limitless range to 'ranchers' and farmers. Gallant explorers and 'path-finders' had made their way from point to point, over creek and river, through forest and valley, till the great polar seas were descried and the outlines of the Rockies unfolded little by little to the cartographer's view. The 'Great North-West,' destined to furnish many confederating Provinces, had a history of its own since the days of the Stuarts and the founding of The Hudson's Bay Company. In 1670 Prince Rupert obtained from Charles the Second a Charter which made him and the Hudson's Bay Company nominal monopolists of an extent of country stretching from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, from Manitoba to Athabasca. Its area was nearly as large as Europe. It was thinly inhabited and almost entirely unexplored. Roving tribes of Indians found their way there as fur-hunters, and here and there a few traders' posts were set up. But to the European explorer and first trader, these regions of Canada seemed a howling and unproductive desert of ice and snow, where winter reigned supreme for eight months of the year.

(2) Over this boundless region of the North-West, Prince Rupert and his colleagues, a company of English noblemen and gentlemen, exercised proprietary rights. The Company held their courts and exercised jurisdiction. The right to appropriate the country was often questioned, the French explorers and concessionnaires having been first in the field. Fur-traders from France are said to have penetrated, in 1706, as far as the Assiniboine Valley, and in 1784 the Montreal North-West Company was formed, but the Hudson's Bay Company held its own for exactly 200 years. In reality this was a vast 'No man's land,' for a long time tenanted by the buffalo, beaver, and moose. Company aided materially in opening up the land.

The

Ex

ploration in the Far West was carried on by means of light canoes, which could be carried from one point to another by the Indians and voyageurs, the most being thus made of the countless rivers and lakes. A trade route was made in many places along the numerous 'portages' or carrying-places between river and river, and lake and

lake.

(3) The South African explorer, like the United States western emigrant with his prairie schooner slowly passing westward over the vast central plains, takes with him a large waggon, many draught oxen, horses. and a whole retinue of native drivers and attendants. The difficulty there is, in many regions, to find water, or 'salt pans' as they are called. The huge canvas-covered 'buck-waggon' is like the 'Ship of the Desert,' moving slowly and laboriously along with struggling teams of oxen. How different the ways and methods of Canadian travel! It is the land of the canoe, the sleigh, and the snow-shoe; the one useful in summer, the others in winter. The Hudson's Bay Company established their posts from point to point on the huge continent, and, in leading the way to exploration, developed a peculiar class of men exactly fitted for the task. Many Orcadians from the islands of Scotland were engaged as storesmen and voyageurs, and French half-breeds, natives, and adventurers of every nation hunted the vast preserves of the Company. The endurance of the voyageur and fur-dealer is proverbial. The great Fur Company liked to keep half a continent to themselves as a hunting-ground, and long discouraged emigration. At one time they employed 3000 agents, traders, and voyageurs, and many thousands of Indians. They divided the whole territory into four departments, thirty-three districts, and 152 posts. The value of the fur-trade from the commencement up to 1870 was calculated at between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000.

Trade with the Indians was carried on by barter. The skin of the beaver was the unit of computation. Four or five beavers were equal to one silver fox, two martens to a beaver, twenty musk-rats to a marten. If an Indian wished to purchase a gun he had to give twenty beaver skins for it. The tariff was one of very old standing, and was well known amongst the Indians. Under the Company's management the Indians were well cared for; they were not allowed to buy Fire-water, and quarrels between them and the Europeans were of the rarest occurrence. The régime of this Company was generally beneficial to the tribes and profitable to themselves, as long as the beaver, musk-rat, otter, fox, racoon, and badger continued to yield to the hunters their valuable skins in the well-known hunting-grounds.

(4) Rupert's Land meant what is now included under Manitoba, Kewatin, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Athabasca1. But much of it was hidden from the ken of men. Here was another system of vast lakes and deep rivers which dwarfed the floods of the Old World. The Mackenzie, from its rise in the Rocky Mountains to its mouth in the Arctic Ocean, is 2000 miles long, and the Saskatchewan runs a course of 1300 miles before it mixes its waters with those of Lake Winnipeg. Great Bear Lake was found to be 180 miles long and 105 broad, Athabasca was 200, Great Slave Lake 280 miles long, Lake Winnipeg 280, the Lake of the Woods 60 miles long and 32 broad. In addition, there were minor lakes, as Deer Lake and Wollaston Lake. Most of the region lay outside the Arctic Circle, and when the brief warm summer came it seemed to call forth in an extraordinarily short time the gifts of nature. It has long been discovered that the country between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains is the finest wheat-field in the world.

See Appendix ix.

(5) There are said to be three classes of soil in this region. There is the great plain of the Red River, a vast country with great fertility of soil, boasting of the best climate both with regard to the length of summer and the temperature of winter. There is the second prairie level round Regina forming a splendid wheat country; and there is a third prairie level west of Moose Jaw, lately discovered to be useful for grazing purposes chiefly. But in 1670 the country was looked upon simply as a region for the hunter and fur-trader. No one had yet explored as far westward as the Rocky Mountains. Winter sets in over the regions about the middle of November, and the husbandman cannot sow his seed till April. Summer comes quickly and rushes through the sky. Haytime is in June and July, harvesting in August and September, and in October the roots are pulled; so the farmer must not lag behind in the brief space allowed him. The atmosphere is clear and bracing, the number of cloudy days in the year being seldom more than sixty or seventy, and the golden grain is ripened quickly. The native population is sparse and scattered over enormous regions, and it is calculated that between the Red River and the Rocky Mountains there were never more than 50,000 souls, the principal tribes being the Crees, Blackfeet, Saulteaux, and Swampies.

(6) It was impossible under the old régime for settlement and colonisation to go on quietly. Here and there were lonely settlements or factories, as at Forts York and Moose Factory on the Hudson's Bay shore, Fort Chippewyan on the Slave River, Forts Resolution and Providence on the Slave Lake, Forts Macleod and Vermilion on the Peace River, and Forts Edmonton and Carleton House in the Saskatchewan Valley, Forts Alexander and Pelly in the Winnipeg Lake district, and Fort Macleod on the extreme south near the Kootany Pass over the Rockies.

Each one of these forts or factories constituted a little centre of industry, to and from which, for many generations, the hunters and trappers of the Great North-West came and went.

(7) In course of time, however, the loose tenure of a proprietary, especially as it was coupled with the duties of government, was found to be altogether inadequate. From the State of Minnesota there was at one time an overflow of population, and the gold discoveries north of latitude 45° attracted a digger population. In 1863 the rights of the old Company were sold to a new proprietary, of which Sir Edmund Head was the chairman, and in order to connect the Far West with the Maritime Provinces and with England, a scheme of telegraphic communication was set on foot. Under the provisions of the Union Act, the Canadian Legislature made an application to the Crown for the annexation of the Hudson's Bay Territory.

(8) The Company had for a long time taken their stand upon their old charter of 1670 and their original proprietary rights, and in 1849 had declined to refer a question raised upon the subject of their trade and territory to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But the time for the exercise of their rights was rapidly passing away as the country ceased to be a mere hunters' preserve; and in 1857, the law officers advised that, though the Crown could not fairly contest the Company's charter or proprietorship, yet the Company could not be allowed to establish monopolies of government or trade. This was the principle ultimately adopted in 1870.

The

(9) In 1870 the Hudson's Bay Company parted with their monopoly of government. The North-West Territory was transferred to the Dominion of Canada. Company received £300,000 compensation, retaining their posts and trade, and a right to the twentieth part of lands