munck’s Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of -Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfortunately before his -authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in -France from mere hearsay, by <em>La Peyrére</em>. It is this erroneous -version of Munck’s adventures that appears in various collections of -voyages, such as <em>Churchill’s</em> and <em>Jeremie’s Relation</em> -in the <cite>Bernard Collection</cite>. Of modern authorities on Munck, -Vol. II of the <em>Hakluyt Society</em> for 1897, and the writings of -<em>Mr. Lauridsen</em> of <em>Copenhagen</em> stand first. Data on the -topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin’s Land may be found in -the Canadian Government Reports from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> 1877 down to 1906. But best of -all are the directions of the old sailing masters employed by the -Hudson’s Bay Company, which are only to be found in the Archives of -Hudson’s Bay House, London. In English reports—though all English -accounts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society’s are limited to a few -paragraphs—his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it Munck.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1662-1713</p> - -<p>How the Sea of the North is Discovered Overland by the French Explorers -of the St. Lawrence—Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of -the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson’s Bay and Leads -the Company a Dance for Fifty Years—He is Followed by the French -Raiders Under d’Iberville.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1662-1674</p> - -<p class="hang50center">RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND -FOUNDS THE COMPANY OF GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">For</span> fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, -lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast peninsular -territory—crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, -cataracts, upland tarns—Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen -European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked, -impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence, -in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what -is now known as the Great Northwest—Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, -Alberta, Mackenzie River and British Columbia—in area, a second -Russia; but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. -Fox and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane; -and the record of their sufferings has been compared to the Book of -Lamentations;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span> but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret -of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable -treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory -bordering its coasts.</p> - -<p>A new era was now to open on the bay—an era of wildwood runners -tracking the snow-padded silences; of dare-devil gamesters of the -wilderness sweeping down the forested waterways to midnight raid -and ambuscade and massacre on the bay; of two great powers—first -France and England, then the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company and the -Nor’Westers—locked in death-grapple during a century for the prize -of dominion over the immense unknown territory inland from the bay. -Hudson and Jens Munck, Vikings of the sea, were to be succeeded by -those intrepid knights of the wilderness, Radisson the pathfinder, -and d’Iberville, the wildwood rover. The third era on Hudson Bay -comes down to our own day. It marks the transition from savagery -with semi-barbaric splendor, with all its virtues of outdoor life -and dashing bravery, and all its vices of unbridled freedom in a -no-man’s land with law of neither God nor man—to modern commerce; the -transition from the Eskimo’s kyack and voyageur’s canoe over trackless -waters to latter-day Atlantic liners plowing furrows over the main -to the marts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> of commerce, and this period, too, is best typified in -two commanding figures that stand out colossally from other actors on -the bay—Lord Selkirk, the young philanthropist, and Lord Strathcona, -whose activities only began at an age when other men have either made -or marred their careers. For three hundred years, the history of -Hudson Bay and of all that region for which the name stands is really -the history of these four men—Radisson, d’Iberville, Selkirk and -Strathcona.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>While Hudson Bay lay in its winter sleep, the world had gone on. The -fur traders of New France had pushed westward from the St. Lawrence to -the Great Lakes and Mississippi. In fact, France was making a bold bid -for the possession of all America except New Spain, and if her kings -had paid more attention to her colonies and less to the fripperies of -the fool-men and fool-women in her courts, the French flag might be -waving over the most of America to-day. In New England, things had also -gone apace. New York had gone over from Dutch to English rule, and the -commissioners of His Majesty, King Charles II, were just returning -from revising the affairs of the American plantations consequent upon -the change from Cromwell’s Commonwealth to the Stuart’s Restoration. -In England, at Oxford,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> was Charles himself, fled from the plague -of London. Majesty was very jaded. Success had lost its relish and -pleasure had begun to pall from too much surfeit. It was a welcome -spur to the monarch’s idle languor when word came posthaste that the -royal commissioner, Sir George Carterett, had just arrived from America -accompanied by two famous Frenchmen with a most astonishing story.</p> - -<p>They had set sail from America on August 1, 1665, Carterett bearing -a full report of conditions in the American plantations. When off -Spain, their boat had been sighted, pursued, captured and boarded by a -Dutch privateer—<em>The Caper</em>. For two hours, hull to hull, rail -to rail, hand to hand, they had fought, the men behind the guns at -the portholes of one ship looking into the smoke-grimed faces of the -men behind the guns on the other ship till a roaring broadside from -<em>The Caper</em> tore the entrails out of Carterett’s ship. Carterett -just had time to fling his secret dispatches overboard when a bayonet -was leveled at his breast and he surrendered his sword a captive. -Likewise did two French companions. Taken on board <em>The Caper</em>, -all three were severely questioned—especially the Frenchmen. Why were -they with Carterett? Where were they going? Where had they come from? -Could they not be persuaded to go to Holland with their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> extraordinary -story. One—Medard Chouart de Groseillers—was a middle-aged man, -heavily bearded, swarthy, weather-worn from a life in the wilderness. -The other—his brother-in-law—Pierre Esprit Radisson, was not yet -thirty years of age. He was clean-shaved, thin, lithe, nervous with -the restlessness of bottled-up energies, with a dash in his manners -that was a cut between the courtier and the wilderness runner. These -were the two men of whom such famous stories had been told these ten -years back—the most renowned and far traveled wood-runners that New -France had yet produced. It was they, who had brought 600,000 beaver -skins to Quebec on a single trip from the North. How they had been -robbed by the governor of New France and driven from Quebec to Cape -Breton, where, out of jealousy, they were set upon and mobbed, escaping -only with the clothes on their backs to Port Royal, Nova Scotia—was -known to all men. In vain, they had appealed to France for justice. -The robber governor was all powerful at the French court and the two -explorers—penniless nobodies pitting their power against the influence -of wealth and nobility—were dismissed from the court as a joke. They -had been promised a vessel to make farther explorations in the North, -but when they came to Isle Percé, south of Anticosti, to await the -vessel, a Jesuit was sent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span> to them with word that the promise had -been a put-off to rid the court of troublesome suitors—in a word, -a perfidious joke. There had followed the flight to Cape Breton, -the setting to work of secret influence against them, the mob, the -attempted murder, the flight to Port Royal, Nova Scotia. Port Royal -was at this time under English rule, and an English captain, Zachariah -Gillam, offered his ship for their trip North, but when up opposite -Hudson Straits, the captain had been terrified by the ice and lost -heart. He turned back. The season was wasted. The two Frenchmen had -then clubbed their dwindling fortunes together and had engaged two -vessels on their own account, but fishing to lay up supplies at Sable -Island, one of the vessels had been wrecked. For four years they had -been hounded by a persistent ill-luck: First, when robbed by the French -governor on pretense of a fine for going to the North without his -permission; second, when befooled by the false promises of the French -court; third, when Captain Gillam refused to proceed farther amid the -Northern ice; and now, when the wreck of the vessel involved them in a -lawsuit. In Boston, they had won their lawsuit, but the ill-luck left -them destitute. Carterett, the Royal Commissioner, had met them in -Boston and had persuaded them to come to England with him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span></p> - -<p>The commander of the Dutch ship listened to their story and took down -a report of it in writing. Could they not be persuaded to come on -with him to Holland? The two Frenchmen refused to leave Carterett. -Groseillers, Radisson and Carterett were then landed in Spain. From -Spain, they begged and borrowed and pawned their way to France, and -from France got passage to Dover. Here, then, they had come to the king -at Oxford with their amazing story.</p> - -<p>The stirring adventures of these two explorers, I have told in -another volume, and an exact transcript of their journals I am giving -elsewhere, but their story was one to make King Charles marvel. How -Radisson as a boy had been captured by the Mohawks and escaped through -the Dutch settlement of New York; how, as a youth, he had helped the -Jesuits to flee from a beleaguered fort at Onondaga; how before he was -twenty-five years old, he had gone overland to the Mississippi where -he heard from Cree and Sioux of the Sea of the North; and how before -he was thirty, he had found that sea where Hudson had perished—all -those adventures King Charles heard. The King listened and pondered, -and pondered and listened, and especially did he listen to that story -of the Sea of the North, which Henry Hudson had found in 1610 and from -which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> Radisson sixty years later had brought 600,000 beaver. Beaver at -that time was worth much more than it is to-day. That cargo of beaver, -which Radisson had brought down from Hudson Bay to Quebec would be -worth more than a million dollars in modern money.</p> - -<p>“We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the ice runs,” -related Radisson, telling how they had passed up the Ottawa to Lake -Superior and from Lake Superior by canoe seven hundred miles north to -Hudson Bay. “We had thwarted (portaged) a place forty-five miles. We -came to the far end at night. It was thick forest, and dark, and we -knew not where to go. We launched our canoes on the current and came -full sail on a deep bay, where we perceived smoke and tents. Many boats -rush to meet us. We are received with joy by the Crees. They suffer us -not to tread the ground but carry us like cocks in a basket to their -tents. We left them with all possible haste to follow the great river -and came to the seaside, where we found an old house all demolished -and battered with bullets. The Indians tell us peculiarities of the -Europeans, whom they have seen there. We went from isle to isle all -summer. We went along the bay to see the place the Indians pass the -summer. This river comes from the lake that empties in the Saguenay<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -at Tadoussac, a hundred leagues from where we were in the Bay of -the North. We left in the place our mark and rendezvous. We passed -the summer coasting the sea. This is a vast country. The people are -friendly to the Sioux and the Cree. We followed another river back to -the Upper Lake (Lake Superior) and it was midwinter before we joined -the company at our fort” (north of Lake Superior).</p> - -<p>When King Charles moved from Oxford to Windsor, Radisson and -Groseillers were ordered to accompany him, and when the monarch -returned to London, the two Frenchmen were commanded to take chambers -in town within reach of the court, and what was more to the point, the -King assigned them £2 a week maintenance, for they were both destitute, -as penniless soldiers of fortune as ever graced the throne room of a -Stuart. At Oxford, too, they had met Prince Rupert, and Prince Rupert -espoused their cause with the enthusiasm of an adventurer, whose -fortunes needed mending. The plague, the great fire in London, and -the Dutch war—all prevented King Charles according the adventurers -immediate help, but within a year from their landing, he writes to -James, Duke of York, as chief of the navy, ordering the Admiralty -department to loan the two Frenchmen the ship <em>Eaglet</em> of the -South Sea fleet for a voyage to Hudson Bay, for the purpose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> of -prosecuting trade and extending their explorations toward the South -Sea. I have his letter issuing the instructions, and it is interesting -as proving that the initiative came from King Charles, as Prince Rupert -has hitherto received all the credit for organizing the Adventurers of -England trading to Hudson Bay. Prince Rupert and half a dozen friends -were to bear the expense of wages to the seamen and victualling the -ships. During the long period of waiting, Charles presented Radisson -with a gold medal and chain. To Groseillers—if French tradition is to -be accepted—he gave some slight title of nobility. During this time, -too, Radisson and Groseillers heard from the captain of the Dutch ship, -who had questioned them. There came a spy from Amsterdam—Eli Godefroy -Touret, who first tried to bribe the Frenchmen to come to Holland, -and failing that, openly accused them of counterfeiting money. The -accusation could not be proved, and the spy was imprisoned.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_151"> -<img src="images/i_151.jpg" alt="" width="365" height="600"> -<p class="caption">Bienville, founder of Louisiana, who took part with his -brother Le Moyne d’Iberville, in the famous naval battle for possession -of Hudson Bay.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>The year 1667-8 was spent in preparations for the voyage. In addition -to <em>The Eaglet</em> under Captain Stannard, the ship <em>Nonsuch</em> -under Captain Gillam, who had failed to reach the bay from Nova -Scotia—was chartered. As far as I could gather from the old documents -in Hudson’s Bay House, London, the ships were supplied with provisions -and goods for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> trade by leading merchants, who were given a share -in the venture. The cash required was for the seamen’s wages, running -from £20 to £30 a year, and for the officer’s pay, £3 a month to the -surgeons, £50 a trip to the captains, with a bounty if the venture -succeeded. With the bounty, Gillam received £160 for this trip, -Stannard, £280. Thomas Gorst, who went as accountant, and Mr. Sheppard -as chief mate, were to assume command if anything happened to Radisson -and Groseillers. All, who advanced either cash, or goods, or credit -for goods, were entered in a stock book as Adventurers for so many -pounds. There was as yet no company organized. It was a pure gamble—a -speculation based on the word of two penniless French adventurers, and -in the spirit of the true gambler, gay were the doings. Captain Gillam -facetiously presents the Adventurers with a bill for five shilling -for a rat catcher. The gentlemen honor the bill with a smile, order a -pipe of canary, three tuns of wine, “a dinner with pullets,” dinners, -indeed, galore, at the Three Tunns and the Exchange Tavern and the Sun, -at which Prince Rupert and Albermarle and perhaps the King, himself, -“make merry like right worthy gentlemen.” Everybody is in rare, good -humor, for you must remember Mr. Radisson brought back 600,000 beaver -from that Sea of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> North, and the value of 600,000 beaver divided -among less than a dozen Adventurers would mean a tidy $100,000 of -modern money to each man. Then, the gentlemen go down to Gravesend -Docks to see the ships off. Each seaman shakes hands heartily with his -patron. Then the written commission is delivered to the captains:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“You are to saile with the first wind that presents, keeping company -with each other to your place of rendezvous (the old mark set up by -Radisson when he went overland to the bay.) You are to saile to such -place as Mr. Gooseberry (Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson shall direct to -trade with the Indians there, delivering the goods you carry in small -parcells no more than fifty pounds worth at a time out of each shipp, -the furs in exchange to stowe in each shipp before delivering out -any more goods, according to the particular advice of Mr. Gooseberry -(Groseillers) and Mr. Radisson.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Then follows a cryptogramatic order, which would have done credit to -the mysterious cipher of pirates on the high seas.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“You are to take notice that the <em>Nampumpeage</em> which you carry -with you is part of our joynt cargoes wee having bought it for -money for Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson to be delivered by small -quantities with like caution as the other goods.”</p> -</div> - -<p>No more drinking of high wines, my gentlemen! Strict business now, for -it need scarcely be explained<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> the mysterious <em>Nampumpeage</em> was a -euphemism for liquor. Fortifications are to be built, minerals sought, -the cargo is to be brought home by Groseillers, while Radisson remains -to conduct trade, and</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“You are to have in your thought the discovery of the passage into -the South Sea and to attempt it with the advice and direction of Mr. -Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson, they having told us that it is only seven -daies paddling or sailing from the River where they intend to trade -unto the Stinking Lake (the Great Lakes) and not above seven daies -more to the straight wch. leads into that Sea they call the South Sea, -and from thence but forty or fifty leagues to the Sea itselfe.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Exact journals and maps are to be kept. In case the goods cannot be -traded, the ships are to carry their cargoes to Newfoundland and the -New England plantations, where Mr. Philip Carterett, who is governor of -New Jersey, will assist in disposing of the goods.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“Lastly we advise and require you to use the said Mr. Gooseberry and -Mr. Radisson with all manner of civility and courtesy and to take -care that all your company doe bear a particular respect unto them, -they being the persons upon whose credit wee have undertaken this -expedition,</p> - -<p>Which we beseech Almighty God to prosper.”</p> - -<table class="sig"> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><span class="smcap">Rupert</span></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td><span class="smcap">Albermarle</span></td> -</tr><tr> -<td>(signed)</td> -<td><span class="smcap">Craven</span></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td><span class="smcap">G. Carterett</span></td> -</tr><tr> -<td></td> -<td><span class="smcap">J. Hayes</span></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td></td> -<td><span class="smcap">P. Colleton.</span></td> -</tr> -</table> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span></p> - - -<p>A last shout, the tramp of sailors running round the capstans, and the -ships of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England trading to Hudson’s Bay -are off; off to find and found a bigger empire for England than Russia -and Germany, and France, and Spain, and Austria combined.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter VI.</em>—Full details of Radisson’s life prior -to his coming to England, when he was an active explorer of New -France, are to be found in the previous volume, <em>Pathfinders of -the West</em>. The data for that volume came almost exclusively from -the Marine Archives of Paris. The facts of this chapter are drawn -from the Archives of Hudson’s Bay House, London, England, which I -personally searched with the result of almost three hundred foolscap -folio pages of matter pertaining to Radisson, and from the Public -Records Office of London, which I had searched, by a competent person, -on the Stuart Period. It is extraordinary how the Archives of France -and the Archives of England dove-tail and corroborate each other in -every detail regarding Radisson. King Charles’ letter in his favor -is to be found in the Public Records Office, State Papers, Domestic -Series, Entry Book 26. The Admiralty Board Books, No. 15, contain -the correspondence regarding the voyage. The instructions to the -captains—five foolscap pages—are in the S. P. Dom. Carl. II. No. -180. The exact data regarding Radisson’s movements, given in this -chapter, are from his Manuscript Journal in the Bodleian and from the -two petitions which he filed, one to the Company, one to Parliament, -copies of which are in Hudson’s Bay House, London. It is necessary -to give the authorities somewhat explicitly because in the case of -<em>Pathfinders of the West</em>, the <cite>New York Evening Post</cite> -begged readers to consult original sources regarding Radisson. As -original sources are not open to the public, the advice was worth just -exactly the spirit that animated it. However, transcripts of all data -bearing on Radisson will be given to the public with his journals, in -the near future.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1668-1674</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST VOYAGE—RADISSON DRIVEN BACK ORGANIZES -THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AND WRITES HIS JOURNALS OF FOUR VOYAGES—THE -CHARTER AND THE FIRST SHAREHOLDERS—ADVENTURES OF RADISSON ON THE -BAY—THE COMING OF THE FRENCH AND THE QUARREL</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">At last</span>, then, five years from the time they had discovered the Sea of -the North, after baffling disappointments, fruitless efforts and the -despair known only to those who have stood face to face with the Grim -Specter, Ruin, Radisson and Groseillers set sail for Hudson Bay from -Gravesend on June 3, 1668. Radisson was on the big ship <em>Eaglet</em> -with Captain Stannard, Groseillers on <em>The Nonsuch</em> of Boston, -with Captain Gillam.</p> - -<p>Countless hopes and fears must have animated the breasts of the -Frenchmen. It is so with every venture that is based on the unknown. -The very fact that possibilities <em>are</em> unknown gives scope to -unbridled fancy and the wildest hopes; gives scope,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> too, when the -pendulum swings the other way, to deepest distrust. The country boy -trudging along the road with a carpetbag to seek his fortunes in the -city, dreams of the day when he may be a millionaire. By nightfall, he -longs for the monotonous drudgery and homely content and quiet poverty -of the plow.</p> - -<p>So with Radisson and Groseillers. They had brought back 600,000 beaver -pelts overland from Hudson Bay five years before. If they could repeat -the feat, it meant bigger booty than Drake had raided from the Spanish -of the South Seas, for the price of beaver at that time fluctuated -wildly from eight shillings to thirty-five. And who could tell that -they might not find a passage to the South Seas from Hudson Bay? That -old legend of a tide like the ocean on Lake Winnipeg, Radisson had -heard from the Indians, as every explorer was to hear it for a hundred -years. The explanation is very simple to anyone who has sailed on Lake -Winnipeg. The lake is so shallow that an inshore wind lashes the waters -up like a tide. Then sudden calm, or an outshore breeze, leaves the -muddy flats almost bare. I remember being stranded on that lake by such -a shift of wind for twenty-four hours. To the Indians who had never -seen the ocean, the phenomenon seemed like the tide of which the white -man told,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> so Radisson had reported to the Adventurers that the Indians -said the South Sea was only a few weeks’ journey from Hudson Bay.</p> - -<p>Radisson, whose highest hope from boyhood was to be a great explorer, -must have dreamed his dreams as the ships slid along the glassy waters -of the Atlantic westward. Six weeks, ordinarily, it took sailing -vessels to go from the Thames to the mouth of Hudson Straits, but -furious storms—as if the very elements themselves were bent on the -defeat of these two indomitable men—drove their ships apart half way -across the Atlantic. As is often the case, the little ship—Gillam’s -<em>Nonsuch</em>—weathered the hurricane. Now buried under billows -mountain-high, with the yardarms drenched by each wash of the pounding -breakers, now plowing through the cataract of waters, the little -<em>Nonsuch</em> kept her head to the wind, and if a sea swept from stem -to stern, battened hatches and masts naked of sails took no harm. The -staunch craft kept on her sea feet, and was not knocked keel up.</p> - -<p>But <em>The Eaglet</em>, with Radisson, was in bad way. Larger and -ponderous in motion, she could not shift quick to the raging gale. -Blast after blast caught her broadsides. The masts snapped off like -saplings uprooted by storm. A tornado of waters threw the ship on her -side “<em>till we had like to have swamped</em>”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>—relate the old Company -records—and when the storm cleared and the ship righted, behold, of -<em>The Eaglet</em> there is left only the bare hull, with deck boards -and cabin floors sprung in a dozen places. The other ship was out of -sight. Carpenters were set at work to rig the lame vessel up. It was -almost October before the battered hull came crawling limply to her -dock on the Thames. There, Sir James Hayes, Rupert’s secretary, turned -her over to the Admiralty.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_161"> -<img src="images/i_161.jpg" alt="" width="484" height="650"> -<p class="left">Photograph of the copy of Radisson’s Voyages, end of -the third trip on which he discovered Mississippi River, beginning -of the fourth trip on which he discovered the overland route to the -Sea of the North, or Hudson’s Bay. The original of Radisson’s first -four voyages is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, part of the famous -Pepys Collection. The question has been raised is this Radisson’s -handwriting, or that of a copyist, like Rodd and others who did -professional work for Shaftesbury and others of Radisson’s associates? -Specialists on the handwriting and idioms of the period say this is -undoubtedly the work of a foreigner not familiar with the idioms of the -English.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Adversity is a great tester of a man’s mettle. When some men fall -they tumble <em>down</em> stairs. Other men, when they fall, make a -point of falling <em>up</em> stairs. Radisson was of the latter class. -His activity redoubled. The design in the first place had been for -one of the two ships to winter on the bay; the other ship to come -back to England in order to return to the bay with more provisions. -Radisson urged his associates not to leave <em>The Nonsuch</em> in the -lurch. Application was made to the Admiralty for another ship. <em>The -Wavero</em> of the West Indies was granted. Radisson spent the winter -of 1668-69 fitting up this ship and writing the account of his first -four voyages through the wilds of America, “<em>and I hope</em>”—he -concludes the fourth voyage—“<em>to embarke myselfe by ye helpe of God -this fourth year</em>” of coming to England. But <em>The Wavero</em> on -which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> Radisson sailed in March, 1669, proved unseaworthy. She had to -turn back. What was Radisson’s delight to find anchored in the Thames, -<em>The Nonsuch</em>, with his brother-in-law, Groseillers.</p> - -<p>After parting from the disabled <em>Eaglet</em>, <em>The Nonsuch</em> had -driven ahead for Hudson Straits, which she missed by going too far -north to Baffin’s Land, but came to the entrance on the 4th of August. -Owing to the lateness of the season, the straits were free of ice -and <em>The Nonsuch</em> made a quick passage for those days, reaching -Digges’ Island, at the west end of the straits on the 19th of August. -Groseillers and Gillam then headed south for that rendezvous at the -lower end of the bay, where the two Frenchmen had found “a house all -battered with bullets,” five years before, and had set up their own -marks. Slow and careful search of the east coast must have been made, -for <em>The Nonsuch</em> was seven weeks cruising the seven hundred -miles from Digges’ Island to that River Nemisco, which had seemed to -flow from the country of the St. Lawrence or New France. Here they -cast anchor on September 25, naming the river Rupert in honor of their -patron. Beaching the ship on the sand-bars at high tide, the crew threw -logs about her to fend off ice jams and erected slab palisades round -two or three log huts for the winter—a fort named after King Charles.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span></p> - -<p>Weather favored <em>The Nonsuch’s</em> crew. The south end of Hudson Bay -often has snow in October, and nearly always ice is formed by November. -This year, the harbor did not freeze till the 9th of December, but -when the frost did come it was a thing to paralyze these Englishmen -used to a climate where a pocketful of coal heats a house. The -silent pine forests, snow-padded and snow-wreathed; the snow-cones -and snow-mushrooms and snow-plumes bending the great branches with -weight of snow like feathers; the icy particles that floated in the -air; ice fog, diamond-sharp in sunshine and starlight but ethereal -as mist, morning and evening; the whooping and romping and stamping -and cannon-shot reports of the frost at night when the biggest trees -snapped brittle and the earth seemed to groan with pain; the mystic -mock-suns that shone in the heavens foreboding storm, and the hoot -and shout and rush of the storm itself through the forests like the -Indians’ Thunder Bird on the wings of the wind; the silences, the awful -silences, that seemed to engulf human presence as the frost-fog closed -mistily through the aisled forests—all these things were new and -wondrous to the English crew. It was—as Gillam’s journal records—as -if all life “had been frozen to death.” And then the marvel of the -frost world, frost that fringed your eyelashes and hair<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> with breath as -you spoke, and drew ferns on the glazed parchment of the port windows, -and created two inches of snow on the walls inside the ship! Snow -fell—fell—fell, day after day, week after week, muffling, dreamy, -hypnotic as the frost sleep.</p> - -<p>But these things were no new marvels to Groseillers. The busy Frenchman -was off to the woods on snowshoes in search of the Indians—a search -in which a twig snapped off short, old tepee poles standing bare, a -bit of moose skin blowing from a branch, deadfall traps, rabbit snares -of willow twigs—were his sole guides. True wood-loper, he found the -Ojibways’ camps and they brought down their furs to trade with him in -spring. I don’t know what ground there is for it, but Groseillers had -the reputation for being a very hard trader. Perhaps it was that the -cargo of 600,000 pelts had been brought back when he had gone North -with only two canoe loads of goods. As far as I could ascertain from -the old records, the scale of trade at the time was half a pound of -beads, one beaver; one kettle, one beaver; one pound shot, one beaver; -five pounds sugar, one beaver; one pound tobacco, one beaver; one -gallon brandy (diluted?), four beaver; one blanket, six beaver; two -awls, one beaver; twelve buttons, one beaver; twenty fishhooks, one -beaver; twenty flints, one beaver; one gun, twelve beaver; one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span> pistol, -four beaver; eight bells, one beaver. At this stage, trade as barter -was not known. The white man dressed in gold lace and red velvets -pompously presented his goods to the Indian. The Indian had previously, -with great palaver, presented his furs to the trader. Any little -difference of opinion as to values might be settled later by a present -from the trader of drugged liquor to put the malcontent to sleep, or a -scalping raid on the part of the Indian.</p> - -<p>As spring came, life awakened on the bay. Wild geese darkened the -sky, the shrill honk, honk, calling the sailors’ notice to the long -curved lines marshaled like armies with leaders and scouts, circling, -maneuvering, filing north. Whiskey jays became noisier and bolder than -in winter. Red bills alighted in flocks at the crew’s camp fires, and -a constant drumming told of partridge hiding in underbrush the color -of his own plumage. There was no lack of sport to Gillam’s crew. -The ice went out with the rush of a cataract in May, and by June it -was blistering hot, with the canaries and warblers and blue jays of -Southern climes nesting in the forests of this far Northern bay. By -June, <em>The Nonsuch</em> was ship-shape for homeward voyage, and the -adventurers sailed for England, coming into the Thames about the time -Radisson was driven back on <em>The Wavero</em>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span></p> - -<p>There is no record of what furs Groseillers and Gillam brought back, -doubtless for the reason that the proceeds of their sale had to satisfy -those creditors, who had outfitted the ships and to purchase new ships -for future voyages. But the next move was significant. With great -secrecy, application was made to King Charles II for a royal charter -granting “the Gentlemen Adventurers Trading to Hudson’s Bay” monopoly -of trade and profits for all time to come.</p> - -<p>In itself, the charter is the purest piece of feudalism ever -perpetrated on America, a thing so alien to the thought of modern -democracy and withal destined to play such a necessary part in the -development of northern empire that it is worth examining. In the first -place, though it was practically deeding away half America—namely -all of modern Canada except New France, and the most of the Western -States beyond the Mississippi—practically, I say, in its workings; the -charter was purely a royal favor, depending on that idea of the Stuarts -that the earth was not the Lord’s, but the Stuarts, to be disposed of -as they wished.</p> - -<p>The applicants for the charter were Prince Rupert, the Duke of -Albermarle, the Earl of Craven, Lord Arlington, Lord Ashley, Sir -John Robinson, Sir Robert Viner, Sir Peter Colleton, Sir Edward<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -Hungerford, Sir Paul Neele, Sir John Griffith, Sir Philip Carterett, -Sir James Hayes, John Kirke, Frances Millington, William Prettyman, -John Fenn and John Portman. “Whereas,” runs the charter, “these have -at their own great cost and charges undertaken an expedition for -Hudson’s Bay for the discovery of a new passage to the South Sea and -for trade, and have humbly besought us to incorporate them and grant -unto them and their successors the whole trade and commerce of all -those seas, straits, bays, rivers, creeks and sounds in whatsoever -latitude that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson’s -Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon -the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays, lakes, rivers, -creeks and sounds not now actually possessed by the subjects of any -other Christian State, know ye that we have given, granted, ratified -and confirmed” the said grant. There follow the official name of the -company, “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading -with Hudson’s Bay,” directions for the appointment of a governor and a -governing committee—Prince Rupert to be the first governor—Robinson, -Viner, Colleton, Hayes, Kirke, Millington and Portman to be the first -committee, to which elections are to be made each November. Their -territory is to be known as Rupert’s Land.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> Of this territory, they are -to be “true and absolute lords” paying as token of allegiance to the -King when he shall happen to enter these dominions “two elks and two -black beaver.”</p> - -<p>Permission is given to build forts, employ mariners, use firearms, pass -laws and impose punishments. Balboa has been laughed at ever since he -crossed Panama to the Pacific for claiming Heaven and earth, air and -water, “from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic” for Spain; but what -shall we say of a charter that goes on royally to add, “and furthermore -of our own ample and abundant grace we have granted not only the whole, -entire and only liberty of trade to and from the territories aforesaid; -but also the whole and entire trade to and from all Havens, Bays, -Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas unto which they shall find entrance -by water or land out of the territories aforesaid ... and to, and -with, all other nations adjacent to the said territories, which is not -granted to any other of our subjects?”</p> - -<p>In other words, if trade should lead these Adventurers far afield from -Hudson Bay where no other discoverers had been—the territory was to be -theirs. For years, it was contended that the charter covered only the -streams tributary to Hudson Bay, that is to the headwaters of Churchill -and Saskatchewan and Moose and Rupert Rivers, but if the charter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> was -to be valid at all, it was to be valid in all its provision and the -company might extend its possessions indefinitely. And that is what -it did—from Hudson Bay to Alaska, and from Alaska to California. The -debonair King had presented his friends with three-quarters of America.</p> - -<p>All other traders are forbidden by the charter to frequent the -territory on pain of forfeiture of goods and ships. All other persons -are forbidden to inhabit the territory without the consent of the -Company. Adventurers at the General Court in November for elections -are to have votes according to their stock, for every hundred pounds -one vote. The Company is to appoint local governors for the territory -with all the despotic power of little kings. In case of misdemeanors, -law-breakers may be brought before this local governor or home to -England for trial, sentence, and punishment. The Shah of Persia had -not more despotic power in his lands than these local governors. Most -amazing of all, the Company is to have power to make war against other -“Prince or People whatsoever that are not Christians,” “for the benefit -of the said company and their trade.” Should other English intrude on -the territory, the Company is explicitly granted the right to seize and -expel them and impose such punishment as the offense may warrant. If -delinquents appeal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> against such sentence, the Company may send them -home to England for trial. Admirals, judges, sheriffs, all officers of -the law in England are charged by the charter to “aid, favor, help and -assist” the Company by “land and sea....” signed at Westminster, May 2, -1670.</p> - -<p>We of to-day may well smile at such a charter; but we must remember -that the stones which lie buried in the clay below the wall are just -as essential to the superstructure as the visible foundation. Let us -grant that the charter was an absurd fiat creating a tyranny. It was an -essential first step on the trail that was to blaze a way through the -wilderness to democracy.</p> - -<p>In the charter lay the secret of all the petty pomp—little kings -in tinsel—with which the Company’s underling officers ruled their -domain for two hundred years. In the charter lay the secret of all the -Company’s success and all its failure; of its almost paternal care of -the Indians and of its outrageous, unblushing, banditti warfare against -rivals; of its one-sidedness in driving a bargain—the true caste idea -that the many are created for exploitation by the few—of its almost -royal generosity when a dependent fell by the way—the old monarchical -idea that a king is responsible for the well-being of his subjects, -when other great commercial monopolists<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> cast their useless dependents -off like old clothes, or let them rot in poverty. Given all the facts -of the case, any man can play the prophet. With such a charter, -believing in its validity as they did in their own existence, it is not -surprising the Adventurers of Hudson Bay ran the magnificent career the -Company has had, and finally—ran their privileges aground.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Thus, then, was the Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated. Its first stock -book of 1667 before incorporation, shows the Duke of York to have £300 -of stock; Prince Rupert, £470; Carterett, £770 in all; Albermarle, -£500; Craven, £300; Arlington, £200; Shaftsbury, £600; Viner, £300; -Colleton, £300; Hungerford, £300; Sir James Hayes, £1800; Sir John -Kirke, £300; Lady Margaret Drax, £300—with others, in all a capital -of £10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It -may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett -and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships -from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little -actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were -impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after -the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on -credit by those merchants who are credited with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> shares. At least, -the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years, -gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young, -or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who advance money to Radisson -and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these -shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and -Stannard, the captains, are credited with £160 and £280 in the venture, -as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off -for the bay with three ships, <em>The Wavero</em> under Captain Newland, -<em>The Shaftsbury</em> under Captain Shepperd, <em>The Prince Rupert</em> -under Gillam, in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the -Admiralty. Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary; -Peter Romulus, the French apothecary, as surgeon at £20 a year. While -the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took the -small boat <em>Wavero</em> along the south shore westward, apparently -seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose, -and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named -after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson, -where Radisson himself erected<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> the English King’s Arms. Only a boat of -shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy flats and -bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous drive of ice -stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by Radisson to -have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose was Albany -River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the building of -a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from Moose, marked -where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson Bay. All -this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could be -explored only by anchoring <em>The Wavero</em> off shore and approaching -the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was -an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs -from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present. -Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to -hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and -seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit -to the Company. North of Henrietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground. -Button and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its -two magnificent harbors—Nelson and Hayes River—taking its name from -Button’s seaman, Nelson, who was buried here.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> Groseillers wintered on -the bay but Radisson came home to England on <em>The Prince Rupert</em> -with Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. -This year, the Company held its meetings at Prince Rupert’s lodgings in -Whitehall.</p> - -<p>In the summer of 71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before, -to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred -muskets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade. -Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 1771-72 on -the bay, there was no mistaking the fact—not so many Indians were -bringing furs to Rupert River for trade. Radisson reported conditions -when he returned to London in the fall of ’72, and he linked himself -more closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the -daughter of Sir John Kirke.</p> - -<p>“It is ordered,” read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, “that -<em>The Prince Rupert</em> arriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not -stire from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to London with the -report.” The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from -Canada were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The -Company decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddell, for the -west coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in ’74, a council<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span> -was held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the -ships were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor -Bayly to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful -of divided authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length -consented to leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. -When he came back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by -an emissary from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a -passport from Frontenac recommending him to the English Governor, and -with personal letters for the two Frenchmen.</p> - -<p>Bayly’s rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports -from a friendly nation compelled him to do, but he flared out in open -accusations against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion -with rivals to the Company’s trade. A thousand fictions cling round -this part of Radisson’s career. It is said that the two Frenchmen -knocked down and were knocked down by the English Governor, that spies -were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that -Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped -through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the -Jesuit.</p> - -<p>All these are childish fictions directly contradicted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> by the facts of -the case as stated in the official minutes of the Company. No doubt -the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed, -but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September 17, -of William Lyddell on <em>The Prince Rupert</em>, governor-elect for the -west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole -case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was -desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had -found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best -years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited -him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted -proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but -financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a -partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed £100 a -year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter -of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were -the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct -from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment -of all debts and a gratuity of some £400 to begin life anew if he would -go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson -quit the Company’s services in disgust. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> was the old story of the -injustice he had suffered in Quebec—he, the creator of the wealth, was -to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce -his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of -October in 1674.</p> - -<p>As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an -international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from -the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on -the scope and influence and power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the -history of America.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter VII.</em>—For authorities on this chapter see -Chapters VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter -will clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson in -<em>Pathfinders of the West</em>, it was necessary to state frankly that -his movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to -locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the -official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals -of Hudson’s Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be -found after Chapter VIII and IX. One point in <em>Pathfinders of the -West</em>, all authorities differ as to the time when Radisson left -the company, Albanel’s Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, -Gorst’s record of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the -date as late as 1676. My examinations of the Hudson’s Bay records show -that the rupture occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is -Albanel’s Relation 1672? The passport from Frontenac, which Albanel -delivered to Bayly—now on record in Hudson’s Bay Company papers—is -dated, Quebec, Oct. 7, 1673. If the passport only left Quebec in -October, 1673, and Albanel reached the bay in August, 1674—there is -only one conclusion: the date of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two -years. One can easily understand how this would occur in a journal -made up of scraps of writing jotted down in canoes, in tepees, -everywhere and anywhere, and then passed by couriers from hand to hand -till it reached the Cramoisy printers of Paris.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_179"> -<img src="images/i_179.jpg" alt="" width="943" height="600"> -<p class="caption">Rupert House, Rupert River, James Bay, as it is To-day.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>A letter to the Secretary of State, dated Sept. 25, 1675, relates: -“This day came <em>The Shaftsbury Pink</em> ffrom Hudson <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span>Baye. Capt. -Shopard, ye capt. tiles me thay found a franch Jesuit thare that did -endeavor to convert ye Indians & persuad them not to trade with ye -English, for wh. reason they have brought him away with them.... Capt. -Gillam we expect to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>Later: “This day is arrived Capt. Gillam. I was on board of him and -he tells me they were forced to winter there and spend all their -Provisions. They have left only four men to keep possession of the -place. I see the French Jesuit is a little ould man.”</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1670-1870</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">“GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND”—LORDS OF THE OUTER MARCHES—TWO -CENTURIES OF COMPANY RULE—SECRET OATHS—THE USE OF WHISKEY—THE -MATRIMONIAL OFFICES—THE PART THE COMPANY PLAYED IN THE GAME OF -INTERNATIONAL JUGGLING—HOW TRADE AND VOYAGES WERE CONDUCTED</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Just</span> where the world’s traffic converges to that roaring maelstrom in -front of the Royal Exchange, London—on Lime Street, off Leadenhall -Street—stands an unpretentious gray stone building, the home of -a power that has held unbroken sway over the wilds of America for -two-and-a-half centuries. It is the last of those old companies granted -to royal favorites of European courts for the partitioning of America.</p> - -<p>To be sure, when Charles II signed away sole rights of trade and -possession to all countries bordering on the passage supposed to lead -from the Atlantic to the South Sea, he had not the faintest notion that -he was giving to “<em>the Gentlemen Adventurers of England<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> Trading on -Hudson’s Bay</em>,” three-quarters of a new continent. Prince Rupert, -Albermarle, Shaftsbury, the Carteretts and half a dozen others had -helped him back to his throne, and with a Stuart’s good-natured belief -that the world was made for the king’s pleasure, he promptly proceeded -to carve up his possessions for his friends. Only one limitation was -specified in the charter of 1670—the lands must be those <em>not</em> -already claimed by any Christian power.</p> - -<p>But Adventurers on booty bound would sail over the edge of the earth -if it were flat, and when the Hudson’s Bay Company found, instead of -a passage to the fabulous South Sea, a continental watershed whence -mighty rivers rolled north, east, south, over vaster lands than those -island Adventurers had ever dreamed—was it to turn back because these -countries didn’t precisely border on Hudson’s Bay? The Company had been -chartered as Lords of the Outer Marches, and what were Outer Marches -for, but to march forward? For a hundred years, the world heard very -little of these wilderness Adventurers except that they were fighting -for dear life against the French raiders, but when Canada passed to the -English, Hudson’s Bay canoes were threading the labyrinthine waterways -of lake and swamp and river up the Saskatchewan, down the Athabasca, -over the mountain passes to the Columbia. Hudson’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> Bay fur brigades -were sweeping up the Ottawa to Abbittibbi, to the Assiniboine, to -MacKenzie River, to the Arctic Circle. Hudson’s Bay buffalo runners -hunted the plains from the Red River to the Missouri. Hudson’s Bay -Rocky Mountain brigades—one, two, three hundred horsemen, followed -by a ragged rabble of Indian retainers—yearly scoured every valley -between Alaska and Mexico in regular platoons, so much territory -assigned to each leader—Oregon to McLoughlin, the Snake Country to -Ogden, the Umpqua to Black or McLeod, the Buffalo Country to Ross -or some other, with instructions not to leave a beaver alive on the -trail wherever there were rival American traders. Hudson’s Bay vessels -coasted from the Columbia to Alaska. The Adventurers could not dislodge -Baranoff from Sitka, but they explored the Yukon and the Pelly, and the -official books show record of a farm where San Francisco now stands. -Beginning with a score of men, the Company to-day numbers as many -servants as the volunteer army of Canada. Railroads to Eastern ports -now do the work of the four or five armed frigates that used yearly to -come for the furs, but two company ships still carry provisions through -the ice floes of Hudson’s Bay, and on every navigable river of the -inland North, floats the flag of the Company’s steamers. The brigades<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -of fur canoes can yet be seen at remote posts like Abbittibbi; and -the dog trains still tinkle across the white wastes bringing down the -midwinter furs from the North.