Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/504

484 exclusive, and the Company became a gigantic monopoly. No ends or purposes of actual colonization were intended or provided for in it; in fact, the interests of the Company discouraged and withstood colonization. No attempt in a design to civilize or benefit the natives was proposed by it, nor was any effort whatever made in that direction. The Company existed and was managed simply in the interest of trade, and that proved enormously profitable. The dividends made from its original stock, — after that, in modern phrase, had been well “watered,” — for 110 successive years, from 1690 to 1800, averaged between sixty and seventy per cent. Beginning its enterprise with a single factory or post near the shore of the Bay, it extended the field of its operations far into the Northwest, and with a wide embrace of regions producing the fur-bearing animals. Its chain of posts or forts was connected by streams, lakes, and portages, by which the natives brought their peltries to the Company's clerks and agents to be bartered for European commodities. It was but rarely that these posts were fortified, as mutual advantage from traffic secured peaceful relations. There is something very significant of English policy in the names given to these chief factories in Rupert's Land; such as York, Albany, Churchill, Cumberland, Nelson, Carlton, etc. As if to cheer the agents of the Company, — who, as winterers in the stations far inland in the lonely and dreary depths of the wilderness, needed the help of their imaginations for a solace, — these remote posts bore such names as Resolution, Providence, Good Hope, Enterprise, Reliance, Confidence, Hudson's Hope, etc. The posts extended from Oregon to Ungava, and from Mingan to the Mackenzie. The region of country claimed under the charter of the Company took in between two and three millions of square miles, — nearly fifty times the surface of England.

One might gather a whole library of volumes that have been written about the Hudson Bay Company, chiefly by