Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/237

Rh whose flesh or fur renders their chase a highly lucrative employment. How comes it, then, that, for all this superabundant endowment, the only population outside the wandering bands of Eskimos and native Indians to be found there to-day gathers in little circles around the company's forts which dot the shore at immense intervals?

The explanation of this apparent enigma is not far to seek. It lies simply in the fact that, until little more than a decade ago, Hudson Bay and vicinity was the subject of a monopoly, which effectually excluded from it all but the employés of a single corporation. It was first visited in 1610 by Henry Hudson, who, after giving his name to the Hudson River, in his rude little bark, well named Discovery, dauntlessly pushed his way thither in search of the mythical northwest passage to the Pacific, and made it both his imperishable monument and his grave. The stories that his mutinous crew took home with them did not prevent other vessels being dispatched on the same hopeless quest, and, if these latter failed to find the northwest passage, they at all events found sufficient cause for the Hudson Bay Company being founded in 1668. This astute corporation, easily obtaining a grant of the bay and its environing territory, together with the most extensive powers from a king who knew nothing of its value, and cared less, forthwith set about excluding all possible rivals from their invaluable fur-preserve. For half a century or more they had a serious obstacle to the execution of their laudable design in the presence of the French, and the bay became the theatre of many a hard-fought conflict.

It was not until, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the whole of Hudson Bay was ceded to the British, that the company were left to the undisputed possession of their vast estate—the most stupendous landed property ever owned by one corporation, embracing, as it then did, the entire Northwest of Canada. As the day for violence had gone by, they resorted to a subtler but incomparably more effective method of keeping the country to themselves. The most ingeniously false and distorted accounts were sedulously spread abroad concerning this region. According to them, it was a land of eternal snow and ice, utterly unfit for human settlement. The perils of the passage through the strait were grossly magnified. Preposterous tales were circulated as to the rigors of the climate, the fierceness of the wild animals, and the barbarous character of the inhabitants. The company's efforts were crowned with the most gratifying success. Decade after decade slipped by, and they were still in unquestioned possession, and probably would have continued so to this day, but for their having been bought out in 1870 for the tidy sum of £300,000, by the Canadian Government, to whom, with some reservation, they transferred all their real estate.

With the change of ownership came a complete change in policy. Under the new régime, the great object held in view was no longer to keep the country a solitude, unbroken by the hum of human life, but