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The old Company has the unique distinction of being the only instance -of feudalism transplanted from Europe to America, which has flourished -in the new soil. Other royal companies of Virginia, of Maryland, of -Quebec, became part of the new democracy. Only the Hudson’s Bay Company -remains. The charter which by “the Grace of God” and the stroke of a -pen gave away three-quarters of America—was, itself, pure feudalism. -Oaths of secrecy, implicit obedience of every servant to the man -immediately above him—the canoemen to the steersman, the trader to the -chief factor, the chief factor to the governor, the governor to the -king—dependence of the Company on the favor of the royal will—all -these were pure feudalism. Prince Rupert was the first governor. The -Duke of York, afterwards King James, was second. Marlborough, the great -general, came third; and Lord Strathcona, the present governor, as High -Commissioner for Canada, stands in the relation of ambassador from the -colony to the mother country. Always the Company has been under the -favor of the court.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span></p> - -<p>Formerly, every shareholder had to make solemn oath: “<em>I doe sweare -to bee True & faithfull to ye Govern’r & Comp’y of Adventurers of -England Trading into Hudson’s Bay & to my power will support and -maintain the said comp’y & the privileges of ye same; all bye laws -and orders not repeated which have been or shall be made by ye said -Govern’r & Company I will to my best knowledge truly observe and keepe: -ye secrets of ye said company, which shall be given me in charge to -conceale, I will not disclose; and during the joint stock of ye said -comp’y I will not directly nor indirectly trade to ye limitts of ye -said company’s charter without leave of the Govern’r, the Deputy -Govern’r and committee, So help me God.</em>”</p> - -<p>A similar oath was required from the governor. Once a year, usually -in November, the shareholders met in a general session called the -General Court, to elect officers—a governor, a deputy governor, and -a committee which was to transact details of business as occasion -required. Each officer was required to take oath of secrecy and -fidelity. This committee, it was, that appointed the captains to the -vessels, the men of the crews, the local governors for the fur posts -on the bay, and the chief traders, who were to go inland to barter. -From all of these, oaths and bonds of fidelity were required. He, who -violated his oath, was liable to forfeiture of wages<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span> and stock in -the Company. In all the minute books for two-and-a-half centuries, -both of the committee and the General Court which I examined, there -were records of only one director dismissed for breaking his oath, and -two captains discharged for illicit trade. Compared to the cut-throat -methods of modern business, whose promise is not worth the breath that -utters it and whose perjuries having become so common, people have -ceased to blush, the old, slow-going Company has no need to be ashamed.</p> - -<p>Each officer in his own sphere was as despotic as a czar, but the -despotism was founded on good will. When my Lord Preston did the -Company a good turn by sending Radisson back from Paris to London, -the committee of 1684 orders the warehouse keeper “<em>to deliver the -furrier as many black beaver skins as will make my lord a fine covering -for his bedd</em>”—not a bribe <em>before</em> the good turn, but a -token of good will <em>afterwards</em>. When Mr. Randolph of New England -arrests Ben Gillam for poaching on the Company’s preserve up on Hudson -Bay, the committee orders a piece of plate to the value of £10 for Mr. -Randolph. When King Charles and the Duke of York interceded with France -to forbid interlopers, “<em>two pair of beaver stockings are ordered for -the King and the Duke of York</em>;” and the committee of April, 1684, -instructs “<em>Sir James Hayes do attend His Royal Highness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> at Windsor -and present him his dividend in gold in a faire embroidered purse</em>.” -For whipping “<em>those vermin, those enemies of all mankind, the -French</em>,” the Right Honorable Earl John Churchill (Marlborough) is -presented with a cat-skin counterpane.</p> - -<p>The General Court and weekly committee meetings were held at the very -high altars of feudalism—in the White Tower built by William the -Conqueror, or at Whitehall where lived the Stuarts, or at the Jerusalem -Coffee House, where scions of nobility met the money lenders and where -the Company seems to have arranged advances on the subscribed stock -to outfit each year’s ships. Often, the committee meetings wound up -with orders for the secretary “<em>to bespeake a cask of canary for ye -governor</em>,” or “<em>a hogshead of claret for ye captains sailing from -Gravesend</em>,” to whom “<em>ye committee wished a God Speed, a good -wind and a faire saile</em>.”</p> - -<p>When the Stuart line gave place to a new régime, the Company hastened -to King William at Kensington, and as the minutes of Oct. 1, 1690, -record—“<em>having the Honour to be introduced into His Majesty’s -clossett ... the Deputy-Governor Sir Edward Dering delivered himself -in these words.... May it Please your Majesty—Your Majesty’s most -loyal and dutifull subjects, the Hudson’s Bay Company begg leave -most humbly to congratulate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> your Majesty’s Happy Returne home with -honours and safety. And wee doo daily pray to Heaven (that Hath -God wonderfully preserved your Royall person) that in all your -undertakings, your Majesty may bee as victorious as Caesar, as Beloved -as Titus, and (after all) have the glorious long reign and peacefull -end of Augustus.... We doo desire also most humbly to present to your -Majesty a dividend of three hundred guineas upon three hundred pounds -stock in the Hudson’s Bay Company now Rightfully devolved to your -Majesty. And altho we have been the greatest sufferers of any Company, -from these common enemies off all mankind, the French, yet when your -Majesty’s just arms shall have given repose to all Christendom, wee -also shall enjoy our share of those great Benefitts and doo not doubt -but to appeare often with this golden fruit in our hands—And the -Deputy-Governor upon his knees humbly presented to his Majesty, the -purse of gold ... and then the Deputy-Governor and all the rest had the -honour to kiss His Majesty’s Hand</em>.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Holding its privilege by virtue of royal favor, the Company was -expected to advance British dominion abroad and resist all enemies. For -exactly one hundred years (1682-1782) it fought the ground inch by inch -against the French. From 1698, agents were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> kept in Russia and Holland -and Germany to watch the fur markets there, and when the question of -designating the bounds between Russian Alaska and British Columbia, -came up between England and Russia, it was on the Hudson’s Bay Company -that the British Government relied for the defense of its case. -Similarly, when the United States took over Louisiana, the British -Government called on the Company in 1807 to state what the limits ought -to be between Louisiana and British America. But perhaps the most -notoriously absurd part the Company ever played internationally was in -connection with what is known as “the Oregon question.” The bad feeling -over that imbroglio need not be recalled. The modern Washington and -Oregon—broadly speaking, regions of greater wealth than France—were -at stake. The astonishing thing, the untold inside history of the -whole episode was that after insisting on joint occupancy for years -and refusing to give up her claims, England suddenly kow-towed flat -without rhyme or reason. The friendship of the Company’s chief factor, -McLoughlin, for the incoming American settlers of Oregon, has usually -been given as the explanation. Some truth there may be in this, for -the settlers’ tented wagon was always the herald of the hunter’s end, -but the real reason is good enough to be registered as melodrama<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> to -the everlasting glory of a martinet officer’s ignorance. Aberdeen was -the British minister who had the matter in hand. His brother, Captain -Gordon in the Pacific Squadron was ordered to take a look over the -disputed territory. In vain the fur traders of Oregon and Vancouver -Island spread the choicest game on his table. He could not have his -English bath. He could not have the comforts of his English bed. He had -bad luck deerstalking and worse luck fishing. Asked if he did not think -the mountains magnificent, his response was that he would not give the -bleakest hill in Scotland for all these mountains in a heap. Meanwhile, -the Hudson’s Bay Company was wasting candle light in London preparing -the British case for the retention of Oregon. Matters hung fire. Should -it be joint occupancy, “fifty-four-forty or fight,” or compromise? -Aberdeen’s brother on leave home was called in.</p> - -<p>“Oregon? Oregon?” Yes, Gordon remembered Oregon. Been there fishing -last year, and “the fish wouldn’t rise to the fly worth a d——! Let -the old country go!” This, in a country where fish might be scooped out -in tubfuls without either fly or line!</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The committeemen meeting to transact the details of business were, -of course, paid a small amount,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> but coming together in the court, -itself, or in the jolly chambers of a gay gallant like Prince Rupert, -or at the Three Tunns, or at the Golden Anchor, great difficulty was -experienced in calling the gentlemen to order, and the law was early -passed, “<em>yt whensoever the committee shall be summoned, yt one hour -after ye Deputy-Governor turns up ye glass, whosoever does not appear -before the glass runs out, shall lose his committee money</em>.” The -“<em>glass</em>,” it may be explained, was the hourglass, not the one -for the “cask of canary.” Later on, fines were imposed to be put in -the Poor Box, which was established as the minutes explain, “a token -of gratitude for God’s great blessing to the company,” the proceeds -to go to old pensioners, to those wounded in service, or to wives and -children of the dead.</p> - -<p>The great events of the year to the committee were the dispatching -of the boats, the home-coming of the cargoes and the public sales -of the furs. Between these events, long recesses were taken without -any evidence that the Company existed but a quiet distribution of -dividends, or a courier spurring post-haste from Southampton with word -that one of the Company’s ships had been captured by the French, the -Company’s cargo sold, the Company’s ship sunk, the Company’s servants -left rotting in some dungeon waiting for ransom. From January<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> to -April, all was bustle preparing the ships, two in the first years, -later three and four and five armed frigates, to sail to the bay. Only -good ice-goers were chosen, built of staunchest oak or ironwood, high -and narrow at the prow to ride the ice and cut the floes by sheer -weight. Then captains and crews were hired, some captains sailing for -the Company as long as forty years. Goods for trade were stowed in -the hold, traps, powder, guns, hatchets, blankets, beads, rope; and -the committee orders the secretary “<em>to bespeake a good rat catcher -to kill the vermin that injure our beaver</em>,” though whether this -member of the crew was biped or quadruped does not appear. A surgeon -accompanied each ship. The secret signals left in duplicate with the -posts on the bay the year before were then given to the captains, for -if any ship approached the bay without these signals the forts had -orders to fire their cannon at the intruder, cut the harbor buoys, put -out all lights and do all they could to cause the interlopers’ wreck. -If taken by pirates, all signals were to be thrown overboard, and the -captains were secretly instructed how high a ransom they might in the -name of the Company offer their captors. On the day of sailing, usually -in early June, the Committee went down on horse-back to Gravesend. -Lockers were searched for goods that might be hidden for clandestine -trade,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span> for independent trade, even to the extent of one muskrat, the -Company would no more tolerate than diamond miners will allow a private -deal in their mine. These searchers examined the ships for hidden furs -when she came home, just as rigorously as the customs officers examine -modern baggage on any Atlantic liner. The same system of search was -exercised among the workers on the furs of the Company’s warehouses, -the men being examined when they entered in the morning, and when they -left at night. For this, the necessity was and is yet plain. Rare -silver fox skins have been sold at auction for £200, £300, £400, even -higher for a fancy skin. Half a dozen such could be concealed in a -winter overcoat. That the searchers could no more prevent clandestine -trade than the customs can smuggling—goes without saying. Illicit -trade was the pest of the committeeman’s life. Captains and crews, -traders and factors and directors were alike dismissed and prosecuted -for it. The Company were finally driven to demanding the surrender of -even personal clothing, fur coats, mits, caps, from returning servants. -On examination, this was always restored.</p> - -<p>The search over, wages were paid to the seamen with an extra half-crown -for good luck. The committee then shook hands with the crew. A parting -cheer—and the boats would be gone for six months,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> perhaps forever, -for wrecks were frequent, so frequent that they are a story of heroism -and hardship by themselves. Nor have the inventions of modern science -rendered the dangers of the ice floes less. There are fewer Hudson’s -Bay Company ships among the floes now than in the middle period of its -existence, but half a dozen terrible wrecks mark its latter history, -one but a few years ago, when a $300,000 cargo went to the bottom; the -captain instead of being dismissed was presented by Lloyds with gold -plate for preventing another wreck in a similar jam the next year. -Pirates, were, of course, keener to waylay the ships home-bound with -furs than out-going, but armed convoys were usually granted by the -Government at least as far as the west Irish coast.</p> - -<p>One of the quaintest customs that I found in the minute books was -regarding the home-coming ships. The money, that had accrued from sales -during the ships’ absence, was kept in an iron box in the warehouse on -Fenchurch Street. It ranged in amount from £2,000 to £11,000. To this, -only the governor and deputy-governor had the keys. Banking in the -modern sense of the word was not begun till 1735. When the ships came -in, the strong box was hauled forth and the crews paid.</p> - -<p>After the coming of the cargoes the sales of the furs were held in -December, or March, by public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> auction if possible, but in years when -war demoralized trade, by private contract. This was the climax of the -year to the fur trader. Even during the century when the French raiders -swept the bay, an average of ten thousand beaver a year was brought -home. Later, otter and mink and marten and ermine became valuable. -These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’ hoofs and whale blubber -made up the lists of the winter sales. Before the days of newspapers, -the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange and sales held “by candle” -in lieu of auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle being lighted, pins -stuck in at intervals along the shaft, and bids shouted till the light -burned out. One can guess with what critical caress the fur fanciers -ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver fox, blowing open the -fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt had been damaged -in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from the fur world -meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it anyway, this creature -rare as twentieth century radium, that was neither blue fox nor gray, -neither cross nor black? Was it the black fox changing his winter coat -for summer dress just caught at the moment by the trapper, or the same -fellow changing his summer pelt from silver to black for winter? Was it -a turning of the black hairs to silver from old age, trapped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> luckily -just before old age had robbed the fur of its gloss? Was it senility -or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a Newton or a -Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from Royal Society -and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at the coffee -houses, not one could explain the silver fox. Or was the soul of the -fur trader, like the motto painted on his coat of arms by John Pinto -for thirty shillings, in December, 1679—<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Pro Pelle Cutem</i>—not -above the value of a beaver skin?</p> - -<p>Terse business methods of to-day, where the sales are advertised in a -newspaper and afterward held apart from the goods, have robbed them of -their old-time glamor, for the sale was to the city merchant what the -circus is to the country boy, the event of the year. By the committee -of Nov. 8, 1680, “<em>Sir James Hayes is desired to choose 3 doz. -bottles of sack & 3 doz. of claret to be given the buyers at the sale -& a dinner to be spoke at the Stellyarde, Mr. Stone to bespeake a good -dish of fish, a lione of veale, 2 pullets and 4 ducks.</em>”</p> - -<p>In early days when the Company had the field to itself, and sent out -only a score or two of men in two small ships, £20,000 worth of beaver -were often sold in a year, so that after paying back money advanced for -outfit and wages, the Company was able to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> declare a dividend of 50 per -cent. on stock that had been twice trebled. Then came the years of the -conflict with France—causing a loss in forts and furs of £100,543. -Though small cargoes of beaver were still brought home, returns were -swamped in the expenses of the fight. No dividends were paid for twenty -years. The capital stock was all out as security for loans, and the -private fortunes of directors pledged to keep the tradesmen clamoring -for payment of outfits quiet. Directors borrowed money on their own -names for the payment of the crews, and the officers of the Company, -governors, chief factors and captains were paid in stock. Then came -the peace of 1713 and a century’s prosperity, when sales jumped from -£20,000 to £30,000 and £70,000 a year. In five years all debts were -paid, but the Company had learned a lesson. To hold its ground, it -must strengthen grip. Instead of two small sloops, four and five armed -frigates were sent out with crews of thirty and forty and sixty men. -Eight men used to be deemed sufficient to winter at a fur post. Thirty -and forty and sixty were now kept at each post, the number of posts -increased, some of them built and manned like beleaguered fortresses, -and that forward march begun across America which only ended on the -borders of the Pacific and the confines of Mexico. Though the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> returns -were now so large from the yearly cargo, dividends never went higher -than 20 per cent., fell as low as six, and hardly averaged above eight.</p> - -<p>Then came the next great struggle of the Company for its life—against -the North-West Company in Canada and the American traders in the -Western States. Sales fell as low as £2,000. Oddly enough to-day, with -its monopoly of exclusive trade long since surrendered to the Canadian -Government, its charter gone, free traders at liberty to come or go, -and populous cities spread over two-thirds of its old stamping ground, -the sales of the Company yield as high returns as in its palmiest days.</p> - -<p>The reason is this:</p> - -<p>It was only in regions where there were rival traders, or where -colonization was bound to come, as in the Western States, that the fur -brigades waged a war of extermination against the beaver. Elsewhere, -north of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca, where cold must forever bar -out the settler and leave the hunter in undisturbed possession of his -game preserve, the Company acted as a nursery for the fur-bearing -animals. Indians were taught not to kill in summer, not to kill the -young, to leave the mother untouched. Tales are told—and the tales -are perfectly true—of Hudson’s Bay fur traders taking a particularly -long-barreled old musket standing it on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span> the ground and ordering the -poor, deluded Indian to pile furs to the top before he could have the -gun; but to make these tales entirely true it should be added that the -furs were muskrat and rabbit killed out of season not worth a penny -apiece in the London market and only taken to keep the Indians going -till a year of good hunting came. When arraigned before a committee -of the House of Commons, in 1857, charged with putting an advance -of 50 per cent. on all goods traded to the Indians, and with paying -ridiculously small prices for the rare skins in proportion to what -they had paid for the poor, the Company frankly acknowledged both -facts, but it was proved that 33 per cent. of the advance represented -expenses of carriage to the interior. As for the other charge, the -Company contended that it was wiser to take many skins that were -absolutely worthless and buy the valuable pelts at a moderate price; -otherwise, the Indians would die from want in bad years, and in good -years kill off the entire supply of the rare fur-bearing animals. Since -the surrender of the monopoly, countless rival traders have invaded -the hunting grounds of the Company. None has yet been able to wean the -Indians away from the old Company. It is a question if the world shows -another example of such a long-lived feudalism.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span></p> - -<p>Though a Hudson’s Bay servant could not take as much as one beaver -skin for himself, every man afield had as keen an interest in the -total returns as the shareholders in London. This was owing to the -bounty system. To encourage the servants and prevent temptations to -dishonesty, the Company paid bounty on every score (20) of made beaver -to captains, factors, traders, and trappers, in amounts ranging from -three shillings to sixpence a score. Latterly, this system has given -place to larger salaries and direct shareholding on the part of the -servants, who rise in the service.</p> - -<p>A change has also taken place in methods of barter. Up to 1820, beaver -was literally coin of the realm. Mink, marten, ermine, silver fox, -all were computed as worth so much or so many fractions of beaver. -A roll of tobacco, a pound of tea, a yard of blazing-red flannel, a -powderhorn, a hatchet, all were measured and priced as worth so many -beaver. This was the Indian’s coinage, but this, too, has given way to -modern methods, though the old system may perhaps be traced among the -far Northern tribes. The account system was now used, so much being -consigned to each factor, for which he was responsible. The trader, -in turn, advanced the Indian whatever he needed for a yearly outfit, -charging it against his name. This was repaid by the year’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> hunt. If -the hunt fell short of the amount, the Indians stood in debt to the -Company. This did not in the least prevent another advance for the -next year. If the hunt exceeded the debt, the Indian might draw either -cash or goods to the full amount or let the Company stand in his debt, -receiving coins made from the lead of melted tea chests with 1, 2, 3 or -4 <em>B</em>—beaver—stamped in the lead, and the mystic letters N. B., -A. R., Y. F., E. M., C. R., H. H., or some other, meaning New Brunswick -House, Albany River, York Fort, East Main, Churchill River, Henley -House—names of the Company’s posts on or near the bay. And these coins -have in turn been supplanted by modern money.</p> - -<p>One hears much of the Indians’ slavery to the Company owing to the -debts for these advances, but any one who knows the Indians’ infinite -capacity for lounging in idleness round the fort as long as food lasts, -must realize that the Company had as much trouble exacting the debt as -the Indian could possibly have in paying it.</p> - -<p>A more serious charge used to be leveled against the fur traders—the -wholesale use of liquor by which an Indian could be made to give away -his furs or sell his soul. Without a doubt, where opposition traders -were encountered—Americans west of the Mississippi, Nor’Westers on -the Saskatchewan,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> French south of the bay, Russians in Alaska—liquor -and laudanum, bludgeon and bribe were plied without stint. Those days -are long past. For his safety’s sake, the fur trader had to relinquish -the use of liquor, and for at least a century the strictest rules have -prohibited it in trade, the old Russian company and the Hudson’s Bay -binding each other not to permit it. And I have heard traders say that -when trouble arose at the forts the first thing done by the Company was -to split open the kegs in the fort and run all liquor on the ground.</p> - -<p>The charge, however, is a serious one against the Company’s past, -and I searched the minutes for the exact records on the worst year. -In 1708, conflict was at its height against the French. The highest -record of liquor sent out for two hundred servants was one thousand -gallons—an average of five gallons a trader for the year, or less -than two quarts a month. In 1770, before the fight had begun with -the Nor’Westers, the Company was sending out two hundred and fifty -gallons a year for three hundred traders. In 1800, when Nor’Westers -and Hudson’s Bay came to open war and each company drove the other to -extremes of outlawry, neither had intended at the beginning, coureurs -falling by the assassin’s dagger, a Hudson’s Bay governor butchered on -the open field, Indians horsewhipped for daring to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> communicate with -rivals, whole camps demoralized by drugged liquor, the highest record -was twelve thousand six hundred gallons of brandy sent out for a force -of between 4,000 or 5,000 men. This gives an average of three gallons -a year for each trader. So that however terrible the use of liquor -proved in certain disgraceful episodes between the two great British -companies—it must be seen that the orgies were neither general nor -frequent.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It is astonishing, too, to take a map of North America and consider -what exploration stands to the credit of the fur traders. They were -first overland from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay, and first inland -from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi—thanks to Radisson.</p> - -<p>In the exploration of the Arctic, who stands highest? It was a matter -of paralyzing astonishment to the Company, itself, when I told them -I had counted up in their books what they had spent on the Northwest -Passage, and that before 1800 they had suffered dead loss on that -account of £100,000. Beginning with old Captain Knight in 1719, who -starved to death on Marble Island with his forty-three men, on down -to Hearne in 1771, and Simpson and Rae in later days—that story -of exploration is one by itself. The world knows of Franklins and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span> -Nansens, but has never heard of the Company’s humble servants whose -bones are bleaching on the storm-beaten rocks of the desolate North. -Take that bleak desert of the North, Labrador—of which modern -explorers know nothing—by 1750 Captain Coates of the Hudson’s Bay had -explored its shores at a loss to the company of £26,000.</p> - -<p>Inland—by 1690, that ragamuffin London boy, Henry Kelsey, who ran away -with the Indians and afterward rose to greatness in the service, had -penetrated to the present province of Manitoba and to the Saskatchewan. -The MacKenzie River, the Columbia, the Fraser, the passes of the -Rocky Mountains, the Yukon, the Liard, the Pelly—all stand to the -credit of the fur trader. And every state north of Louisiana, west -of the Mississippi, echoed to the tramp of the fur traders’ horses -sweeping the wilderness for beaver. Gentlemen Adventurers, they called -themselves, but Lords of the Outer Marches were they, truly as any -robber barons that found and conquered new lands for a feudal king.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Old-fashioned feudalism marked the Company’s treatment of its -dependents. To-day, the Indian simply brings his furs to the trader, -has free egress to the stores, and goes his way like any other buyer. -A hundred years ago, bartering was done through a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> small wicket in the -gate of the fort palisades; but in early times, the governor of each -little fort felt the pomp of his glory like a Highland chief. Decking -himself in scarlet coat with profusion of gold lace and sword at belt, -he marched out to the Indian camp with bugle and fife blowing to the -fore, and all the white servants in line behind. Bartering was then -accomplished by the Indian chief, <em>giving</em> the white chief the -furs, and the white chief formally presenting the Indian chief with a -<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">quid pro quo</i>, both sides puffing the peace pipe like chimney -pots as a token of good-fellowship.</p> - -<p>How these pompous governors—little men in stature some of them—kept -their own servants obedient and loyal in the loneliness of these -wilderness wilds, can only be ascribed to their personal prowess. -Of course, there were desertions, desertions to the wild life and -to the French overland in Canada and to the Americans south of the -boundary, but only once was payment withheld from the men of the far -fur post on account of mutiny, though many a mutiny was quelled in -its beginnings by the governor doffing his dignity and laying a sound -drubbing on the back of the mutineer. The men were paid by bills drawn -on the home office to the amount of two thirds of their wages, the -other third being kept against their return as savings. Many devices -were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> employed to keep the men loyal. Did a captain accomplish a good -voyage? The home committee ordered him a bounty of £150. Hearne, for -his explorations inland, over and above his wages was given a present -of £200. Did a man suffer from rigorous climate? The committee solemnly -indites: “£4, smart money, for a frozen toe.” Such luck as a French -wood-runner deserting from Canada to the Hudson’s Bay was promptly -recognized by the order: “To Jan Ba’tiste Larlée, £1-5, a periwig to -keep him loyal.” No matter to what desperate straits war reduced the -Company’s finances, it was never too poor to pension some wreck of -the service, or present gold plate to some hero of the fight, or give -a handsome funeral to some servant who died in harness—“funeral by -torch light and linkmen, to St. Paul’s Churchyard, company and crew -in attendance, £31.” Though Governor Semple had been little more -than a year on the field when he was murdered, the Company pensioned -both his sisters for life. The humblest servants in the ranks—men -beginning on twenty shillings a month, like Kelsey, and Grimmington, -and Hearne, and old Captain Knight—were urged and encouraged to -rise to the highest positions in the Company. The one thing required -was—absolute, implicit, unquestioning loyalty; the Company could do -no wrong. Quite the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> funniest instance of the Company’s fatherly care -for its servants was the matrimonial office. For years, especially in -time of war, it was almost impossible to secure apprentices at all, -though the agents paid £2 as bonus on signing the contract. At this -period in the Company’s history, I came across a curious record in the -minutes. A General Court was secretly called of which no entry was to -be made in the minutes, to consider the proposals of one, Mr. Andrew -Vallentine, for the good of the Company’s service. In addition to the -shareholders’ general oath of secrecy, every one attending this meeting -had to take solemn vows not to reveal the proceedings. What could it -be about? I scanned the general minutes, the committee books, the -sub-committee records of shippings and sailings and wars. It was not -about France, for proceedings against France were in the open. It was -not a “back-stairs” fund, for when the Company wanted favors it openly -sent purses of gold or beaver stockings or cat-skin counterpanes. But -farther on in the minutes, when the good secretary had forgotten all -about secrecy, I found a cryptic entry about the cryptic gentleman, -Mr. Andrew Vallentine—“that all entries about Mr. Andrew Vallentine’s -office for the service of the Company be made in a Booke Aparte,” and -that 10 per cent. of the regular yearly dividends go as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> dowries for -the brides of the apprentices, the ceremonies to be performed—not by -any unfrocked clergyman under the rose—but by the Honorable, the Very -Reverend Doctor Sacheverell of renown. The business with the gentleman -of matrimonial fame was not called “a marriage office.” No such clumsy -herding of fair ones to the altar, as in Virginia and Quebec, where -brides were sent in shiploads and exposed on the town square like -slaves at the shambles. The Company’s matrimonial venture was kept in -dignified reserve, that would send down no stigma to descendants. It -was organized and designated as a separate <em>company</em>; certainly, -a company of two. Later on, Mr. Vallentine’s office being too small -for the rush of business, the secretary, “<em>Mr. Potter is ordered -to arrange a larger office for Mr. Vallentine in the Buttery of the -Company’s store house.</em>” But all the delightful possibilities hidden -in Mr. Vallentine’s suggestive name and in the oleaginous place which -he chose for his matrimonial mart—failed to make the course of true -love run smooth. Mr. Vallentine entangled the Company in lawsuits and -on his death in 1731, the office was closed.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Foregoing Chapters.</em>—Groseillers’s name is given in a -variety of ways, the full name being Medard Chouart Groseillers—the -last translated by the English as “Goosebery,” which of course would -necessitate the name being spelled “Groseilliers.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span></p> - -<p>The account of the passage of the ships across the Atlantic is drawn -from Radisson Journals, from his Petitions, and from the Journal of -Gillam as reported by Thomas Gorst, Bayly’s secretary. There are also -scraps about the trip in Sir James Hayes’ report of damage to <em>The -Eaglet</em>, which he submitted to the Admiralty.</p> - -<p>The relationship of Radisson to Groseillers and the French version of -the quarrel on the bay—are to be found in the life of Radisson in -<em>Pathfinders of the West</em>. Though I have searched diligently, -I have not been able to find a single authority, ancient or modern, -for the odd version given by several writers of Radisson and -Groseillers absconding overland to New France. The statement is sheer -fiction—neither more nor less, as the Minutes of Hudson’s Bay House -account for Radisson’s movements almost monthly from 1667 to 1674, -when he left London for France.</p> - -<p>A comical story is current in London about the charter. After the -monopoly was relinquished by the Company in 1870 and its territory -taken over by Canada, the old charter was, of course, of no -importance. For thirty years it disappeared. It was finally found -jammed behind old papers tumbled down the back of an old safe—and -this was the charter that deeded away three-quarters of America.</p> - -<p>Before a Parliamentary Commission on March 10, 1749, the Company made -the following statement concerning its stock:</p> - -<table class="rec"> -<tr> - <td class="tdl"> 1676 October 16 It appears by the Company’s Books, that their stock then was </td> - <td class="tdr">£10,500</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">1690 September The same being trebled is </td> - <td class="tdr">21,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr" colspan="2">______</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Which made the Stock to be - <td class="tdr"> 31,500</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> 1720 August 29 This Stock being again trebled is</td> - <td class="tdr">63,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr" colspan="2">______</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Which made the Stock to be </td> - <td class="tdr">94,500</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">And a subscription then taken in of - 10% amounting to Additional Stock - <td class="tdr">9,450</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr" colspan="2">______</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Which makes the present Amount of - the Stock to be -<td class="tdr">103,950</td> -</table> - -<p>The minutes of the Company and Radisson’s journal alike prove that he -passed to France from England, in October, 1674. Whether Groseillers -came to England on the ship is not stated, therefore the question is -left open, but it is stated that Groseillers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> passed to France at the -same time, so that pretty story of Groseillers knocking Bayly’s head -is all fiction.</p> - -<p>I was not able to find that “Booke Aparte” in which entries were made -of Mr. Andrew Vallentine’s matrimonial mart. It may yet turn up in -the cellarful of old papers in the Company’s warehouse. Perhaps it -is as well that it should not, for some of the most honored names in -Canadian history came into the service of the Company at this time.</p> - -<p>Lyddell’s salary as governor of the west coast of the bay was to be -£100 per annum. Sailors were paid, in 1671, from £20 to £30 a year, -the surgeons £20 a year.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1674-1685</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">IF RADISSON CAN DO WITHOUT THE ADVENTURERS, THE ADVENTURERS CANNOT DO -WITHOUT RADISSON—THE ERUPTION OF THE FRENCH ON THE BAY—THE BEGINNING -OF THE RAIDERS</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">While</span> Radisson became once more a man without habitat or country, the -Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were in the very springtime of wonderful -prosperity. Despite French interlopers coming overland from the St. -Lawrence, the ships of 1679 brought home cargoes totaling 10,500 -beaver, 1,100 marten, 200 otter, 700 elk and a vast quantity of such -smaller furs as muskrat and ermine. Cash to the value of half the -Company’s capital lay in the strong box as a working fund, and by 1681 -dividends to the value of just twice the Company’s stock had been paid -to the shareholders. The first speculation in the stock began about -this time, the shares changing hands at an advance of 33 per cent. -and a new lot of shareholders coming in, among whom was the famous -architect—Christopher Wrenn. At this time, too, one, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> Phillips, -was expelled as a shareholder for attempting to conduct a private trade -through members of the crews. Prince Rupert continued to be governor -till the time of his death, in 1682, when James, Duke of York, was -chosen to succeed. At first, the governing committee had met only -before the ships sailed and after they returned. Committee meetings -were now held two or three times a week, a payment of 6s 8d being made -to each man for attendance, a like amount being levied as a fine for -absence, the fines to be kept in a Poor Box for the benefit of the -service.</p> - -<p>Bayly, who had been governor on the south coast of Hudson’s Bay, when -Radisson left, now came home in health broken from long exposure, to -die at Mr. Walker’s house on the Strand, whence he was buried with full -military honors, the crew of <em>The John and Alexander</em> and the -Adventurers marching by “torch light” to St. Paul’s Churchyard.</p> - -<p>Hudson Bay—let it be repeated—can be compared in size only to the -Mediterranean. One governor could no more command all the territory -bordering it than one ruler could govern all the countries bordering -the Mediterranean. Nixon was commissioned to succeed Bayly as governor -of the South Shore—namely of Rupert and Moose Rivers, territory inland -about the size of modern Germany, which the new governor was supposed -to keep in order<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> with a force of sixteen men from the crew of <em>The -John and Alexander</em> and garrison of eight men at each of the two -forts—thirty-two men in all, serving at salaries ranging from $60 -(£12) to $100 (£20) a year, to police a barbarous pre-historic Germany; -and the marvel is, they did it. Crime was almost unknown. Mr. Nixon’s -princely salary as governor, poohbah, potentate, was £200 a year, and -it is ordered, May, 1680, “that a cask of canary be sent out as a -present to Governor Nixon.”</p> - -<p>On the West Coast, it will be remembered, Lyddell had gone out as -governor. That vague “West Coast”—though the Adventurers did not know -it—meant a region the size of Russia. Lyddell was now succeeded by -Sargeant, the bluffest, bravest, halest, heartiest of governors that -ever donned the gold lace and pompous insignia of the Adventurers. -Sargeant’s garrison never at any time numbered more than forty and -usually did not exceed twelve. His fort was on an island at the mouth -of Albany River, some one hundred miles north of Moose. It will be -recalled that Radisson had traveled three hundred miles farther up -the west coast to Port Nelson. The Company now decided to appoint a -governor for that region, too, and John Bridgar was commissioned to go -out in 1682 with Captain Gillam on the ship <em>Prince Rupert</em>—a -bad combination, these two, whose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span> chief qualification seemed to be -swashbuckler valor, fearlessness of the sea, ability to break the -heads of their men and to drown all remorse pottle deep in liquor. -How did they rule, these little potentates of the wilds? With all the -circumstance and pomp of war, couriers running beforehand when they -traveled, drums beating, flags flying, muskets and cannon roaring -salutes, a bugler tootling to the fore of a governor dressed in -gaudiest regimentals, a line of white servants marching behind, though -they were so poor they wore Indian garb and had in their hearts the -hatred of the hireling for a tyrant; for over them the Company had -power of life and death without redress. All very absurd, it seems, at -this long distant time, but all very effective with the Indians, who -mistook noise for power and display for greatness.</p> - -<p>By royal edict, privateers were forbidden to go to Hudson Bay, whether -from England or New England. Instead of two small ships borrowed -from the Admiralty, the Adventurers now had four of their own and -two chartered yearly—<em>The Prudent Mary</em>, and <em>Albermarle</em> -frigate and <em>Colleton</em> yacht outward bound, <em>The Prince -Rupert</em> and <em>John and Alexander</em> and <em>Shaftsbury</em>—which -was wrecked—homeward bound, or <em>vice versa</em>. And there began -to come into Company’s records, grand old names of grand old<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -mariners—Vikings of the North—Mike Grimmington, who began before the -mast of <em>The Albemarle</em> at thirty shillings a month, and Knight, -of whose tragic fate more anon, and Walker, who came to blows with -Governor Sargeant, outward bound. Those were not soft days for soft -men. They were days of the primordial when the best man slept in his -fighting gear and the victory went to the strong.</p> - -<p>When Captain James had come out to follow up Hudson’s discoveries, he -had left his name to James Bay and discovered Charlton Island, some -forty miles from the South Shore. Now that the Company had so many -ships afloat, Charlton Island became the rendezvous. The ships, that -were to winter on the bay, went to their posts, but to Charlton Island -came the cargoes for those homeward bound.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>To Port Nelson, then, came Governor Bridgar on <em>The Prince Rupert</em> -with Captain Gillam, in August, of 1682. Mike Grimmington is now second -mate. Gillam must have been to Port Nelson before on trading ventures, -but Governor Bridgar’s commission was to establish that fort which -for two centuries was to be the battleground of Northern traders and -may yet be the great port of Northern commerce. The whole region was -called Nelson after Admiral Button’s mate, but it was to become better -known<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> as Fort Bourbon, when possessed by the French; as York, when it -repassed to the English.</p> - -<p>Shifting shoals of sand-drift barred the sea from the main coast for -ten miles north and south, but across the shoals were gaps visible -at low tide, through which the current broke with the swiftness of a -river. Gillam ordered small boats out to sound and stake the ship’s -course by flags erected in the sand at half tide. Between these flags, -<em>The Prince Rupert</em> slowly moved inland. Inside the sand-bar, the -coast was seen to be broken by the mouths of two great rivers—either -one a miniature St. Lawrence, on the north the Nelson, on the south the -Hayes. It was on the Hayes to the south that the Adventurers finally -built their fur post, but Bridgar and Gillam now pushed <em>The Prince -Rupert’s</em> carved prow slowly up the northern river, the Nelson. -The stream was wide with a tremendous current and low, swampy, wooded -banks. Each night sails were reefed and men sent ashore to seek a good -site or sign of Indians. Night after night during the whole month of -September, John Calvert, Robert Braddon, Richard Phineas, Robert Sally -and Thomas Candy punted in and out of the coves along the Nelson, -lighting bonfires, firing muskets, spying the shore for footstep of -native. On the ship, Bridgar ordered the cannon fired as signals to -distant Indians and for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span> the first time in history the roar of heavy -guns rolled across the swamps. Winter began to close in early. Ice was -forming. Nipping frosts had painted the swamp woods in colors of fire. -One afternoon toward October when <em>The Prince Rupert</em> was some -seventeen miles from the sand-bar, gliding noiselessly with full-blown -sails before a gentle wind, the smoke of an Indian signal shot skyward -from the south shore.</p> - -<p>In vain Bridgar fired muskets all that afternoon and waved flags, -to call the savages to the ship. A solitary figure, seeming to be a -spy, emerged from the brushwood, gazing stolidly at the apparition -of the ship. Presently, two or three more figures were discovered -moving through the swamp. The next morning Governor Bridgar ordered -the gig-boat lowered, and accompanied by Gillam and an escort of six -sailors—rowed ashore. First impressions count much with the Indians. -On such occasion, Hudson’s Bay Company officers never failed of pompous -ostentation—profusion of gold lace, cocked hats for officers, colored -regimentals for underlings, a bugler to the fore, or a Scotchman -blowing his bagpipes, with a show of burnished firearms and helmets.</p> - -<p>On rowed the gig-boat toward the imperturbable figure on the shore. -Some paces out, the boat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> grated bottom and stuck in the sand. A sailor -had jumped to mid-waist in water to drag the craft in, when the stolid -figure on the sand suddenly came to life. With a leap, leveled musket -covering the incoming boat, the man had bounded to the water’s edge and -in purest English shouted—“Halt!”</p> - -<p>“We are Hudson’s Bay Company men,” protested Bridgar standing up.</p> - -<p>“But I,” answered the figure, “am Radisson, and I hold possession of -<em>all</em> this region for France.”</p> - -<p>If the Frenchman had been Vesuvius suddenly erupted under some idling -tourists, or if a ghost arisen from the ground, the English could not -have been more astonished. They had thought they had finished with -the troublesome Frenchman, and behold him, here, in possession with a -musket leveled at their heads and three men commanding ambushed forces -behind.</p> - -<p>With a show of hollow courage, Bridgar asked permission to land -and salute the commander of the French forces. One can guess with -what love, they fell on each other’s necks. Radisson’s courage rose -recklessly as if the danger had been so much wine. These three men were -his officers, he said. His fort was some distance away. He had two -ships but expected more. How many men had he? Ah, there his English -failed, but his broken French<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> conveyed the impression of forces that -could wipe the English out of existence. Gillam and Bridgar, who could -not speak one word of French, looked glum enough. To test this brave -show of valor, they invited him on board <em>The Prince Rupert</em> to -dine. Radisson accepted with an alacrity that disarmed suspicion, but -he took the precaution of inviting two English sailors to remain on -shore with his French followers. What yarns were spun over the mess -room table of <em>The Prince Rupert</em> that day! Radisson enquired for -all his own friends of London, and Bridgar in turn heard what Radisson -had been doing in the French navy all these eight years. Who knew Port -Nelson better than Radisson? They asked him about the current of the -river. He advised them to penetrate no farther for fear of a clash with -the French forces and to forbid their men marauding inland in order to -avoid trouble with the Indians.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_221"> -<img src="images/i_221.jpg" alt="" width="850" height="381"> -<p class="caption">Copy of Robson’s drawing of York Harbor. The positions -of Radisson’s fort, Ben Gillam’s Island and the H. B. C. ship are -written in.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Could any one guess that the astute Frenchman, boasting of ships and so -recklessly quaffing toasts at the table of his enemies—was defenseless -and powerless in their hands? His fort was not on this river but on -the Hayes across the swamp to the south—a miserable collection of -log shacks with turf roofs, garrisoned by a mere handful of mutinous -sailors. His fear was not that the English would clash with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span> the -French forces, but that they would learn how weak he was. And another -discovery added the desperation of recklessness to the game. Radisson -and Groseillers had come to the bay but a month before on two miserable -ships with twenty-seven men. Musketry firing had warned Radisson of -some one else at Port Nelson. Twenty-six miles up Nelson River on -Gillam Island, he had discovered to his amazement, poachers who were -old acquaintances—Ben Gillam, son of the Company’s captain, with John -Outlaw, come in <em>The Bachellors’ Delight</em> from Boston, on June -21, to poach on the Company’s fur preserve. It was while canoeing down -stream from the discovery of the poachers that Radisson ran full-tilt -into the Company’s ship. Here, then, was a pretty dilemma—two English -ships on the same river not twenty miles apart, the French south across -the swamp not a week’s journey away. Radisson was trapped, if they had -but known. His only chance was to keep <em>The Prince Rupert</em> and -<em>The Bachellors’ Delight</em> apart, and to master them singly.</p> - -<p>If Bridgar had realized Radisson’s plight, the Frenchman would have -been clapped under hatches in a twinkle, but he was allowed to leave -<em>The Prince Rupert</em>. Bridgar beached his ships on the flats and -prepared to build winter quarters. Ten days later,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> Radisson dropped -in again, “to drink health,” as he suavely explained, introducing -common sailors as officers and firing off muskets to each cup quaffed, -to learn whether the Company kept soldiers “on guard in case of a -surprise.” Governor Bridgar was too far gone in liquor to notice -the trick, but Captain Gillam rushed up the decks of <em>The Prince -Rupert</em> with orders for the French to begone. Gillam and Radisson -had been enemies from the first. Gillam was suspicious. Therefore, it -behooved Radisson to play deeper. The next time he came to the ship he -was accompanied by the Captain’s son, Ben, the poacher, dressed as a -bushranger. There was reason enough now for the old captain to keep his -crew from going farther up the river. If Ben Gillam were discovered in -illicit trade, it meant ruin to both father and son. When some of his -crew remarked the resemblance of the supposed bushranger to the absent -son, Captain Gillam went cold with fright.</p> - -<p>Falsity, intrigue, danger, were in the very air. It lacked but the -spark to cause the explosion; and chance supplied the spark.</p> - -<p>Two of the Company men ranging for game came on young Gillam’s ship. -They dashed back breathless to Governor Bridgar with word that there -was a strange fort only a few miles away. Bridgar thought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> this must -be the French fort, and Captain Gillam had not courage to undeceive -him. Scouts were sent scurrying. Those scouts never returned. They had -been benighted in a howling blizzard and as chance would have it, were -rescued by Radisson’s spies. While he waited for their return, worse -disaster befell Bridgar. Storm and ice set the tide driving in Nelson -River like a whirlpool. <em>The Prince Rupert</em> was jammed, ripped, -crushed like an eggshell and sunk with loss of all provisions and -fourteen men, including old Captain Gillam. Mike Grimmington, the mate, -escaped. Governor Bridgar was left destitute and naked to the enemy -without either food or ammunition for the remainder of his crew to face -the winter. The wretched man seems to have saved nothing from the wreck -but the liquor, and in this he at once proceeded to drown despair. It -was Radisson who came to his rescue. Nothing more was to be feared from -Bridgar. Therefore, the Frenchman sent food to the servants of his -former friends. Without his aid, the entire Hudson’s Bay crew would -have perished.