Part 4 (1/2)

In the same merry month of May the _Prince Rupert_ set sail from Gravesend, conveying a new cargo, a new crew, and a newly appointed overseer of trade, to the Company's distant dominions.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The proportions of this inland sea are such as to give it a prominent place among the geographical features of the world. One thousand three hundred miles in length, by six hundred miles in breadth, it extends over twelve degrees of lat.i.tude, and covers an area not less than half a million square miles. Of the five basins into which Canada is divided, that of Hudson's Bay is immeasurably the largest, the extent of country draining into it being estimated at three million square miles. To swell the mighty volume of its waters there come rivers which take their rise in the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Labrador wilderness on the east; while southward its river roots stretch far down below the forty-ninth parallel, reaching even to the same lake source whence flows a stream into the Gulf of Mexico. A pa.s.sing breath of wind may determine whether the ultimate destiny of the rain drop falling into the little lake be the bosom of the Mexican Gulf or the chilly grasp of the Arctic ice-floe.

[10] Known afterwards as Nemiscau by the French.

[11] See Appendix.

[12] The second Duke, Charles' old friend, General George Monk, known to all the leaders of English history as the brave restorer of the King, afterwards created Duke of Albemarle, died in the year the charter was granted.

[13] Lord Ashley, the ancestor of the present Earl of Shaftsbury, and one of the ruling spirits of the reign of Charles II., will also be remembered as the Achitophel of Dryden.

”A man so various that he seemed to be Not one; but all mankind's epitome.”

Arlington, another of the Honourable Adventurers, was also a member of the celebrated Cabal.

CHAPTER V.

1668-1670.

Danger Apprehended to French Dominion -- Intendant Talon -- Fur Trade Extended Westward -- News of the English Expedition Reaches Quebec -- Sovereign Rights in Question -- English Priority Established.

[Sidenote: French activity.]

Although neither the Governor, the Fur Company nor the officials of the Most Christian King at Quebec, had responded favourably to the proposals of Groseilliers, yet they were not long in perceiving that a radical change in their trade policy was desirable. Representations were made to M. Colbert and the French Court. It was even urged that France's North American dominions were in danger, unless a more positive and aggressive course were pursued with regard to extension.

These representations, together with the knowledge that the Dutch on the south side of the St Lawrence and in the valley of the Hudson had unexpectedly acknowledged allegiance to the King of England, determined Lewis to evince a greater interest in Canadian affairs than he had done hitherto.

Mezy was recalled, to die soon afterwards; and Daniel de Remin, Seigneur de Courcelles, was despatched as Provincial Governor. A new office was created, that of Intendant of Justice, Police and Finance; and Jean Talon--a man of ability, experience and energy--was made the first Intendant. Immediately upon his arrival, he took steps to confirm the sovereignty of his master over the vast realms in the West; and to set up the royal standard in the region of the Great Lakes.

In 1668 Talon returned to France, taking with him one of those hardy bushrangers (_coureurs de bois_) who pa.s.sed nearly the whole of their lives in the interior and in the company of the Hurons. This man seems to have cut a very picturesque figure. He had been scalped, and bore about his person many grim mutilations and disfigurements, to bear witness to his adventures amongst unfriendly tribes. He accompanied Talon in the capacity of servant or bodyguard, and appears to have had little difficulty in making himself an object of infinite interest to the lackeys and concierges of Paris. On the Intendant's return to Canada, this daring personage, Peray by name, is alluded to as Talon's most trusted adviser with regard to the western country and the tribes inhabiting it. In one of the Intendant's letters, dated February 24th, 1669, he writes that Peray had ”penetrated among the western nations farther than any Frenchman; and had seen the copper mine on Lake Huron. This man offers to go to that mine and explore either by sea, or by the lake and river--such communication being supposed to exist between Canada and the South Sea--or to the Hudson's Bay.”

French activity had never been so great in the new world as in the years between Groseilliers' departure from Quebec and the period when the English fur-traders first came in contact with the French on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson's Bay, thirteen years later.

In the summer of 1669, the active and intelligent Louis Joliet, with an outfit of 4,000 livres, supplied him by the Intendant, penetrated into an unknown region and exhibited the white standard of France before the eyes of the astonished natives.

This also was the period which witnessed the exploits of La Salle, and of Saint Lusson. Trade followed quickly on their heels. In March, 1670, five weeks before the charter was granted to the Great Company, a party of Jesuits arriving at Sault Ste. Marie found twenty-five Frenchmen trading there with the Indians. These traders reported that a most lucrative traffic had sprung up in that locality. Coincident with the tidings they thus conveyed to Talon, the Intendant learnt from some Algonquins who had come to Quebec to trade, that two European vessels had been seen in Hudson's Bay.

[Sidenote: Colbert and the Company.]

”After reflecting,” he wrote to Colbert, ”on all the nations that might have penetrated as far north as that, I can only fall back on the English, who, under the conduct of one named Groseilliers, in former times an inhabitant of Canada, might possibly have attempted that navigation, of itself not much known and not less dangerous. I design to send by land some men of resolution to invite the Kilistinons,[14] who are in great numbers in the vicinity of that Bay, to come down to see us as the Ottawas do, in order that we may have the first handling of what the savages bring us, who, acting as retail dealers between ourselves and those natives (_i.e._, the Kilistinons), make us pay for this roundabout way of three or four hundred leagues.”

The rivalry of French and English north of the St. Lawrence had begun.

With that rivalry began also from this moment that long series of disputes concerning the sovereignty of the whole northern territories, which has endured down to our own generation.

[Sidenote: A much vexed controversy.]

Few historical themes have ever been argued at greater length or more minutely than this--the priority of discovery, occupation, and active a.s.sumption of sovereignty over those lands surrounding Hudson's Bay, which for two centuries were to be held and ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company. The wisest jurists, the shrewdest intellects, the most painstaking students were destined to employ themselves for over a century in seeking to establish by historical evidence, by tradition and by deduction, the ”rights” of the English or of the French to those regions.

A great deal of importance has been attached to the fact that in 1627 a charter had been granted by Lewis XIII. to a number of adventurers sent to discover new lands to the north of the River of St. Lawrence.