</p> - -<p>Cooped up in the deplorable rabbit hutches that did duty as barracks, -and constantly besotted with liquor, Governor Bridgar was eking out a -miserable winter when he was electrified by another piece of chance -news. A thunderous rapping awakened the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> cabin one winter night. When -the door was opened, there stumbled in a disheveled, panting Scotchman -with an incoherent plea for help. The French were attacking Ben -Gillam’s fort. For the first time, Bridgar learned that the fort up -stream was <em>not</em> French but English—the fort of Ben Gillam, the -poacher; and all his pot valor resolved on one last, desperate cast -of the dice. To be sure, the other ship was a poacher; but she was -English. If Bridgar united with her, he might beat Radisson. He would -at least have a ship to escape to the Company’s forts at the lower end -of Hudson Bay, or to England. Also, he owed his own and his crew’s life -to Radisson; but he owed his services to the Company, and the Company -could best be served by treachery to Radisson and alliance with that -scalawag sailor adventurer—Ben Gillam, whose ship sailed under as many -names as a pirate and showed flags as various as the seasons. Better -men than Bridgar forced to choose between the scalawag with the dollar -and honor with ruin, have chosen the scalawag with the dollar.</p> - -<p>Men sent out as scouts came back with unsatisfactory tales of having -failed to capture Ben Gillam’s ship, but they were loaded with food -for Bridgar from Radisson. Bridgar only waited till spies reported -that Radisson had left Gillam’s fort to cross the marsh to French -headquarters. Then he armed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> his men—cutlass, bludgeon, such muskets -as Radisson’s ammunition rendered available—and set out. It was a -forced tramp in midwinter through bitter cold. The men were an ill-clad -rabble. They were unused to this cold with frost that glittered sharp -as diamond-points, and had not yet learned snowshoe travel over the -rolling drifts. Frost-bitten, plunging to their armpits in snow, they -followed the iced river bed by moonlight and sometime before dawn -presented themselves at the main gate of Ben Gillam’s palisaded fort. -Never doubting but Gillam’s sentry stood inside, Bridgar knocked. The -gate swung open before a sleepy guard. In rushed Bridgar’s men. Bang -went the gates shut. In the confusion of half-light and frost smoke, -armed men surrounded the English. Bridgar was trapped in his own trap. -Not Gillam’s men manned the poacher’s fort, but Radisson’s French -sailors. Ben Gillam and his crew had long since been captured and -marched across the swamp to French headquarters. Bridgar and his crew -were the prisoners of the French in the poacher’s fort.</p> - -<p>The rest of the winter of 1682-83 belongs to the personal history of -Radisson and is told in his life. Between despair and drink, Bridgar -was a madman. Radisson carried him to the French fort on Hayes River, -whence in a few weeks he was released on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span> parole to go back to his own -rabbit hutch of a barracks. When spring came, between poachers and -Company men, the French had more English prisoners than they knew what -to do with. To make matters worse, one of the French boats had been -wrecked in the ice jam. It was decided to send some of the English -prisoners on the remaining boat to Moose and Rupert River at the south -end of the bay, and to carry the rest on the poacher <em>Bachellors’ -Delight</em> to Quebec. Outlaw and some of the other poachers would take -no chance of going back to New England to be arrested as pirates. They -went in <em>The Ste. Anne</em> to the foot of James Bay and joined the -Hudson’s Bay Company. Bridgar, too, was to have gone to his company’s -forts on James Bay, but at the last moment he pretended to fear the ice -floes on such a slender craft and asked to go with Radisson on <em>The -Bachellors’ Delight</em> to Quebec. Giving the twelve refugees on <em>The -Ste. Anne</em> each four pounds of beef, two bushels of oatmeal and -flour, Radisson dispatched them for the forts of James Bay on August -14th. He had already set fire to Bridgar’s cabins on Nelson River -and destroyed the poachers’ fort on Gillam Island, Bridgar, himself, -asking permission to set the flame to Ben Gillam’s houses. Leaving -Groseillers’ son, Chouart, with seven Frenchmen to hold possession -of Port Nelson, Radisson set<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span> sail with his prisoners on <em>The -Bachellors’ Delight</em>. A few miles out, a friendly Englishman warned -him of conspiracy. Bridgar and Ben Gillam were plotting a mutiny to cut -the throats of all the Frenchmen and return to put the garrison at Port -Nelson to the sword; so when Bridgar asked for the gig-boat to attempt -going six hundred miles to the forts at the south end of the bay, -Radisson’s answer was to order him under lock the rest of the voyage.</p> - -<p>At Quebec, profound disappointment awaited Radisson. Frontenac had -given place to De la Barre as governor of New France, and De la Barre -knew that a secret treaty existed between France and England. He would -lend no countenance to Radisson’s raid. <em>The Bachellors’ Delight</em> -was restored to young Gillam and Radisson ordered to France to report -all he had done. Young Gillam was promptly arrested in Boston for -poaching on Hudson Bay. Within a few years, he had turned pirate in -earnest, or been driven to piracy by the monopolistic laws that gave -every region for trade to some special favorite of the English crown. -About the time Captain Kidd of pirate fame was arrested at Boston, one -Gillam of <em>The Prudent Sarah</em> was arrested, too. By wrenching off -his handcuffs and filing out the bars of his prison window with the -iron of the handcuff, Gillam almost escaped. He was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> leaping out of the -prison window on old Court Street when the bayonet of a guard prodded -him back. With Captain Kidd, he was taken to England and tried for -crimes on the high seas. There, he drops from history.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_231"> -<img src="images/i_231.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="453"> -<p class="caption">Silver Fox Skins, Trapped by Hunters in the Employment -of J. K. Cornwall, Lesser Slave Lake Athabasca.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>As for Bridgar, he no sooner whiffed Governor De la Barre’s fear of -consequences for what Radisson had done, than he set two worlds ringing -with vauntings of the vengeance England would take. Putting through -drafts on the Hudson’s Bay Company for money, he hired interpreters, -secretaries, outriders, and assumed pomp that would have done credit to -a king’s ambassador. Sailing to New England with Ben Gillam, he cut a -similar swath from Boston to New York, riding like a Jehu along the old -post road in a noisy endeavor to rehabilitate his own dignity. Then he -sailed for England where condign humiliation lay in wait. The Company -was furious. They refused to honor his drafts and would not pay him -one penny’s salary from the day he had surrendered to Radisson. The -wages of the captured servants, the Company honored in full, even the -wages of the dead in the wreck of <em>The Prince Rupert</em>. Bridgar was -retained in the service, but severely reprimanded.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter IX.</em>—Practically the entire contents of this -chapter are taken from the documents in Hudson’s Bay House, London. -Details of the Company’s affairs are from the Minute Books, of the -fracas with Radisson, from the affidavits<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> of John Outlaw, who -first went to the bay as a poacher with young Gillam, and from the -affidavits of Bridgar’s crew.</p> - -<p>It has always been a matter of doubt whether Gillam Sr. survived the -wreck of <em>The Prince Rupert</em>. The question is settled by the fact -that his wages are “payable to an attorney for his heirs.” If he had -lived, it was ordered that he was to be arrested for complicity in -piracy with his son.</p> - -<p>The ultimate fate of Ben Gillam I found in the Shaftesbury collection -of papers bearing on Captain Kidd. His name is variously given as -“William” and “James,” but I think there can be little doubt of his -identity from several coincidences. In the first place, the Gillam -whom Mr. Randolph arrested for piracy (and was given a present by the -Company for so doing) was the Gillaum later arrested in connection -with Captain Kidd. Also Gillam’s boat was known under a variety of -names—<em>Bachellors’ Delight</em>, <em>Prudent Sarah</em>, and the -master of <em>The Prudent Sarah</em> was arrested in connection with -Captain Kidd. The minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company show that the -Boston owners of Gillam’s boat sued for the loss of this trip against -the Hudson’s Bay Company, and lost their suit. This was the first test -of the legality of the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly, and the courts -upheld it.</p> - -<p>Radisson’s life as given in <em>Pathfinders of the West</em> and -<cite>Heralds of Empire</cite> affords fuller details of the fray from the -Frenchman’s point of view. It is remarkable how slightly his record -differs from the account as contained in the official affidavits.</p> - -<p>As to the distance of Charlton Island from the main coast—it puzzled -me how the sailing directions for the ships that were to rendezvous -there gave the distance of the island from the main coast as anything -from twenty to eighty miles. The explanation is the point on the south -coast that is considered.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1683-1685</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">THE ADVENTURERS FURIOUS AT RADISSON, FIND IT CHEAPER TO HAVE HIM AS -FRIEND THAN ENEMY AND INVITE HIM BACK—THE REAL REASON WHY RADISSON -RETURNED—THE TREACHERY OF STATECRAFT—YOUNG CHOUART OUTRAGED, NURSES -HIS WRATH AND THERE GAILY COMES ON THE SCENE MONSIEUR PÉRÉ—SCOUT AND -SPY</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were dazed by the sudden eruption of -Radisson at Port Nelson. Their traders had gone there often enough to -have learned that the finest furs came from the farthest North. Here -was a region six hundred miles distant from the French bush-lopers, who -came overland from the St. Lawrence. Here were the best furs and the -most numerous tribes of Indian hunters. Radisson had found Port Nelson -for them. Now he had snatched the rich prize from their hands.</p> - -<p>Bad news travels fast. Those refugees, who had been shipped by the -French to the Company’s posts at the south of the bay, reached the -ships’ rendezvous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span> at Charlton Island in time to return to England by -the home-bound vessels of 1683. Before Radisson had arrived in France, -Outlaw and the other refugees had come to London. The embassies of -France and England rang with what was called “the Radisson outrage.” -John Outlaw, quondam captain for Ben Gillam, the poacher, took oath in -London, on November 23, of all that Radisson had done to injure the -English, and he swore that Groseillers had showed a commission from -the Government of France for the raid. Calvert, Braddon, Phineas and -those seamen, who had gone up Nelson River with Bridgar—gave similar -evidence, and when Bridgar, himself, came by way of New England, the -clamor rose to such heights it threatened to upset the friendly treaty -between England and France. Lord Preston, England’s envoy to Paris, was -besieged with memorials against Radisson for the French Government.</p> - -<p>“I am confirmed in our worst fears by the news I have lately received,” -wrote Sir James Hayes of the Company, “Monsieur Radisson, who was at -the head of the action at Port Nelson is arrived in France the 8th of -this month (December, 1683) in a man-of-war from Canada and is in all -posthaste for Paris to induce the ministry to undermine us on Hudson’s -Bay. Nothing can mend at this time but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span> to get His Majesty’s order -through my Lord Preston instantly to cause ye French King to have -exemplary justice done upon ye said Radisson.”</p> - -<p>At the same time, Hayes was urging Preston to bribe Radisson; in fact, -to do anything to bring him back to the service of the Hudson’s Bay -Company.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Radisson and Groseillers had meanwhile reached Paris only to find -that the great statesman, Colbert—on whose protection they had -relied—was dead. Fur traders of Quebec had the ear of the court—those -monopolists, who had time and again robbed them of their furs under -pretense of collections for the revenue. Both Radisson and Groseillers -separately petitioned the court for justice. If De la Barre had -been right in restoring the pirate vessel to Ben Gillam, what right -had he to seize their furs? One fourth for revenue did not mean -wholesale confiscation. The French Court retorted that Radisson and -Groseillers had gone North without any official commission. “True,” -answered Groseillers in his petition, “no more official than a secret -verbal commission such as Albanel the Jesuit had, when he came to us -years ago, and that is no good reason why we should be condemned for -extending French dominion and changing Nelson’s name to Bourbon.” -Radisson’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span> petition openly stated that while they carried no “official -commission,” they had gone North by the express order of the King, and -that the voyage, itself, was sufficient proof of their zeal for France.</p> - -<p>King Louis was in a quandary. He dare not offend the Hudson’s Bay -Company, for its chief shareholders were of the English court, and -with the English Court, Louis XIV had a secret treaty. To De la Barre -he sent a furious reprimand for having released Gillam’s pirate -vessel. “It is impossible to imagine what your conduct meant,” ran the -reproof, “or what you were about when you gave up the vessel captured -by Radisson and Groseillers, which will afford the English proof -of possession at Port Nelson. I am unwilling to afford the King of -England cause of complaint,” he explained, “but I think it important to -prevent the English establishing themselves on Nelson River.” In brief, -according to the shifty trickery of a royal code, Radisson was to be -reprimanded publicly but encouraged privately. Groseillers dropped out -of the contest disgusted. The French court sent for Radisson. He was -ordered to prepare to sail again to the bay on April 24, 1684, but -this time, Radisson would have no underhand commission which fickle -statesmen might repudiate. He demanded restoration of his confiscated -furs and a written agreement that he should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span> have equal share in -trading profits. The Department of the Marine haggled. Preparations -went on apace, but the Hudson’s Bay Company was not idle. Sir James -Hayes and Sir William Young and my Lord Preston—English envoy to -Paris—urged Radisson to come back to England on one hand, and on -the other threatened rupture of the treaty with France if “condign -punishment” were not visited on the same men.</p> - -<p>It is here what historians have called “Radisson’s crowning -treachery” takes place. “Prince of liars, traitors, adventurers and -bushrangers”—says one writer. “He received the marked displeasure -of M. Colbert,” explains another, though Colbert was dead. “He was -blamable for deserting the flag of France: the first time we might -pardon him, for he was the victim of grave injustice, but no excuse -could justify his second desertion. He had none to offer. It was an -ineffaceable stain,” asserts yet another critic.</p> - -<p>In a word, Radisson suddenly left France secretly and appeared in -England, the servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Why did he do it? -Especially, why did he do it without any business agreement with the -Company as to what his rewards were to be? Traitors sell themselves for -a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">quid pro quo</i>, but there was no prospect of gain in Radisson’s -case.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> His own journals give no explanation. I confess I had always -thought it was but another example of the hair-brained enthusiast mad -to be back in his native element—the wilds—and shutting his eyes to -all precautions for the future. It was not till I had examined the -state papers that passed between the Hudson’s Bay Company and France -that I found the true explanation of Radisson’s erratic conduct. He -was sent for by the Department of the Marine, and told that the French -had quit all open pretentions to the bay. He was commanded to cross to -England at once and restore Port Nelson to the Hudson’s Bay Company.</p> - -<p>“Openly?” he might have asked.</p> - -<p>Ah, that was different! Not openly, for an open surrender of Port -Nelson would forever dispose of French claims to the bay. All Louis XIV -now wanted was to pacify the English court and maintain that secret -treaty. No, not openly; but he was commanded to go to England and -restore Port Nelson as if it were of his own free will. He had captured -it without a commission. Let him restore it in the same way. But -Radisson had had enough of being a scapegoat for state statecraft and -double dealing. He demanded written authority for what he was to do, -and the Department of Marine placed this commission in his hands:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“In order to put an end to the Differences wch. exist between the two -Nations of the French & English touching the Factory or Settlement -made by Messrs. Groseillers and Radisson on Hudson Bay, and to avoid -the efusion of blood that may happen between the sd. two nations, -for the Preservation of that place, the expedient wch. appeared most -reasonable and advantageous for the English company will, that the -sd. Messrs. De Groseillers and Radisson return to the sd. Factory -or habitation furnished with the passport of the English Company, -importing that they shall withdraw the French wch. are in garrison -there with all the effects belonging to them in the space of eighteen -months to be accounted from the day of their departure by reason they -cannot goe and come from the place in one year.... The said gentlemen -shall restore to the English Company the Factory or Habitation by -them settled in the sd. country to be thenceforward enjoyed by the -English company without molestation. As to the indemnity pretended by -the English for effects seized and brought to Quebec ... that may be -accommodated in bringing back the said inventory & restoring the same -effects or their value to the English Proprietors.”</p> -</div> - -<p>This, then, was the reason for Radisson a second time deserting the -French flag. He was compelled by “the statecraft” of Louis XIV, and -this reason, as a man of honor, he could not reveal in his journals.</p> - -<p>On the 10th of May, 1684, Radisson landed in London. He was welcomed by -Sir James Hayes and forthwith carried in honor to Windsor, where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> he -took the oath of fidelity as a British subject—a fealty from which he -never swerved to the end of his life. In a week, he was ready to leave. -Three ships sailed this year, <em>The Happy Return</em>, under Captain -Bond; <em>The Success</em>, under Outlaw, who had been with Ben Gillam, -and a little sloop called <em>The Adventure</em> for inland waters, -under Captain Geyer. Radisson went on board <em>The Happy Return</em>. -Groseillers had long since left France for Quebec, where he settled at -Three Rivers with his family. Favorable winds carried the ships forward -without storm or stop, to the straits, which luckily presented open -water. Inside the bay, ice and heavy seas separated the vessels. Sixty -miles from Port Nelson <em>The Happy Return</em> was caught and held. -Fearing that the French at Nelson, under young Chouart Groseillers, -might attack the English if the other ships arrived first, Radisson -asked permission of Governor Phipps, who had superseded Bridgar, -to take seven of the crew and row the sixty miles ashore. It was a -daring venture. Ice floes were tossing in a heavy sea, but by rowing -might and main, portaging over the ice where the way was blocked, and -seeking shelter on the lee side of a floe when the wind became too -rough, Radisson and his men came safely to Port Nelson in forty-eight -hours, spending only one night in the gig-boat on the sea. Radisson -was amazed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> to find the French fort on Hayes River deserted. Indians -presently told him the reason. Barely had he left the bay the year -before when the annual frigate of the English company came to port. -Young Chouart Groseillers trusted to the loyalty of the Indians as a -defense against the English till he learned that the savages had been -offered a barrel of gunpowder to massacre the French. Then Chouart -hastily withdrew up Hayes River above the first rapids to the camping -place of the Assiniboines, whose four hundred warriors were ample -protection.</p> - -<p>Young Groseillers’ anger at the turn of affairs knew no bounds. In his -fort were twelve thousand beaver skins and eight thousand other pelts -of the same value as beaver. To the expedition the year before, he -had contributed £500 of his own money, and the cargo of that voyage -had been confiscated at Quebec. Now, he had rich store of pelts to -compensate for the two years’ toil, and by the order of the French -Government—a secret back-stairs, treacherous order which could not -stand daylight and would brand him as a renegade—he was to turn these -furs over to the enemy. The young man was furious, and surrendered -his charge with an ill grace. Radisson had been commissioned to offer -the Frenchmen employment in the English Company at £100 a year for -Chouart, £50 for Durvall, Lamotte, Greymaire<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span> and the rest. They heard -his offer in sullen silence, for it meant they must forswear allegiance -to France. They preferred to remain free-lances and take chances of -crossing overland to Quebec two thousand miles through the wilderness.</p> - -<p>Then came what was truly the crowning treachery. A square deal is -safest in the long run. The man of double dealing forgets that he often -compels men, who would otherwise deal squarely, to meet him on his own -ground—double dealing; to stoop to the trickery that his dishonesty -has taught.</p> - -<p>Radisson had been assured that the Frenchmen left in Hudson Bay should -be free to do as they wished, or if they joined the English they should -be well treated; but when they evinced no haste to become English -subjects, Governor Phipps took his own counsel. By September, a new -fort had been built on Hayes River five miles from the mouth. The -Indians had come down stream with an enormous trade and Radisson had -made a treaty of peace between them and the English, which has lasted -to this day. Finally, the cargo of beaver was on board <em>The Happy -Return</em>. Sailors were chanting their sing-song as they ran round -the capstan bars heaving up anchor on September the 4th, when Governor -Phipps suddenly summoned a final council on board the decks of <em>The -Happy Return</em>. To this council<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span> came the unsuspecting Frenchmen from -the shore. Three—as it happened—had gone to the woods, but young -Groseillers and the rest clambered up the accommodation ladder for last -orders. No sooner were they on board, than sails were run out. <em>The -Happy Return</em> spread her wings to the wind and was off for England -carrying the unwilling Frenchmen passengers.</p> - -<p>In a trice, hands were on pistols and swords out, but Radisson besought -the outraged Frenchmen to restrain their anger. What was their -strength against an armed crew of ruffians only too glad of a scuffle -to put them all to the sword? It was a sullen, sad home-coming for -the adventurer. Uncle and nephew were scarcely on speaking terms, and -the trick of Governor Phipps must have opened Radisson’s eyes to the -treatment he might expect now that he was completely in the power of -the English. The boat reached Portsmouth on October 23. Not waiting -for coach, Radisson took horse and rode fast and furious to London. -He was at once taken before the Company. He was publicly thanked for -his services, presented with a set of silver and given a present of a -hundred guineas. He became the lion of the hour. Nor did he forget his -French confrères. The committee at once voted each of the Frenchmen -twenty shillings a week for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span> pocket money and ordered their board paid. -Later, Mr. Radisson is authorized to offer them salaries ranging from -£100 a year to £50 if they will join the Company. But they are in no -haste to join the Company, and strangely, when they evince intentions -of going across to France—a thousand obstructions arise as out of -the ground. They are watched—even threatened; politely, of course, -but threatened with arrest. Some suave-tongued gentleman points out -an advantageous marriage that young Chouart might make with some -well-dowered English belle, like his Uncle Radisson, who had married -Mary Kirke. Monsieur Chouart shrugs his shoulders. He hasn’t a very -high opinion of the way Radisson has managed his marriage affairs.</p> - -<p>But when they find that they can gain their liberty in no other way, -these young French knights of the wilderness, they accept service in -the English company to be sent to the bay forthwith, and take out -“papers of denizenation,” which can be broken with less damage to -conscience than an oath of fealty and the forswearing of France. And -all the while, they are burning with rage that bodes ill for Governor -Phipps’ trick on the deck of <em>The Happy Return</em>. Letters came -from France to Chouart, letters from one Duluth, who is pushing north -from Lake Superior; letters from one Comporté, who has offered to -go<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span> overland and “wipe the English from the bay”; messages from a -bush-loper, one Péré, who is useful to the king of France as a spy. -To Comporté, Chouart writes: “<em>I am not at liberty to do as I wish. -All the advantages offered do not for a moment cause me to waver. I -shall be happy to meet you by the route you travel. I will perish -or be at the place you desire me to go. It is saying enough. I will -keep my word.</em>” To his mother at Three Rivers, the young Frenchman -confesses: “<em>Orders have been given to arrest me if I try to leave. -I will cause it to be known in France that I never wished to follow -the English. I will abandon this nation. I have been forced here by my -Uncle’s subterfuges. See M. Duluth in my behalf and M. Péré and all our -good friends.</em>” “All our good friends,” are the bushrangers who are -working overland north from the St. Lawrence to intercept the trade of -Hudson Bay—especially “Mons. Péré.”</p> - -<p>And the same French Government that has compelled Radisson to go -back to England, issues orders to the Governor of New France—M. de -Denonville, “to arrest Radisson wherever he may be found,” “to reward -young Groseillers if he will desert from Hudson’s Bay,” and “to pay -fifty pistolles” to any man who seizes Radisson. And the reason for -this duplicity of statecraft? Plain enough. The Stuart<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span> throne is -tottering in England. When it falls, there falls also the secret treaty -with France. His Most Christian Majesty does not wish to relinquish -claim to one foot of ground in the North, and well might he not—it was -an empire as large as half Europe.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Meantime, the Company was proceeding on the even tenor of its ways. -Dividends of 50 per cent. were paid in ’83, the same in ’84, despite -interception of furs by the French overlanders. In the suit for -loss by the owners of Ben Gillam’s ship, the Company had emerged -triumphant—its monopoly vindicated, and in 1684, Captain Walker of the -south coast coming out of the bay on <em>The Diligence</em>, captured -another pirate ship, <em>The Expectation</em>, whose owners again tested -the Company’s claim to exclusive trade on the bay, by a lawsuit; -and again the Company came out a victor—its monopoly justified -by the courts. Three of the ships—<em>Happy Return</em>, Captain -Bond; <em>Owners’ Good Will</em>, Captain Lucas, and <em>Success</em>, -Captain Outlaw—were yearly chartered from Sir Stephen Evance, a rich -goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder in the Company. Besides -these, there were <em>The Perpetuana Merchant</em>, Captain Hume, with -Smithsend as mate; <em>The Diligence</em>, Captain Walker; the sloop -<em>Adventure</em>, Captain Geyer, and one frigate; in all a fleet of -seven vessels,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span> each carrying from twelve to twenty men plying to -and from the bay. It was in 1686 that the sloop was sent north of -Nelson to Churchill River, named after the great General—to open -trade on the river where Munck’s Danes had suffered such frightful -disaster. About this time, too, poor London boys began to go out as -apprentices—scullions, valets, general knockabouts—among whom was -one Henry Kelsey engaged at £8 a year, and his keep for Port Nelson. -When James, Duke of York, became king, the position of governor of -the Company was vacated, and Sir James Hayes, who seems always to -have been the Company’s emissary in all court matters, is directed -by the governing committee “<em>to bespeak the Lord John Churchill to -dynner at ye Rummor Tavernne in Queen’s Street</em>” on business for -the company’s very great interests. What that business was became -evident at the General Court of the Adventurers called on April 2, -1685, when my Lord Churchill is elected governor by unanimous ballot. -Phipps remains at Nelson as local governor, Sargeant at Albany, Nixon -at Moose. Bridgar has been transferred to Rupert River, not important -now, because the French are luring the Indians away, and Radisson is -general superintendent of all trade, spending the winters in London to -arrange the furs for sale and to choose the out-going cargoes,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span> going -each summer to the bay to barter with the Indians.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter X.</em>—With the exception of the two petitions -filed by Radisson and Groseillers in France, and of young Groseillers’ -letters—all the contents of this chapter are drawn from the official -records of the Hudson’s Bay House. Young Groseillers, by the way, is -usually called Jean Baptiste, but as he signs himself Chouart I have -referred to him by that name.</p> - -<p>The real reason why Radisson came back to England is so new to history -that I have given the instructions of the French Government in full. -Radisson refers to these instructions in his affidavit of 1697, a -document—which for State reasons—has never been given to the public -till now. The State reasons will become plainer as the record goes on. -Both governments were lying to sustain fictitious claims for damages. -Herewith in part, is Radisson’s affidavit, taken before Sir Robert -Jeffery, Aug. 23, 1697, left with the English commissioners of claims -against France the 5th of June, 1699:</p> - -<p>“Peter Esprit Radisson of the Parish of St. James in the County of -Middlesex Esqr. aged sixty-one years or thereabouts maketh oath that -he came into England in the year 1665 And in the year 1672 married one -of the Daughters of Sir John Kirke. And in the year 1667 this deponent -with his Brother in law Medard Chouart De Groseilier were designed -for a voyage in the service of the English to Hudson Bay, which they -undertook, this deponent going on board the ship <em>Eagle</em> then -commanded by one Captain Wm. Stanard was hindered being disabled at -sea by bad weather, soe could not compleate the sd. intended Voyage, -But the sd. Grosilier proceeded in another English ship called the -<em>Nonsuch</em> and arrived in the Bottom of Hudson’s Bay on a certaine -River then which Capt. Zachary Gillam commander of the sd. ship ... -then named Rupert River in Honor of His Highness Prince Rupert who -was chiefly interested in that expedition.... And this deponent alsoe -saith that in the year 1668 He went from England ... to another -voyage to Port Nelson on an English ship called the <em>Wavero</em> but -was also obstructed ... and at his returne found the sd. Grossilier -safely arrived ... and in the year 1669 this deponent went on the -sd. ship the <em>Wavero</em> commanded by Captain Newland & arrived at -Port Nelson ... and in the year 1670 the sd. Grosilier was sent in an -English Barke to Port Nelson ... and in the year 1673 there arising -some difference between the Hudson’s Bay Company of England & this -deponent, this deponent went unto France<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span> ... and in the year 1682 -there were two Barkes fitted out at Canada ... sailed to Hudson’s Bay -and arrived on Hayes River ... and took Port Nelson and an English -vessel which came from New England commanded by one Benj. Gillam ... -and gave the name of Bourbon to the said Port Nelson ... and in the -year 1683 he came from Canada to Paris by order of Monsr. Colbert, who -soone after dyed. And this deponent being at Paris was there informed -that the Lord Preston, Ambassador of the King of England had given -in a Memoriall ... against this Deponent And after this deponent had -been several times with the Marquis de Seignlay & Monsr. Calliere -(one of the Plenipotentiaries at the Treaty of Peace) this Deponent -found that the French had quitted all pretences to Hudson Bay, And -thereupon in the year 1684 in the month of Aprill, this deponent by -the special direction of the sd. Monsr. Calliere did write the papers -hereunto annexed ... ” (there follow the instructions to return to -England as given in the text) ... “which the sd. Monsr. Calliere -dictated ... and the sd. Monsr. Calliere acted in the sd. affaire by -the directions of the Superintendent of Marine affairs in France.... -And the deponent was commanded by the sd. Monsr. Calliere ... to goe -to Port Nelson to withdraw the French from thence, And to restore the -same to the English who—he sd.—should be satisfied for the wrong & -damages done them by this deponent ... and this deponent went in one -of the Hudson’s Bay Company ships to Port Nelson and withdrew the -French that were there from that Place, and the sd. Place was then put -into possession of the English ... and the French that withdrew were -brought unto England....</p> - -<p class="right"> -(Signed) Pierre Esprit Radisson London.”</p> - -<p>August 1697.</p> - -<p>Those who wish a more detailed account of Radisson will find it in -<cite>Pathfinders of the West</cite>. Chouart’s letter will be found in -the appendix of the same volume. <cite>Documents Relatifs a la Nouvelle -France</cite>, Tome I (1492-1712), contains the petitions filed by -Radisson and Groseillers in France.</p> - -<p>It has been almost a stock criticism of the shallow nowadays to say -that an author has rejected original authorities, if the author refers -to printed records, or to charge that the author has ignored secondary -authorities, if the writer refers only to original documents. I may -say that I have not depended on secondary authorities in the case of -Radisson, because to refer to them would be to point out inaccuracies -in every second line—an ungrateful tack. But I have consulted and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span> -possess in my own library every book that has ever been printed on the -early history of the Northwest. As for original documents, I spent six -months in London on records whose dust had not been disturbed since -they were written in the sixteen-hundreds. The herculean nature of -this laborious task can best be understood when it is realized that -these records are not open to the public and it is impossible to have -an assistant do the copying. The transcripts had to be done by myself, -and revised by an assistant at night.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1685-1686</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">WHEREIN THE REASONS FOR YOUNG CHOUART GROSEILLERS’ MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE -TO OUR GOOD FRIEND “PÉRÉ” ARE EXPLAINED—THE FOREST ROVERS OF NEW -FRANCE RAID THE BAY BY SEA AND LAND—TWO SHIPS SUNK—PÉRÉ, THE SPY, -SEIZED AND SENT TO ENGLAND</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">It is</span> now necessary to follow the fleet of seven ships—four large -frigates, three sloops for inland waters—to the bay. Radisson goes -as general superintendent with Captain Bond and Captain Lucas to -Nelson—the port farthest north. In these ships, too, go young Chouart -Groseillers and his French companions, bound for four years to the -Hudson’s Bay Company, albeit they have received and sent mysterious -messages to and from “our good friend, Monsieur Jan Péré,” of Quebec, -swearing they will meet him at some secret rendezvous or “perish in the -attempt.” What Chouart Groseillers and his friends—sworn to serve the -English company—mean by secret oaths to meet French bush-rovers from -Quebec—remains to be seen.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span> Young Mike Grimmington is second mate on -Captain Outlaw’s ship, <em>The Success</em>, destined for the fort south -of Nelson—Albany, where bluff old Governor Sargeant holds sway from -his bastioned stronghold on the island at the mouth of Albany River. -Bridgar—quondam governor at Nelson—now goes with the small sloops -bound for the bottom of the bay—Moose and Charlton Island and Rupert -River.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>No Robin Hoods of legendary lore ever lived in more complete security -than the Gentlemen Adventurers of Hudson Bay. Radisson—the one man to -be feared as a rival—had been compelled by the French Court to join -them. So had his followers. The forts on the bay seemed immune from -attack. To the south, a thousand miles of juniper swamp and impassable -cataracts separated the English fur traders from the fur traders of -New France. To the west, was impenetrable, unknown wilderness. To the -north, the realm of iron cold. The Adventurers of Hudson Bay slumbered -secure on the margin of their frozen sea. Rupert and Moose—the forts -of the south—yearly collected 5,000 beaver pelts each, not counting as -many again of other rare furs. Albany—where the bay turns north—gave -a yearly quota of 3,500, and Nelson sent out as much as $100,000 worth -of beaver in a single year. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span> Adventurers had found a gold mine rich -as Spanish Eldorado.</p> - -<p>To be sure, the French fur traders, who had been led to the bay by -Radisson once, would now be able to find the way there for themselves, -but the French fur traders demanded four beavers in barter where -the English asked only two, and two French ships that had come up -under Lamartiniére commissioned “to seize Radisson,” could neither -find Radisson nor an Indian who would barter them a single pelt. -They dare not land at Nelson, for it was now English. Reefing sails, -Lamartiniére’s ships spent the summer of ’85 dodging the ice floes -and hiding round Digges’ Island at the inside end of the straits for -reasons that young Chouart Groseillers might have explained if he would.</p> - -<p>It was July before the fleet of Hudson’s Bay boats reached the straits. -Ice jam and tide-rip had presently scattered the fleet. As usual, -the smaller vessels showed their heels to danger and slipping along -the lee edge of the floes, came to the open water of the bay first. -<em>The Happy Return</em>, under Captain Bond with Monsieur Radisson, -Monsieur Chouart and his comrades; <em>The Success</em>, under Captain -Outlaw; <em>The Merchant Perpetuana</em>, under Captain Hume, with -mates Smithsend and Mike Grimmington looking anxiously over decks at -the tumult of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span> ramming ice that swept past—came worming their way -laboriously through the ice floes, small sails only out, grappling -irons hooked to the floating icepans, cables of iron strength hauling -and pulling the frigates up to the ice, with crews out to their armpits -in ice slush ready to loose and sheer from the danger of undertow when -the tide ripple came.</p> - -<p>On July 27, with the crews forespent and the ships badly battered, the -three emerged on the open water of Hudson Bay and steered to rest for -the night under shelter of the rocky shores off Digges’ Island. Like -ghosts from the gloom, shadows took form in the night mist—two ships -with foreign sails on this lonely sea, where all other ships were -forbidden. In a trice, the deathly silence of the sea is broken by the -roar of cannonading. It is Monsieur Radisson, on whose head there is -a price, who realizes the situation first and with a shout that they -are trapped by French raiders—by Lamartiniére—bids Captain Bond flee -for his life. Captain Bond needs no urgings. <em>The Happy Return’s</em> -sails are out like the wings of a frightened bird and she is off -like a terrified quarry pursued by a hawk. Nor does Captain Outlaw -on <em>The Success</em> wait for argument. With all candles instantly -put out, he, too, steers for the hiding of darkness on open water. -<em>The Perpetuana</em> is left alone wedged between Lamartiniére’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span> -two French ships. Hooked gang planks seize her on both sides in a -death grapple. Captain Hume, Mates Smithsend and Mike Grimmington with -half a dozen others are surrounded, overpowered, disarmed, fettered -and clapped under hatches of the victorious ships. Before morning, -<em>The Perpetuana</em> had been scuttled of her cargo. Fourteen of her -crew have been bayoneted and thrown overboard. A month later, cargo -and vessel and captives are received with acclaim at Quebec. Captain -Hume is sent home to France in December on a man-of-war to lie in a -dungeon of Rochelle till he can obtain ransom. So are Mr. Richard Alio -and Andrew Stuckey—seamen. The rest are to lie in the cells below -Château St. Louis, Quebec, on fare of bread and water for six months.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_257"> -<img src="images/i_257.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="388"> -<p class="caption">Montagu House, Hayes River, where <em>The Dobbs</em> and -<em>The California</em> wintered in 1747—photographed from Henry Ellis’s -Voyages.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Mike Grimmington is held and “tortured” to compel him to betray the -secrets of navigation at the different harbors of Hudson Bay, but Mate -Grimmington tells no tales; for he learns that rumors of raid are in -the air at Quebec. Though England and France are at peace, the fur -traders of Quebec are asking commission for one Chevalier de Troyes -with the brothers of the family Le Moyne, to raid the bay, fire the -forts, massacre the English. Smithsend by secret messenger sends a -letter with warnings of the designs to the Hudson’s Bay Company in -England, and Smithsend<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span> for his pains is sold with his comrades into -slavery in Martinique, whence he escapes before spring. Grimmington is -held prisoner for two years before a direct order from the French Court -sets him free. Other things, Grimmington hears in Quebec of the French -on the bay.</p> - -<p>All unsuspecting of plots at Quebec and pirate attacks on the Company’s -ships, the governors of the different forts on the bay awaited the -coming of the ships. From July, it was customary to keep harbor lights -out on the sand-bars, and station sentinels day and night to watch for -the incoming fleet. Secret codes of signals had been left the year -before with the forts. If the incoming ships did not display these -signals, the sentinels were ordered to cut the harbor buoys, put out -the lights, and give the alarm. If the signals were correct, cannon -roared a welcome, flags were run up, and pilots went out in small boats -to guide the ships in through sand-bars and bowlder reefs.</p> - -<p>At Albany, Governor Sargeant, whose wife and family were now with him -at the fort—had ordered a sort of lookout, or crow’s-nest, built of -scaffolding, on a hill above the fort. As far as known, not a single -Englishman had up to this time penetrated the wilds west of the bay. -One Robert Sanford had been ordered this very year to “go up into the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span> -country,” but fear of French bush-rovers made him report that such a -course was very unsafe. It would be wiser and safer for the Company to -give handsome presents to the Indian chiefs. This would induce them to -bring their tribes down to the bay. So the sentinel at Albany could -hardly believe his senses one morning when from the eerie height of his -lookout he espied three men—three white men, steering a canoe down -the swift, tumultuous current of the rain-swollen river. They were -coming <em>not</em> from the sea, but from the Upcountry. This was a -contingency the cutting of harbor buoys had not provided against. The -astounded sentinel ran to Sargeant with the alarm. Cannon were manned -and Governor Sargeant took his stand in the gate of the palisaded walls.</p> - -<p>Beaching their canoe, the three white men marched jauntily up to the -governor. The shaggy eyes of the bluff old governor took in the fact -that the newcomers were French—Frenchmen dressed as bush-lopers, -but with the manners of gentlemen, introducing themselves with the -debonair gayety of their race, Monsieur Péré, Monsieur Coultier de -Comporté and a third, whose name is lost to the records. Old Governor -Sargeant scratched his burly beard. England and France were at peace, -very much at peace when France had sent Radisson back;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span> and he must -treat the visitors with courtesy; but what were gentlemen doing -dressed as bush-rovers? Hunting—taking their pleasure where they -found it—knights of the wildwoods—says my good friend, Jan Péré, -doffing his fur capote with a bow. Governor Sargeant hails good friend -Péré into the fort, to a table loaded with game and good wine and the -hospitality of white men lonely for companionship as a sail at sea. The -wine passes freely and stories pass freely, stories of the hunt and -the voyage and of Monsieur Radisson and his friends, whom the Governor -expects back this year—soon, very soon, any day now the ships may come.</p> - -<p>But at base, every Hudson’s Bay Company man is a trader. Governor -Sargeant evincing no zealous desire to extend his hospitality longer, -Monsieur Péré tactfully evinces no desire to stay. The gay adventurers -aver they are going to coast along the shore—that alkali shore between -the main coast of cedar swamps and the outer reef of bowlders—where -good sport among feathered game is to be expected. Once they are out -of sight from Albany, the three Frenchmen rest on their paddles and -confer. They had not counted on leaving <em>quite</em> so soon. Still gay -as schoolboys on an escapade, that night as they sleep on shore under -the stars, they take good care to leave their canoe so that the high -tide carries<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span> it out to sea. What is to be done now—a thousand miles -by swamp from the nearest French fort? Presto—go back to the English -fort, of course; and back they trudge to Albany with their specious -farce of misadventure.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, Outlaw on <em>The Success</em>, had arrived at Albany with -the tale of Lamartiniére’s raid and the loss of <em>The Perpetuana</em>. -Before Monsieur Jan Péré can feign astonishment—he is dumfounded at -the news, is Monsieur Péré—Governor Sargeant has clapped irons on his -wrists and irons on his feet. The fair-tongued spy is cast manacled -into the bastion that served as prison at Albany, and his two comrades -are transported across to Charlton Island to earn their living hunting -till they have learned that no one may tamper with the fur trade of the -English adventurers. What welcome Chouart Groseillers and his French -comrades received—is not told in Hudson’s Bay annals. They go north -to Nelson for the next four years, then drop from the pay lists of the -Company, and reappear as fur traders of New France. It would hardly be -stretching historic fact to infer that these daring French youths took -to the tall timbers.</p> - -<p>Over on Charlton Island, Péré’s comrades hunted as to the wildwoods -born; hunted so diligently that by September they had store enough of -food to stock<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span> them for the winter. By September the boats that met at -Charlton Island had sailed. No one was left to watch the Frenchmen. -They hastily constructed for themselves a large canoe, loaded it with -their provisions, set out under cover of night and reached the south -shore of James Bay, keeping well away from Moose and Rupert River. -Then they paddled for life upstream toward New France. By October, ice -formed, cutting the canoe. They killed a moose, cured the buckskin -above punk smoke, made themselves snowshoes and marched overland seven -hundred miles to the French fort at Michilimackinac. Word ran like -wildfire from Lake Superior to Quebec—Jan Péré was held in prison at -Albany. These were the rumors Mike Grimmington and Richard Smithsend -heard from their prison cells under Château St. Louis. If these two -spies can march overland in midwinter, cannot a band of bush-rovers -march overland to the rescue of Péré? France and England are at peace; -but Albany holds Péré in prison, and Quebec holds Mike Grimmington and -Smithsend in the cellar of the Château St. Louis.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Up on the bay, old Sargeant was puzzled what to do with Péré. All told, -there were only eighty-nine men on Hudson Bay at this time. It was -decided that Outlaw should remain for the winter with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span> Sargeant, but -take Péré up to Captains Bond and Lucas at Nelson to be shipped home -to England, where the directors could decide on his fate. On October -27, Bond and Lucas arrived in London, and on October 29, the minutes -of the Company report “one Monsieur Jan Péré sent home by Governor -Sargeant as a French spy.” The full report of <em>The Perpetuana’s</em> -loss was laid before the Company on the 30th. On November 4, Monsieur -Péré is examined by a committee. Within a week the suave spy suffers -such a change of heart, he applies on November 11 for the privilege -of joining the Company. Before the Company have given answer to that -request, comes a letter from Captain Hume dated December 13, Rochelle, -France, giving a full account of the wreck of <em>The Perpetuana</em>, -the indignities suffered at Quebec, stating that he is in a dungeon -awaiting the Company’s ransom. Captain Hume is ordered to pay what -ransom is necessary and come to England at once, but it is manifest -that the French spy, Jan Péré, must be held for the safety of the -other English prisoners at Quebec. The Company lodges a suit of £5,000 -damages against him, which will keep Péré in gaol till he can find -bail, and when he sends word to know the reason for such outrage, the -minutes of the Company glibly put on record “<em>that he hath damnified<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span> -the company very considerably</em>.” Unofficially, he is told that the -safety of his life depends on the safety of those English prisoners -held at Quebec. In January arrives Captain Hume, putting on record his -affidavit of the wreck of <em>The Perpetuana</em>. In February, 1686, -comes that letter from Smithsend which he smuggled out of his prison in -Quebec, “<em>ye contents to be kept private and secret</em>,” warning the -Company that raiders are leaving Canada overland for the bay. By March, -Jan Péré is on his knees to join the Company. The Company lets him stay -on his knees in prison. All is bustle at Hudson’s Bay House fitting -out frigates for the next summer. Eighteen extra men are to be sent to -Albany, twelve to Moose, six to Rupert. Monsieur Radisson is instructed -to inspect the large guns sent over from Holland to be sent out to the -bay. Monsieur Radisson advises the Company to fortify Nelson especially -strongly, for hence come the best furs.</p> - -<p>The Company is determined to be ready for the raid, but the straits -will not be clear of ice before July.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XI.</em>—The contents of this chapter are -taken from the Minutes of the Company, Hudson’s Bay House. All -French records state that Hume was killed in the loss of <em>The -Perpetuana</em>. As I have his letter from Rochelle, dated December, -1685, this is a mistake. He reached England, January, 1686, and his -affidavit is in Hudson’s Bay House. Captain Bond was severely censured -by the Company for deserting <em>The Perpetuana</em>. If he had not -fled, the French would without a doubt have dispatched Radisson on -the spot. Some of the men of <em>The Perpetuana</em> spent two years -imprisoned in Quebec. Up to this time, by wreck and raid, including -sloops as well as frigates—the Company had lost thirteen vessels. -Record of Péré is found also in French state documents of this date. -Smithsend escaped to England, February 14, 1686.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1686-1687</p> - -<p class="center">PIERRE LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">With</span> Captain Outlaw’s crew adding strength to Albany, and Governor -Bridgar’s crew wintering at Rupert River, the Adventurers on Hudson -Bay once more felt secure. Like a bolt from the blue came the French -raiders into the midst of this security.</p> - -<p>It was one of the long summer nights on the 18th of June, 1686, -when twilight of the North merges with dawn. Fourteen cannon in all -protruded from the embrasures of the four stone bastions round Moose -Factory—the southwest corner of the bay; and the eighteen-foot pickets -of the palisaded square wall were everywhere punctured with holes -for musketry. In one bastion were three thousand pounds of powder. -In another, twelve soldiers slept. In a third were stored furs. The -fourth bastion served as kitchen. Across the middle of the courtyard -was the two-story storehouse and residence of the chief factor. The -sentinel had shot the strong<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span> iron bolts of the main gate facing the -waterway, and had lain down to sleep wrapped in a blanket without -loading the cannon it was his duty to guard. Twilight of the long June -night—almost the longest day in the year—had deepened into the white -stillness that precedes dawn, when two forms took shape in the thicket -of underbrush behind the fort, and there stepped forth clad in buckskin -<em>cap-à-pie</em>, musket over shoulder, war hatchet, powderhorn, -dagger, pistol in belt and unscabbarded sword aglint in hand, two -French wood-lopers, the far-famed <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coureurs des bois</i>, whose -scalping raids were to strike terror from Louisiana to Hudson Bay.</p> - -<p>At first glance, the two scouts might have been marauding Iroquois -come this outrageous distance through swamp and forest from their -own fighting ground. Closer scrutiny showed them to be young French -noblemen, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville, age twenty-four, and his -brother, Sainte Hélène, native to the roving life of the bushranger, -to pillage and raid and ambuscade as the war-eagle to prey. Born in -Montreal in 1661 and schooled to all the wilderness perils of the -struggling colony’s early life, Pierre le Moyne, one of nine sons of -Charles le Moyne, at Montreal, became the Robin Hood of American wilds.</p> - -<p>Sending his brother Ste. Hélène round one side of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span> the pickets to -peer through the embrasures of the moonlit fortress, Pierre le Moyne -d’Iberville skirted the other side himself and quickly made the -discovery that not one of the cannon was loaded. The tompion was in -every muzzle. Scarcely a cat’s-paw of wind dimpled the waters. The bay -was smooth as silk. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasined tread of -the two spies. There was the white silence, the white midnight pallor -of Arctic night, the diaphanous play of Northern lights over skyey -waters, the fine etched shadows of juniper and fir and spruce black as -crayon across the pale-amber swamps.</p> - -<p>With a quick glance, d’Iberville and his brother took in every -detail. Then they melted back in the pallid half-light like shadows. -In a trice, a hundred forms had taken shape in the mist—sixty-six -Indians decked in all the war-gear of savage glory from head-dress and -vermilion cheeks to naked red-stained limbs lithe as tiger, smooth and -supple as satin—sixty-six Indians and thirty-three half-wild French -soldiers gay in all the regimentals of French pomp, commanded by old -Chevalier de Troyes, veteran of a hundred wars, now commissioned to -demand the release of Monsieur Péré from the forts of the English fur -traders. Beside De Troyes, stood De la Chesnay, head of the Northern -Company of Fur Traders in Quebec, only too glad of this chance to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span> raid -the forts of rivals. And well to the fore, cross in hand, head bared, -the Jesuit Sylvie had come to rescue the souls of Northern heathendom -from hell.</p> - -<p>Impossible as it may seem, these hundred intrepid wood-runners had -come overland from Montreal. While Grimmington and Smithsend were -still in prison at Quebec, d’Iberville and his half-wild followers had -set out in midwinter on a voyage men hardly dared in summer. Without -waiting for the ice to break up, leaving Montreal in March, they had -followed the frozen river bed of the Ottawa northward, past the Rideau -and Chaudiere Falls tossing their curtains of spray in midair where -the city of Ottawa stands to-day, past the Mattawa which led off to -the portages of Michilimackinac and the Great Lakes, up the palisaded -shores of the Temiscamingue to Lake Abbittibbi, the half-way watershed -between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. French silver mines, which -the English did not rediscover to the present century, were worked at -Temiscamingue. At Abbittibbi, a stockade was built in the month of May, -and three Canadians left to keep guard. Here, too, pause was made to -construct canoes for the voyage down the watershed of Moose River to -James Bay. Instead of waiting for the ice of the Ottawa to break up, -the raiders had forced their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span> march to be on time to float down on the -swollen currents of the spring thaw to Moose Factory, four-hundred -miles from the height of land.</p> - -<p>And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had -proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied -to each man’s back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but -what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder, -the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague -promise of loot from the English wigwamming—as the Indians say—on the -Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic -daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest -in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by -spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting -windfall and dank forest growth around the bay?</p> - -<p>If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now. -Unknown cataracts, unknown whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless -rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of -rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d’Iberville’s canoe -was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and -two others only saved by d’Iberville, himself, leaping<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span> to the rescue -and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with -hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking -to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven -miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot -over ice-cold, slippery river bed.</p> - -<p>It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back -from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur -traders were really wigwamming on the bay—by which the Indians meant -“wintering.” Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes were -cast aside and <em>cached</em>. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees -invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur. -Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin; -for these men fought with all the Spartan ferocity of the Indian -fighter—that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in -defeat.</p> - -<p>Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened -powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sovereign -Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every -enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old -Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Dollard’s fight on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span> the Long -Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there -was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or -perish! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood-rovers that -in at least one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts were fifty-thousand -crowns’ worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors. -De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious -onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each -flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild -yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and -his brothers, Ste. Hélène and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and -across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind -the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Hélène’s saber -split the fellow’s head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was -used to ram the main gate. Iberville’s Indians had hacked down the -rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the -sixteen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what -was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides -the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire -of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs -were evidently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span> stored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by -sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three-thousand pounds of -powder. Flag unfurled, muskets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier -de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most -Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how -such an act was accomplished in time of peace, when the sole object of -the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Péré, imprisoned as a spy.</p> - -<p>Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of -the bay on Rupert’s River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions -of stone, with a dock where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships commonly -anchored for the summer. Northwestward of Moose, some hundred miles, -was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders’ -strength, forty paces back from the water. Unassailable by sea, it was -the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first. -Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Chevalier de -Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on -the 27th of June.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_275"> -<img src="images/i_275.jpg" alt="" width="532" height="650"> -<p class="caption">Petition to the H. B. C. signed by Churchill, or -Marlborough.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By -sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe, -this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first -man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span> to blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by -hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a -glimpse of Rupert’s bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians, -he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company’s -ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar -was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville -stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary. -Then he glided across the water to the schooner.</p> - -<p>Hand over fist, he was up the ship’s sides when the sleeping sentinel -awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville’s sword, -and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman’s feet. Iberville then -stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men -in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor -Bridgar, himself, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of -the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found -himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions -were dismantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry -poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a -distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The -bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span> barracks. -Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to -the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and -threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as -well as the enemy to eternity. “It was,” says the old chronicle, “with -an effect most admirable”—which depends on the point of view; for -when the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house -inside, gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville -with his followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down -more bombs. As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman -dashed up stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for -her to retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment -he was down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, followed -by the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had -been the factor’s room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders, -Iberville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a -woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left -for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is -now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a -bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called in the surgeon, and barring -the door from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span> outside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot. -The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship -and thirty prisoners.</p> - -<p>The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three -hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Péré -was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that -the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual, -Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the -soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was -sunset when the canoes launched out from Rupert River. To save time by -crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from -the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter -northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes -about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell -thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice -floes it was destruction.</p> - -<p>Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moynes’ -two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two. -There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice, -hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyageurs’ heads -out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered -through the iceslush<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span> the human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind -of canoe work for Iberville’s Indians. When daylight came through the -gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns -firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse, -portaging where there was ice, paddling where there was water. Four -days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian -wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his Indians and bush-lopers -below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the -boat with soldiers and cannon.</p> - -<p>Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian -coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave -sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all -sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty -yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside -the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair -that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment. -Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court -pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line, -and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out -to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Péré, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span> loyal -subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at -the hands of the English. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders -would have done without the excuse of Péré. The messenger came back -from Governor Sargeant with word that Péré had been sent home to France -by way of England long ago. (That Péré had been delayed in an English -prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender -of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in -time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider. -With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most -of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a -few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a -ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilderness of -forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat -empty-handed.</p> - -<p>Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the -raiders’ hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his -teeth clinched to the end, though the larder was lean and only enough -powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon. -When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner, -dashed from his post roaring out he was going to throw<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span> himself on the -mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with -the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two -English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting -their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to -hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies, -over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor, -imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without -an advance of pay anyway, they added in words that should go down to -posterity, “<em>for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make -it good</em>.” Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his -guns spitting defiance at the enemy.</p> - -<p>For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was -more parleying. Bridgar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to -tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled -to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped -against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then -Captain Outlaw came from the powder magazines with word there was no -more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to -desert <em>en masse</em> to the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused -to beat a parley; so Dixon, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span> under factor, hung out a white sheet -as flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased -firing to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting -iron round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with -word of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out -with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank -healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if -his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums -beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers, -wives and servants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to -be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the -English ship.</p> - -<p>Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed -into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns’ -worth of beaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl -of barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither -powder nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, -and it was a wild scramble for home—<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sauve qui peut</i>, as the -old chronicler relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec -as carriers of the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being -turned adrift in the desolate wilderness of the bay! It was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span> October -before Iberville’s forest rovers were back in Montreal.</p> - -<p>From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port -Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these -were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the -woods, and the Hudson’s Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the -loot for the French raiders back to Quebec—suffered slim mercies from -their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of -burden for the small French garrison, and received no food but what -they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others -attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw’s -ship <em>Success</em>, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving -six were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were -set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever -heard of again.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XII.</em>—The contents of this chapter are drawn -from the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and the State Papers -of the Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remarkable how completely -the State papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. -C. House are the Minutes, Governor Sargeant’s affidavit, Bridgar’s -report, Outlaw’s oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw’s -crew—namely, John Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, -Edmund Clough, Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids -now became an international matter, duplicates of most of these papers -are to be found in the Public Records Office, London. All French -historians give some account of this raid of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span> Iberville’s; but all are -drawn from the same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from -one De Lery, who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old -English chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant’s papers, as he -relates some details only to be found in Hudson’s Bay House.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1686-1697</p> - -<p class="center">D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY (<em>Continued</em>)</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> French were now in complete possession of the south end of Hudson -Bay. Iberville’s brother, Maricourt, with a handful of men remained -at Albany to guard the captured forts. Some of the English, who had -taken to the woods in flight, now found the way to Severn River, -half-way north between Albany and Nelson, where they hastily rushed -up rude winter quarters and boldly did their best to keep the Indians -from communicating with the French. Among the refugees was Chouart -Groseillers, who became one of the chief advisers at Nelson. Two of -his comrades had promptly deserted to the French side. For ten years, -Hudson Bay became the theater of such escapades as buccaneers might -have enacted on the Spanish Main. England and France were at peace. A -Treaty of Neutrality, in 1686, had provided that the bay should be held -in common by the fur traders<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span> of both countries, but the Company of the -North in Quebec and the English Adventurers of London had no notion of -leaving their rights in such an ambiguous position. Both fitted out -their raiders to fight the quarrel to the end, and in spite of the -Treaty of Neutrality, the King of France issued secret instructions -to the bush-rovers of Quebec “<em>to leave of the English forts on the -Northern Bay, not a vestige standing</em>.” If the bay were to be held -in common, and the English abandoned it, all rights would revert to -France.</p> - -<p>The year 1687 saw the tireless Iberville back at Rupert River. The -Hudson’s Bay sloop, <em>The Young</em>, had come to port. Iberville -seized it without any ado and sent four spies over to Charlton Island -where <em>The Churchill</em>, under Captain Bond, was wintering. Three of -the French spies were summarily captured by the English fur traders and -thrown into the hold of the ship, manacled, for the winter. In spring, -one was brought above decks to give the English sailors a helping hand. -The fellow waited till six of the crew were up the ratlines, then he -seized an axe, tip-toed up behind two Englishmen, brained them on -the spot, rushing down the hatchway liberated his two comrades, took -possession of all firearms and at pistol point kept the Englishmen -up the mast poles till he steered the vessel across<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span> to Iberville at -Rupert River, where a cargo of provisions saved the French from famine.</p> - -<p>It was in vain that the English sent rescue parties south from Nelson -and Severn to recapture Albany. Captain Moon had come down from Nelson -with twenty-four men to Albany, reinforced by the crews of the two -ships, <em>Hampshire</em> and <em>North-West Fox</em>, when Iberville came -canoeing across the ice floes with his Indian bandits. The English -ships were locked in the ice before the besieged fort. Iberville -ambushed his men in the tamarack swamps till eighty-two English had -landed. Then, he rushed the deserted vessels, took possession of one -with its cargo of furs, and as the ice cleared sailed gayly out of -Albany for Quebec. The astounded English set fire to the other ship and -retreated overland to Severn. At the straits, Iberville ran full-tilt -into the fleet of incoming English vessels, but that was nothing to -disconcert this blockade-runner, not though the ice closed round them -all, holding French and English prisoners within gunshot of each other. -Iberville ran up an English flag on his captured ship and had actually -signaled the captains of the English frigates to come across the ice -and visit him when the water cleared, and away he sailed.</p> - -<p>Perhaps success bred reckless carelessness on the part of the French. -From 1690 to ’93, Iberville<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span> was absent from the bay on the border -raids of Schenectady, and Pemaquid in New England. Mike Grimmington -of <em>The Perpetuana</em> was at last released from captivity in -Quebec and came to England with rage in his heart and vengeance in -his hands for France. It was now almost impossible for the English -Adventurers to hire captains and crews for the dangerous work of their -trade on the bay. The same pensions paid by the State were offered by -the Company in case of wounds or death, and in addition a bonus of -twenty shillings a month was guaranteed to the sailors, of from £50 -to £200 a year to the captains. A present of £10 plate was given to -Grimmington for his bravery and he was appointed captain. Coming out -to Nelson in ’93, Grimmington determined to capture back Albany for -the English. Three ships sailed down to Albany from Nelson. The fort -looked deserted. Led by Grimmington, the sailors hacked open the gates. -Only four Frenchmen were holding the fort. The rest of the garrison -were off hunting in the woods, and in the woods they were forced to -remain that winter; for Grimmington ransacked the fort, took possession -and clapped the French under Mons. Captain Le Meux, prisoners in the -hold of his vessel. With Grimmington on this raid was his old mate in -captivity—Smithsend. Albany was the largest fort on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span> the bay at this -time. As the two English captains searched the cellars they came on a -ghastly sight—naked, covered with vermin, shackled hands to feet and -chained to the wall was a French criminal, who had murdered first the -surgeon, then the priest of the fort. He, too, was turned adrift in the -woods with the rest of the garrison.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Mons. Le Meux, carried to England captive, is examined by the English -Adventurers. From his account, all the French garrisons are small and -France holds but lightly what she has captured so easily. Captain -Grimmington is given a tankard worth £36 for his distinguished -services. Captain Edgecombe of <em>The Royal Hudson’s Bay</em>, who, -in spite of the war, has brought home a cargo of twenty-two thousand -beaver, is given plate to the value of £20 as well as a gratuity of -£100. Captain Ford, who was carried prisoner to France by Iberville, is -ransomed, and <em>The Hampshire</em> vessel put up at auction in France -is bid in by secret agents of the English company. Chouart Groseillers -is welcomed home to London, and given a present of £100 and allowed -to take a graceful farewell of the Company, as are all its French -servants. The Company wants no French servants on the bay just now—not -even Radisson to whom Mons. Péré, now escaped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span> to France, writes -tempting offers. Sargeant, who lost Albany in 1686, is first sued -for £20,000 damages for surrendering the fort so easily, and is then -rewarded £350 for holding it so bravely. Phipps has refused point-blank -to serve as governor any longer at so dangerous a point as Nelson for -so small a salary as £200 a year. Phipps comes home. Abraham tries it -for a year. He, too, loses relish for the danger spot, and Walsh goes -to Nelson as governor with the apprentice boy Henry Kelsey, risen to -be first lieutenant. In spite of wars and raids and ambuscades, there -is a dividend of 50 per cent. in ’88, (the King refusing to receive it -personally as it might prejudice him with France) and of 50 per cent. -in ’89, and of 25 per cent. in ’90 on stock which had been trebled, -which was equivalent to 75 per cent. dividends; and there are put on -record in the Company’s minutes these sentiments: “<em>being thoroughly -sensible of the great blessing it has pleased Almighty God to give the -company by the arrival of the shippes, the comp’y doo thinke fitt to -show some testimony of their Humble thankfulness for Gods so great a -mercy and doo now unanimously resolve that the sum of £100 bee sett -aparte as charity money to be distributed amongst such persons as shall -dye or be wounded in the companies’ service, their widows or children & -the secretary is to keep a particular account in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span> company’s books -for the future</em>.” Stock forfeited for the breaking of rules is also -to go to wounded men and widows.</p> - -<p>And the Company is equally generous to itself; no shilling pay for -committeemen now but a salary of £300 a year to each committeeman of -the weekly meetings on the Company’s business.</p> - -<p>The upshot of the frequent meetings and increasing dividends was—the -Company resolved on a desperate effort to recapture the lost forts. -The English now held—Nelson, the great fur emporium of the North; New -Severn to the South, which had been built by refugees from Albany, -burnt twice to escape bush-raiders and as promptly rebuilt when the -French withdrew; and Albany, itself, which Mike Grimmington had -captured back.</p> - -<p>The French held Moose and Rupert on the south of the bay.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_293"> -<img src="images/i_293.jpg" alt="" width="437" height="650"> -<p class="caption"><div class="blockquot1"> - -<p>Terms of surrender between Le Moyne d’Iberville and Governor Walsh at -York Fort. These terms, the Hudson’s Bay Company averred in petitions, -were grossly violated by the French. Original in the H. B. C. Memorial -Books transferred to Public Records.</p> -</div> -</div> -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>James Knight, who had acted variously as apprentice, trader and captain -from the beginning of the Company—was now appointed commander of the -south end of the bay, with headquarters at Albany, at a salary of £400 -a year. Here, he was to resist the French and keep them from advancing -north to Nelson. New Severn, next north, was still to serve as a refuge -in case of attack. At Nelson, in addition to Walsh, Bailey—a new -man—Geyer, a captain,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span> and Kelsey were to have command as officers. -Three frigates—<em>The Dering</em>, <em>The Hudson’s Bay</em> and <em>The -Hampshire</em> are commissioned to the bay with letters of marque to -war on all enemies, and three merchantmen—<em>The Prosperous</em>, -<em>The Owner’s Love</em> and <em>The Perry</em> are also to go to the bay. -Mutinous of voyages to the bay, seamen are paid in advance, and two -hundred and twenty gallons of brandy are divided among the ships to -warm up courage as occasion may require.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>But Iberville was not the man to let his winnings slip through his -fingers. It had now become more than a guerrilla warfare between -gamesters of the wilderness. It was a fight for ascendency on the -continent. It was a struggle to determine which nation was to command -the rivers leading inland to the unknown West. If the French raiders -were to hold the forts at the bottom of the bay, they must capture the -great stronghold of the English—Nelson.</p> - -<p>Taking on board one hundred and twenty woodrangers, Iberville sailed -from Quebec on August 10, 1694. He had two frigates—<em>The Poli</em> -and <em>Salamander</em>. By September 24, he was unloading his cannon -below the earthworks of one hundred great guns at Nelson. Steady -bombardment from his frigates poured bombs into the fort from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span> -September 25 to October 14, and without ceasing, the fort guns sent -back a rain of fire and ball. Chateauguay, Iberville’s brother, landed -to attempt a rush with his bush-rovers by the rear. He was met at the -pickets by a spattering fire and fell shot as other brave sons of the -Le Moyne family fell—wounded in front, shouting a rally with his -dying breath. The death of their comrade redoubled the fury of the -raiders. While long-range guns tore up the earthworks and cut great -gashes in the shattered palisades to the fore, the bushrangers behind -had knocked down pickets and were in a hand-to-hand fight in the ditch -that separated the rows of double palisades. In the hope of saving -their furs, Walsh and Kelsey hung out a tablecloth as flag of truce. -For a day, the parley lasted, the men inside the pickets seizing the -opportunity to eat and rest, and spill all liquor on the ground and -bury ammunition and hide personal treasures. The weather had turned -bitterly cold. Winter was impending. No help could come from England -till the following July. Walsh did his best in a bad bargain, asking -that the officers be lodged till the ships came the next year, that the -English be allowed the same provisions as the French, that no injury be -offered the English traders during the winter, and that they should be -allowed to keep the Company’s books.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span></p> - -<p>Iberville was depending on loot to pay his men, and would not hear -of granting the furs to the English, but he readily subscribed to -the other conditions of surrender, and took possession of the fort. -When Iberville hastily sailed away to escape through the straits -before winter closed them, he left De la Forêst commander at Nelson, -Jeremie, interpreter. And De la Forêst quickly ignored the conditions -of surrender. He was not a good man to be left in charge. He was one -of those who had outfitted Radisson in ’83 and lost when Radisson -turned Nelson over to the English in ’84. Early next year, the English -ships would come. If De la Forêst could but torture some of the -English officers, who were his prisoners, into betraying the secret -signals of the ships, he might lure them into port and recoup himself -for that loss of ten years ago. Only four officers were kept in the -fort. The rest of the fifty-three prisoners were harried and abused -so that they were glad to flee to the woods. Beds, clothes, guns and -ammunition—everything, was taken from them. Eight or ten, who hung -round the fort, were treated as slaves. One Englishman was tied to a -stake and tortured with hot irons to compel him to tell the signals -of the English ships. But the secret was not told. No English ships -anchored at Port Nelson in the summer of ’95.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span> The sail that hove on -the offing was a French privateer. In the hold of this, the English -survivors were huddled like beasts, fed on pease and dogs’ meat. The -ship leaked, and when the water rose to mid-waist of the prisoners, -they were not allowed to come above decks, but set to pumping the water -out. On the chance of ransom money, the privateer carried the prisoners -in irons to France because—as one of the sufferers afterward took -oath—“<em>we had not the money to grease the commander’s fist for our -freedom</em>.” Of the fifty-three Hudson’s Bay men turned adrift from -Nelson, only twenty-five survived the winter.</p> - -<p>So the merry game went on between the rival traders of the North, -French and English fighting as furiously for a beaver pelt as the -Spanish fought for gold. The English Adventurers’ big resolutions to -capture back the bay had ended in smoke. They had lost Nelson and now -possessed only one fort on the bay—Albany, under Governor Knight; -but one thing now favored the English. Open war had taken the place -of secret treaty between France and England. The Company applied to -the government for protection. The English Admiralty granted two -men-of-war, <em>The Bonaventure</em> and <em>Seaforth</em>, under Captain -Allen. These accompanied Grimmington and Smithsend to Nelson in ’96, -so when Iberville’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span> brother, Serigny, came out from France with -provisions on <em>The Poli</em> and <em>Hardi</em> for the French garrisons -at Nelson, he found English men-of-war lined up for attack in front of -the fort. Serigny didn’t wait. He turned swift heel for the sea, so -swift, indeed, that <em>The Hardi</em> split on an ice floe and went to -the bottom with all hands. On August 26, Captain Allen of the Royal -Navy, demanded the surrender of Nelson from Governor De la Forêst. -Without either provision or powder, La Forêst had no choice but to -capitulate. In the fort, Allen seized twenty thousand beaver pelts.</p> - -<p>Nelson or York—as it is now known—consisted under the French rule -of a large square house, with lead roof and limestone walls. There -were four bastions to the courtyard—one for the garrisons’ lodgings, -one for trade, one for powder, one for provisions. All the buildings -were painted red. Double palisades with a trench between enclosed the -yard. There were two large gates, one to the waterside, one inland, -paneled in iron with huge, metal hinges showing the knobs of big nail -heads. A gallery ran round the roof of the main house, and on this were -placed five cannon. Three cannon were also mounted in each bastion. -The officers’ mess room boasted a huge iron hearth, oval tables, wall -cupboards, and beds that shut up in the wall-panels.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span></p> - -<p>Captain Allen now retaliated on the French for their cruelty to English -captives by taking the entire garrison prisoners. Loaded with furs to -the water-line, the English ships left Bailey and Kelsey at Nelson and -sailed slowly for England. Just at the entrance to the straits—the -place already made so famous by Indian attack on Hudson’s crew, and -French raid on <em>The Perpetuana</em>, a swift-sailing French privateer -bore down on the fleet, singled out Allen’s ship which was separated -from the other, poured a volley of shot across her decks which killed -Allen on the spot, and took to flight before the other ship could come -to the rescue. Was this Iberville’s brother—Serigny—on his way home? -It will never be known, for as the ships made no capture, the action is -not reported in French records.</p> - -<p>The war had reduced the Hudson’s Bay Company to such straits that -several of the directors had gone bankrupt advancing money to keep the -ships sailing. No more money could be borrowed in England, and agents -were trying to raise funds in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the Company -presented the captains—Smithsend and Grimmington—with £100 each for -capturing York. The captured furs replenished the exhausted finances -and preparation was made to dispatch a mighty fleet that would forever -settle mastery of the bay.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span></p> - -<p>Two hundred extra mariners were to be engaged. On <em>The Dering</em>, -Grimmington, now a veteran campaigner, was to take sixty fighting -men. Captain Moon was to have eighteen on the little frigate, -<em>Perry</em>. Edgecombe’s <em>Hudson’s Bay</em>, frigate, was to have -fifty-five; Captain Fletcher’s <em>Hampshire</em>, sixty; the fire ship -<em>Prosperous</em> another thirty under a new man, Captain Batty. These -mariners were in addition to the usual seamen and company servants. On -<em>The Hudson’s Bay</em> also went Smithsend as adviser in the campaign. -Every penny that could be raised on sales of beaver, all that the -directors were able to pledge of their private fortunes, and all the -money that could be borrowed by the Adventurers as a corporate company, -went to outfit the vessels for what was to be the deciding campaign. -With Bailey in control at Nelson and old Governor Knight down at -Albany—surely the French could be driven completely from the bay.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Those captives that Allen’s ship had brought to England, lay in prison -five months at Portsmouth before they were set free. Released at last, -they hastened to France where their emaciated, ragged condition spoke -louder than their indignant words. Frenchmen languishing in English -prison! Like wildfire ran the rumor of the outrage! Once before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span> when -Péré, the Frenchman, had been imprisoned on Hudson Bay, Iberville -had thrust the sword of vengeance into the very heart of the English -fastness. France turned again to the same Robin Hood of Canada’s rude -chivalry. Iberville was at this time carrying havoc from hamlet to -hamlet of Newfoundland, where two hundred English had already fallen -before his sword and seven hundred been captured.</p> - -<p>On the 7th of April, 1697, Scrigny, his brother, just home from Nelson, -was dispatched from France with five men-of-war—<em>The Pelican</em>, -<em>The Palmier</em>, <em>The Profound</em>, <em>The Violent</em>, <em>The -Wasp</em>—to be placed under Iberville’s command at Placentia, -Newfoundland, whence he was to proceed to Hudson Bay with orders, “to -leave not a vestige remaining” of the English fur trade in the North.</p> - -<p>The squadron left Newfoundland on July 8. By the 25th, the ships had -entered the straits amid berg and floe, with the long, transparent -daylight, when sunset merges with sunrise. Iberville was on <em>The -Pelican</em> with Bienville, his brother, two hundred and fifty men and -fifty guns. The other brother, Serigny, commanded <em>The Palmier</em>, -and Edward Fitzmaurice of Kerry, a Jacobite, had come as chaplain. A -gun gone loose in the hold of <em>The Wasp</em>, created a panic during -the heavy seas of the Upper Narrows in the straits—the huge implement<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span> -of terror rolling from side to side of the dark hold with each wash -of the billows in a way that threatened to capsize the vessel—not a -man daring to risk his life to stop the cannon’s roll; and several -gunners were crushed to death before <em>The Wasp</em> could come to -anchor in a quiet harbor to mend the damage. On <em>The Pelican</em>, -Iberville’s ship, forty men lay in their berths ill of scurvy. The -fleet was stopped by ice at Digges’ Island at the west end of the -straits—a place already famous in the raiders’ history. Here, the -icepans, contracted by the straits, locked around the vessels in iron -grip. Fog fell concealing the ships from one another, except for the -ensigns at the mastheads, which showed all the fleet anchored southward -except Iberville’s <em>Pelican</em>. For eighteen days the impatient -raider found himself forcibly gripped to the ice floes in fog, his ship -crushed and banged and bodily lifted until a powder blast relieved -pressure, or holes drilled and filled with bombs broke the ice crush, -or unshipping the rudder, his own men disembarked and up to the waist -in ice slush towed <em>The Pelican</em> forward.</p> - -<p>On the 25th of August at four in the morning, the fog suddenly -lifted. Iberville saw that <em>The Palmier</em> had been carried back -in the straits. <em>The Wasp</em> and <em>Violent</em> had disappeared, -but straight to the fore, ice-jammed, were <em>The Profound</em>, -and—Iberville<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span> could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes—three -English men-of-war, <em>The Hampshire</em>, and <em>Dering</em>, and -<em>Hudson’s Bay</em> closing in a circle round the ill-fated and -imprisoned French ship. Just at that moment, the ice loosened. -Iberville was off like a bird in <em>The Pelican</em>, not waiting to see -what became of <em>The Profound</em>, which escaped from the ice that -night after a day’s bombardment when the English were in the act of -running across the ice for a hand-to-hand fight.</p> - -<p>On the 3rd of September, Iberville anchored before Port Nelson. -Anxiously, for two days, he scanned the sea for the rest of his fleet. -On the morning of the fifth, the peaked sails of three vessels rose -above the offing. Raising anchor, Iberville hastened out to meet them, -and signaled a welcome. No response signaled back. The horrified watch -at the masthead called down some warning. Then the full extent of the -terrible mistake dawned on Iberville. These were not his consort ships -at all. They were the English men-of-war, <em>The Hampshire</em>, Captain -Fletcher, fifty-two guns and sixty soldiers; <em>The Dering</em>, Captain -Grimmington, thirty guns and sixty men; <em>The Hudson’s Bay</em>, -Edgecombe and Smithsend, thirty-two guns and fifty-five men—hemming -him in a fatal circle between the English fort on the land and their -own cannon to sea.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span></p> - -<p>One can guess the wild whoop of jubilation that went up from the -Englishmen to see their enemy of ten years’ merciless raids, now -hopelessly trapped between their fleet and the fort. The English -vessels had the wind in their favor and raced over the waves all sails -set like a war troop keen for prey. Iberville didn’t wait. He had -weighed anchor to sail out when he thought the vessels were his own, -and now he kept unswervingly on his course. Of his original crew, forty -were invalided. Some twenty-five had been sent ashore to reconnoiter -the fort. Counting the Canadians and Indians taken on at Newfoundland, -he could muster only one hundred and fifty fighting men. Quickly, ropes -were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery -decks. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen -below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation -for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the -impending battle. Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen -in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand -grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and -war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships -knocked keels. Iberville knew it was to be like those old-time raids—a -Spartan conflict—a fight to the death;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span> death or victory; and he swept -right up to <em>The Hampshire</em>, Fletcher’s frigate, the strongest -of the foe, where every shot would tell. <em>The Hampshire</em> shifted -broadsides to the French; and at nine in the morning, the battle began.</p> - -<p><em>The Hampshire</em> let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up -the decks of <em>The Pelican</em> and stripped the French bare of masts -to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s <em>Dering</em> and -Smithsend’s <em>Hudson’s Bay</em> circled to the left of the French and -poured a stream of musketry fire across <em>The Pelican’s</em> stern. At -one fell blast, forty French were mowed down; but the batterymen below -never ceased their crash of bombs straight into <em>The Hampshire’s</em> -hull.</p> - -<p>Iberville shouted for the infantrymen to fire into <em>The Dering’s</em> -forecastle, to pick off Grimmington if they could; and for the Canadian -sharp-shooters to rake the decks of <em>The Hudson’s Bay</em>.</p> - -<p>For four hours, the three-cornered battle raged. The ships were so -close, shout and counter-shout could be heard across decks. Faces were -singed with the closeness of the musketry fire. Ninety French had been -wounded. <em>The Pelican’s</em> decks swam in blood that froze to ice, -slippery as glass, and trickled down the clinker boards in reddening -splashes. Grape shot and grenade had set the fallen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span> sails on fire. -Sails and mastpoles and splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame -that would presently extend to the powder magazines and blow all to -eternity. Railings had gone over decks; and when the ship rolled, only -the tangle of burning débris kept those on deck from washing into the -sea. The bridge was crumbling. A shot had torn the high prow away; and -still the batterymen below poured their storm of fire and bomb into -the English hull. The fighters were so close, one old record says, and -the holes torn by the bombs so large in the hull of each ship that -the gunners on <em>The Pelican</em> were looking into the eyes of the -smoke-grimed men below the decks of <em>The Hampshire</em>.</p> - -<p>For three hours, the English had tacked to board <em>The Pelican</em>, -and for three hours the mastless, splintered <em>Pelican</em> had fought -like a demon to cripple her enemy’s approach. The blood-grimed, -half-naked men of both decks had rushed <em>en masse</em> for the last -leap, the hand-to-hand fight, when a frantic shout went up!</p> - -<p>Then silence, and fearful confusion, and a mad panic back from the -tilting edges of the two vessels with cries from the wounded above the -shriek of the sea!</p> - -<p>The batteries of <em>The Hampshire</em> had suddenly silenced. The great -ship refused to answer to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span> wheel. That persistent, undeviating fire -bursting from the sides of <em>The Pelican</em> had done its work. <em>The -Hampshire</em> gave a quick, back lurch. Before the amazed Frenchmen -could believe their senses, amid the roar of flame and crashing billows -and hiss of fires extinguished in an angry sea, <em>The Hampshire</em>, -all sails set, settled and sank like a stone amid the engulfing -billows. Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men—one hundred and -ninety mariners and servants, with sixty soldiers—escaped.</p> - -<p>The screams of the struggling seamen had not died on the waves before -Iberville had turned the batteries of his shattered ship full force -on Smithsend’s <em>Hudson’s Bay</em>. Promptly, <em>The Hudson’s Bay</em> -struck colors, but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and -taking over ninety prisoners, Grimmington on <em>The Dering</em> showed -swift heel and gained refuge in Fort Nelson.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In the fury and heat of the fight, the French had not noticed the -gathering storm that now broke with hurricane gusts of sleet and -rain. The whistling in the cordage became a shrill shriek—warning a -blizzard. Presently the billows were washing over decks with nothing -visible of the wheel but the drenched helmsman clinging for life to -his place. The pancake ice pounded the ships’ sides with a noise of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span> -thunder. Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries -of the wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railing -by the pounding seas. <em>The Pelican</em> could only drive through -the darkness before the storm-flaw, “the dead” says an old record, -“floating about on the decks among the living.” The hawser, that had -towed the captive ship, snapped like thread. Captor and captive in vain -threw out anchors. The anchors raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the -two ships drove along the sands. The deck of <em>The Pelican</em> was -icy with blood. Every shock of smashing billows jumbled dead and dying -<em>en masse</em>. The night grew black as pitch. The little railing that -still clung to the shattered decks of <em>The Pelican</em> was now washed -away, and the waves carried off dead and wounded. Tables were hurled -from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and the water was already to the -bridge of the foundering ship, when the hull began to split, and <em>The -Pelican</em> buried her prow in the sands, six miles from the fort.</p> - -<p>All small boats had been shot away. The canoes of the Canadians -swamped in the heavy sea as they were launched. Tying the spars of -the shattered masts in four-sided racks, Iberville had the surviving -wounded bound to these and towed ashore by the others, half-swimming, -half-wading. Many of the men sprang into the icy sea bare to mid-waist -as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span> they had fought. Guns and powderhorns carried ashore in the -swimmers’ teeth were all that were saved of the wreck. Eighteen more -men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they -had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires -kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed -raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted -fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became -targets for sharp-shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp -fires. Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked <em>Hudson’s Bay</em> -and Grimmington, who had succeeded in taking <em>The Dering</em> into -harbor—put Governor Bailey on guard. Their one hope was that Iberville -might be drowned.</p> - -<p>It was at this terrible pass that the other ships of Iberville’s fleet -came to the rescue. They, too, had suffered from the storm, <em>The -Violent</em> having gone to bottom; <em>The Palmier</em> having lost her -steering gear, another ship her rudder.</p> - -<p>Nelson or York under the English was the usual four-bastioned fur post, -with palisades and houses of white fir logs a foot thick, the pickets -punctured for small arms, with embrasures for some hundred cannon. It -stood back from Hayes River, four miles up from the sea. The seamen -of the wrecked <em>Hudson’s Bay</em> <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span> carried word to Governor Bailey -of Iberville’s desperate plight. Nor was Bailey inclined to surrender -even after the other ships came to Iberville’s aid. With Bailey in the -fort were Kelsey, and both Grimmington and Smithsend who had once been -captives with the French in Quebec. When Iberville’s messenger was led -into the council hall with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand -surrender, Smithsend advised resistance till the English knew whether -Iberville had been lost in the wreck. Fog favored the French. By the -11th, they had been able to haul their cannon ashore undetected by the -English and so near the fort that the first intimation was the blow -of hammers erecting platforms. This drew the fire of the English, and -the cannonading began on both sides. On the 12th, Serigny entered the -council again to demand surrender.</p> - -<p>“If you refuse, there will be no quarter,” he warned.</p> - -<p>“Quarter be cursed,” thundered the old governor. Then turning to his -men, “Forty pounds sterling to every man who fights.”</p> - -<p>But the Canadians with all the savagery of Indian warfare, had begun -hacking down palisades to the rear.</p> - -<p>Serigny came once more from the French. “They<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span> are desperate,” he -urged, “they must take the fort, or pass the winter like beasts in the -wilds.” Bombs had been shattering the houses. Bailey was induced to -capitulate, but game to the end, haggled for the best bargain he could -get. Neither the furs nor the armaments of the fort were granted him, -but he was permitted to march out with people unharmed, drums beating, -flags unfurled, ball in mouth, matches lighted, bag and baggage, fife -screaming its shrillest defiance—to march out with all this brave -pomp to a desolate winter in the wilds, while the bush-lopers, led -by Boisbriant, ransacked the fort. In the surrender, Grimmington -had bargained for his ship, and he now sailed for England with the -refugees, reaching the Thames on October 26. Bailey and Smithsend with -other refugees, resolutely marched overland in the teeth of wintry -blasts to Governor Knight at Albany. How Bailey reached England, I do -not know. He must have gone overland with French coureurs to Quebec; -for he could not have sailed through the straits after October, and he -arrived in England by December.</p> - -<p>That the blow of the last loss paralyzed the Company—need not be told. -Of all their forts on the bay, they now had only Albany, and were in -debt for the last year’s ships. They had not money to pay the captains’ -wages. Nevertheless, they borrowed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span> money enough to pay the wages of -all the seamen and £20 apiece extra, for those who had taken part in -the fight. Just at this time, the Treaty of Ryswick put an end to war -between England and France, but, as far as the Company was concerned, -it left them worse than before, for it provided that the contestants on -the bay should remain as they were at the time, which meant that France -held all the bay except Albany. Before this campaign, the loss of the -English Adventurers from the French raiders had been £100,000. Now the -loss totaled more than £200,000.</p> - -<p>Chouart Groseillers had long since been created a nobleman for -returning to France. In spite of the peace, this enigmatical -declaration is found in the private papers of the King of France:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“Owing to the peace, the King of England has given positive orders -that goods taken at Hudson Bay, must be paid for; but the French King -relies on getting out of this affair.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Iberville sailed away to fresh glories. A seigniory had been granted -him along the Bay of Chaleurs. In 1699, he was created Chevalier of -St. Louis. The rest of his years were passed founding the colony of -Louisiana, and he visited Boston and New York harbors with plans of -conquest in his mind, though as the Earl of Belomont reported “he -pretended it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span> was for wood and water.” In the war of the Barbadoes, -Iberville had hoped to capture slaves for Louisiana, and he had -transported hundreds, but yellow fever raged in the South and Iberville -fell a victim to it on July 9, 1706, at Havana. He was, perhaps, the -most picturesque type of Canada’s wildwood chivalry, with all its -savage faults and romantic heroism.</p> - -<p>And His Majesty, the King of France, well pleased with the success -of his brave raiders sends out a dispatch that reads: “His Majesty -declines to accept the white bear sent to him from Hudson Bay, but he -will permit the fur traders to exhibit the animal.”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XIII.</em>—The English side of the story related -in this chapter is taken from the records of Hudson’s Bay House, -London, and of the Public Records Office. The French side of the -story, from the State Papers of the Marine Archives. <em>Bacqueville de -la Potherie</em>, who was present in the fight of ’97, gives excellent -details in his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Historie de l’Amerique Septentrionale</i> (1792). -<em>Jeremie</em>, who was interpreter at York, wrote an account, -to be found among other voyages in the <cite>Bernard Collection of -Amsterdam</cite>. For side-lights from early writers, the reader is -referred to <cite>Doc. Relatifs Nouvelle France</cite>; <cite>Oldmixon</cite>; -<cite>Doc. Hist. N. Y.</cite>; <cite>Quebec Hist. So. Collection</cite> in which -will be found <em>Abbé Belmont’s Relation</em> and <em>Dollier de -Casson’s</em>.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It will be noticed that one of the conditions of surrender was that -the English should be permitted to march out “match-lighted; ball -in mouth.” The latter term needs no explanation. The ball was held -ready to be rammed down the barrel. With reference to the term -“match-lighted,” in the novel, “Heralds of Empire,” I had referred -to “matches” when the argus-eyed critic came down with the criticism -that “matches” were not invented until after 1800. I stood corrected -till I happened to be in the Tower of London in the room given over -to the collection of old armor. I asked one of the doughty old “beef<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span> -eaters” to take down a musket of that period, and show me exactly -what “match-lighted” must have meant. The old soldier’s explanation -was this: In time of war, not flint but a little bit of inflammable -punk did duty as “match-lighter.” This was fastened below the trigger -like the percussion cap of a later day. The privilege of surrendering -“match-lighted” meant with the punk below the trigger. I offer this -explanation for what it is worth, and as he is the keeper of the -finest collection of old armor in the world, the chances are he is -right and that matches preceded 1800.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>At first sight, there may seem to be discrepancies in the numbers on -the English ships, but the 200 mariners were extra men, in addition to -the 50 or 60 seamen on each frigate, and the 50 or 60 servants on each -boat sent out to strengthen the forts.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1688-1710</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hang50center">WHAT BECAME OF RADISSON? NEW FACTS ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAMOUS -PATHFINDER</p> -</div> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">What</span> became of Radisson? It seems impossible that the man, who set -France and England by the ears for a century, and led the way to the -pathfinding of half America, should have dropped so completely into -oblivion that not a scrap is recorded concerning the last twenty-five -years of his life. Was he run to earth by the bailiffs of London, like -Thackeray’s “Virginian?” Or did he become the lion tamed, the eagle -with its wings clipped, to be patronized by supercilious nonentities? -Or did he die like Ledyard of a heart broken by hope deferred?</p> - -<p>Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for -life through mountain torrents that would throw his savage pursuers -off the trail—we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London -bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake -Superior to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span> Great Northwest—he is a familiar figure, but not -stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles -the Second’s slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come -to Hudson Bay during Iberville’s raids, he drops as completely out of -history as if he had been lost in Milton’s Serbonian Bog. One historian -describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. -Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson’s -Bay Company—many of them undisturbed since Radisson’s time—can be -gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder’s life to the time of -his death.</p> - -<p>The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, -contains account of Radisson—an order for Alderman Portman to pay -Radisson and Groseillers £5 a year for expenses—chiefly wine and -fresh fruit, as later entries show. There were present at this meeting -of the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis -Stevenson’s heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, -married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the -earldom that came later, and with the reputation that “he would rob the -devil, himself, and the church altars.” It was Ashley, when Chancellor -of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of £100 to every man appointed -in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span> the government services, though he concealed his peculations -under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade -of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley’s wife earned public -notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever -splintering in collision with some other carriage or going to bits -over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey -was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was commander of the -Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir -John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of fighting blood, -whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson’s Bay -Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of -London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the -handsomest conservatories in England. It was to Viner’s that Charles -the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the -giddy course, that danced the Stuart’s off the throne. Mr. Young was a -man of fashion as well as a merchant, so famous for amateur acting that -he often took the place of the court actors at a moment’s notice.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_319"> -<img src="images/i_319.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="650"> -<p class="caption">Radisson’s House on Seething Lane in 1679. (1) St. Olave Hart’s -Church; (2) Radisson’s House: (3) Pepys’ House.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>These were Radisson’s associates, the Frenchman’s friends when he -came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with -the exploration<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span> of the North and the West to his credit. None knew -better than he, the money value of his discoveries. And Radisson -knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn -this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur -trade was a gamble—and everything on earth was gamble in the reign -of Charles—Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that -gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick -his pockets—politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of -course—and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned -into pounds sterling—politely, also, of course. Very generous, very -pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but -withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered -periwigs.</p> - -<p>Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the -sudden plunge from wilderness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, -Prince Rupert’s secretary, declares in a private document that the -French explorer at this time “<em>deluded</em> the daughter of Sir John -Kirke into secretly marrying him,” so that Radisson may have been -caught in the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake’s -progress was complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump -over the back wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance -in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span> the world to ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door -and being married properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless -adventurer and a Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich -Puritan, may have been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there -is any truth at all in the rumor repeated by Hayes.</p> - -<p>For seven years after he came to London, the love of wilderness places, -of strange new lands, clung to Radisson. He spent the summers on Hudson -Bay for the Company, opening new forts, cruising up the unknown coasts, -bartering with new tribes of Indians, and while not acting as governor -of any fur post, seems to have been a sort of general superintendent, -to keep check on the Company’s officers and prevent fraud, for when the -cargoes arrived at Portsmouth, orders were given for the Captains not -to stir without convoy to come to the Thames, but for “<em>Mr. Radisson -to take horse</em>” and ride to London with the secret reports. During -the winters in London, Sir John Robinson of the Tower and Radisson -attended to the sales of the beaver, bought the goods for the next -year’s ships, examined the cannon that were to man the forts on the -bay and attended to the general business of the Company. Merchants, -who were shareholders, advanced goods for the yearly outfit. Other -shareholders, who owned ships, loaned or gave vessels<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span> for the voyage. -Wages were paid as money came in from the beaver sales. So far, -Radisson and his associates were share and share alike, all laying the -foundations of a future prosperity. Radisson and his brother-in-law -drew from the beaver sales during these seven years (1667-1673) £287, -about $2,000 each for living expenses.</p> - -<p>But now came a change. The Company’s ships were bought and paid for, -the Company’s forts built and equipped—all from the sales of the -cargoes brought home under Radisson’s superintendence. Now that profits -were to be paid, what share was his? The King had given him a gold -chain and medal for his services, but to him the Company owed its -existence. What was his share to be? In a word, was he to be one of the -Adventurers or an outsider? Radisson had asked the Adventurers for an -agreement. Agreement? A year passed, Radisson hung on, living from hand -to mouth in London, receiving £10 one month, £2 the next, an average -of $5 a week, compelled to supplicate the Company for every penny he -needed—a very excellent arrangement for the Gentlemen Adventurers. -It compelled Radisson to go to them for favors, instead of their -going to Radisson; though from Radisson’s point of view, the boot may -have seemed to be on the wrong leg. Finally, as told in a preceding -chapter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span> the committee met and voted him “£100 <em>per ann. from the -time of his arrival in London</em>, <em>and if it shall please God to -bless this company with good success</em>, <em>they will then resume the -consideration of Mr. Radisson</em>.” One hundred pounds was just half of -one per cent. of the yearly cargoes. It was the salary of the captains -and petty governors on the bay.</p> - -<p>Radisson probably had his own opinion of a contract that was to depend -more on the will of Heaven than on the legal bond of his partners. He -quit England in disgust for the French navy. Then came the raids on -Nelson, the order of the French Court to return to England and his -resumption of service with the Hudson’s Bay Company up to the time -Iberville drove the English from the bay and French traders were not -wanted in the English service.</p> - -<p>For changing his flag the last time, such abuse was heaped on Radisson -that the Hudson’s Bay Company was finally constrained to protest: -“<em>that the said Radisson doth not deserve those ill names the French -give him. If the English doe not give him all his Due, he may rely on -the justice of his cause.</em>”</p> - -<p>Indeed, the English company might date the beginning of the French -raids that harried their forts for a hundred years from Radisson’s -first raid at Port Nelson; but they did not foresee this.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span></p> - -<p>The man was as irrepressible as a disturbed hornets’ nest—break up -his plans, and it only seemed to scatter them with wider mischief. How -the French Court ordered Radisson back to England has already been -told. He was the scapegoat for court intrigue. Nothing now was too -good for Radisson—with the English. The Adventurers presented him -with a purse “<em>for his extraordinary services to their great liking -and satisfaction</em>.” A dealer is ordered “<em>to keep Mr. Radisson -in stock of fresh provisions</em>,” and the Company desires “<em>that -Mr. Radisson shall have a hogshead of claret</em>” presumably to drown -his memory of the former treatment. My Lord Preston is given a present -of furs for persuading Radisson to return. So is “Esquire Young,” the -gay merchant of Cornhill, who was Radisson’s best friend in England, -and Sir James Hayes, who had been so furious against him only a few -months before, begs Monsieur to accept that silver tankard as a token -of esteem from the Adventurers (£10 4s, I found it cost by the account -books.)</p> - -<p>Only one doubt seemed to linger in the minds of the Company. In spite -of King Louis’ edict forbidding French interlopers on Hudson’s Bay, -secret instructions of an opposite tenor were directing Iberville’s -raiders overland. If Radisson was to act as superintendent on the bay, -chief councillor<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span> at Port Nelson, the Company must have bonds as well -as oath for his fidelity, and so the entry in the minute books of 1685 -records: “<em>At this committee, Mons. Pierre Radisson signed and sealed -the covenants with the company, and signed a bond of £2,000 to perform -covenants with the company, dated 11 May.... Dwelling at the end of -Seething Lane in Tower Street.</em>”</p> - -<p>I think it was less than ten minutes from the time I found that entry -when I was over in Seething Lane. It is in a part of old London -untouched by the Great Fire running up from the famous road to the -Tower, in length not greater than between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New -York. Opening off Great Tower Street, it ends at Crutched Friars. At -the foot of the lane is the old church of All Hallows Barking, whose -dial only was burned by the fire; at the top, the little antiquated -church of St. Olave Hart’s, whose motley architecture with leaning -walls dates from the days of the Normans. If Radisson lived “<em>at the -end of Seething Lane</em>,” his house must have been just opposite St. -Olave Hart’s, for the quaint church with its graveyard occupies the -entire left corner. In this lane dwelt the merchant princes of London. -Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, who thought his own style of -living “mighty fine”—as he describes it—preening and pluming himself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span> -on the beautiful panels he had placed in his mansion, must have been a -near neighbor of Radisson’s; for in the diarist’s description of the -fire, he speaks of it coming to Barking Church “at the bottom of our -lane.” But a stone’s throw away is the Tower, in those days commanded -by Radisson’s friend, Sir John Robinson. The Kirkes, the Colletons, -Griffith the dandy of the balls, Sir Robert Viner, the rich Lord-Mayor; -Esquire Young of Cornhill—all had dwellings within a few minutes’ walk -of Seething Lane.</p> - -<p>The whereabouts of Radisson in London explain how the journals of his -first four voyages were lost for exactly two hundred years and then -found in the Pepys Collection of the Bodleian Library. He had given -them either directly or through the mutual friend Carterett, to his -neighbor Pepys, who was a keen collector of all matter appertaining to -the navy, and after being lost for years, the Pepys Collection only -passed to the Bodleian in recent days.</p> - -<p>The place where Radisson lived shows, too, that he was no back-stairs -sycophant hanging on the favor of the great, no beggarly renegade -hungry for the crumbs that fell from the tables of those merchant -princes. It proves Radisson a front-door acquaintance of the Gentlemen -Adventurers. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect who was a -share-holder<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span> in the Hudson’s Bay Company at this time, thought himself -well paid at £200 a year for superintending the building of St. Paul’s. -Radisson’s agreement on returning to the Adventurers from France, -was for a salary of £50 a year, paid quarterly, £50 paid yearly and -dividends—running as high as 50 per cent.—on £200 of stock—making in -all, practically the same income as a man of Wren’s standing.</p> - -<p>Second-rate warehouses and dingy business offices have replaced the -mansions of the great merchants on Seething Lane, but the two old -churches stand the same as in the days of Radisson, with the massive -weather-stained stone work uncouth, as if built by the Saxons, inner -pillars and pointed arches showing the work of the Normans. Both have -an antique flavor as of old wine. The Past seems to reach forward and -touch you tangibly from the moldering brass plates on the walls, and -the flagstone of the aisles so very old the chiseled names of the dead -below are peeling off like paper. The great merchant princes—the -Colletons, the Kirkes, the Robinsons, Radisson’s friends—lie in effigy -around the church above their graves. It was to St. Olave’s across the -way, Pepys used to come to hear Hawkins, the great Oxford scholar, -also one of the Adventurers—preach; and a tablet tells where the body -of Pepys’<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span> gay wife lies. From the walls, a memorial tablet to Pepys, -himself, smiles down in beplumed hat and curled periwig and velvet -cloak, perhaps that very cloak made in imitation of the one worn in -Hyde Park by the King and of which he was—as he writes—“so mighty -proud.” The roar of a world’s traffic beats against the tranquil walls -of the little church; but where sleeps Radisson, the Catholic and -alien, in this Babylon of hurrying feet? His friends and his neighbors -lie here, but the gravestones give no clue of him. Pepys, the annalist -of the age, with his gossip of court and his fair wife and his fine -clothes—thought Radisson’s voyages interesting enough as a curio but -never seems to have dreamed that the countries Radisson discovered -would become a dominant factor in the world’s progress when that royal -house on whose breath Pepys hung for favor as for life, lay rotting in -a shameful oblivion. If the dead could dream where they lie forgotten, -could Radisson believe his own dream—that the seas of the world are -freighted with the wealth of the countries he discovered; that “<em>the -country so pleasant, so beautiful ... so fruitful ... so plentiful of -all things</em>”—as he described the Great Northwest when he first -saw it—is now peopled by a race that all the nations of Europe woo; -that the hope of the empire, which ignored him when he lived, is -now<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span> centered on “that fair and fruitful and pleasant land” which he -discovered?</p> - -<p>For ten years Radisson continued to go to the bay, Esquire Young acting -as his attorney to draw the allowance of £100 a year and the dividends -on £200 stock for Radisson’s wife, Mary Kirke. The minutes contain -accounts of wine presented to Mr. Radisson, of furs sent home as a gift -to Mistress Radisson, of heavy guns bought for the forts on the advice -of Mr. Radisson, of a fancy pistol delivered to Monsieur Radisson. Then -a change fell.</p> - -<p>The Stuarts between vice and folly had danced themselves off the -throne. The courtiers, who were Adventurers, scattered like straws -before the wind. The names of the shareholders changed. Of Radisson’s -old friends, only Esquire Young remained. Besides, Iberville was now -campaigning on the bay, sweeping the English as dust before a broom. -Dividends stopped. The Company became embarrassed. By motion of the -shareholders, Radisson’s pension was cut from £100 to £50 a year. In -vain Esquire Young and Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, now governor -of the Company, urged Radisson’s claims. The new shareholders did not -know his name.</p> - -<p>These were dark days for the old pathfinder. He must have been -compelled to move from Seething<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span> Lane, for a petition describes him as -in the Parish of St. James “in a low and mean condition” in great want -and mental distress lest his family should be driven to the poorhouse. -It was at this period three papers were put on file that forever place -beyond dispute the main facts of his life. He filed a suit in Chancery -against the Company for a resumption of his full salary pending the -discontinuance of dividends. He petitioned Parliament to make the -continuance of the Company’s charter dependent on recognition of his -rights as having laid the foundations of the Company. And he took an -oath regarding the main episodes of his life to be used in the treaty -of peace with France. A fighter he was to the end, though haunted by -that terrible Fear of Want which undermined his courage as no Phantom -Fright ever shook him in the wilderness. No doubt he felt himself -growing old, nearly seventy now with four children to support and -naught between them and destitution but the paltry payment of £12 10s a -quarter.</p> - -<p>Again the wheel of fortune turned. Radisson won his suit against the -Company. His income of £100 was resumed and arrears of £150 paid. -Also, in the treaty pending with France, his evidence was absolutely -requisite to establish what the boundaries ought to be between Canada -and Hudson Bay; so the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span> Adventurers became suddenly very courteous, -very suave, very considerate of the old man they had kept standing -outside their office door; and the committee of August 17, 1697, -bade “<em>the secretary take coach and fetch Mr. Radisson who may be -very useful at this time as to affairs between the French and the -Company</em>.” The old war horse was once more in harness. In addition -to his salary, gratuities of £10 and £8 and £20 “for reliable services” -are found in the minutes. Regularly his £50 were paid to him at the end -of each year. Regularly, the £12 10s were paid each quarter to March -29, 1710. When the next quarter came round, this entry is recorded in -the minute book:</p> - -<p>“<em>Att A Comitte the 12th July 1710</em>—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>The Sec is ordered to pay Mr. Radisson’s widow as charity the sum -of six pounds.</em>”</p> -</div> - -<p>Between the end of March and the beginning of July, the old pathfinder -had set forth on his last voyage.</p> - -<p>But I think the saddest record of all is the one that comes nineteen -years later:</p> - - -<p>“<em>24 Sept. 1729 Att A Comitte</em>—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>The Sec. is ordered to pay Mrs. Radisson, widow of Mr. Peter Esprit -Radisson, who was formerly employed in the company’s service, the sum -of £10 as charity, she being very ill and in very great want, the -said sum to be paid her at such times as the Sec. shall think most -convenient.</em>”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span></p> - -<p>This was the widow of the man who had explored the West to the -Mississippi; who had explored the North to Nelson River; who had twice -saved New France from bankruptcy by the furs he brought from the -wilderness, and who had laid the foundations of the most prosperous -chartered company the world has ever known.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XIV.</em>—It need scarcely be explained that -the data for this chapter are all drawn from thousands of sheets of -scattered records in Hudson’s Bay House, London. Within the limits -of this book, it is quite impossible to quote all the references of -this chapter. Details of Radisson’s early life are to be found in -“<em>Pathfinders of the West</em>.” One of Radisson’s petitions has been -given in a former chapter. Another of his petitions runs as follows:</p> - -<p>“Copy of Peter Esprit Radisson’s peticon to ye Parleamt. presented ye -11th of March 1697-8.</p> - -<p>“To ye Hon’ble the Knights Citizens & Burgesses in Parliament -Assembled——</p> - -<p>“The Humble Peticon of Peter Esprit Radisson Humbly sheweth</p> - -<p>“That your petitioner is a native of France, who with a brother of his -(since deceased) spent many years of their youths among the Indians in -and about Hudson’s Bay, by reason whereof they became absolute masters -of the trade and language of the said Indians in those parts of America</p> - -<p>“That about the year 1666 King Charles the Second sent yr. Pet’r and -his said brother with two ships on purpose to settle English colonies -& factories on the sd. Day, wh. they effected soe well by the said -King’s satisfaction that he gave each of them a gold chain & medell -as a marke of his Royale favour & recommended them to the Comp’y of -Adventurers of England Trading unto Hudson’s Bay to be well gratified -and rewarded by them for their services aforesaid.</p> - -<p>“That since the death of yr. Petr. Brother, the sd. compy have settled -on your Petr: six actions in the joint stock of ye sd. compy and one -hundred pounds per annum during yr. Petr: life</p> - -<p>“That your Petr is now 62 years of age (being grown old in the compys -service) & hath not recd any Benefits of the sd. six <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span>shares in the -compys stock for more than 7 years last past & hath had nothing -but the sd. 100 pds. Per annum to maintain himselfe and four small -children all borne in England.</p> - -<p>“That during the late Reign a Price was set upon your Petr head by the -French & several attempts were made upon him to assassinate him & that -for none other reasons but for quitting his owne country & serving the -compy.</p> - -<p>“That your Petr: dares not return to his Native country for the -reasons aforesaid: & seeing all his subsistance depends on the sd. -compy & is shortly to Determine with the life of your Petr and his -four smalle children must consequently fall to be maintained by the -Alms of the Parish altho’ the company hath had many thousand pounds -effects by his procurement & some that he conceives he had himselfe a -good tytle to——</p> - -<p>“Your Petr therefore most humbly prays that this House will comiserate -the condition of yr. Petr said children, and whereas he hath now the -said six actions & £100 only for his life, that you will Vouchsafe to -direct a provisoe in the Bill depending to grant the sd. annuity to -be paid quarterly & the dividends of the sd. Actions as often as any -shall become due to your Petr: his Heirs for Ever during the joint -stock of the said compy.</p> - -<p>“And yr. Petr shall forever pray</p> - -<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Peter Esprit Radisson</span>.”<br> -</p> - -<p>The occasion of this petition by Radisson was when the Stuarts had -lost the throne and the Company was petitioning for a confirmation of -its royal charter by an act of Parliament. “The many thousand pounds -which he conceived himself to have a title to,” refers to 1684, when -the French Court compelled him to turn over all the £20,000 in his -fort at Nelson to the English. That beaver had been procured in the -trade of goods for which Radisson and Groseillers and young Chouart -and La Fôrest and De la Chesnay and Dame Sorrell had advanced the -money. As a matter of fact, the Company never gave Radisson any stock. -They simply granted him the right to dividends on a small amount of -stock—a wrong which he was powerless to right as he dared not return -to France. It was during Iberville’s raids that the Company stopped -paying Radisson dividends or salary, when he filed a suit against them -in Chancery and won it. It is quite true the Company was unable to -pay him at this time, but then they had their own niggardly policy to -thank for having driven him across to France in the first place.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>When the Company presented a bill of damages against France for the -raids, Radisson’s evidence was necessary to prove that the French -King gave up all claims to the bay when he ordered Radisson back to -England, so the old man was no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span> longer kept cooling his heels in the -outer halls of the Company’s Council Room. The bill of damages was -made up as follows:</p> - -<table class="bill"> -<tr> - <td class="tdl"> 1682—Port Nelson taken with Gov. Bridgar - & Zechariah Gillam & 5 men perished.</td> - <td class="tdr">£25,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">1684—damage to trade at Nelson.</td> - <td class="tdr">10,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> 1685—<em>Perpetuana</em> taken with 14 seamen.</td> - <td class="tdr">5,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl1">loss of life and wages.</td> - <td class="tdr">1,255</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">1686—forts captured at the bottom of the bay</td> - <td class="tdr">50,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl1">loss in trade.</td> - <td class="tdr">10,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> 1688—loss of <em>Churchill</em> Captain Bond <em>Young—Stimson</em> - <td class="tdr">15,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl1">cargo to Canada.</td> - <td class="tdr">70,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">1692—forts lost.</td> - <td class="tdr">20,000</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr" colspan="2">_______</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr" colspan="2">£206,255</td> -</tr> -</table> - -<p>The French King had said, “You may rely on me getting out of this -affair,” and the bill of damages, however absurdly exaggerated, was -never paid. The French raiders proved an expensive experiment.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Radisson’s other affidavit was made to prove that the French had -quitted all pretensions to the bay when he was ordered back to Nelson. -The French responded by denying that he had ever been ordered back -to Nelson and by calling him “a liar,” “a renegade,” “a turn coat.” -To this, the English answered in formal memorial: “The Mr. Radisson -mentioned in this paper doth not deserve the ill names heaped upon -him,” following up with the proof that the French had sent him back to -England.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The real reason that the Company were so remiss to Radisson in -his latter days was their own desperate straits. Besides, the old -shareholders of the Stuart days had scattered like the wind. Radisson -was unknown to the new men, so completely unknown that in one -committee order his wife is spoken of as Madam Gwodet (Godey) instead -of Mary Kirke. Now Madam Godey was the damsel whom Lord Preston -offered to Radisson in marriage (with a dowry) despite the fact that -he already had a wife—if he would go back from Paris to London. De la -Potherie tells the story and adds that Radisson married her—another -of the numerous fictions about the explorer. This mass of notes may -give the impression that I am a protagonist of Radisson. My answer is -that he badly needs one, when such staunch modern defenders of his as -Drs. Bryce, and Dionne, and Judge Prudhomme refuse to excuse him for -his last desertion of the French flag. In that case, Radisson was as -much a victim of official red tape as Dreyfus in modern days.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1700-1820</p> - -<p>The Search for the North-West Passage, the Fall of France, the -Inlanders, the Coming of the Colonists and the Great Struggle with the -North-West Company of Montreal.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1699-1720</p> - -<p class="hang50center">THE FIRST ATTEMPT OF THE ADVENTURERS TO EXPLORE—HENRY KELSEY -PENETRATES AS FAR AS THE VALLEY OF THE SASKATCHEWAN—SANFORD -AND ARRINGTON, KNOWN AS “RED CAP,” FOUND HENLEY HOUSE INLAND -FROM ALBANY—BESET FROM WITHOUT, THE COMPANY IS ALSO BESET -FROM WITHIN—PETITIONS AGAINST THE CHARTER—INCREASE OF -CAPITAL—RESTORATION OF THE BAY FROM FRANCE</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Peace of Ryswick in 1697, which decreed that war should cease on -Hudson Bay, and that France and England should each retain what they -chanced to possess at the time of the treaty—left the Adventurers of -England with only one fort, Albany, under doughty old Governor Knight, -and one outpost, New Severn, which refugees driven to the woods had -built out of necessity.</p> - -<p>Back in ’85 when Robert Sanford had been ordered to explore inland, he -had reported such voyages impracticable. The only way to obtain inland -trade, he declared, was to give presents to the Indian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span> chiefs and -attract the tribes down to the bay. Now that the French had swept the -English from the bay, Sanford was driven to the very thing he had said -could not be done—penetrating inland to intercept the Indian fleets of -canoes before they came down to the French. With one Arrington, known -as Red Cap on the bay, and a man, John Vincent, Sanford year after year -went upstream from Albany through Keewatin toward what is now Manitoba. -By 1700, Henley House had been built one hundred and fifty miles inland -from Albany. The French war was proving a blessing in disguise. It had -awakened the sleeping English gentlemen of the bay and was scattering -them far and wide. The very year the French came overland, 1686, -Captain Abraham had sailed north from Nelson to Churchill—“a faire -wide river,” he describes it, naming it after the great Marlborough; -and now with only Albany as the radiating point, commanded by old -Governor Knight, sloops under the apprentice boy, young Henry Kelsey, -under Mike Grimmington and Smithsend, sailed across to the east side -of the bay, known as East Main (now known as Ungava and Labrador) and -yearly traded so successfully with the wandering Eskimo and Montagnais -there that in spite of the French holding the bay, cargoes of 30,000 -and 40,000 beaver pelts were sent home to England.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span></p> - -<p>But the honors of exploration at this period belong to the ragamuffin, -apprentice lad, Henry Kelsey. He had come straight to Nelson before the -French occupation from the harum-scarum life of a London street arab. -At the fur posts, discipline was absolutely strict. Only the governor -and chief trader were allowed to converse with the Indians. No man -could leave the fort to hunt without special parole. Every subordinate -was sworn to unquestioning obedience to the officer above him. Servants -were not supposed to speak unless spoken to. Written rules and -regulations were stuck round the fort walls thick as advertisements -put up by a modern bill poster, and the slightest infraction of these -martinet rules was visited by guardroom duty, or a sound drubbing at -the hands of the chief factor, or public court-martial followed by -the lash. It was all a part of the cocked hat and red coat and gold -lace and silk ruffles with which these little kings of the wilderness -sought to invest themselves with the pomp of authority. It is to the -everlasting credit of the Company’s governors that a system of such -absolute despotism was seldom abused. Perhaps, too, the loneliness -of the life—a handful of whites cooped up amid all the perils of -savagery—made each man realize the responsibility of being his -brother’s keeper.</p> - -<p>Henry Kelsey, the apprentice boy, fresh from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span> streets of London, -promptly ran amuck of the strict rules at Nelson. He went in and out -of the fort without leave, and when gates were locked, he climbed the -walls. In spite of rules to the contrary, he talked with the Indians -and hunted with them, and when Captain Geyer switched him soundly for -disobedience, he broke bars, jumped the walls, and ran away with a -party of Assiniboines. About this time, came the French to the bay. The -Company was moving heaven and earth to induce servants to go inland -for trade when an Indian runner brought a message on birch bark from -Kelsey. He had been up Hayes River with the Indians and now offered to -conduct an exploration on condition of pardon. Geyer not only pardoned -the young renegade but welcomed him back to the fort bag and baggage, -Indian wife and all the trumpery of an Indian family. The great Company -issued Kelsey a formal commission for discovery, and the next year on -July 15, 1691, as the Assiniboines departed from Deering’s Point where -they camped to trade at Nelson, Kelsey launched out in a canoe with -them.</p> - -<p>Radisson and young Chouart had been up this river some distance; but -as far as known, Kelsey was the first white man to follow Hayes River -westward as far as the prairies. The weather was exceedingly dry, game -scarce, grass high and brittle,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span> the tracks hard to follow whether of -man or beast. Within a week, the Indians had gone up one hundred and -seventy miles toward what are now known as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, -but only two moose and one partridge had been killed, and provisions -were exhausted. Leaving the Indians, Kelsey pushed forward across -country following the trail of an encampment to the fore. At the end -of a thirty mile tramp through brushwood of poplars and scrub birch, -he came to three leather tepees. No one was in them. Men and women -were afield hunting. Ravenous with hunger, Kelsey ransacked provision -bags. He found nothing but dried grass and was fain to stay his -hunger with berries. At night the hunters came in with ten swans and -a moose. Here, Kelsey remained with them hunting till his party came -up, when all advanced together another one hundred and thirty miles -to the Assiniboine camping place. There were only twenty-six tents -of Assiniboines. In a fray, the main party of Assiniboine hunters -had slain three Cree women, and had now fled south, away from Cree -territory. By the middle of August, Kelsey and his hunters were on the -buffalo plains. All day, the men hunted. At night, the women went out -to bring in and dress the meat. Once, exhausted, Kelsey fell sound -asleep on the trail. When he awakened, there was not even<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span> the dust of -the hunt to guide him back to camp. From horizon to horizon was not -a living soul; only the billowing prairie, grass neck high, with the -lonely call of birds circling overhead. By following the crumpled grass -and watching the sky for the reflection of the camp fires at night, -Kelsey found his way back to the Assiniboines. Another time, camp fire -had been made of dry moss. Kelsey was awakened to find the grass round -him on fire and the stock of his musket blazing. With his jackknife -he made a rude gunstock for the rest of the trip. Hunting with an -Indian one day, the two came unexpectedly on a couple of grizzly bears. -The surprise was mutual. The bears knew no fear of firearms and were -disposed to parley, but the hunters didn’t wait. The Indian dashed for -a tree; Kelsey for hiding in a bunch of willows, firing as he ran. The -bears mistook the direction of the shot and had pursued the Indian. -Kelsey’s charge had wounded one bear, and with a second shot, he now -disabled the other, firing full in its face. The double victory over -the beast of prey most feared by the Indians gained him the name of -Little Giant—<em>Miss-top-ashish</em>.</p> - -<p>From Kelsey’s journal, it is impossible to follow the exact course of -his wanderings. Enemies, who tried to prove that the English Company -deserved no credit for exploration, declared that he did not go<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span> -farther than five hundred miles from the bay, seventy-one by canoe, -three hundred through woods overland, forty-six across a plain, then -eighty-one more to the buffalo country. From his own journal, the -distance totals up six hundred miles; but he does not mention any large -river except the Hayes, or large lake; so that after striking westward -he must have been north of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, but not -so far north and west as Athabasca. This would place his wanderings in -the modern province of Saskatchewan.</p> - -<p>It was the 24th of August before he joined Washa, chief of the -Assiniboines, and took up lodgings amid the eighty tents of the tribe. -Solemnly, the peace pipe was smoked and, on the 12th of September, -Kelsey presented the Assiniboine chief with the present of a lace coat, -a cap, a sash, guns, knives, powder and shot, telling the Indians -these were tokens of what the white men would do if the Indians proved -good hunters; but on no account must the tribes war on one another, -or the white man would give the enemy guns, which would exterminate -all fighters. Washa promised to bring his hunt down to the bay, which -tribal wars prevented for some years. Hudson’s Bay traders, who -followed up Kelsey’s exploration—aimed for the region now known as -Cumberland House, variously called Poskoyac and Basquia—westward<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span> -of Lake Winnipeg, so there is little doubt it was in this land that -the Hudson’s Bay boy first hunted and camped. With Kelsey, the result -was instant promotion. His wife went home to England, where she was -regularly paid his salary, and he rose to a position second only to the -venerable old Governor Knight, commander of the entire bay.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, the French were having their own troubles in the captured -forts. War had broken out again, and was going against France in -Marlborough’s victories. The French might hold the bay, but not a -pound of provisions could be sent across seas on account of English -privateers. The French garrisons of Hudson Bay were starving. Indians, -who brought down pelts from the Pays d’en Haut or upcountry—could -obtain no goods in barter and having grown dependent on the whiteman’s -firearms, were in turn reduced to straits.</p> - -<p>Lagrange, a gay court adventurer, had come out in 1704 to Nelson, which -the French called Bourbon, with a troop of pleasure-seeking men and -women for a year’s hunting. For one year, the drab monotony of post -life was enlivened by a miniature Paris. Wines from the royal cellars -flowed like water. The reckless songs of court gallants rang among -the rafters, and the slippered feet of more reckless court beauties -tripped the light dance over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span> the rough-timbered floors of the fur -post. It was a wild age, and a wild court from which they came to this -wilderness—reckless women and reckless men, whose God was Pleasure. -Who knows what court intrigue was being hidden and acted out at Port -Nelson? Poor butterflies, that had scorched their wings and lost their -youth, came here to masquerade! Soldiers of fortune, who had gambled -their patrimony in the royal court and stirred up scandal, rusticating -in a little log fort in the wilderness! The theme is more romantic than -the novelist could conceive.</p> - -<p>But war broke out, and Lagrange’s gay troop scattered like leaves -before the wind. Iberville was dead in Havana. La Fôrest of the -Quebec Fur Company had gone back to the St. Lawrence. Jeremie, the -interpreter, had gone to France on leave, in 1707, and now in 1708, -when the French garrisons were starving and the high seas scoured -by privateers—Jeremie came back as governor, under the king. He at -once dispatched men to hunt. Nine bushrangers had camped one night -near a tent of Crees. The Indians were hungry, sullen, resentful to -the whitemen who failed to trade guns and powder as the English had -traded. At the fort, they had been turned away with their furs on their -hands. It is the characteristic of the French trader that he frequently -descends to the level of the Indian.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span> Jeremie’s nine men were, perhaps, -slightly intoxicated after their supper of fresh game and strong -brandy. Two Indian women came to the camp and invited two Frenchmen to -the Indian tents. The fellows tumbled into the trap like the proverbial -country jack with the thimblerigger. No sooner had they reached the -Indian tepees than they were brained. Seizing the pistols and knives of -the dead men, the Indians crept through the thicket to the fire of the -bush-rovers. With unearthly yells they fell on the remaining seven and -cut them to pieces. One wounded man alone escaped by feigning the rigor -of death, while they stripped him naked, and creeping off into hiding -of the bushes while the savages devoured the dead. Waiting till they -had gone, the wounded man crawled painfully back by night—a distance -of thirty miles—to Jeremie, at an outpost. Jeremie quickly withdrew -the garrison from the outpost, retreated within the double palisades -of Nelson (Bourbon) shot all bolts, unplugged his cannon and awaited -siege; but Indians do not attack in the open. Jeremie held the fort -till events in Europe relieved him of his charge.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In spite of French victories, as long as Mike Grimmington and Nick -Smithsend were bringing home cargoes of thirty thousand beaver a year, -the English<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span> Adventurers prospered. In fact, within twenty years of -their charter’s grant, they had prospered so exceedingly that they -no longer had the face to declare such enormous dividends, and on -September 3, 1690, it was unanimously decided to treble their original -stock from £10,500 to £31,500. The reasons given for this action were: -that there were furs of more value than the original capital of the -Company now in the Company’s warehouses; that the year’s cargo was of -more value than the original capital of the Company; that the returns -in beaver from Nelson and Severn alone this year exceeded £20,000; that -the forts and armaments were of great value, and that the Company had -reasons to expect £100,000 reparation from the French.</p> - -<p>Immediately after the decision, a dividend of 25 per cent. was declared -on the trebled stock.</p> - -<p>Such prosperity excited envy. The fur buyers and pelt workers and skin -merchants of London were up in arms. People began to question whether -a royal house, which had been deposed from the English throne, had any -right to deed away in perpetuity public domain of such vast wealth -to court favorites. Besides, court favorites had scattered with the -ruined Stuart House. Newcomers were the holders of the Hudson’s Bay -Company stock. What right had these newcomers to the privileges of such -monopoly?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span> Especially, what was the meaning of such dividends, when the -Company regularly borrowed all the money needed for working operations? -As late as 1685, the Company had borrowed £2,000 at 6 per cent. from -its own shareholders, and after French disasters began to injure its -credit in the London market, it regularly sent agents to borrow money -in Amsterdam.</p> - -<p>The Company foresaw that the downfall of the Stuarts might affect its -monopoly and in 1697 had applied for the confirmation of its charter -by Parliament. Against this plea, London fur buyers filed a counter -petition: (1) It was too arbitrary a charter to be granted to private -individuals. (2) It was of no advantage to the public but a mere -stockjobbing concern, £100 worth of stock selling as high as £300, £30 -as high as £200. (3) Beaver purchased in Hudson Bay for 6d sold in -London for 6s. (4) Monopoly drove the Indians to trade with the French. -(5) The charter covered too much territory.</p> - -<p>To which the Company made answer that not £1,000 of stock had changed -hands in the last year, which was doubtless true; for ’97 was the year -of the great defeat. The climate would always prevent settlement in -Hudson Bay, and most important of all—England would have lost all -that region but for the Hudson’s Bay Company. In its mood at the time, -that was a telling argument with the English Parliament.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span> Negotiations -were in progress with France for a permanent treaty of peace. If the -Hudson’s Bay Company were dissolved, to whom would all the region -revert but to those already in possession—the French? And if the -impending war broke out, who would defend the bay from the French but -the Company?</p> - -<p>By act of Parliament, the charter of the English Adventurers was -confirmed for a period of seven years. And more—when an act was passed -in 1708 to encourage trade to America, a proviso was inserted that the -territory of the Company should not be included in the freedom of trade.</p> - -<p>From the time France was beaten in the continental wars, the English -Adventurers never ceased to press their claims against France for the -restoration of all posts on Hudson Bay and the payment of damages -varying in amount from £200,000 to £100,504. Memorials were presented -to King William, memorials to Queen Anne. Sir Stephen Evance, the -goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder through taking stock in -payment for his ships chartered to the bay—had succeeded Marlborough -as governor in 1692, but the great general was still a friend at Court, -and when Evance retired in 1696, Sir William Trumbull, Secretary of -State, became governor. Old Governor Knight came from Albany<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span> on the -bay, in 1700, to go to France with Sir Bibye Lake and Marlborough to -press the claims of the English fur traders against France. For the -double claims of restoration and damages, France offered to trade all -the posts on the south shore for all the posts on the west shore. The -offer was but a parley for better terms. Both English and French fur -traders knew that the best furs came from the west posts. Negotiations -dragged on to 1710. It was subterraneously conveyed to the English fur -traders that France would yield on one point, but not on both: they -could have back the bay but not the indemnity; or the indemnity but -not the bay. The English fur traders subterraneously conveyed to the -commissioners in Holland, that they would accept the restoration of the -bay and write off the indemnity bill of £100,000 as bad debts. Such was -the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, as it affected the fate of the Hudson’s Bay -Company.</p> - -<p>One point was left unsettled by the treaty. Where was the boundary -between bushrangers of New France working north from the St. Lawrence, -and the voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company, working south from James -Bay? A dozen different propositions were made, but none accepted. The -dispute came as a heritage to modern days when Quebec and Ontario -wrangled out their boundaries,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span> and Ontario and Manitoba competed -for Keewatin, and finally the new province of Saskatchewan disputed -Manitoba for a slice giving access to a seaport on Hudson Bay.</p> - -<p>The settlement came just in time to save the Company from bankruptcy. -The Adventurers had no money to pay their captains. Grimmington and -Smithsend accepted pay of £200 apiece in bonds. Yet this same Company -so often accused of avarice and tyranny to servants borrowed money to -pay £20 each to the seamen surviving the terrible disasters of ’97, and -donated a special gratuity to Captain Bailey for bringing the books of -Nelson safely home. Sir Stephen Evance became governor again in 1700 -and transferred £600 of his own stock to Captain Knight as wages for -holding Albany. Captains would now accept engagements only on condition -of being ransomed if captured, at the Company’s expense; and no ship -would leave port without a convoy of frigates.</p> - -<p>June 2, 1702, the secretary is ordered to pay the cost of making a -scarlet coat with lace, for <em>Nepanah-tay</em>, the Indian chief, come -home with Captain Grimmington.</p> - -<p>November 5, 1703, Captain Knight is ordered to take care of the little -Indian girl brought home by Captain Grimmington. It is ordered at the -same<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span> time that tradesmen’s bills shall be paid “as long as the money -lasts,” but that seamen’s wages be paid up to date. Orders are also -issued for the gunsmith “to stamp no barrell nor locks with ye compy’s -marker that are not in every way good and perfect.”</p> - -<p>Henry Kelsey is now employed at £100 per annum either “to go up -country”—meaning inland—or across to East Main (Labrador). When Mike -Grimmington is not on the bay in his frigate, he is sent to Russia with -beaver, bringing back cargoes of leather. Fullerton takes Knight’s -place at Albany, with a scale of wages running from £10 to £16 a year -for apprentices with a gratuity of 20s a month if they prove worthy; -and to Fullerton and the captains of the vessels are sent twenty-three -hogsheads of liquor to keep up their courage against the French in -1710. Outward bound the same year, Mike Grimmington, the veteran of a -hundred raids, falls desperately ill. Like the Vikings of the North, -he will not turn back. If vanquished, he will be vanquished with face -to foe. So he meets his Last Foe at sea, and is vanquished of Death -on June 15—within a few weeks of Radisson’s death—and is buried -at Harwich. Learning the news by coureur, the Governing Committee -promptly vote his widow, Anne, a gift of £100 and appoints the son, -Mike Grimmington, Jr., an apprentice. Sir Bibye Lake, who had helped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span> -to secure the favorable terms of the peace treaty, is voted governor in -1713.</p> - -<p>In no year at this period did the sales of furs exceed £100,000 but -big cargoes are beginning to come in again, and the Company is able -to declare a dividend of 10 per cent. in 1718. Before the French war, -the forts had been nothing but a cluster of cabins palisaded. Now the -Adventurers determine to strengthen their posts. For the time, Rupert -and Severn are abandoned, but stone bastions are built in 1718 at Moose -and Albany and Nelson (now known as York) and Churchill. Inland from -Albany, Henley House is garrisoned against the French overlanders. At -East Main on Slude River a fort is knocked together of driftwood and -bowlder and lime.</p> - -<p>In spite of increased wages and peace, the Adventurers have great -difficulty procuring servants. The war has made known the real perils -of the service. Mr. Ramsay is employed in 1707 and Captain John Merry -in 1712 to go to the Orkneys for servants—fourteen able-bodied -seamen in the former year, forty in the latter, and for the first -time there come into the history of the Northwest the names of those -Orkney families, whose lives are really the record of the great domain -to which they gave their strength—the Belchers and Gunns, and the -Carruthers, and the Bannisters, and the Isbisters and the Baileys,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span> -generation after generation, and the Mackenzies, and the Clarkes -and the Gwynnes’s. Some came as clerks, some as gunners, some as -bush-lopers. The lowest wage was 12s a month with a gratuity of £2 on -signing the contract. But this did not suffice to bring recruits fast -enough for the expanding work of the Company, and there comes jauntily -on the scene, in 1711, Mr. Andrew Vallentine of matrimonial fame with -secret contracts to supply the Company with apprentices if the Company -will supply the dowries for the brides of the said apprentices. As told -in a former chapter, “<em>all proposals to be locked up in ye Iron Chest -in a Booke Aparte</em>.” Dr. Sacheverell, the famous divine, performed -the marriage ceremonies; and from an item surreptitiously smuggled into -the general minutes of the Company’s records instead of “the Booke -Aparte,” I judge that the marriage portions were on a scale averaging -some £70 and £100 each. A Miss Evance is named as one of the brides, -so that the affair was no common listing of women for the marriage -shambles such as Virginia and Quebec witnessed, but a contract in which -even a relative of the Company’s governor was not ashamed to enter. -Business flourished—as told elsewhere. The marriage office had to have -additional apartments in “the Buttery” until about 1735, when lawsuits -and the death of Mr. Vallentine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span> caused a summary shutting down of -the enterprise. It had accomplished its aim—brought recruits to the -Company.</p> - -<p>By 1717 Kelsey, the aforetime apprentice, had become governor of -Churchill at £200 a year. One William Stewart and another apprentice, -Richard Norton, were sent inland from Churchill to explore and -make peace between the tribes. How far north they proceeded is not -known—not farther than Chesterfield Inlet, where the water ran with -a tide like the sea, and the Indians by signs told legends of vast -mines. Kelsey had heard similar tales of mines over on the Labrador -coast. Thomas Macklish, who had gone up Nelson River beyond Ben -Gillam’s Island, heard similar tales. Each of these explorers, the -Company rewarded with gratuities ranging from £20 to £100. There -were legends, too, at Moose and Rupert of great silver mines toward -Temiscamingue—the field of the modern cobalt beds.</p> - -<p>The Company determined to inaugurate a policy of search for mineral -wealth and exploration for a passage to the South Sea. Old Captain -Knight—now in his eighties—had gone back to the bay to receive the -posts from the French under Jeremie. He had returned to England and -was, in 1718, ordered on a voyage of exploration. He demanded stiff -terms for the arduous task. His salary was to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span> £400 per annum. -He was to have one-tenth profit of all minerals discovered and all -new trade established, which was not in furs, such as whale hunting -and fishing. He was to be allowed to accept such presents from the -evacuating French as he saw fit, and was not to be compelled to winter -on the bay. The contract was for four years with the proviso in case of -Knight’s death, Henry Kelsey was to be governor of all the bay. With a -Greenland schooner and a yawl for inland waters, Knight set sail on the -frigates bound from England, hopes high as gold miners stampeding to a -new field.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XV.</em>—The Sandford first sent inland from -Albany was a relative of Captain Gillam and was at one time put on the -lists for dismissal owing to Ben Gillam’s poaching.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p><em>Robson</em> casts doubt on Kelsey having gone inland from Nelson, -but Robson was writing in a mood of spite toward his former employers. -The reasons given for his doubt are two-fold: (1) Kelsey could not -have gone five hundred miles in sixty days; (2) in the dry season of -July, Kelsey could not have followed any Indian trail. Both objections -are absurd. Forty miles a day is not a high average for a good -woodsman or canoe-man. As to following a trail in July, the very fact -that the grass was so brittle, made it easy to follow recent tracks. -Night camp fire and the general direction of the land would be guides -enough for a good pathfinder, let alone the crumpled grasses left -behind a horde of wandering Indians.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Kelsey’s Journal is to be found in the Parliamentary Report of 1749. -At the time, it was handed over to Parliament, it was taken from -Hudson’s Bay House, and is no longer in the records of the Company. -The exact itinerary of the journey, I do not attempt to give. Each -reader, especially in the West, can guess at it for himself.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It is about this time that Port Nelson became known as York, in honor -of the Duke of York, former governor. Heretofore,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span> dispatches were -headed “Nelson.” Now, they are addressed to “York.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The account of French occupation is to be found in French Marine -Archives and in the <cite>Relation of Jeremie, Bernard’s Voyages</cite>.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Governor Knight paid £277 to the French for provisions left at Nelson. -It was the cargo of furs he sent home in 1714 that enabled the Company -to pay its long-standing debts and declare a dividend by 1718.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>As York may soon be Manitoba’s seaport, it is worth noting that in -1715 Captain Davies spent the entire summer beating about and failed -to enter Hayes River for the ice. For this failure, he was severely -reprimanded by the Company.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1695 the lease was signed for thirty-five years for the premises on -Fenchurch Street, occupied till the Company moved to present quarters -in Lime Street.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The first map of the bay drawn for the Company was executed in 1684, -by John Thornton, for which he was paid £4.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It was in 1686 that the famous Jan Péré, the spy, was discharged from -prison and escaped to France.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>All trace of young Chouart is lost after 1689, when he came to London -from Nelson.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1719-1740</p> - -<p class="hang50center">OLD CAPTAIN KNIGHT BESET BY GOLD FEVER, HEARS THE CALL OF THE -NORTH—THE STRAITS AND BAY—THE FIRST HARVEST OF THE SEA AT DEAD -MAN’S ISLAND—CASTAWAYS FOR THREE YEARS—THE COMPANY BESET BY GOLD -FEVER INCREASES ITS STOCK—PAYS TEN PER CENT. ON TWICE-TREBLED -CAPITAL—COMING OF SPIES AGAIN</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">From</span> the time of the first voyage up to Churchill River, in 1686, the -fur traders had noticed tribes of Indians from the far North, who wore -ornaments of almost pure copper. Chunks of metal, that melted down to -lead with a percentage of silver, were brought down to the fur post -at Slude River in Labrador on the east side of the bay. Vague tales -were told by the wandering Eskimo and Chippewyans at Churchill of a -vast copper mine somewhere on that river now known as Coppermine, and -of a metal for which the Indians had no name but which white man’s -avidity quickly recognized as gold dust coming from the far northern -realms of iceberg<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span> and frost known as Baffin’s Land. How true some of -these legends were has been proved by the great cobalt mines of modern -Ontario and placers of Alaska. But where lies the hidden treasure trove -from which the Indians brought down copper to Churchill, silver to -Slude River, and gold dust—if gold it was—from the snowy realm of the -Eskimo in the North? Those treasure stores have not yet been uncovered, -though science has declared that vast deposits of copper may be found -west of Chesterfield Inlet, and placers may at any time be uncovered in -Baffin’s Land.</p> - -<p>The Hudson’s Bay charter had been granted in the first place for -“the discovery of a passage to the South Sea.” At this time, there -was great agitation in Russia for the discovery of the Straits of -Anian, that were supposed to lead through America from Asia to Europe. -Vitus Bering’s expedition to find these straits resulted in Russia’s -discovery of Alaska.</p> - -<p>The English Adventurers now kept agents in Russia. They were aware -of the projects in the air at the Russian Court. Why not combine the -search for the passage to the South Sea with the search for the hidden -mines of Indian legends? Besides—the Company had another project in -the air. Richard Norton, the apprentice boy, had gone overland north -from Churchill almost as far as Chesterfield Inlet.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span> Chesterfield -Inlet seemed to promise the passage to the South Sea; but what was -more to the point—the waters in this part of the bay offered great -opportunities for whale fisheries. With the threefold commission of -discovering mines, the passage to the South Sea, and a whale fishery, -old Captain Knight sailed from Gravesend on June 3, 1719, “<em>so -God send the good ships a successful Discovery and to return in -safety—your loving friends</em>”—ran the words of the commission.</p> - -<p>Four ships there were in the fleet that sailed this year: <em>The -Mary</em>, frigate, under Captain Belcher, with Mike Grimmington, Jr., -now chief mate, a crew of eighteen and a passenger list of new servants -for York and Churchill, among them Henry Kelsey, to be governor during -Knight’s absence from Churchill; the frigate <em>Hudson’s Bay</em> under -Captain Ward, with twenty-three passengers for the south end of the -bay; and the two ships for Knight’s venture: <em>The Discovery</em>, -Captain Vaughan; <em>The Albany</em>, Captain Bailey, with fifty men, -all told, bound for the unknown North, the three men, Benjamin Fuller, -David Newman and John Awdry going as lieutenants to Captain Knight. -Henry Kelsey had left his wife in London. Each of the captains had -given bonds of £2,000 to obey Knight in all things.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span></p> - -<p>Knight himself is now eighty years of age—an old war horse limbering -up to battle at the smell of powder smoke—his ships loaded with -iron-hooped treasure casks to carry back the gold dust. The complete -frames of houses are carried to build a post in the North, and among -his fifty men are iron forgers, armorers, whalers from Dundee, and -a surgeon paid the unusual salary of £50 a year on account of the -extraordinary dangers of this voyage. Bailey was probably the son of -that Bayly, who was first governor for the Adventurers on the bay. A -seasoned veteran, he had passed through the famous siege of Nelson in -’97. When Knight had left Albany to come to England, Fullerton was -deputy and Bailey next in command. There was peace with France, but -that had not prevented a score of French raiders coming overland to -ambush the English. Bailey got wind of the raiders hiding in the woods -round Albany and shutting gates, bided his time. Word was sent to the -mate of his ship lying off shore, at the sound of a cannon shot to rush -to the rescue. At midnight a thunderous hammering on the front gates -summoned the English to surrender. Bailey gingerly opened the wicket at -the side of the gate and asked what was wanted.</p> - -<p>“Entrance,” yelled the raiders, confident that they had taken the -English by surprise.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span></p> - -<p>Bailey answered that the Governor was asleep, but he would go and -fetch the keys. The raiders rallied to the gate. Bailey put the match -lighters to the six-pounders inside and let fly simultaneous charges -across the platform where the raiders crowded against the gate. There -was instant slaughter, a wild yell, and a rush for cover in the woods, -but the cannon shot had brought the master of Bailey’s sloop running -ashore. Raiders and sailors dashed into each other’s faces, with the -result that the crew were annihilated in the dark. For some days the -raiders hung about the outskirts of the woods, burying the dead, -waiting for the wounded to heal, and hunting for food. A solitary -Frenchman was observed parading the esplanade in front of the fort. -Fullerton came out and demanded what he wanted. The fellow made no -answer but continued his solitary march up and down under the English -guns. Fullerton offered to accept him as a hostage for the others’ good -conduct, but the man was mute as stone. The English governor bade him -be off, or he would be shot. The strange raider continued his odd tramp -up and down till a shot from the fort window killed him instantly. -The only explanation of the incident was that the man must have been -crazed by the hardship of the raid and by the horrors of the midnight -slaughter.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span></p> - -<p>Bailey, then, was the man chosen as the captain of <em>The Albany</em> -and Knight’s right-hand man.</p> - -<p>The ships were to keep together till they reached the entrance of the -straits, the two merchantmen under Ward and Belcher then to go forward -to the fur posts, Knight’s two ships straight west for Chesterfield -Inlet, where he was to winter. Two guineas each, the Adventurers gave -the crews of each ship that afternoon on June 3, at Gravesend, to -drink “<em>God-speed, a prosperous discovery, a faire wind, and a good -sail</em>.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>As a railway is now being actually built after being projected on -paper for more than twenty-five years—from the western prairie to -a seaport on Hudson Bay, which has for its object the diversion of -Western traffic to Europe from New York to some harbor on Hudson Bay, -it is necessary to give in detail what the archives of the Hudson’s Bay -Company reveal about this route. Hudson Strait opens from the Atlantic -between Resolution Island on the north and the Button Islands on the -south. From point to point, this end of the strait is forty-five miles -wide. At the other end, the west side, between Digges’ Island and -Nottingham Island, is a distance of thirty-five miles. From east to -west, the straits are four hundred and fifty miles long—wider at the -east where the south<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span> side is known as Ungava Bay, contracting at the -west, to the Upper Narrows. The south side of the strait is Labrador; -the north, Baffin’s Land. Both sides are lofty, rocky, cavernous shores -lashed by a tide that rises in places as high as thirty-five feet and -runs in calm weather ten miles an hour. Pink granite islands dot the -north shore in groups that afford harborage, but all shores present -an adamant front, edges sharp as a knife or else rounded hard to have -withstood and cut the tremendous ice jam of a floating world suddenly -contracted to forty miles, which Davis Strait pours down at the east -end and Fox Channel at the west.</p> - -<p>Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill; one thousand feet, -a mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two -thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and -torn and ripped a way since the ice age preceding history, cutting a -great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to -secluded silent valleys moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day -Earth first saw light. Down these valleys pour the clear streams of -the eternal snows, burnished as silver against the green, setting the -silence echoing with the tinkle of cataracts over some rock wall, or -filling the air with the voice of many waters at noon-tide thaw. One -old navigator—Coates—describes the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span> beat of the angry tide at the -rock base and the silver voice of the mountain brooks, like the treble -and bass of some great cathedral organ sounding its diapason to the -glory of God in this peopleless wilderness.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the kyacks of some solitary Eskimo, lashed abreast twos -and threes to prevent capsizing, may shoot out from some of these -bog-covered valleys like seabirds; but it is only when the Eskimos -happen to be hunting here, or the ships of the whalers and fur traders -are passing up and down—that there is any sign of human habitation on -the straits.</p> - -<p>Walrus wallow on the pink granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears -flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for -the great bulging black eye, bounds over the bowlders. Snow buntings, -whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads—flacker and clacker and -hold solemn conclave on the adjoining rocks, as though this were their -realm from the beginning and for all time.</p> - -<p>Of a tremendous depth are the waters of the straits. Not for nothing -has the ice world been grinding through this narrow channel for -billions of years. No fear of shoals to the mariner. Fear is of another -sort. When the ice is running in a whirlpool and the incoming tide -meets the ice jam and the waters mount thirty-five feet high and a wind -roars between the high shores like a bellows—then it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span> is that the -straits roll and pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where -the ships go down. “Undertow,” the old Hudson’s Bay captains called -the suck of the tide against the ice-wall; and that black hole where -the lumpy billows seemed to part like a passage between wall of ice -and wall of water was what the mariners feared. The other great danger -was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing -and plunging like fighting stallions, with the ice blocks going off -like pistol shots or smashed glass. No child’s play is such navigating -either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern -ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the -whaling fleets have navigated these straits for two hundred years.</p> - -<p>Westward of the straits, the shores dropped to low, sandy reaches at -Mansfield Island. Another five hundred miles across the bay brought the -ships to Churchill and York (Nelson).</p> - -<p>Here, then, came Captain Knight’s fleet. And the terrific dangers of -his venture met him—as it were—on the spot. The records do not give -the exact point of the disaster, but one may guess without stretching -imagination that it was in the Upper Narrows where thirty-five feet of -lashing tide meet a churning wall of ice.</p> - -<p>The ships were embayed, sails lowered, rudders<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span> unshipped, and anchors -put out for the night. Night did not mean dark. It meant the sunlight -aslant the ice fields and pools in hues of fire that tinted the green -waves and set rainbows playing in the spray. Gulls wheeled and screamed -overhead. Cascades tinkled over the ice walls. There was the deep -stillness of twilight calm, then the quiver of the ship’s timbers -forewarning the rising tide, then the long, low undertone of the ocean -depths gathering might to hurl against the iron forces of the ice. The -crews had been rambling over the ice but were now recalled to be on -the watch as the tide rose. Some were at the windlass ready to heave -anchors up at first opening of clear water; others ready to lower boats -and tow from dangers; others again preparing blasts of powder to blow -up the ice if the tide threatened to close the floes in a squeeze. -Captain Ward’s men must have been out on the ice, for it happened in -the twinkling of an eye as such wrecks always happened, and not a man -was lost. Two icepans reared up, smashed together, crushed the frigate -<em>Hudson’s Bay</em>, like an eggshell and she sank a water-logged wreck -before their eyes. Ward’s crew were at once taken on board by Belcher, -and when the ice loosened, carried on down to York and Albany. There -was a lawsuit against the Company for the wages of these men wrecked -outward bound<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span> and kept in idleness on the bay for thirteen months. The -matter was compromised by the Company paying ten months’ wages instead -of thirteen.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Captain Knight waited only long enough at Churchill to leave the fort -provisions. Then he set out on his quest to the north. This could -scarcely be described as foolhardy, for his ships carried the frames -for houses to winter in the North. From this point on, the story must -be pieced together of fragments. From the time Captain Knight left -Churchill, in 1719, his journal ceases. No line more came from the -game old pathfinder to the Company. The year 1719 passed, 1720, 1721, -still no word of him. Surely, he must have passed through the Straits -of Anian to the South Sea and would presently come home from Asia laden -with spices and gold dust for the Company. But why didn’t he send back -one of the little whaling boats to Churchill with word of his progress; -or why didn’t some of the men come down from the whaling station he -was to establish at Chesterfield Inlet? Henry Kelsey takes a cruise on -the sloop <em>Prosperous</em> from York, in 1719, but finds no trace of -him. Hancock has been cruising the whaling seas on <em>The Success</em> -that same summer, but he learns nothing of Knight. The whole summer of -1721, while whaling, Kelsey is on the lookout for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span> the peaked sails of -Knight’s ships; but he sees never a sail. Napper is sent out again on -the sloop <em>Success</em>, but he runs amuck of a reef four days from -Nelson River and loses his ship and almost his life.</p> - -<p>Three full years were long enough for Knight to have circumnavigated -the globe. By 1721, the Company was so thoroughly alarmed that it -bought <em>The Whalebone</em>, sloop—John Scroggs, master—and sent -it from Gravesend on the 31st of May to search for Knight. Two years -Scroggs searched the northwest coast of the bay, but the northwest -coast of the bay is one thousand miles in and out, and Scroggs missed -the hidden hole-in-the-wall that might have given up the secret of -the sea. Norton traveling inland with the Indians hears disquieting -stories, and some whalers chancing North, in 1726, discover a new -harbor at the bottom of which lie cannon, anchors, bits of iron, but it -is not till fifty years later that the story is learned in detail.</p> - -<p>Here it is:</p> - -<p>Knight steered for that western arm of the sea known as Chesterfield -Inlet. It was here that Norton had heard legends of copper mines and -seen evidences of tide water. Just south of Chesterfield Inlet is -a group of white quartz islands the largest five by twenty miles, -known as Marble Island, from the fact that it is bare of growth as a -gravestone.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span> Bedford whalers of modern days have called it by another -name—Dead Man’s Island.</p> - -<p>At the extreme east is a hole-like cavity in the rock wall where -Eskimos were wont to shoot in with their bladder boats and hide from -the fury of the northeast gale. One night as the autumn storms raged, -the Indians were amazed to see two huge shadows emerge from the lashing -hurricane like floating houses—driving straight as an arrow for the -mark to certain destruction between an angry sea and the rock wall. -If there were cries for help, they were drowned by the shrieks of the -hurricane. In the morning, when the storm had abated, the Indians saw -that the shadows had been whitemen’s ships. The large one had struck -on the reefs and sunk. The other was a mass of wave-beaten wreckage -on the shore, but the white men were toiling like demons, saving the -timbers. Presently, the whites began to erect a framework—their winter -house. To the wondering Eskimos, the thing rose like magic. The Indians -grasped their kyacks and fled in terror.</p> - -<p>It need scarcely be told—these were Knight’s treasure-seekers, -wrecked without saving a pound of provisions on an island bare as a -billiard ball twenty miles from the mainland. How did the crews pass -that winter? Their only food must have been such wild cranberries as -they could gather under the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span> drifting snows, arctic hares, snowbirds, -perhaps the carcass of an occasional dead porpoise or whale. When the -Indians came back in the summer of 1720, there were very few whitemen -left, but there was a great number of graves—graves scooped out of -drift sand with bowlders for a tombstone. The survivors seemed to be -starving. They fell like wild beasts on the raw seal meat and whale oil -that the Eskimos gave them. They seemed to be trying to make a boat out -of the driftwood that had been left of that winter’s fuel. The next -time the Eskimos visited the castaways, there were only two men alive. -These were demented with despair, passing the time weeping and going -to the highest rock on the island to watch for a sail at sea. Their -clothes had been worn to tatters. They were clad in the skins of the -chase and looked like madmen. From the Indians’ account, it was now -two years from the time of the wreck. What ammunition had been saved -from the ships, must have been almost exhausted. How these two men kept -life in their bodies for two winters in the most bitterly cold, exposed -part of Hudson Bay, huddling in their snow-buried hut round fires of -moss and driftwood, with the howling north wind chanting the death song -of the winding sheet, and the scream of the hungry were-wolf borne to -their ears in the storm—can better be imagined than described.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span></p> - -<p>Why did not they try to escape? Possibly, because they were weakened -by famine and scurvy. Surely Bering’s Russians managed better when -storm cast them on a barren island while they were searching this same -mythical passage. They drifted home on the wreckage. Why could not -these men have tried to escape in the same way? In the first place, -they did not know they were only twelve miles from the main coast. Cast -on Marble Island in the storm and the dark, they had no idea where they -were, except that it was in the North and in a harbor facing east. Of -the two last survivors, one seemed to be the armorer, or else that -surgeon who was to receive £50 for the extraordinary dangers of this -voyage, for he was constantly working with metal instruments to rivet -the planks of his raft together. But he was destined to perish as his -comrades. When his companion died, the man tried to scoop out a grave -in the sand. It was too much for his strength. He fell as he toiled -over the grave and died among the Eskimo tents. So perished Captain -Knight and his treasure-seekers, including the veteran Bailey—as -Hudson had perished before them—taken as toll of man’s progress by the -insatiable sea. Not a secret has been wrested from the Unknown, not a -milepost won for civilization from savagery, but some life has paid -for the secret to go down in despair<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span> and defeat; but some bleaching -skeleton of a nameless failure marks where the mile forward was won. -The lintel of every doorway to advancement is ever marked with some -blood sacrifice.</p> - -<p>Whalers in 1726, saw the cannon and anchors lying at the bottom of the -harbor, also casks with iron hoops—that were to bring back the gold -dust. Hearne, in 1769, could count where the graves had been scraped up -by the wolves, and he gathered up the skeletons along the beach to bury -them in a common grave. Latterly, oddly enough, that island was the -rendezvous of Northern whalers—where they came from the far North to -bury their dead and set up crosses for those who lie in the sea without -a grave. It was known as Dead Man’s Island.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>After giving an account of three wrecks in four years, I hope it may -not seem inconsistent to say that I believe the next century will -see a Hudson’s Bay route to Europe. What—you say—after telling of -three wrecks in four years? Yes—what Atlantic port does not have six -wrecks in ten years? New York and Montreal have more. If the Hudson’s -Bay route is not fit for navigation, the country must make it fit for -navigation. Of telegraphs, shelters, light-houses, there is not now -one. Canals have been dug for less cause than the Upper Narrows of -Hudson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span> Straits. If Peter the Great had waited till St. Petersburg -was a fit site for a city, there would have been no St. Petersburg. -He made it fit. The same problem confronts northwest America to-day. -It is absurd that a population of millions has no seaport nearer than -two thousand miles. Churchill or York would be seaports in the middle -of the continent. Of course, there would be wrecks and difficulties. -<em>The wrecks are part of the toll we pay for harnessing the sea. The -difficulties are what make nations great.</em> One day was the delay -allowed the fur ships for the straits. Who has not waited longer than -one day to enter New York harbor or Montreal?</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Meanwhile, moneybags at home were counting their shekels. A wild -craze of speculation was sweeping over England. It was a fever -of getting-something-for-nothing, floating wild schemes of paper -capital to be sold to the public for pounds, shillings and pence. In -modern language it would be called “wild-catting.” The staid “old -Worthies”—as the Adventurers were contemptuously designated—were -caught by the craze. It was decided on August 19, 1720, to increase -the capital of the Company from £31,500 to £378,000 to be paid for -in subscriptions of 10 per cent. installments. Before the scheme had -matured, the bubble of speculation had collapsed.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span> Money could neither -be borrowed nor begged. The plan to enlarge the stock was dropped as -it stood—with subscriptions to the amount of £103,950 paid in—which -practically meant that the former capital of £31,500 had been trebled -and an additional 10 per cent. levied.</p> - -<p>On this twice-trebled capital of £103,950, dividends of 5 per cent. -were paid in 1721; of 8 per cent. in 1722; of 12 per cent. in 1723 and -’24; of 10 per cent. from 1725 to 1737, when the dividends fell to 8 -per cent. and went up again to 10 per cent. in 1739. From 1723, instead -of leaving the money idle in the strong box, it was invested by the -Company in bonds that bore interest till their ships came home. From -1738, the Bank of England regularly advanced money for the Company’s -operations. Sir Bibye Lake was governor from the time he received such -good terms in the French treaty. The governor’s salary is now £200, the -deputy’s £150, the committeemen £100 each.</p> - -<p>It was in February, 1724, that a warehouse was leased in Lime Street at -£12 a year, the present home of the Company.</p> - -<p>In four years, the Company had lost four vessels. These were replaced -by four bigger frigates, and there come into the service the names -of captains famous on Hudson Bay—Belcher, and Goston, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span> Spurell, -and Kennedy, and Christopher Middleton, and Coates, and Isbister, -with officers of the names of Inkster, and Kipling, and Maclish, and -MacKenzie, and Gunn, and Clement. Twice in ten years, Captain Coates is -wrecked in the straits, on the 26th of June, 1727, outward bound with -all cargo and again on the frigate <em>Hudson’s Bay</em> in 1736, when -“<em>we sank</em>,” relates Coates, “<em>less than ten minutes after we -were caught by the ice</em>.”</p> - -<p>From being an apprentice boy traveling inland to the Indians, Richard -Norton has become governor of Churchill, with an Indian wife and -half-Indian sons sent to England for education. Norton receives orders, -in 1736, once more to explore Chesterfield Inlet where Knight had -perished. Napper on <em>The Churchill</em>, sloop, and Robert Crow on -<em>The Musquash</em> carry him up in the summer of 1737. Napper dies of -natural causes on the voyage, but Chesterfield Inlet is found to be a -closed arm of the sea, not a passage to the Pacific; and widow Napper -is voted fifty guineas from the Company. Kelsey dies in 1729, and widow -Kelsey, too, is voted a bounty of ten guineas, her boy to be taken as -apprentice.</p> - -<p>In 1736, Captain Middleton draws plans for the building of a fine new -post at Moose and of a stone fort at Eskimo Point, Churchill, which -shall be the strongest fort in America. The walls are to be sixteen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span> -feet high of solid stone with a depth of twenty-four feet solid masonry -at base. On the point opposite Eskimo Cape, at Cape Merry, named after -the deputy governor, are to be blockhouses ten feet high with six great -guns mounted where watch is to be kept night and day.</p> - -<p>Moose will send up the supply of timber for Churchill, and the Company -sends from London sixty-eight builders, among whom is one Joseph -Robson, at £25 a year, who afterward writes furious attacks on the -Company. Barely is Moose completed when it is burned to the ground, -through the carelessness of the cook spilling coals from his bake oven.</p> - -<p>Two things, perhaps, stirred the Company up to this unwonted activity. -Spies were coming overland from St. Lawrence—French explorers working -their way westward, led by La Vérendrye. “<em>We warn you</em>,” the -Company wrote to each of its factors at this time, “<em>meet these spies -very civily but do not offer to detain them and on no account suffer -such to come within the gates nor let the servants converse with them, -and use all legal methods to make them depart and be on your guard not -to tell the company’s secrets</em>.”</p> - -<p>Then in 1740, came a bolt from the blue. Captain Christopher Middleton, -their trusted officer, publicly resigned from the service to go into -the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span> King’s navy for the discovery of a Northwest Passage through -Hudson Bay.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XVI.</em>—Of Baffin’s Land, Dr. Bell, who -personally explored Hudson Bay in 1885 for the Dominion Government, -says: “These ancient grounds probably contain rich placer gold in the -valleys of the streams.” The mica mines of Baffin’s Land were being -mined in 1906.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The name of the captain, who perished with Knight, is our friend -Bailey of the Iberville siege; not Barlow, as all modern histories -copying from Hearne and 1749 Parl. Report give. The minutes of the -H. B. C. show that Barlow is a misprint for Berley, and Berley for -Bailey, which name is given repeatedly in the minutes in connection -with this voyage.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The account of Bering’s efforts to find the Straits of Anian and of -his similar fate will be found in “<cite>Vikings of the Pacific</cite>.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>All the printed accounts of Knight’s disaster say he wintered at -Churchill in 1719-20. This is wrong, as shown by the unprinted -records of H. B. C. He sailed at once for the North. All printed -accounts—except Hearne’s—give the place of disaster as the west -end of Marble Island. This is a mistake. It was at the east end as -given in the French edition of Hearne. Hearne it is, who gives the -only account of Bailey’s defense of Albany in 1704, only Hearne calls -Bailey, Barlow, which the records show to be wrong.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>An almost Parallel wreck to that of Knight’s took place at Gull Island -off Newfoundland twenty-five years ago. A whole shipload of castaways -perished on a barren island in sight of their own harbor lights, only -in the case of Gull Island, the castaways did not survive longer than -a few weeks. They lived under a piece of canvas and subsisted on -snow-water.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It was not till 1731 that Knight’s Journals as left at Churchill were -sent home to London. They cease at 1719.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Richard Norton first went North by land in 1718. His next trip was -after Knight’s death; his next, by boat as told in this chapter.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1723, Samuel Hopkins was sent home in irons from Albany for three -times absconding over the walls to the woods without Governor Myatt’s -leave. Examined by the committee, he would give no excuse and was -publicly dismissed with loss of <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span>wages. Examined later privately, he -was re-engaged with honor—which goes to prove that Myatt may have -been one of those governors, who ruled his men with the thick end of -an oar.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>At this period, servants for the first time were allowed to go to the -woods to trap and were given one half the proceeds of their hunt.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1740-1770</p> - - -<p class="hang50center">THE COMPANY’S PROSPERITY AROUSES OPPOSITION—ARTHUR DOBBS AND THE -NORTHWEST PASSAGE AND THE ATTACK ON THE CHARTER—NO NORTHWEST PASSAGE -IS FOUND BUT THE FRENCH SPUR THE ENGLISH TO RENEWED ACTIVITY</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">For</span> fifty years, the Company had been paying dividends that never went -lower than 7 per cent. and generally averaged 10. These dividends -were on capital that had been twice trebled. The yearly fur sales -yielded from £20,000 to £30,000 to the Adventurers—twice and three -times the original capital, which—it must be remembered—was not -all subscribed in cash. French hunters had been penetrating America -from the St. Lawrence. Bering had discovered Alaska on the west for -Russia. La Vérendrye had discovered the great inland plains between the -Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for France. It was just beginning to -dawn on men’s minds what a vast domain lay between the plantations of -the Atlantic seaboard and the Western Sea. It was inevitable that men -should ask themselves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span> whether Charles II. had any right to deed away -forever that vast domain to those court favorites and their heirs known -as the Hudson’s Bay Company. To be sure, Parliament had confirmed the -charter when the Stuart House fell; but the charter had been confirmed -for only seven years. Those seven years had long since expired, and -the original stock of the fur company had passed from the heirs of the -original grantees to new men—stock speculators and investors. With -the exception of royalty, there was not a single stockholder of the -Hudson’s Bay Company by 1740, who was an heir of the original men named -in the original charter. Men asked themselves—had these stockholders -any right to hold monopoly against all other traders over a western -domain the size of half Europe? The charter had been granted in the -first place as a reward for efforts to find passage to the South Sea. -What had the Company done to find a passage to the Pacific? Sent Knight -and his fifty men hunting gold sands in the North, where they perished; -and dispatched half a dozen little sloops north of Chesterfield Inlet -to hunt whales. This had the Adventurers done to earn their charter, -and ever since sat snugly at home drawing dividends on twice-trebled -capital equal to 90 per cent. on the original stock, intrenched behind -the comfortable feudal notion that it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span> the manifest design of an -All Wise Providence to create this world for the benefit of the few who -can get on top and exploit the many to the profit of the aforesaid few.</p> - -<p>We, whose modern democracy is working ten-fold worse injustice by -favors to the few against the many, must have a care how we throw -stones at that old notion. Feudalism in the history of the race—had -its place. It was the system by which the bravest man led the clan and -ruled because he was fittest to rule as well as to protect. Of all -those rivals now yelping enviously at the Company’s privileges—which -could point to an ancestor, who had been willing to brave the perils -of a first essay to Hudson Bay? We have seen how even yet the Company -could obtain servants only by dint of promising bounties and wives and -dowries; how the men under command of the first navigators balked and -reared and mutinied at the slightest risk; how—in spite of all we -can say against feudalism—it was the spirit of feudalism, the spirit -of the exclusive favored few, that faced the first risks and bought -success by willing, reckless death, and later fought like demons to -hold the bay against France.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It was one Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and scholar, who voiced the -general sentiment rising against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span> privileges of the Company. Dobbs -had been bitten by that strange mania which had lured so many and was -yet to lure more brave seamen to their death. He was sure there was a -Northwest Passage. Granted that; and the sins of the fur traders became -enormities. Either they had not earned their charter by searching the -Northwest Passage, or if they had found it, they had kept the discovery -a secret through jealousy of their trade. Dobbs induced the Admiralty -to set aside two vessels for the search. Then he persuaded Captain -Middleton, who had for twenty years navigated Hudson Bay, to resign the -service of the Company and lead the government expedition of 1741-2.</p> - -<p>Around this expedition raged a maelstrom of ill feeling and false -accusations and lies. The Company were jealous of their trade and -almost instantly instructed their Governing Committee to take secret -means to prevent this expedition causing encroachment on their rights. -This only aroused the fury of the Admiralty. The Company were given -to understand that if they did not do all they could to facilitate -Middleton’s search, they might lose their charter. On this, the Company -ordered their factors on the bay to afford Middleton every aid, but -judging from the factors’ conduct, it may be surmised that secret -instructions of another nature were sent out.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span></p> - -<p>When Middleton came to Churchill in July on <em>The Furnace Bomb</em> and -<em>Discovery</em>, he found buoys cut, harbor lights out and a governor -mad as a hornet, who forbade the searchers to land, or have any -intercourse with the Indians. Taking two Indians as guides, Middleton -proceeded north as far as 66°—in the region of Rowe’s Welcome beyond -Chesterfield Inlet. Here, he was utterly blocked by the ice, and the -expedition returned to England a failure.</p> - -<p>It was at this point the furor arose. It was charged that the Company -had bribed Middleton with £5,000 not to find a passage; that he had -sailed east instead of west; that he had cast the two Indian guides -adrift at Marble Island with scant means of reaching the main shore -alive; and that while wintering in Churchill he had been heard to say, -“That the Company need not be uneasy, for if he did find a passage, no -one on earth would be a bit the wiser.” The quarrel, which set England -by the ears for ten years and caused a harvest of bitter pamphlets that -would fill a small library—need not be dealt with here.</p> - -<p>Middleton knew there was no passage for commercial purpose. That the -Admiralty accepted his verdict may be inferred from the fact that he -was permanently appointed in the king’s service; but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span> Dobbs was not -satisfied. He hurled baseless charges at Middleton, waged relentless -pamphlet war against the Company and showered petitions on Parliament. -Parliament was persuaded to offer a reward of £20,000 to any one -finding a passage to the Pacific. Dobbs then formed an opposition -company, opened subscriptions for a capital of £10,000 in one hundred -shares of £100 each for a second expedition, and petitioned the king -for a grant of all lands found adjacent to the waters discovered, -<em>with the rights of exclusive trade. Exclusive trade!</em> There—the -secret was out—the cloven hoof! It was not because they had not -earned their charter, that the Adventurers had been assailed; but -because rivals, themselves, wanted rights to exclusive trade. To these -petitions, the Company showered back counter-memorials; and memorials -of special privileges becoming the fashion, other merchants of London, -in 1752, asked for the grant of all Labrador; to which the Company -again registered its counter-memorial.</p> - -<p>The furor materialized in two things: the expedition of the Dobbs -Company to find the Northwest Passage in 1746-47, and the Parliamentary -Inquiry, in 1748-49, to look into the rights and workings of the -Adventurers’ charter.</p> - -<p><em>The Dobbs</em> galley, under Captain Moore was one hundred and -eighty tons; <em>The California</em>, Captain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span> Smith, one hundred and -forty tons; and to the crews of both, rewards for the discovery of the -Passage to the South Sea were to be given ranging from £500 for the -captains to £200 to be divided among the sailors. Henry Ellis went -as agent for the Dobbs Company. The name of <em>The California</em> -was indicative of where these argonauts hoped to sail. Oddly enough, -that Captain Middleton, whom the Dobbs forces had so mercilessly -belabored—accompanied the explorers some distance westward from the -Orkneys on <em>The Shark</em> as convoy against French pirates. After -leaving Middleton, one of the vessels suffered an experience that very -nearly finished Arthur Dobbs’ enterprise. “Nothing had occurred,” -writes Ellis, “till the 21st of June, at night, when a terrible fire -broke out in the great cabin of <em>The Dobbs</em>, and quickly made -progress to the powder room, where there were not less than thirty-six -or forty barrels of powder besides other combustibles. It is impossible -to express the consternation. Every one on board had every reason to -expect that moment was their last. You might hear all varieties of -sea-eloquence, cries, prayers, curses, scolding, mingled together. -Water was passed along by those who still preserved their reason, but -the crew were for hoisting out the boats. Lashings were cut, but none -had patience to hoist them out. The ship was head<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span> to wind, the sails -shaking and making a noise like thunder, then running right before the -wind and rolling, every one on deck waiting for the blast to put an end -to our fears.”</p> - -<p>The fire was put out before it reached the powder, but one can guess -the scare dampened the ardor of the crew. Very little ice was met in -Hudson Straits and by August 19, the vessels were at Marble Island. -The season was too late to go on north, so the ships sailed to winter -at York (Nelson) on Hayes River. Here, the usual quarrels took place -with the Hudson’s Bay people—buoys and flag signals being cut down -as the ships ran through the shoals of Five-Fathom Hole, five miles -up Hayes River. A fort called Montague House was built for the winter -on the south side, the main house being a two-story log-barracks, the -outbuildings, a sort of lean-to, or wooden wigwam banked up with snow, -where the crews could have quarters. The harbor was frozen over by -October 8. Heavy fur clothing was then donned for the winter, but in -spite of precautions against scurvy—exercise, the use of spruce beer, -outdoor life—four men died from the disease before ice cleared from -Hayes River in June.</p> - -<p>It need not be told here that no passage was found. As the boats -advanced farther and farther north of Rowe’s Welcome toward Fox -Channel, the hopelessness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span> of the quest became apparent. Before them -lay an ice world, “As gloomy a prospect,” writes Ellis, “as ever -astonished mortal eyes. The ragged rocks seemed to hang above our -heads. In some places there were falls of water dashing from cliff to -cliff. From others, hung icicles like the pipes of a vast organ. But -the most overwhelming things were the shattered crags at our feet, -which appeared to have burst from the mountains through the power of -the frost—amazing relics of the wreck of nature.” In October of 1747, -the ships were back on the Thames.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>If Dobbs’ Expedition had found a Northwest Passage, the history of -the Adventurers would close here. With the merchants of London a -unit against the charter and the Admiralty open to persuasion from -either side, there can be no doubt that the discovery of a way to -China through Hudson Bay would have sounded the death knell of the -Company. But the Dobbs Expedition was a failure. The Company’s course -was vindicated, and when the Parliamentary Committee of 1748-49 met, -affairs were <em>judiciously</em> and I must believe <em>intentionally -steered</em> away from the real question—the validity of the -charter—to such side issues as the Northwest Passage, the state of the -Indians, whether the country<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span> could be inhabited or not, questions—it -will be noticed—on which no one was competent to give evidence but -the Company itself. Among other evidence, there was quietly laid on -the table the journals of one Joseph La France, a French wood-rover -who had come overland from Michilimackinac to Hudson Bay. This record -showed that France was already on the field in the West. La Vérendrye -and his sons were on their way to the Rockies. Three forts were -already built on the Assiniboine. Such evidence could have only one -influence on Parliament. If Parliament took away the charter from the -Company—declared, in fact, that the charter was not legal—who would -hold the vast domain against France? The question of the abstract right -did not come up at all. Does it ever in international affairs? The -question was one for diplomacy, and diplomacy won. It was better for -England that the Adventurers should remain in undisturbed possession; -and the Company retained its charter.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Meanwhile, that activity among the French fur traders stirred up the -old Company as all the home agitation could not. Each of the forts, -Churchill farthest north, York on Hayes River, Albany, and Henley -House up Albany River, Moose (Rupert lay<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span> dismantled these years) -and Richmond Fort on the east side of the bay, were strengthened by -additions to the garrisons of from thirty to fifty men. Each of the -four frigates sent out by the Company had a crew of fifty men, among -whom was one young sailor, Samuel Hearne, of whom more anon. Every -year took out more cannon for the forts, more builders for Churchill, -now a stone-walled fort strong as Quebec. Joseph Isbister, who had -been governor at Albany and made some inland voyages from Churchill, -was permanently appointed, from 1770, as agent at Quebec to watch what -rival fur traders were doing; and when he died, Hugh Findlay succeeded -him. A new house was rushed up on Severn River in 1756, to attract -those Indians of Manitoba where the French were established. Lest other -merchants should petition for Labrador, the Slude River Station was -moved to Richmond Fort and Captain Coates appointed to survey the whole -east coast of Hudson Bay, for which labor he was given a present of -£80. Poor Coates! This was in 1750. Within a year, he is hauled up for -illicit trade and dismissed ignominiously from the service; whereat he -suicides from disgrace. Eight years later, Richmond Fort is closed at -a loss of £20,000, but it has shut the mouths of other petitioners for -Labrador.</p> - -<p>It is in 1757, too, that the Company inaugurates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span> its pension -system—withholding 5 per cent. of wages for a fund. As if Joseph La -France’s journal had not been alarming enough, there comes overland -to Nelson, in 1759, that Jan Ba’tiste Larlée, a spy whom the English -engage and vote a wig (£1 5s) “<em>to keep him loyal</em>.”</p> - -<p>At Henley House up Albany River, pushing trade to attract the Indians -away from the French, is that Andrew Graham, whose diary gives such -a picture of the period. Richard Norton of Churchill is long since -dead. Of his half-breed sons educated in England, William has become -a captain; Moses, from being sailor under Middleton, wins distinction -as explorer of Chesterfield Inlet and rises to become governor at -Churchill. Among the recruits of the increasing garrisons are names -famous in the West—Bannister’s and Spencer’s and Flett’s. By way of -encouraging zeal, the Company, in 1770, increases salaries for chief -traders to £130 a year, for captains to £12 a month with a gratuity -of £100 if they have no wreck. Each chief trader is to have added to -his salary three shillings for every twenty beaver sent home from -his department; each captain, one shilling sixpence for every twenty -beaver brought safely to England. As these bounties amounted to £108 -and £150 a year, they more than doubled salaries. I am sorry to say -that at this period,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span> brandy began to be plied freely. French power had -fallen at Quebec in 1759. French traders were scattered through the -wilds—birds of passage, free as air, lawless as birds, too, who lured -the Indians from the English by the use of liquor. If an English trader -ventured among Indians, who knew the customs of the French, and did not -proffer a keg of watered brandy, he was apt to be forthwith douched -“<em>baptized</em>”—the Indians called it.</p> - -<p>But the greatest activity displayed by the English at this time was -inland from the bay. If Joseph La France could come overland from -Lake Superior, English traders could be sent inland. Andrew Graham is -ordered to keep his men at Severn and Albany moving up stream. One -Isaac Butt is paid £14 for his voyaging, and in 1756 the Company votes -£20 to Anthony Hendry for his remarkable voyage from York to the Forks -of the Saskatchewan—the first Englishman to visit this now famous -region. Hendry’s voyage merits a detailed account in the next chapter.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes to Chapter XVII.</em>—The list of governors at this period -is: Sir Bibye Lake, 1712-1743; Benjamin Pitt, 1743-1746, when he died; -Thomas Knapp, 1746-1750; Sir Atwell Lake, 1750-1760; Sir William -Baker, 1760-1770; Bibye Lake, Jr., 1770-1782.</p> - -<p>The controversy between the Company and Dobbs fills volumes. Ellis -and Dobbs need not be taken seriously. They were for the time maniacs -on the subject of a passage that had no existence except in their own -fancy. Robson is different.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span></p> - -<p>Having been a builder at Churchill, he knew the ground, yet we find -him uttering such absurd charges as that the Company purposely sent -Governor Knight to his death and were glad “that the troublesome -fellow was out of the way.” This is both malicious and ignorant, -for as Robson knew, the Northwest Passage played a very secondary -part in Knight’s fatal voyage. The Company just as much as Knight -was infatuated with the lure of gold-dust. Perhaps, it will some day -prove not so foolish an infatuation. Gold placers have been found in -Klondike. Indian legend says they also exist in the ices of the East.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The Parliamentary Report for 1749 is an excellent example of -investigating “off the beat.” The only thing of value in the report is -Joseph La France’s Journal. It is valuable not as a voyage—for this -trip was well tracked from the days of Radisson and Iberville—but as -a description of the French posts on the Saskatchewan, which Hendry -visited—Pachegoia or Pasquia or the Pas and Bourbon—and as helping -to identify the Indians, whom Hendry met.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>La Vérendrye voyages are not given here, because not relative to the -subject. His life will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The Canadian Archives give Hendry’s name as Hendey. It is spelt Hendry -in the H. B. C. minutes.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1746 the warehouse on Lime Street was purchased for £550. This -year, too, comes a letter to the Company from Captain Lee of Virginia, -warning that a French pirate of two hundred and fifty men, which -captured him, is on the lookout for the fur ships.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Sharpe was the lawyer who engineered the Parliamentary Inquiry of -1749. I find his charges in the Minutes £250 and £505.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>John Potts was the trader of Richmond, when Coates was captain.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1766, Samuel Hearne’s name appears as on the pay roll of <em>The -Prince Rupert</em>.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Whale fisheries were now flourishing on the bay, for which each -captain received a bounty of 25 per cent. on net proceeds.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1769, the Company issued as standard of trade 3 marten, 1 beaver; 2 -fox, 3 beaver; gray fox, 4 beaver; white fox, ½ beaver; 1 otter, 1 -beaver.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1754-1755</p> - -<p class="hang50center">THE MARCH ACROSS THE CONTINENT BEGINS—THE COMPANY SENDS A MAN TO -THE BLACKFEET OF THE SOUTH SASKATCHEWAN—ANTHONY HENDRY IS THE FIRST -ENGLISHMAN TO PENETRATE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN—THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN TO -WINTER WEST OF LAKE WINNIPEG—HE MEETS THE SIOUX AND THE BLACKFEET AND -INVITES THEM TO THE BAY</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> lends more romantic coloring to the operations of the fur -traders on Hudson Bay than the character of the men in the service. -They were adventurers, pure and simple, in the best and the worst -sense of that term. Peter Romulus, the foreign surgeon, rubbed elbows -with Radisson, the Frenchman. A nephew of Sir Stephen Evance—come out -under the plain name, Evans—is under the same roof as a niece of the -same governor of the Company, who has come to the bay as the doweried -wife of an apprentice. Younger sons of the English gentry entered the -service on the same level as the Cockney apprentice. Rough Orkney<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span> -fishermen—with the thick burr of the North in their accent, the iron -strength of the North in their blood, and a periphery of Calvinistic -self-righteousness, which a modern gatling gun could not shoot -through—had as bedfellows in the fort barracks soft-voiced English -youths from the south counties, who had been outlawed for smuggling, -or sent to the bay to expiate early dissipations. And sometimes this -curious conglomeration of human beings was ruled in the fort—ruled -with the absolute despotism of the <em>little</em> king, of course—by -a drunken half-breed brute like Governor Moses Norton, whose one -qualification was that he could pile up the beaver returns and hold the -Indians’ friendship by being baser and more uncivilized than they. The -theme is one for song and story as well as for history.</p> - -<p>Among the flotsam and jetsam cast on Hudson Bay in the seventeen -hundred and fifties was one Anthony Hendry, a boy from the Isle of -Wight. He had been outlawed for smuggling and sought escape from -punishment by service on the bay. He came as bookkeeper. Other -servants could scarcely be driven or bribed to go inland with the -Indians. Hendry asked permission to go back to their country with the -Assiniboines, in 1754. James Isham was governor of York Fort at the -time. He was only too glad to give Hendry permission.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span></p> - -<p>Four hundred Assiniboines had come in canoes with their furs to the -fort. Leather wigwams spread back from the Hayes River like a town of -mushrooms. Canoes lay in hundreds bottom-up on the beach, and where -the reddish blue of the campfire curled up from the sands filling -the evening air with the pungent smell of burning bark, Assiniboine -voyageurs could be seen melting resin and tar to gum the splits in the -birch canoes. Hunters had exchanged their furs for guns and ammunition. -Squaws had bartered their store of pemmican (buffalo) meat for gay -gewgaws—red flannels and prints, colored beads, hand mirrors of -tin—given at the wicket gate of the fort.</p> - -<p>Young Hendry joined the encampment, became acquainted with different -leaders of the brigades, and finally secured an Assiniboine called -Little Bear as a guide to the country of the Great Unknown River, -where the French sent traders—the Saskatchewan. It was the end of -June before the Indians were ready to break camp for the homeward -voyage. By looking at the map, it will be seen that Nelson and Hayes -rivers flow northeast from the same prairie region to a point at the -bay called Port Nelson, or Fort York. One could ascend to the country -of the Assiniboines by either Hayes River or Nelson. York Fort was on -Hayes River. The Indians at that time usually<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span> ascended the Hayes River -halfway, then crossed westward to the Nelson by a chain of rivers and -lakes and portages, and advanced to the prairie by a branch of the -Nelson River known as Katchawan to Playgreen Lake. Playgreen Lake is -really a northern arm of Lake Winnipeg. Instead of coming on down to -Lake Winnipeg, the Assiniboines struck westward overland from Playgreen -Lake to the Saskatchewan at Pasquia, variously known as Basquia and -Pachegoia and the Pas. By cutting across westward from Playgreen Lake -to the main Saskatchewan, three detours were avoided: (1) the long -detour round the north shore of Lake Winnipeg; (2) the southern bend -of Saskatchewan, where it enters the lake; (3) the portage of Grand -Rapids in the Saskatchewan between Lake Winnipeg and Cedar Lake. It is -necessary to give these somewhat tedious details as this route was to -become the highway of commerce for a hundred years.</p> - -<p>Up these waters paddled the gay Indian voyageurs, the foam rippling -on the wake of their bark canoes not half so light as the sparkling -foam of laugh and song and story from the paddlers. Over these long -lonely portages, silent but for the wind through the trees, or the hoot -of the owl, or flapping of a loon, or a far weird call of the meadow -lark—a mote in an ocean of sky—the first colonists were to trudge,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span> -men and women and children, who came to the West seeking that freedom -and room for the shoulder-swing of uncramped manhood, which home lands -had denied. Plymouth Rock, they call the landing place of the Pilgrim -Fathers. Every portage up Hayes River was a Plymouth Rock to these -first colonists of the West.</p> - -<p>On June 26, then, 1754, Hendry set out with the Assiniboines for the -voyage up Hayes River. At Amista-Asinee or Great Stone Rock they -camped for the first night, twenty-four miles from York—good progress -considering it was against stream at the full flood of summer rains. -Fire Steel River, Wood Partridge River, Pine Reach—marked the camps -for sixty miles from York. Four Falls compelled portage beyond Pine -Reach, and shoal water for another twenty-five miles set the men -tracking, the crews jumping out to wade and draw the lightened canoes -up stream.</p> - -<p>July 1, Hendry was one hundred and thirteen miles from York. Terrific -rains, hot and thundery, deluged the whole flotilla, and Hendry learned -for the first time what clouds of huge inland mosquitoes can do. -Mosquito Point, he called the camp. Here, the Hayes broke into three or -four branches. Hendry’s brigade of Assiniboines began to work up one of -the northwestward branches toward the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span> Nelson. The land seemed to be -barren rock. At camping places was neither fish nor fowl. The voyageurs -took a reef in their belts and pressed on. Three beaver afforded some -food on Steel River but “we are greatly fatigued,” records Hendry, -“with carrying and hauling our canoes, and we are not well fed; but the -natives are continually smoking, which I find allays hunger.” Pikes and -ducks replenished the provision bags on Duck Lake beyond Steel River. -Twenty canoes of Inland Indians were met at Shad Falls beyond Cree -Lake, on their way to York. With these Hendry sent a letter to Governor -Isham. It was July 20 before Hendry realized that the labyrinth of -willow swamps had led into Nelson River. It must have been high up -Nelson River, in some of its western sources east of Playgreen Lake, -for one day later, on Sunday the 21st, he records: “We paddled two -miles up the Nelson and then came to Keiskatchewan River, on which the -French have two houses which we expect to see to-morrow.” He was now -exactly five hundred miles from York. “The mosquitoes are intolerable, -giving us peace neither day nor night. We paddled fourteen miles up the -Keiskatchewan west, when we came to a French house. On our arrival, two -Frenchmen came to the waterside and in a very genteel manner invited -me into their house, which I readily accepted. One<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span> asked if I had -any letter from my master and why I was going inland. I answered I -had no letter and was out to view the country; that I meant to return -this way in spring. He told me his master and men were gone down to -Montreal with the furs, and that they must detain me until his return. -However, they were very kind, and at night I went to my tent and told -Little Bear my leader. He only smiled and said: “They dare not detain -you.” Hendry was at the Pas on the Saskatchewan. If he had come up the -Saskatchewan from Lake Winnipeg, he would have found that the French -had another fort at the mouth of the river—Bourbon.</p> - -<p>From now on, he describes the region which he crossed as Mosquito -Plains. White men alone in the wilderness become friends quickly. In -spite of rivalry, the English trader presented the French with tobacco; -the French in turn gave him pemmican of moose meat. On Wednesday, July -24, he left the fort. Sixteen miles up the Saskatchewan, Hendry passed -Peotago River, heavily timbered with birch trees. Up this region the -canoes of the four hundred Assiniboines ascended southward, toward the -western corner of the modern province of Manitoba. As the river became -shoal, canoes were abandoned seventy miles south of the Saskatchewan. -Packs strapped on backs, the Indians starving for food, a dreary march<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span> -began across country southwest over the Mosquito Plains. “Neither bird -nor beast is to be seen. We have nothing to eat,” records Hendry after -a twenty-six miles tramp. At last, seventy miles from where they had -left the canoes, one hundred and forty from the Saskatchewan, they came -on a huge patch of ripe raspberries and wild cherries, and luckily in -the brushwood killed two moose. This relieved the famine. Wandering -Assiniboines chanced to be encamped here. Hendry held solemn conference -with the leaders, whiffed pipes to the four corners of the universe—by -which the deities of North, South, East and West were called to witness -the sincerity of the sentiments—and invited these tribes down to York; -but they only answered, “we are already supplied by the French at -Pasquia.”</p> - -<p>One hundred miles south of Pas—or just where the Canadian Northern -Railroad strikes west from Manitoba across Saskatchewan—a delightful -change came over the face of the country. Instead of brackish swamp -water or salt sloughs, were clear-water lakes. Red deer—called -by the Assiniboines <em>waskesaw</em>—were in myriads. “I am now,” -writes Hendry as he entered what is now the Province of Saskatchewan, -“entering a most pleasant and plentiful country of hills and dales with -little woods.”</p> - -<p>Many Indians were met, but all were strong<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span> partisans of the French. -An average of ten miles a day was made by the marchers, hunting red -deer as they tramped. On August 8, somewhere near what is now Red Deer -River, along the line of the Canada Northern, pause was made for a -festival of rejoicing on safe return from the long voyage and relief -from famine. For a day and a night, all hands feasted and smoked and -danced and drank and conjured in gladness; the smoking of the pipe -corresponding to our modern grace before meals, the dancing a way of -evincing thanks in rhythmic motion instead of music, the drinking -and conjuring not so far different from our ancestors’ way of giving -thanks. The lakes were becoming alkali swamps, and camp had to be -made where there was fresh water. Sometimes the day’s march did not -average four miles. Again, there would be a forced march of fifteen. -For the first time, an English fur trader saw Indians on horseback. -Where did they get the horses? As we now know, the horses came from -the Spaniards, but we must not wonder that when Hendry reported having -seen whole tribes on horseback, he was laughed out of the service as a -romancer, and the whole report of his trip discredited. The Indians’ -object was to reach the buffalo grounds and lay up store of meat for -the winter. They told Hendry he would presently see whole tribes of -Indians on horseback—Archithinues,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_343"></a>[343]</span> the famous Blackfoot Confederacy -of Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans and Sarcees.</p> - -<p>On the 15th of August, they were among the buffalo, where to-day the -great grooves and ruts left by the marching herds can still be seen -between the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboine Rivers toward Qu’ Appelle. -For the most part, the Indians hunted the buffalo with bow and arrow, -and at night there was often a casualty list like the wounded after -a battle. “<em>Sunday—dressed a lame man’s leg and he gave me for my -trouble a moose nose, which is considered a great delicacy among the -Indians.</em>” “<em>I killed a bull buffalo</em>,” he writes on September -8, “<em>he was nothing but skin and bones. I took out his tongue and -left his remains to the wolves, which were waiting around in great -numbers. We cannot afford to expend ammunition on them. My feet are -swelled with marching, but otherwise I am in perfect health. So expert -are the natives buffalo hunting, they will take an arrow out of the -buffalo when the beasts are foaming and raging and tearing the ground -up with their feet and horns. The buffalo are so numerous, like herds -of English cattle that we are obliged to make them sheer out of our -way.</em>”</p> - -<p>Sometimes more dangerous game than buffalo was encountered. On -September 17, Hendry writes: “<em>Two young men were miserably wounded -by a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_344"></a>[344]</span> grizzly bear that they were hunting to-day. One may recover but -the other never can. His arm is torn from his body, one eye gouged out -and his stomach ripped open.</em>” The next day the Indian died.</p> - -<p>The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas toward the land -of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the -French House. To Hendry’s surprise they came to a large river with -high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South -Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of -Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four -hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty -in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose -parchment skin—like the bull-boats of the Missouri—the Assiniboines -rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River -and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and -persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort.</p> - -<p>As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins -and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth-hole smoked the skins. Beating -and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. -For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry -remarks how in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_345"></a>[345]</span> the fall of the year, the women sat in the doors of -their wigwams “knitting moose leather into snow shoes” made of seasoned -wood. It was October before the Indians of the far Western plains were -met. These were the famous Blackfeet for the first time now seen by an -English trader. They approached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with -bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. -Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He -thought the mineral iron. What he saw was probably an outcropping of -coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as -ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver—which -were plentiful beyond the fur trader’s hopes. When, on October the -11th, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatchewan, which -the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches -were forks of one and the same great river—the Saskatchewan, or as the -French called it, Christinaux. The Indian names for the two branches -were Keskatchew and Waskesaw.</p> - -<p>For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible -southwest. On October the 14th, four riders came out to conduct Hendry -to an encampment of three hundred and twenty-two tents<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_346"></a>[346]</span> of Blackfeet -Indians “<em>pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where -we were conducted to the leader’s tent</em>.” This was the main tribe -of which Hendry had already met the outrunners. “<em>The leader’s tent -was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a -buffalo skin attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to -sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) -set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to -their custom. Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo -flesh was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten -buffalo tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand -leader who lives on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with -their furs. They would receive in return, powder, shot, guns and cloth. -He made little answer: said it was far off and his people could not -paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents which we pitched -a quarter of a mile outside their lines.</em>” Again invited to the -leader’s tent the next morning, Hendry heard some remarkable philosophy -from the Indian. “<em>The chief told me his tribe never wanted food -as they followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who -frequented the settlements often starved on their journey, which was -exceedingly true</em>,” added Hendry. Reciprocal presents closed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_347"></a>[347]</span> the -interview. The present to the Assiniboine chief was a couple of girl -slaves, one of whom was murdered at York ten years afterward by an -Indian in a fit of jealousy.</p> - -<p>Later, Hendry learned that the Assiniboines did not want these -Blackfeet of the far West to come down to the bay. Neither would the -Assiniboines hunt except for food. Putting the two facts together, -Hendry rightly judged that the Assiniboines acted as middlemen between -the traders and the Blackfeet.</p> - -<p>By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling -wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional -moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered; his journal says, -“eight hundred and ten miles west of York,” moving back and forward -north and south of the river; but a comment added by Andrew Graham on -the margin of the journal, says he was in latitude 59°. This is plainly -a mistake, as latitude 59° is six degrees away from the Saskatchewan; -but eight hundred and ten miles from York along the Saskatchewan would -bring Hendry in the region between the modern Edmonton and Battleford. -It is to Hendry’s credit that he remained on good terms with the -Assiniboines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become -the butt of the children<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_348"></a>[348]</span> who infested the tents like imps; but he -hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch -the best of them. Consequently, there is not a note in his journal of -that doleful whine which comes from the weakling run amuck of hard life -in a savage land.</p> - -<p>When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader -instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson -Bay. Almost the entire winter, camp moved from bend to bend or branch -to branch of the North Saskatchewan, heading gradually eastward. Toward -spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. -Among these were “green scalps” and many women captives from those -Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags -from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. -One hears much twaddle of the red man’s noble state before he was -contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West -before they had met any white men but himself, and the disposal of -those captives is a criterion of the red man’s noble state. Whenever -one was not wanted—the present of a girl, for instance, resented by a -warrior’s jealous wives—she was summarily hacked to pieces, and not a -passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_349"></a>[349]</span> -caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in -itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception -as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life.</p> - -<p>By spring, Hendry’s camp had dwindled down to a party of twelve. He now -had only two pounds of powder in his possession, but his party were -rich in furs. As the time approached to build canoes, the Assiniboines -began gathering at the river banks. Young men searched the woods for -bark. Old men whittled out the gun’els. Women pounded pemmican into -bags for the long voyage to the bay. The nights passed in riotous feast -and revel, with the tom-tom pounding, the conjurers performing tricks, -the hunters dancing, the women peeping shyly into the dance tent. At -such times, one may guess, Hendry did not spare of his scant supplies -to lure the Indians to York Fort, but he did not count on the effects -of French brandy when the canoes would pass the French posts.</p> - -<p>Ice was driving in the river like a mill race all the month of April. -Swans and geese and pigeons and bluejays came winging north. There was -that sudden and wondrous leap to life of a dormant world—and lo!—it -was summer, with the ducks on the river in flocks, and the long prairie -grass waving like a green sea, and the trees bleak and bare against<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_350"></a>[350]</span> -the vaporous sky now clothing themselves in foliage as in a bridal veil -shot with sunlight.</p> - -<p>The great dog feast was solemnly held. The old men conjured the powers -of the air to bless them a God-speed. Canoes were launched on April 28, -and out swung the Assiniboines’ brigade for Fort York. It was easier -going down stream than up. Thirty and forty miles a day they made, -passing multitudes of Indians still building their canoes on the river -banks. At every camp, more fur-laden canoes joined them. Hendry’s heart -must have been very happy. He was bringing wealth untold to York.</p> - -<p>Four hundred miles down stream, the Blackfeet Indians were met and -with great pow-wow of trading turned their furs over to the crafty -Assiniboines to be taken down to York. There were now sixty canoes in -the flotilla and says Hendry “not a pot or kettle among us.” Everything -had been bartered to the Blackfeet for furs. Six hundred miles from -their launching place, they came to the first French post. This -distance given by Hendry is another pretty effective proof that he had -wintered near Edmonton, if not beyond it, for this post was not the -Pas. It was subordinate to Basquia or Pasquia.</p> - -<p>Hendry was invited into the French post as the guest of the master. -If he had been as crafty as he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_351"></a>[351]</span> was brave, he would have hurried his -Indians past the rival post, but he had to live and learn. While he was -having supper, the French distributed ten gallons of brandy among the -Assiniboines. By morning, the French had obtained the pick of the furs, -one thousand of the best pelts, and it was three days before the amazed -Hendry could coax the Indians away from his polite hosts. Two hundred -miles more, brought the brigade to the main French post—the Pas. Nine -Frenchmen were in possession, and the trick was repeated. “The Indians -are all drunk,” deplores Hendry, “but the master was very kind to me. -He is dressed very genteel but his men wear nothing but drawers and -striped cotton shirts ruffled at the hand and breast. This house has -been long a place of trade and is named Basquia. It is twenty-six feet -long, twelve wide, nine high, having a sloping roof, the walls log on -log, the top covered with willows, and divided into three rooms, one -for trade, one for storing furs, and one for a dwelling.”</p> - -<p>Four days passed before the Indians had sobered sufficiently to go on, -and they now had only the heavy furs that the French would not take. On -June 1, the brigade again set out for York. Canoes were lighter now. -Seventy miles a day was made. Hendry does not give any distances on his -return voyage,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_352"></a>[352]</span> but he followed the same course by which he had come, -through Deer Lake and Steel River to Hayes River and York, where all -arrived on the 20th of June.</p> - -<p>To Hendry’s profound disgust, he was not again permitted to go inland. -In fact, discredit was cast on his report. “Indians on horseback!” The -factors of the bay ridiculed the idea. They had never heard of such a -thing. All the Indians they knew came to the fort in canoes. Indeed, -it was that spirit of little-minded narrowness that more than anything -else lost to the Company the magnificent domain of its charter. If the -men governing the Company had realized the empire of their ruling as -fully as did the humble servants fighting the battles on the field, -the Hudson’s Bay Company might have ruled from Atlantic to Pacific in -the North, and in the West as far south as Mexico. But they objected -to being told what they did not know. Hendry was “frozen” out of the -service. The occasion of his leaving was even more contemptible than -the real cause. On one of his trading journeys, he was offered very -badly mixed brandies, probably drugged. Being a fairly good judge of -brandies from his smuggling days, Hendry refused to take what Andrew -Graham calls “such slops from such gentry.” He quit the service in -disgust.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_353"></a>[353]</span></p> - -<p>The Company, as the minutes show, voted him £20 gratuity for his -voyage. Why, then, did the factors cast ridicule on his report? -Supposing they had accepted it, what would have been entailed? They -must capture the furs of that vast inland country for their Company. To -do that, there must be forts built inland. Some factor would be ordered -inland. Then, there would be the dangers of French competition—very -real danger in the light of that brandy incident. The factors on the -bay—Norton and Isham—were not brave enough men to undertake such -a campaign. It was easier sitting snugly inside the forts with a -multitude of slave Indians to wait on their least want. So the trade of -the interior was left to take care of itself.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes on Chapter XVIII.</em>—Hendry’s Journal is in Hudson’s Bay -Company’s House, London. A copy is also in the Canadian Archives. -Andrew Graham of Severn has written various notes along the margin. -If it had not been for Graham, it looks much as if Hendry’s Journal -would have been lost to the Company. Hendry gives the distances of -each day’s travel so minutely, that his course can easily be followed -first to Basquia, then from Basquia to the North Saskatchewan region. -Graham’s comment that Hendry was at 59° north is simply a slip. It -is out of the question to accept it for the simple reason Hendry -could not have gone eight hundred and ten miles <em>southwest</em> -from York, as his journal daily records, and have been within 6° of -59°. Besides his own discovery that he had been crossing branches of -the Saskatchewan all the time and his account of his voyage down the -Saskatchewan to the Pas, are unmistakable proofs of his whereabouts. -Also he mentions the Eagle Indians repeatedly. These Indians dwelt -between the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan. Whether the -other rivers that he crossed were the Assiniboine or the Qu’ Appelle -or the Red Deer of Lake Winnipegosis—I do not know.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_354"></a>[354]</span></p> - -<p>I had great trouble in identifying the Archithinue Indians of Hendry’s -Journal till I came on Matthew Cocking’s Journal over the same ground. -Dec. 1, 1772, Cocking says: “This tribe is named Powestic Athinuewuck, -Waterfall Indians. There are four tribes or nations which are all -Equestrian Indians, viz:</p> - -<p>(1) Mithco Athinuewuck, or Bloody Indians.</p> - -<p>(2) Koskiton Wathesitock, or Black Footed Indians.</p> - -<p>(3) Pegonow, or Muddy Water Indians.</p> - -<p>(4) Sassewuck, or Woody Country Indians.”</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_355"></a>[355]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1770-1800</p> - - -<p class="hang50center">EXTENSION OF TRADE TOWARD LABRADOR, QUEBEC AND ROCKIES—HEARNE -FINDS THE ATHABASCA COUNTRY AND FOUNDS CUMBERLAND HOUSE ON THE -SASKATCHEWAN—COCKING PROCEEDS TO THE BLACKFEET—HOWSE FINDS THE PASS -IN ROCKIES</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">While</span> Anthony Hendry, the English smuggler, was making his way up the -Saskatchewan to the land of the Blackfeet—the present province of -Alberta—the English Adventurers were busy making good their claim -to Labrador. Except as a summer rendezvous, Rupert, the oldest of -the Company’s forts, at the southeast corner of the bay—had been -abandoned, but far up the coast of Labrador on the wildest part of this -desolate shore, was that fort which the Company was shortly forced to -dismantle at great loss—Richmond. When Captain Coates was sent to -cruise the east coast of Hudson Bay, thirty men under John Potts and -Mr. Pollexfen, had been left on Richmond Gulf to build a fort. There -was no more dangerous region on the bay. It was here Hudson’s crew -had been attacked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_356"></a>[356]</span> by the Eskimos, and here the Eskimos yearly came -to winter and hunt the white whale. Between the rugged main shore and -the outer line of barren islands was usually open water. Camped on -the rocky islets, the timid Eskimos were secure from Indian foe, and -if the white whale fisheries failed, they had only to scud across the -open water or portage over the ice to the mainland and hunt partridge -on Richmond Gulf. From one hundred and fifty to three hundred Eskimos -yearly wintered within trading distance of Richmond.</p> - -<p>Quickly, storehouses, barracks, wareroom and guardroom were erected -just inside the narrow entrance from Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf, and -round all thrown a ten-foot palisade. This was in 1749. Coates had -been attracted to Richmond Gulf—which he calls Artiwinipack—by its -land-locked, sheltered position and the magnificent supply of lumber -for building. The Eskimo whale fisheries were farther south at Whale -River and East Main, with winter lodges subordinate to Richmond. -The partridges of the wooded slopes promised abundance of food, and -there was excellent fox and beaver trapping. Compared to the other -rocky barrens of northern Labrador, Richmond Harbor seemed Paradise, -“<em>but oh, my conscience</em>,” wrote Captain Coates, “<em>there is -so profound silence, such awful precipices,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_357"></a>[357]</span> no life, that the world -seems asleep. The land is so tremendous high that wind and water -reverberate between the cliffs entering two miles to our gulf. Inside -are mountains, groves, cascades and vales adorned with trees. On the -Hudson Bay side nothing is seen but barren rocks. Inside, all is green -with stately woods.... On the high mountains is only snow moss; lower, -a sort of rye grass, some snow drops and violets without odor, then -rows of evergreens down to the very sea. On the right of the gulf is -Lady Lake’s Grove under a stupendous mountain, whence falls a cascade -through the grove to the sea. In short, such is the elegant situation -of Richmond Fort that it is not to be paralleled in the world.</em>”</p> - -<p>Such were the high hopes with which Richmond Fort was founded. To-day -it is a howling wilderness silent as death but for the rush of waters -heard when white men first entered the bay. Partridge there were in -plenty among the lonely evergreens, and game for trapping; but not -the warmest overtures of Chief Factor Potts and Mr. Pollexfen and Mr. -Isbister, who yearly came up from Albany, could win the friendship of -the treacherous Eskimos. They would not hunt, and the white men dare -not penetrate far enough inland to make their trapping pay. Potts -kept his men whale fishing off Whale River, but in five years the -loss to the Company had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_358"></a>[358]</span> totaled more than £24,000. The crisis came -in 1754. Day and night, the stealthy shadow of Eskimo spies moved -through the evergreens of the gulf. In vain Potts gave the chiefs -presents of gold-laced suits, beaver hats with plumes, and swords. -“They <em>shaked</em> my hands,” he records, “and hugged and embraced -and smiled”; but the very next trapper, who went alone to the woods, -or attempted to drive his dog train south to Whale River, would see -Eskimos ambushed behind rocks and have his <em>cache</em> rifled or find -himself overpowered and plundered. One day in February, Mr. Pollexfen -had gone out with his men from Whale River trapping. When they returned -in the afternoon they found the cook boy had been kidnapped and the -house robbed of every object that could be carried away—stores of -ammunition, arms, traps, food, clothes, even the door hinges and iron -nails of the structure.</p> - -<p>Waiting only till it was dark, the terrified hunters hitched their dog -sleighs up, tore off all bells that would betray flight, and drove like -mad for the stronger fort of Richmond. Potts hurriedly sent out orders -to recall his trappers from the hills and manned Richmond for siege. It -was four days before all the men came under shelter, and nightly the -Eskimos could be heard trying to scale the palisades. The fort was so -short of provisions, all hands were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_359"></a>[359]</span> reduced to one meal a day. Potts -called for volunteers, to go to the rescue of the kidnapped cook—a -boy, named Matthew Warden; and thirteen men offered to go. The Eskimos -had taken refuge on the islands of the outer shore. Frost-fog thick as -wool lay on the bay. Eskimos were seen lurking on the hills above the -fort. A council was held. It was determined to catch three Eskimos as -hostages for the cook’s safety rather than risk the lives of thirteen -men outside the fort. Some ten days later, when a few men ventured -out for partridges, the forest again came to life with Eskimo spies. -Potts recalled his hunters, sent two scouts to welcome the Eskimos to -the fort and placed all hands on guard. Three Indians were conducted -into the house. In a twinkling, fetters were clapped on two, and the -third bade go and fetch the missing white boy on pain of death to the -hostages. The stolid Eskimo affected not to understand. Potts laid a -sword across the throats of the two prisoners and signaled the third -to be gone. The fellow needed no urging but scampered. “I had our -men,” relates Potts, “one by one pass through the guardroom changing -their dresses every time to give the two prisoners the idea that I had -a large garrison. They seemed surprised that I had one hundred men, -but they spoke no word.” The next day, the fettered prisoners drew -knives on their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_360"></a>[360]</span> guard, seized his gun and clubbed the Company men from -the room. In the scuffle that followed, both Eskimos were shot. The -danger was now increased a hundredfold. Friendly Montagnais Indians, -especially one named Robinson Crusoe, warned Potts that if the shooting -were known, nothing could save the fort. The bodies were hidden in the -cellar till some Montagnais went out one dark night and weighting the -feet with stones, pushed them through a hole in the ice. How quickly -white men can degenerate to savagery is well illustrated by the conduct -of the cooped-up, starving garrison. Before sending away the dead -bodies, they cut the ears from each and preserved them in spirits of -alcohol to send down by Indian scouts to Isbister at Moose with a -letter imploring that the sloop come to the rescue as soon as the ice -cleared. For two months the siege lasted. Nothing more was ever heard -of the captured boy, but by the end of May, Isbister had sent a sloop -to Richmond. As told elsewhere, Richmond was dismantled in 1778 and the -stores carried down to Whale River and East Main.</p> - -<p>Important changes had gradually grown up in the Adventurer’s methods. -White servants were no longer forbidden to circulate with the Indians -but encouraged to go out to the hunting field and paid<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_361"></a>[361]</span> bounties on -their trapping. Three men had been sent out from York in January, 1772, -to shoot partridges for the fort. It was a mild, open winter. The men -carried provisions to last three weeks. Striking back through the marsh -land, that lies between Hayes and Nelson Rivers, they camped for the -first night on the banks of the Nelson. The next morning, Tuesday, -the 7th of January, they were crossing the ice of the Nelson’s broad -current when they suddenly felt the rocking of the tide beneath their -feet, looked ahead, saw the frost-smoke of open water and to their -horror realized that the tidal bore had loosened the ice and they were -adrift, bearing out to sea. In vain, dogs and men dashed back for the -shore. The ice floe had separated from the land and was rushing seaward -like a race horse. That night it snowed. The terrified men kept watch, -hoping that the high tide would carry the ice back to some of the long, -low sand-bars at Port Nelson. The tide did sway back the third day but -not near enough for a landing. This night, they put up their leather -tents and slept drifting. When they awakened on Friday the 10th, they -were driving so direct for the shore that the three men simultaneously -dashed to gain the land, leaving packs, provisions, tent and sleighs; -but in vain. A tidal wave swept the floe off shore, and when they -set back for their camp, they were appalled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_362"></a>[362]</span> to see camp kit, sleds, -provisions, all—drive past afloat. The ice floe had broken. They were -now adrift without food or shelter, James Ross carrying gun, powder -bag and blanket over his shoulders as he had risen from sleep, Farrant -wearing only the beaver coat in which he had slept, Tomson bereft of -either gun or blanket.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_425"> -<img src="images/i_425.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="385"> -<p class="caption">Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake, One of the Northernmost -Posts of the Fur Trade.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>This time, the ebb carried them far into the bay where they passed the -fourth night adrift. The next day, wind and the crumbling of the ice -added to their terrors. As the floe went to pieces, they leaped from -float to float trying to keep together on the largest icepan. Farrant -fell through the slush to his armpits and after being belted tightly -in his beaver coat lay down behind a wind-break of ice blocks to die. -Their only food since losing the tent kit had been some lumps of sugar -one of them had chanced to have in his pockets. During Saturday night -the 11th of January, the ice grounded and great seas began sweeping -over the floe. When Ross and Tomson would have dragged Farrant to -a higher hummock of the ice field, they found that he was dead. On -Monday, the weather grew cold and stormy. Tomson’s hands had swollen so -that he could not move a muscle and the man became delirious, raving -of his Orkney home as they roamed aimlessly over the illimitable ice -fields. That night, the seventh they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_363"></a>[363]</span> had been adrift, just as the -moon sank below the sea, the Orkneyman, Tomson, breathed his last.</p> - -<p>Ross was now alone. A great ice floe borne down by a wash of the tide, -swept away Tomson’s body. Ross scrambled upon the fresh drift and -hoping against hope, scarcely able to believe his senses, saw that the -new icepan extended to the land. Half blinded by sun glare, hands and -feet frozen stiff, now laughing hysterically, now crying deliriously, -the fellow managed to reach shore, but when the sun set he lost all -sense of direction and could not find his way farther. That night, his -hands were so stiff that he could not strike a light on his flint, but -by tramping down brushwood, made himself a bed in the snow. Sunrise -gave him his bearings again and through his half-delirium he realized -he was only four miles from the fort. Partly walking, partly creeping, -he reached York gates at seven that night. One of the dogs had followed -him all the way, which probably explains how he was not frozen sleeping -out uncovered for nine nights. Hands and feet had to be amputated, but -his countrymen of Orkney took up a subscription for him and the Company -gave him a pension of £20 a year for life. The same amount was bestowed -on the widows of the two dead men. It is not surprising that Hudson -Bay became ill-omened to Orkneymen who heard<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_364"></a>[364]</span> such tales of fur hunting -as have been related of Richmond and York.</p> - -<p>But the Company was now on the eve of the most momentous change in its -history. Anthony Hendry had reported how the French traders had gone up -the Saskatchewan to the tribes of equestrian Indians; and Hendry had -been cashiered for his pains. Now a new fact influenced the Company. -French power had fallen at Quebec, in 1759. Instead of a few French -traders scattered through the West, were thousands of wildwood rovers, -half-Indian, half-French, voyageurs and bush-lopers, fled from the new -laws of the new English régime to the freedom of the wilderness. Beyond -Sault Ste. Marie, the long hand of the law could not reach. Beyond the -Sault, was law of neither God nor man. To make matters worse, English -merchants, who had flocked to Montreal and Quebec, now outfitted these -French rovers and personally led them to the far hunting field of the -<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pays d’en Haut</i>—a term that meant anything from Lake Superior -to the Pole. The English Adventurers sent more men up stream—up the -Moose toward Quebec as far as Abbittibbi, up the Albany toward what is -now Manitoba past Henley House as far as Osnaburg, across what is now -Keewatin toward Lake Superior as far as New Brunswick House. The catch -of furs showed a decrease every<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_365"></a>[365]</span> year. Fewer Indians came to the bay, -fewer hunters to the outlying fur posts. Dividends dropped from 10 to 8 -and from 8 to 6 and from 6 to 5 per cent. Instead of 100,000 beaver a -year there came to the London market only 40,000 and 50,000 a year.</p> - -<p>To stand on the rights of monopoly conferred by an ancient charter -while “interlopers and pedlars,” as the Company called them—ran -away with the profits of that monopoly, was like standing on your -dignity with a thief while he picked your pockets. The “smug ancient -gentlemen,” as enemies designated the Company, bestirred themselves -mightily. Moses Norton, governor of Churchill, was no more anxious -to fight the French Canadians on the hunting field now than he had -been in the days of Anthony Hendry, but being half-Indian he knew -all the legends of the Indians—knew that even if the French already -had possession of the Saskatchewan, north of the Saskatchewan was an -unclaimed kingdom, whence no white man had yet set foot, as large again -as the bounds of Hudson Bay.</p> - -<p>Besides, the Company had not forgotten those legends of minerals in -the North which had lured Captain Knight to his death. Chippewyan -Indians still came to Churchill with huge masses of amorphous copper -strung on necklaces or battered into rough pots and pans and cooking -utensils. Whence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_366"></a>[366]</span> came that copper? Oddly enough, the world cannot -answer that question yet. The Indians said from “a Far-Away-Metal -River” that ran to a vast sea where the tide ebbed and flowed. Once -more hopes of finding a Northwest Passage rose; once more hopes of -those metals that had led Knight to ship-wreck. Norton suggested -that this time the search should be made by land. Serving as a clerk -on a brig at Churchill was a well-educated young Englishman already -mentioned—Samuel Hearne.</p> - -<p>The yearly boats that came to Churchill in 1769, commissioned Hearne -for this expedition, whose ostensible object was the finding of the -Metal River now known as the Coppermine but whose real object was the -occupation of a vast region not yet preempted by the Canadians. The -story of Hearne’s travels would fill a volume. Norton, the governor, -was a curious compound of ability and sham, strength and vice. Born -of an Indian mother and English father, he seemed to have inherited -all the superstitions of one and vices of the other. He was educated -in England and married an English woman. Yet when he came to the -wilderness, he had a seraglio of native wives that would have put a -Mormon to the blush. These he kept apart in rudely but gorgeously -furnished apartments to which he alone possessed the keys. At the -mess-room table, he wearied<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_367"></a>[367]</span> the souls of his officers by long-winded -and saintly sermons on virtue which were expounded as regularly as the -night supper came round. Did some blackleg expiating dissipations by -life in the wilds judge Norton’s sermons by his conduct and emulate -his example rather than his precepts, Norton had the culprit tied to -the triangle and flogged till his back was raw. An Indian is never a -hypocrite. Why would he be? His code is to do as he wishes, to follow -his desires, to be stronger than his enemies, to impose on the weak. -He has no religion to hold a higher example up like a mirror that -reflects his own face as loathsome, and he has no science to teach him -that what religion calls “evil” means in the long run, wretchedness -and rottenness and ruin. But the hypocrisy in Norton was the white man -strain—the fig leaf peculiar to civilized man—living a lie so long -that he finally believes the lie himself. Knowledge of white man’s -science, Norton had; but to the Indian in him, it was still mystery; -“medicine,” a secret means to kill an enemy, arsenic in medicine, -laudanum in whiskey, or poison that caused convulsions to an Indian who -refused either a daughter for the seraglio or beaver at Norton’s terms. -A white man who could wield such power was to the Indians a god, and -Norton held them in the hollow of his hand. Equally successful was the -half-breed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_368"></a>[368]</span> governor managing the governing committee of the Hudson’s -Bay Company in London; for he sent them enormous returns in beaver at -small outlay.</p> - -<p>Seven great guns roared their God-speed as the fort gates opened and -Hearne sped out by dog train for his inland trip north on November 6, -1769. Norton waved a farewell and Hearne disappeared over the rolling -drifts with two Indians as guides, two white men as packers to look -after provisions. Striking northwest, Hearne was joined by other -traveling Indians. Bitterly cold weather set in. One Indian guide -deserted the first night out and the other proved himself an impudent -beggar, who camped when it was cold and camped when it was wet and -paused to hunt when it was fair, but laid up no stock of provisions, -giving Hearne plainly to understand that the whole Indian cavalcade -looked to the white men’s sleighs for food. The travelers did not make -ten miles a day. At the end of the month Hearne wakened one morning to -find his stores plundered and gales of laughter ringing back as the -Indians marched off with their booty. Not even guns were left. Rabbit -and partridge-snaring saved the three white men from starving as they -retreated. They were safe inside the fort once more by December 11. -Hearne’s object setting out in midwinter had been to reach the North -before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_369"></a>[369]</span> summer, and nothing daunted, he again set forth with five fresh -guides on February 23, 1770, again depending on snares for food. April -saw the marchers halted on the borders of the Barren Lands, scouring -the wide wastes of treeless swamps and rock for game. Caribou had -retreated inland and not yet begun their traverse to the bay. Until -wild fowls came winging north, the camp lived on snow water, tobacco -and such scraps of leather and dried meat as had not already been -devoured. A chance herd of wandering deer relieved the famine till -June, when rations were again reduced; this time, to wild cranberries. -Then the traverse of the caribou herds came—a rush of countless -myriads with the tramp of an army and the clicking of a multitude of -horns from west to east for weeks. Indians had gathered to the traverse -in hundreds. Moss served as fuel. Provisions were abundant. Hearne had -almost decided to winter with the wandering Chippewyans when they again -began to plunder his store of ammunition. Wind had smashed some of the -survey instruments, so he joined a band of hunters on their way to the -fort, which he reached on November 25.</p> - -<p>Hearne had not found “Far-Away-Metal-River,” nor the copper mines, -nor the Northwest Passage, but he had found fresh tribes of Indians, -and these were what Norton wanted. December 7, 1770, less<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_370"></a>[370]</span> than a -month from his home-coming, Hearne was again dispatched by Norton. -Matonabbee, a famous guide of the Chippewyans, accompanied the explorer -with a retinue of the Indian’s wives to draw sleds and handle baggage. -Almost as notable as Norton was Matonabbee, the Chippewyan chief—an -Indian of iron constitution and iron will, pitiless to his wives, -whom he used as beasts of burden; relentless in his aims, fearless -of all Indians, a giant measuring more than six feet, straight as an -arrow, supple as willow, hard as nails. Imperturbable and good-natured -Matonabbee set the pace at winged speed, pausing for neither hunger nor -cold. Christmas week was celebrated by fasting. Matonabbee uttered no -complaint; and the white man could not well turn back when the Indian -was as eager for the next day’s march as if he had supped sumptuously -instead of going to bed on a meal of moss water. Self-pity, fear, -hesitation, were emotions of which the guide knew nothing. He had -undertaken to lead Hearne to “Far-Away-Metal-River,” and only death -could stop him.</p> - -<p>In the Barren Lands, caribou enough were killed to afford the whole -company provisions for six months; and the marchers were joined by -two hundred more Indians. Wood became scarcer and smaller as they -marched north. Matonabbee halted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_371"></a>[371]</span> in April and ordered his wives to -camp while the men made dugouts for the voyage down stream. The boats -were heavy in front to resist the ice jams. If Hearne had marveled -at the large company now following Matonabbee to a hard, dangerous -hunting field he quickly guessed good reasons when wives and children -were ordered to head westward and await the warrior’s return at Lake -Athabasca. Women are ordered away only when there is prospect of -war, and Hearne could easily surmise whence the Chippewyans annually -obtained eleven thousand of their best beaver pelts. The sun no longer -set. It was continual day, and on June 12, 1771, the swamps of the -Barrens converged to a narrow, rocky river bed whence roared a misty -cataract—“Far-Off-Metal-River”—the Coppermine River, without any -sign of the ebbing tide that was to lead to the South Sea. When Hearne -came back to his Indian companions from the river bed, he found them -stripped and daubed in war paint, gliding as if in ambush from stone -to stone down the steep declivity of the waterfall. Then far below the -rapids, like the tops of big bowlders, appeared the rounded leather -tent-peaks of an Eskimo camp. The Eskimos were apparently sound asleep, -for it was midnight though as light as day.</p> - -<p>Before Hearne could collect his senses or alarm<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_372"></a>[372]</span> the sleeping victims, -he had been left far to the rear by his villainous comrades. Then -occurred one of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of the -Hudson’s Bay Company. Such of the horrors as are tellable, I have told -elsewhere in the account of Hearne’s travels. The raiders fell on the -Eskimos like wolves on the sheepfold. Not content with plundering the -camp of beaver pelts, they speared, stabbed, bludgeoned, men, women, -children, old and young, till the river ran red with innocent blood. -Rushing forward, Hearne implored Matonabbee to stop the slaughter. -Matonabbee’s response was a shout of laughter. What were the weak for -but to be the victims of the strong? What did these fool-Eskimos toil -for but to render tribute of their toil to him, who had the force to -take? The doctrine was not a new one. Neither is it yet old; only -we moderns do our bludgeoning with financial coercion, competition, -monopoly or what not, instead of the butt end of a gun, or stone spear; -and it would be instructive to know if philosophers in a thousand years -will consider our methods as barbarous as we consider the savages of -two hundred years ago.</p> - -<p>The tortures of that raid have no place in a history of the Hudson’s -Bay Company. They are told in Hearne’s life, and they haunted the -explorer like a bloody nightmare. One day later, on July 17,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_373"></a>[373]</span> Hearne -stood on the shores of the Arctic ocean—the first white man to witness -the tossing ice floes of that green, lone, paleocrystic sea; but his -vision was not the exaltation of an explorer. It was a hideous memory -of young girls speared bodily through and through and left writhing -pinioned to the ground; of young boys whose hearts were torn out and -devoured while warm; of old men and women gouged, buffeted, beaten -to death. It does not make a pretty picture, that doctrine of the -supremacy of strength, the survival of the fit, the extermination of -the weak—it does not make a pretty picture when you reduce it to terms -of the physical. How quickly wild-beast savagery may reduce men to the -level of beasts was witnessed as Hearne rested on the shores of the -Arctic—a musk ox was shot. The warriors tore it to pieces and devoured -it raw.</p> - -<p>Retreating up the shelving rocks of the Coppermine twenty miles, -Hearne found what he thought were the copper mines from which the -Indians made their metal weapons. The company then struck westward -for the famous Athabasca region where the wives were to camp for the -winter. Athabasca proved a hunter’s paradise as it has been ever since -Hearne discovered it. Beaver abounded in the swampy muskegs. Buffalo -roamed to the south. Moose yards were found in the wooded bluffs; -mink,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_374"></a>[374]</span> marten, fox, every fur bearer which the English Adventurers -sought. In spring, a flotilla carried the Indians down to Churchill, -where Hearne arrived on June 30, 1772.</p> - -<p>The geographical importance of Hearne’s discovery—the fact that he -had found a region half the size of European Russia and proved that -not a narrow strip of land lay between the Atlantic and Pacific but a -vast continent—was eclipsed by the importance of his discoveries for -the fur traders. The region must be occupied by the English Company -before the French Canadians found it. Old Moses Norton sick unto death -hastened to send word to the governing committee in London, and the -governing committee voted Hearne a present of £200, £10 a year for a -valet, £130 a year as a salary, and promotion as governor on Norton’s -death, which occurred on December 29, 1773.</p> - -<p>The death of Norton was of a piece with his life. The bully fell ill of -some deadly intestinal trouble that caused him as excruciating tortures -as ever his poisons had caused his victims. Calling the officers of the -fort, he publicly made his will, leaving all his savings to his wife -in England but directing that she should yearly set aside £10 for the -clothing of his Indian wives at Churchill. As the Indian women stood -round the dying tyrant’s bed his eye detected<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_375"></a>[375]</span> an officer whispering to -one of the young Indian wives. With a roar, Norton leaped to his feet -in the bed.</p> - -<p>“You —— —— ——,” he roared, “I’ll burn you alive! I’ll burn you -alive——”</p> - -<p>The effort cost the bully his life. He fell back dead—he whose hand -had tyrannized over the fort for fifty years, a mass of corrupting -flesh which men hurriedly put out of sight. Hearne was called from the -Saskatchewan to become governor and undertake the opening of the inland -trade. Hearne’s report on his trip to the Coppermine and Athabasca -was received at London in November, 1772. In May of 1773, the minutes -recorded “that the company having under consideration the interruptions -to the trade from the Canadian Pedlars as reported by Isaac Batts at -Basquia, do decide on mature deliberation to send Samuel Hearne to -establish a fort at Basquia with Mr. Cocking.” They were accompanied -by Louis Primo, John Cole and half a dozen French renegades, who had -been bribed to desert from the Canadians—in all seventeen men. Hearne -did better than he was instructed. Leaving Batts, Louis Primo and the -Frenchmen at Basquia to compete against the Canadians, he established -Cumberland House far above, on the Saskatchewan, at Sturgeon Lake, -where the Indians could be intercepted before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_376"></a>[376]</span> they came down to the -French posts. Traders inland were paid £40 a year with a bounty of £2 -when they signed their contract and a bonus of a shilling for every -twenty beaver.</p> - -<p>When Hearne was recalled to Churchill to become governor, Matthew -Cocking was left superintendent of inland trade. Cocking had earned -laurels for himself by a voyage almost as important as Hearne’s. The -very week that Hearne came back to Churchill at the end of June, -1772, from the Athabasca, Cocking had set out from York for the South -Saskatchewan. He accompanied the Assiniboines returning from their -yearly trip to the bay. By the end of July he had crossed the north end -of Lake Winnipeg and gone up the Saskatchewan to Basquia. Louis Primo, -the renegade Frenchman, was met leading a flotilla of canoes down to -Hudson Bay, and it must have afforded Cocking great satisfaction to see -that the activity of the Hudson’s Bay Company had forced the French -Canadians to desert both their posts on the lower Saskatchewan. He -passed the empty houses on the banks of the river where the leaders of -the French-Canadians had had their forts, Findlay’s and Frobisher’s and -Curry’s. Leaving canoes somewhere eastward of the Forks, Cocking struck -south for the country of the Blackfeet at the foothills of the Rockies, -near what is now the International<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_377"></a>[377]</span> Boundary. The South Saskatchewan -was crossed at the end of August in bull-boats—tub-like craft made of -parchment stretched on willows. In the Eagle Hills, Cocking met French -traders, who had abandoned civilized life and joined the Indian tribes. -The Eagle Hills were famous as the place where the Indians got tent -poles and birch bark before crossing the plains to the east and south. -Cocking spent the winter with the Blackfeet and the Bloods and the -Piegans and the Sarcees, whom he names as the Confederacy of Waterfall -Indians, owing to the numerous cataracts on the upper reaches of Bow -River. He was amazed to find fields of cultivated tobacco among the -Blackfeet and considered the tribe more like Europeans than any Indians -he had ever met. The winter was spent hunting buffalo by means of the -famous “pounds.” Buffalo were pursued by riders into a triangular -enclosure of sticks round a large field. Behind the fences converging -to a point hid the hunters, whose cries and clappings frightened the -herds into rushing precipitately to the converging angle. Here was -either a huge hole, or the natural drop over the bank of a ravine, -where the buffalo tumbled, mass after mass of infuriated animals, -literally bridging a path for the living across the bodies of the dead. -The Blackfeet hunters thought nothing of riding for a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_378"></a>[378]</span> hundred miles -to round up the scattered herds to one of these “pounds” or “corrals.” -All that Hendry had said of the Blackfeet twenty years before, Cocking -found to be true. All were riders—men, women, children—the first -tribes Cocking had yet met where women were not beasts of burden. The -tribe had earthen pots for cooking utensils, used moss for tinder, and -recorded the history of the people in rude drawings on painted buffalo -robes. In fact, Cocking’s description of the tribal customs might be an -account of the Iroquois. The Blackfeet’s entire lives were spent doing -two things—hunting and raiding the Snakes of the South for horses. Men -and women captives were tortured with shocking cruelty that made the -Blackfeet a terror to all enemies; but young captives were adopted into -the tribe after the custom followed by the Iroquois of the East. Of -food, there was always plenty from the buffalo hunts; and game abounded -from the Saskatchewan Forks to the mountains.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_443"> -<img src="images/i_443.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="379"> -<p class="caption">Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing for the North.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p2"></p> - -<p>When Cocking tried to persuade the Blackfeet to come down to the fort -with furs, they were reluctant. They did not understand canoe travel -and could not take their horses, and why should they go down? The -Assiniboines would trade the furs for firearms to be brought to the -Blackfeet. Cocking pointed out that with more firearms, they could -be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_379"></a>[379]</span> masters of the entire country and by dint of presenting cocked -hats and swords and gold-laced red coats to the chiefs, induced them to -promise not to trade with “the Canadian Pedlars.” “We have done all in -our power to keep them from trading with François or Curry, who lie at -the Portage (the Rapids) of the Saskatchewan to intercept the natives -coming to us.”</p> - -<p>On May 16, 1773, Cocking set out to return to the fort. For the first -time, a few young Blackfeet joined the canoes going to York. At the -Forks, two rival camps were found, that of Louis Primo who had come -over to the Hudson’s Bay from the French, and old François working for -the French Canadians. The English traders had no liquor. Four gallons -of rum diluted with water won the Indians over to old François, the -Canadian, who picked out one hundred of the rarest skins and was only -hindered taking the entire hunt because he had no more goods to trade. -François’ house was a long log structure divided into two sections, -half for a kitchen and mess room, half for a trading room, and the -furs were kept in the loft. Outside, were two or three log cabins for -François’ white men, of whom he had twenty. Round all ran ten-foot -stockades against which lay the great canoes twenty-four feet long, -twenty-two inches deep, which carried the furs to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_380"></a>[380]</span> Lake Superior. -Cocking, who was used to factors ruling like little kings, was shocked -to find old François “an ignorant Frenchman, who did not keep his men -at proper distance and had no watch at night. It surprises me,” he -writes, “to observe what a warm side the natives hath to the French -Canadians.”</p> - -<p>Down at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Saskatchewan, Cocking -received another shock. Louis Primo and those Frenchmen bribed to join -the Hudson’s Bay, who had gone on from the Forks ahead of Cocking, were -to join him at the last portage of the Saskatchewan to go down to York. -He found that they had gone back to the French bag and baggage with -all their furs and goods supplied by the Hudson’s Bay and were already -halfway down to Lake Superior. Spite of being only “an ignorant old -Frenchman,” François had played a crafty game. By June 18, Cocking was -back at York.</p> - -<p>But the Company did not content itself with occasional expeditions -inland. Henceforth “patroons of the woods,” as they were called, were -engaged to live inland with the Indians and collect furs. Fifty-one -men were regularly kept at Cumberland House, and a bonus of £20 a year -regularly paid to the patroons. Whenever a Frenchman could be bribed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_381"></a>[381]</span> -to come over to the Hudson’s Bay traders, he was engaged at £100 a -year. Bonuses above salaries amounted to £200 a year for the factors, -to £40 for the traders, to £80 for traveling servants. The Company now -had a staff of five hundred white men on the field and ten times as -many Indians. In 1785, Robert Longmore is engaged to explore inland up -Churchill River as far as Athabasca, where, in 1799, Malcolm Ross is -permanently placed as chief trader at £80 a year. In 1795, Joseph Howse -is sent inland from York to explore the Rockies, where he gives his -name to a pass, and “it is resolved that forts shall be erected in this -country too.” John Davidson explores the entire coast of Labrador on -the east; and on the west of Hudson Bay Charles Duncan reports finally -and, as far as the Company is concerned, forever—<em>there is no -navigable Northwest Passage</em>. In all, the Company has spent £100,000 -seeking that mythical passage, which is now written off as total loss. -Up at Marble Island, the sea still takes toll of the brave, and James -Mouat, the whaler, is buried in 1773, beside Captain Knight. At this -stage too, I am sorry to say, 12,000 gallons of brandy are yearly sent -into the country.</p> - -<p>It was in 1779 that <em>The King George</em> ship beat about the whole -summer in the ice without entering York and was compelled to unload its -cargo at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_382"></a>[382]</span> Churchill, for which Captain Fowler was suspended and lost -his gratuity of £100.</p> - -<p>Such strenuous efforts brought big rewards in beaver, seventy, and -eighty, and ninety thousand a year to London, but the expenses of -competition had increased so enormously that dividends had fallen from -10 to 5 per cent. I suppose it was to impress the native mind with -the idea of pomp, but about this time I find the Company furnished -all its officers with “brass-barreled pistols, swords with inlaid -handles, laced suits and cocked hats.” A more perfect example of the -English mind’s inability to grasp American conditions could not be -found than an entry in the expense book of 1784 when the Company buys -“150 tracts on <em>the Country Clergyman’s Advice to Parishioners</em>” -for distribution among North American Indians, who could not read any -language let alone English.</p> - -<p>It was no longer a policy of drift but drive, and in the midst of this -came the shock of the French war. All hands were afield from Churchill -but thirty-nine white servants one sleepy afternoon on August 8, 1782, -and Governor Hearne was busy trading with some Indians whom Matonabbee -had brought down, when the astounding apparition appeared of a fleet at -sea. No appointed signals were displayed by the incoming ships—they -were <em>not</em> Company ships,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_383"></a>[383]</span> and they anchored five miles from -the fort to sound. Churchill had not heard of war between France and -England. No alarm was felt. The fort had been forty years in building -and was one of the strongest in America, constructed of stone with -forty great guns and an outer battery to prevent approach. Probably -intending to send out a boat the next morning, Hearne went comfortably -to bed. At three in the morning, which was as light as day, somebody -noticed that four hundred armed men had landed not far from the fort -and were marching in regular military order for the gates. Too late, a -reveille sounded and bells rang to arms. Hearne dashed out with two men -and met the invaders halfway. Then he learned that the fleet was part -of the French navy and the four hundred invaders regular marines under -the great officer—La Perouse. Resistance was impossible now. The guns -of the fort were not even manned. The garrison was too small to permit -one man to a gun. At six in the morning, the British flag was lowered -and a white tablecloth of surrender run up on the pole. Hearne and the -officers were taken on board prisoners of war. Then the rough soldiery -ran riot. Furs, stores, documents—all were plundered, and a second -day spent blowing up the fortifications. Buildings were burned but the -French were unable to do serious damage to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_384"></a>[384]</span> the walls. Matonabbee the -great chief looked on in horror. He had thought his English friends -invincible, and now he saw his creed of brute strength turned upon them -and upon himself. No longer he smiled contemptuously at the horror. It -was one thing to glory in the survival of the strong—another to be the -under dog. Matonabbee drew away outside the walls and killed himself. -Old Norton’s widows and children were scattered. On one the hardships -fell with peculiar harshness. His daughter Marie he had always nurtured -as a white girl. She fled in terror of her life from the brutal -soldiery and perished of starvation outside the walls.</p> - -<p>Hearne has been blamed for two things in this surrender, for not making -some show of resistance and for not sending scouts overland south to -warn York. For thirty-nine men to have fought four hundred would have -invited extermination, and Hearne did not know that the invaders were -enemies till he himself was captured and so could not send word to -York. What he might have done was earlier in the game. If he had sent -out a pilot to guide the ships into Churchill Harbor, it might have led -the enemy to wreck among reefs and sand-bars.</p> - -<p>On the third day, the three French men-of-war set sail for York, -leaving Churchill in flames. Outward bound, one of the Company ships -was sighted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_385"></a>[385]</span> coming into Churchill. The French gave chase till seven in -the evening, but the English captain led off through such shoal water -the French desisted with a single chance volley in the direction of the -fleeing fur ship.</p> - -<p>On August 20, the Company ship lying at York observed a strange fleet -some twenty miles off shore landing men on Nelson River behind York, -which faced Hayes River. From plans taken at Churchill, La Perouse -had learned that York was weakest to the rear. There were in the fort -at that time sixty English and twelve Indians with some twenty-five -cannon and twelve swivel guns on the galleries. There was a supply of -fresh water inside the fort with thirty head of cattle; but a panic -prevailed. All the guns were overset to prevent the French using them, -and the English ship scudded for sea at nightfall.</p> - -<p>The French meanwhile had marched across the land behind York and now -presented themselves at the gates. The governor, Humphry Martin, -welcomed them with a white flag in his hand. Umfreville, who gives the -account of the surrender, was among the captured. His disgust knew no -bounds. “The enemy’s ships lay at least twenty miles from the factory -in a boisterous sea,” he writes, “and could not co-operate with the -troops on shore. The troops had no supplies. Cold, hunger and fatigue<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_386"></a>[386]</span> -were hourly working in our favor. The factory was not in want of a -single thing to withstand siege. The people showed no fear but the -reverse. Yet the English governor surrendered without firing a gun.”</p> - -<p>The French did not attempt to occupy the forts, which they had -captured, but retired with the officers as prisoners, and with the -plunder. By October the Company had received letters from the prison -at Dinan Castle, France, asking for the ransom of the men. By May, the -ransomed men were in London, and by June back at their posts on the bay.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Notes to Chapter XIX.</em>—As stated elsewhere, Cocking classified -the Blackfeet Confederacy as Waterfall Indians, composed of Powestic -Athinuewuck, Mithco Athinuewuck, (Blood); Koskiton Wathesitock -(Blackfeet); Pegonow (Piegan); Sassewuck (Sarcee). Cocking’s Journal -is in the Hudson’s Bay Company House, London, and in the Canadian -Archives, Ottawa.</p> - -<p>The account of Hearne’s Voyages will be found in “Pathfinders of the -West,” or in the accounts by himself, (1) the report submitted to the -H. B. C., (2) his published journals in French and English, of which I -used the French edition of 1799, which is later and fuller than either -his report to the H. B. C. or the English book.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>I find the beaver receipts of this period as follows:</p> - -<table class="rec"> -<tr> - <td class="tdl"> A. F. (Albany Fort)</td> - <td class="tdr">21,454</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> M. R. (Moose)</td> - <td class="tdr">8,860</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"> E. M. (East Main)</td> - <td class="tdr">7,626</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">YF. & SF. (York & Severn)</td> - <td class="tdr">37,861</td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">C. R. (Churchill)</td> - <td class="tdr">9,400</td> -</tr> -</table> - -<p>Churchill and York, of course, included the inland trade.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1777, the minutes record the dismissal of Thomas Kelsey for ill -behavior at P. of Wales (Churchill); the last of Henry Kelsey’s line.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_387"></a>[387]</span></p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1779, December, the warehouse of Lime Street was burned and -all the records without which this history could not have been -written—narrowly escaped destruction.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1797, communication was opened by way of London with the Russian -fur traders of the west coast. In this year, too, 95,000 beaver was -the total.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The sums paid to ransom the officer, ran all the way from £6,000 to -£4,000, so that it is no wonder, though receipts were large, there -were no dividends this year.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>I find in the minutes of 1777, Samuel Hearne orders £20 yearly to -<em>Sarah La Petite</em>, from which one may guess that Samuel had -personal reasons for giving such a black picture of Moses Norton.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1780, Andrew Graham, whose journals give a great picture of this -period, asks that his Indian boy be sent home.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>In 1782, the following names, famous in Manitoba history, came into -the lists of the officers of the Company: Clouston, Ballantine, -Linklater, Spencer, Sutherland, Kipling, Ross, Isbister, Umfreville.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>It was in 1787 that the fearful ravages of smallpox reduced the Indian -population. This year of plague deserves a chapter by itself, but -space forbids. No “black death” of Europe ever worked more terrible -woe than the contagion brought back from the Missouri by wandering -Assiniboines.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The account of the siege of Richmond by the Eskimos is taken from -Pott’s report to the Company. A copy of this the <em>Winnipeg Free -Press</em> recently published as a letter. The description of Richmond -is from Captain Coates’ account. Strange that this Richmond should -have gone back to the state of desolation in which Coates found it. It -was Coates who named all the places of this region.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Nearly every great mineral discovery of America was preceded by the -predictions of the fur trader. It will be interesting to watch if -Hearne’s copper mine is ever re-discovered.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>The story of Ross and Tomson and Farrant, I found first in the minutes -of H. B. C. House and then in Umfreville’s account of life at York.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>I have throughout referred to Prince of Wales Fort as Churchill, as -the constant changing of names confuses the reader.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>From the records it is impossible to tell whether the post Whale River -was Little Whale, or Great Whale. Judging from the fact that the -journey was performed by dog-sled in a night, to Richmond, it must -have been the nearer post.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_388"></a>[388]</span></p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>I have not referred to the mistake in latitude made by Hearne in his -journey North, for which so many critics censure him. It would be -interesting to know how many men would have been in a condition to -take any observation at all after a week’s sleepless marching and the -horrors of the massacre.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>Hearne’s picture will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.”</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_389"></a>[389]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center">1760-1810</p> - - -<p class="hang50center">“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS”—A NEW RACE OF WOOD-ROVERS THRONGS TO THE -NORTHWEST—BANDITS OF THE WILDS WAR AMONG THEMSELVES—TALES OF BORDER -WARFARE, WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR—THE NEW NORTHWEST COMPANY CHALLENGES -THE AUTHORITY AND FEUDALISM OF THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY</p> - - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">La</span> Perouse’s raid on Churchill and York was the least of the -misfortunes that now beset the English Adventurers. Within a year -from the French victory, the English prisoners had been ransomed from -France and the dismantled forts were rebuilt. It was a subtler foe -that menaced the Hudson’s Bay Company. Down at Abbittibbi, halfway -to Quebec—in at Henley House and Martin’s Falls and Osnaburg House -on the way from Albany to the modern Manitoba—up the Saskatchewan, -where Cocking and Batts and Walker held the forts for trade—between -Churchill and Athabasca, where Longmore and Ross had been sent on -Hearne’s trail—yes, even at the entrance to the Rockies,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_390"></a>[390]</span> where Mr. -Howse and the astronomer Turner had found a pass leading from the -headwaters of the Saskatchewan, constantly there emerged from the -woods, or swept gayly up in light birch canoes, strange hunters, -wildwood rovers, free-lances, men with packs on their backs, who -knocked nonchalantly at the gates of the English posts for a night’s -lodging and were eagerly admitted because it was safer to have a rival -trader under your eye than out among the Indians creating bedlam by the -free distribution of rum.</p> - -<p>“Pedlars,” the English called these newcomers, who overran the sacred -territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company as though royal charters were a -joke and trading monopolies as extinct as the dodo. It was all very -well to talk of the rights of your charter, but what became of your -rights if interlopers stole them while you talked about them? And what -was the use of sending men to drum up trade and bring Indians down to -the bay with their furs, if pedlars caught the Indians halfway down -at portage, carrying place and hunting rendezvous, and in spite of -the fact that those Indians owed the English for half-a-dozen years’ -outfit—rifled away the best of the furs, sometimes by the free -distribution of rum, sometimes by such seditious talk as that “the -English had no rights in this country anyway and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_391"></a>[391]</span> Indians were -fools to become slaves to the Hudson’s Bay Company?”</p> - -<p>This was a new kind of challenge to feudalism. Sooner or later it was -bound to come. The ultimate umpire of all things in life is—Fact. Was -the charter valid that gave this empire of trade to a few Englishmen, -or was it buncombe? “The Pedlars” didn’t talk about their rights. -<em>They took them.</em> That was to be supreme test of the English -Company’s rights. Somebody else took the rights, and there were good -reasons why the Hudson’s Bay Company did not care to bring a question -of its rights before the courts. When the charter was confirmed by act -of Parliament in 1697, it was specified for only seven years. At the -end of that period the Company did not seek a renewal. Request for -renewal would of itself be acknowledgment of doubt as to the charter. -The Company preferred “to have and to hold,” rather than risk adverse -decision. They contented themselves with blocking the petitions of -rivals for trade privileges on the bay, but the eruption of these -wildwood rovers—“The French Canadian Pedlars”—was a contingency -against which there seemed to be no official redress.</p> - -<p>It remained only for the old Company to gird itself to the fray—a -fight with bandits and free-booters and raiders in a region where -was law of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_392"></a>[392]</span> neither God nor man. Sales had fallen to a paltry £2,000 -a year. Dividends stopped altogether. Value of stock fell from £250 -to £50. The Company advertised for men—more men. Agents scoured the -Orkneys and the Highlands of Scotland for recruits, each to sign for -five years, a bounty of £8 to be paid each man. Five ships a year -sailed to the bay. Three hundred “patroons” were yearly sent into the -woods, and when their time expired—strange to relate—they did not -return to Scotland. What became of them? Letters ceased to come home. -Inquiries remained unanswered. The wilderness had absorbed them and -their bones lay bleaching on the unsheltered prairie where the arrow of -Indian raider inspired by “the Pedlars” had shot them as they traversed -the plains. No wonder service with the Hudson’s Bay Company became -ill-omened in the Orkneys and the Highlands! In spite of the bounty of -£8 a man, their agents were at their wits’ ends for recruits.</p> - -<p>When Hendry had gone up the Saskatchewan in 1754, he had seen the -houses of French traders. French power fell at Quebec in 1759, and -the French wood-rovers scattered to the wilds; but when Cocking went -up the Saskatchewan in 1772, what was his amazement to find these -French rovers organized under leadership of Scotch merchants from -Montreal—Curry,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_393"></a>[393]</span> and Frobisher, and McTavish, and Todd, and McGill, -and McGillivrays.</p> - -<p>Under French rule, fur trade had been regulated by license. Under -English rule was no restriction. First to launch out from Montreal -with a cargo of goods for trade, was Alexander Henry, senior, in 1760. -From the Michilimackinac region and westward, Henry in ten years, from -1765 to 1775, brought back to Montreal such a wealth of furs, that -peltry trade became a fever. No capital was needed but the capital of -boundless daring. Montreal merchants advanced goods for trade. One went -with the canoes as partner and commander. Three thousand dollars worth -of goods constituted a load. Frenchmen were engaged as hunters and -voyageurs—eight to a canoe, and before the opening of the century, as -many as five hundred canoes yearly passed up the Ottawa from Montreal -for the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pays d’en Haut</i>, west of Lake Superior, ten and twenty -canoes in a brigade. In this way, Thomas Curry had gone from Lake -Superior to Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Winnipeg up the Saskatchewan, -in 1766, as far as the Forks, bribing that renegade Louis Primo, to -steal the furs bought by Cocking for the Hudson’s Bay, and to lead the -brigade on down to Montreal. One voyage sufficed to yield Curry $50,000 -clear, a sum that was considered a fortune in those days,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_394"></a>[394]</span> and enabled -him to retire. The fur fever became an epidemic, a mania. James Finlay -of Montreal, in 1771, pushed up the Saskatchewan beyond the Forks, or -what is now Prince Albert. Todd, McGill & Company outfitted Joseph and -Benjamin Frobisher for a dash north of the Saskatchewan in 1772-5, -where, by the luckiest chance in the world, they met the Chippewyan -and Athabasca Indians on their way to Churchill with furs for the -Hudson’s Bay Company. The Frobishers struck up friendship with “English -Chief”—leader of the Indian brigades—plied the argument of rum night -and day, bade the Indians ignore their debts to the English company, -offered to outfit them for the next year’s hunt and bagged the entire -cargo of furs—such an enormous quantity that they could take down -only half the cargo that year and had to leave the other half cached, -to the everlasting credit of the Indian’s honesty and discredit of the -white man’s. Henceforth, this post was known as Portage de Traite. It -led directly from the Saskatchewan to the Athabasca and became a famous -meeting place. Portage “of the Stretched Frog” the Indians called it, -for the Frobishers had been so keen on the trade that they had taught -the Indians how to stretch skins, and the Indians had responded in -mischief by tacking a stretched frog skin on the door of the cabin. -Pushing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_395"></a>[395]</span> yet farther toward Athabasca, the Frobisher brothers built -another post norwestward, Isle à la Crosse, on an island where the -Indians met for the sport of lacrosse.</p> - -<p>Besides the powerful house of McTavish, Frobisher, Todd, McGill and -McGillivray, were hosts of lesser traders who literally peddled their -goods to the Indians. In 1778, these pedlars pooled their stock and -outfitted Peter Pond to go on beyond the Frobisher posts to Athabasca. -Here, some miles south of the lake, Pond built his fort. Pond was a -Boston man of boundless ambition and energy but utterly unscrupulous. -While at Athabasca, he heard from the Indians rumors of the Russian -fur traders on the Pacific Coast and he drew that famous map of the -interior, which was to be presented to the Empress of Russia. He seems -to have been cherishing secret designs of a great fur monopoly.</p> - -<p>Fur posts sprang up on the waterways of the West like mushrooms. Rum -flowed like water—50,000 gallons a year “the pedlars” brought to -the Saskatchewan from Montreal. Disorders were bound to ensue. At -Eagle Hills near Battleford, in 1780, the drunken Crees became so -obstreperous in their demands for more liquor that the three terrified -traders cooped up in their house tried to save themselves by putting -laudanum in the liquor. An Indian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_396"></a>[396]</span> was drugged to death. The sobered -Crees sulky from their debauch, arose to a man, rammed the doors, -stabbed the three whites and seven half-breed traders to death, burnt -the fort and sent coureurs running from tribe to tribe across the -prairie to conspire for a massacre of all white traders in the country. -Down on the Assiniboine at what is now known as Portage la Prairie, -where the canoemen portaged across to Lake Manitoba and so to Lake -Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, were three strong trading houses under -two men called Brice and Boyer. With them were twenty-three Frenchmen. -Three different companies had their rendezvous here. The men were -scattered in the three houses and off guard when one night the darkness -was made hideous by the piercing war cry of the Assiniboines. Before -lights could be put out, the painted warriors had swooped down on two -of the houses. The whites were butchered as they dashed out—eleven -men in as many seconds. The third house had warning from the shots at -the others. Brice and Boyer were together. Promptly, lights were put -out, muskets rammed through the parchment windows and chinks of the -log walls, and a second relay of loaded weapons made ready. When the -Assiniboines attempted to rush the third house, they were met with a -solid crash of musketry that mowed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_397"></a>[397]</span> down some thirty warriors and gave -the assailants pause. With checked ardor, the Indians retreated to the -other houses. They could at least starve the white men out, but the -white men wisely did not wait. While the Assiniboines rioted, drunk -on the booty of rum in the captured cabins, Brice ordered all liquor -spilt in his house. Taking what peltries he could, abandoning the rest, -Brice led a dash for the river. Darkness favored the fugitive whites. -Three only of the retreating men fell under the shower of random -arrows—Belleau, Facteau, Lachance. Launching canoes with whispers and -muffling their paddles, the white men rowed all night, hid by day, and -in three days were safe with the traders at the Forks, or what is now -Winnipeg.</p> - -<p>Up at Athabasca, Pond, the indomitable, was setting a bad example for -lawless work. Wadin was his partner; Le Sieur, his clerk. No greater -test of fairness and manhood exists than to box two men in a house -ten by ten in the wilderness, with no company but their own year in, -year out. Pond was for doing impossibles—or what seemed impossibles -at that day. He had sent two traders down Big River (the MacKenzie) -as far as Slave Lake. The Indians were furiously hostile. Wadin, the -Swiss partner, opposed all risks. Lonely, unstrung and ill-natured, -Pond conceived that hatred for his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_398"></a>[398]</span> partner which men, who have been -tied too close to an alien nature, know. The men had come to blows. -One night the quarrel became so hot, Le Sieur withdrew from the house. -He had gone only a few steps when he heard two shots. Rushing back, he -found the Swiss weltering in his blood on the floor. “Be off! Never -let me see your face again,” shouted the wounded man, catching sight -of Pond. Those were his last words. It is a terrible commentary on -civilization that the first blood shed in the Athabasca was that of a -white man slain by a white man; but the Athabasca was three thousand -miles away from punishment and the merry game had only begun. Later, -Pond was tried for this crime, but acquitted in Montreal.</p> - -<p>Roving Assiniboines had visited the Mandanes of the Missouri, this -year. They brought back with them not only stolen horses, but an -unknown, unseen horror—the germ of smallpox—which ran like a fiery -scourge for three years, from Red River and the Assiniboine to the -Rockies, sweeping off two-thirds of the native population. Camp after -camp, tribe after tribe, was attacked and utterly destroyed, leaving -no monument but a heap of bleaching bones scraped clean by the wolves. -Tent leather flapped lonely to the wind, rotting on the tepee poles -where Death had spared not a soul of a whole encampment.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_399"></a>[399]</span> In vain the -maddened Indians made offerings to their gods, slew their children to -appease this Death Demon’s wrath, and cast away all their belongings. -Warriors mounted their fleetest horses and rode like mad to outrace -the Death they fancied was pursuing them. Delirious patients threw -themselves into the lakes and rivers to assuage suffering. The epidemic -was of terrible virulence. The young and middle-aged fell victims most -readily, and many aged parents committed suicide rather than live on, -bereft of their children. There was an end to all conspiracy for a -great uprising and massacre of the whites. The whites had fled before -the scourge as terrified as were the Indians and for three years there -was scarcely a fur trader in the country from the Missouri to the -Saskatchewan.</p> - -<p>During the interval, the merchants of Montreal had put their heads -together. Division and internecine warfare in the face of Indian -hostility and the Hudson’s Bay traders steady advancement inland, were -folly. The Montrealers must unite. The united traders were known as -the Northwest Company. The Company had no capital. Montreal partners -who were merchants outfitted the canoes with goods. Men experienced -in the trade led the brigades westward. The former gave credit for -goods, the latter time on the field. The former acted as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_400"></a>[400]</span> agents to -sell the furs, the latter as wintering partners to barter for the -furs with the Indians. To each were assigned equal shares—a share -apiece to each partner, or sixteen shares in all, in the first place; -later increased to twenty and forty-six and ninety-six shares as the -Company absorbed more and more of the free traders. As a first charge -against the proceeds were the wages of the voyageurs—£100 a year, -five times as much as the Hudson’s Bay Company paid for the same -workers. Then the cost of the goods was deducted—$3,000 a canoe—and -in the early days ninety canoes a year were sent North. Later, when -the Nor’Westers absorbed all opposition, the canoes increased to five -hundred. The net returns were then divided into sixteen parts and the -profits distributed to the partners. By 1787, shares were valued at -£800 each. At first, net returns were as small as £40,000 a year, but -this dividend among only sixteen partners gave what was considered -a princely income in those days. Later, net returns increased to -£120,000 and £200,000, but by this time the number of partners was -ninety-six. Often the yearly dividend was £400 a share. As many as -200,000 beaver were sold by the Nor’Westers in a year, and the heaviest -buyer of furs at Montreal was John Jacob Astor of New York. Chief among -the Eastern agents, were the two Frobisher brothers,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_401"></a>[401]</span> Benjamin and -Joseph—McGill, Todd, Holmes, and Simon McTavish, the richest merchant -of Montreal, nicknamed “the Marquis” for his pompous air of wearing -prosperity. Chief among the wintering partners were Peter Pond, the -American of Athabasca fame, the McGillivrays, nephews of McTavish; the -MacLeods, the Grants, the Camerons, MacIntoshes, Shaws, McDonalds, -Finlays, Frasers, and Henry, nephew of the Henry who first went to -Michilimackinac.</p> - -<p>Not only did the new company forthwith send ninety canoes to the North -by way of Lake Superior, but one hundred and twenty men were sent -through Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to Detroit, for the fur region -between Lake Huron and the Mississippi. It was at this period that -the Canadian Government was besieged for a monopoly of trade west of -Lake Superior, in return for which the Nor’Westers promised to explore -the entire region between the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean. When -the Government refused to grant the monopoly, the Nor’Westers stopped -asking for rights. They prepared <em>to take them</em>.</p> - -<p>In Montreal, the Nor’Westers were lords in the ascendant, socially -and financially, living with lavish and regal hospitality, keeping -one strong hand on their interests in the West, the other hand on -the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_402"></a>[402]</span> pulse of the government. Some of the partners were members of -the Assembly. All were men of public influence, and when a wintering -partner retired to live in Montreal, he usually became a member of -the governing clique. The Beaver Club with the appropriate motto, -“Fortitude in Distress,” was the partners’ social rendezvous, and -coveted were the social honors of its exclusive membership. Governors -and councillors, military heroes and foreign celebrities counted it -an honor to be entertained at the Beaver Club with its lavish table -groaning under weight of old wines from Europe and game from the -<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pays d’en Haut</i>. “To discuss the merits of a beaver tail, or -moose nose, or bear’s paw, or buffalo hump”—was the way a Nor’West -partner invited a guest to dinner at the Beaver Club, and I would -not like to testify that the hearty partners did not turn night into -day and drink themselves under the mahogany before they finished -entertaining a guest. Most lordly of the grandees was, of course, “the -Marquis,” Simon McTavish, who built himself a magnificent manor known -as “the Haunted House,” on the mountain. He did not live to enjoy it -long, for he died in 1804. Indeed, it was a matter of comment how few -of the ninety-six partners lived to a good old age in possession of -their hard-earned wealth.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_403"></a>[403]</span> “No wonder,” sarcastically commented a good -bishop, who had been on the field and seen how the wealth was earned, -“when the devil sows the seed, he usually looks after the harvest.”</p> - -<p>But it was not all plain sailing from the formation of the Company. -Pond and Pangman, the two Boston men, who had been in the North when -the partnership was arranged, were not satisfied with their shares. -Pond was won over to the Nor’Westers, but Pangman joined a smaller -company with Gregory, and MacLeod, and Alexander MacKenzie, and Finlay. -MacKenzie, who was to become famous as a discoverer, was sent to Isle -à la Crosse to intercept furs on the way to Hudson Bay. Ross was sent -up to oppose Peter Pond of the Nor’Westers in Athabasca. Bostonnais -Pangman went up the Saskatchewan to the Rockies, with headquarters at -what is now Edmonton, and the rest of what were known as the Little -Company faithfully dogged the Nor’Westers’ footsteps and built a -trading house wherever Indians gathered.</p> - -<p>Failing to establish a monopoly by law, the Nor’Westers set themselves -to do it without law. The Little Company must be exterminated. Because -Alexander MacKenzie later became one of the Nor’Westers, the details -have never been given to the public, but at La Crosse where he waited -to barter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_404"></a>[404]</span> for the furs coming from the North to the Hudson’s Bay, the -Nor’Westers camped on his trail. The crisis in rivalry was to meet the -approaching Indian brigades. The trader that met them first, usually -got the furs. Spies were sent in all directions to watch for the -Indians, and spies dogged the steps of spies. It was no unusual thing -for one side to find the Indians first and for a rival spy to steal the -victory by bludgeoning the discoverer into unconsciousness or treating -him to a drink of drugged whiskey. In the scuffle and maneuver for the -trade, one of Alexander MacKenzie’s partners was murdered, another of -his men lamed, a third narrowly escaping death through the assassin’s -bullet being stopped by a powderhorn; but the point was—MacKenzie got -the furs for the Little Company. The Nor’Westers were beaten.</p> - -<p>Up at Athabasca, Pond, the Nor’Wester was opposed by Ross, the Little -Company man. Hearne, of Hudson’s Bay, had been to Athabasca first of -all explorers, but Pond was the first of the Montreal men to reach -the famous fur region of the North, and he did not purpose seeing -his labors filched away by the Little Company. When Laroux brought -the Indians from Slave Lake to the Nor’Westers and Ross attempted to -approach them, there was a scuffle. The Little Company leader fell -pierced by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_405"></a>[405]</span> a bullet from a revolver smoking in the hand of Peter Pond. -Did Pond shoot Ross? Was it accidental? These questions can never be -answered. This was the second murder for which Pond was responsible -in the Athabasca, and ill-omened news of it ran like wildfire south -to Isle à la Crosse and Portage de Traite where Alexander MacKenzie -and his cousin Roderick were encamped. Nor’Westers and Little Company -men alike were shocked. For the Montreal men to fight among themselves -meant alienation of the Indians and victory for the Hudson’s Bay. -Roderick MacKenzie of the Little Company and William McGillivray of the -Nor’Westers decided to hasten down to Montreal with the summer brigades -and urge a union of both organizations. Locking canoes abreast, with -crews singing in unison, the rival leaders set out together, and the -union was effected in 1787 by the Nor’Westers increasing their shares -to admit all the partners of the Gregory and MacKenzie concern. Pond -sold his interests to the MacGillivrays and retired to Boston.</p> - -<p>The strongest financial, social and political interests of Eastern -Canada were now centered in the Northwest Company. There were ways of -discouraging independent merchants from sending pedlars to the North. -Boycott, social or financial, the pulling of political strings that -withheld a government<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_406"></a>[406]</span> passport, a hint that if the merchant wanted a -hand in the trade it would be cheaper for him to pool his interests -with the Nor’Westers than risk a $3,000 load on his own account—kept -the field clear or brought about absorption of all rivals till 1801. -Then a Dominique Rousseau essayed an independent venture led by his -clerk, Hervieux. Grand Portage on Lake Superior was the halfway post -between Montreal and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pays d’en Haut</i>—the metropolis of the -Nor’Westers’ domain. Here came Hervieux’s brigade and pitched camp some -hundred yards away from the Nor’West palisades. Hardly had Hervieux -landed when there marched across to him three officers of the Northwest -Company, led by Duncan McGillivray, who ordered the newcomers to be -off on pain of death, as all the land here was Northwest property. -Hervieux stood his ground stoutly as a British subject and demanded -proof that the country belonged to the Northwest Company. To the -Nor’Westers, such a demand was high treason. McGillivray retorted he -would send proof enough. The partners withdrew, but there sallied out -of the fort a party of the famous Northwest bullies—prize fighters -kept in trim for the work in hand. Drawing knives, they cut Hervieux’s -tents to shreds, scattered his merchandise to the four winds and -bedrubbed the little men, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_407"></a>[407]</span> tried to defend it, as if they had been -so many school boys.</p> - -<p>“You demand our title to possession? You want proofs that we hold this -country? Eh? Bien! Voila! There’s proof! Take it; but if you dare to go -into the interior, there will be more than tents cut! Look out for your -throats.”</p> - -<p>Totally ruined, Hervieux was compelled to go back to Montreal, where -his master in vain sued the Nor’Westers. The Nor’Westers were not -responsible. It was plain as day: they had not ordered those bullies to -come out, and those bullies were a matter of three thousand miles away -and could not be called as witnesses.</p> - -<p>Determined not to be beaten, Rousseau attempted a second venture in -1806, this time two canoes under fearless fellows led by one Delorme, -who knew the route to the interior. He instructed Delorme to avoid -clashing with the Nor’Westers by skirting round their headquarters -on Lake Superior, if necessary by traveling at night till beyond -detection. Delorme was four days’ march beyond Lake Superior when -Donald McKay, a Nor’Wester, suddenly emerged from the underbrush -leading a dozen wood-rovers. Not a word was said. No threats. No -blustering. This was a no-man’s-land where there was no law and -everyone could do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_408"></a>[408]</span> as he liked. McKay liked to do a very odd thing just -at this juncture, just at this place. His bush-lopers hurried on down -stream in advance of Delorme’s canoes and leveled a veritable barricade -of trees across the trail. Then they went to the rear of Delorme and -leveled another barricade. Delorme didn’t attempt to out-maneuver his -rivals. At most he had only sixteen men, and that kind of a game meant -a free fight and on one side or the other—murder. He sold out both -his cargoes to McKay at prices current in Montreal, and retreated from -the fur country, leaving the sardonic Nor’Westers smiling in triumph. -These were some of the ways by which the Nor’Westers dissuaded rivals -from invading the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pays d’en Haut</i>. On their part, they probably -justified their course by arguing that rivalry would at once lead to -such murders as those in the Athabasca. In their secret councils, they -well knew that they were keeping small rivals from the field to be -free for the fight against the greatest rival of all—the Hudson’s Bay -Company.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="i_475"> -<img src="images/i_475.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="595"> -<p class="caption">CHART<br> -Showing the Routes<br> -of<br> -HUDSON and MUNK</p> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p><em>Footnote to Chapter XX.</em>—The contents of this chapter are taken -primarily from the records of the Hudson’s Bay House; secondarily, -from the Journals of the Nor’West partners as published by Senator -Masson, Prof. Coues, and others; also, and most important, from such -old missionary annals as those of the Oblates and other missionaries -like Abbé Dugas, Tassé, Grandin, Provencher and others. In the most of -cases, the missionary writer was not himself the actor (there are two -exceptions to this) but he was in direct contact with the living<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_409"></a>[409]</span> -actor and took his facts on the spot, so that his testimony is even -more non-partisan than the carefully edited Masson essay and records. -I consider these various missionary legends the most authentic source -of the history of the period, though their evidence is most damning -to both sides. These annals are exclusively published by Catholic -organizations and so unfortunately do not reach the big public of -which they are deserving.</p> - -<p>The exact way in which the N. W. C. was formed, I found very -involved in the Masson essay. A detailed account of all steps in the -organization is very plainly given in the petitions of the Frobisher -Brothers, Peter Pond and McGill to Gov. Haldimand for a monopoly of -the fur trade. The petitions are in the Canadian Archives. A curious -fear is revealed in all these petitions—that the Americans may reach -and possess the Pacific Coast first. As a matter of fact that is -exactly what Grey and Lewis and Clarke did in the Oregon region.</p> - -<p>From the H. B. C. Archives I find the following data on this era: -Batts and Walker and Peter Fidler held the mouth of the Saskatchewan -for the English; one Goodwin worked south from Albany almost to -Lake Superior and west to modern Manitoba; half a dozen French -run-aways from the N. W. C. were engaged as spies at £100 a year; -the Martin Falls House is built inland from Albany in 1782; in spite -of ignominious surrender, Hearne and Humphrey Martin go back as -Governors of Churchill and York; Edward Umfreville leaves the H. B. C. -(wages £141) and joins the N. W. C.; Martin and Hearne, La Perouse’s -prisoners, were dropped at Stromness in November, whether on the -way to France or back from France, I can’t tell; their letters do -not reach the H. B. C. till March, 1783; William Paulson is surgeon -at East Main; no dividends from 1782 to 1786; Joseph Colen succeeds -Martin at York in ’86; William Auld succeeds Hearne at Churchill in -’96; James Hourie is massacred by the Indians of East Main; H. B. C. -servants from the growing dangers become mutinous, six are fined at -East Main for mutiny; four at York fined £4 each, namely Magnus Tait, -Alex. Gunn, John Irvine, Benj. Bruce, two at Churchill £20 each, -Robert Pexman and Henry Hodges. Andrew Graham, the old factor of -Severn, being now destitute at Edinburg, is given thirty guineas in -1801.</p> -</div> - -<p class="p4"></p> - - -<div class="transnote"> -<h2 id="end_note" class="nobreak" title="">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> -<p><a href="#Page_186">Page 186</a>—changed accomodated to <strong>accommodated</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_242">Page 242</a>—changed Palcentia to <strong>Placentia</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_263">Page 263</a>—changed pursuading to <strong>persuading</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_272">Page 272</a>—changed quittting to <strong>quitting</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_319">Page 319</a>—changed proceeeds to <strong>proceeds</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_366">Page 366</a>—changed suggetsed to <strong>suggested</strong></p> -<p><a href="#Page_407">Page 407</a>—changed necesssary to <strong>necessary</strong></p> - -<p>The variant spellings of the following name has been left as printed: -Grossilier, Grosilier, Groseilier, Groseillers. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, VOLUME I (OF 2) ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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