Part 19 (1/2)
The scarcity of servants seems to have continued. In the following year greater bribes were resorted to. ”Captain Mounslow was now ordered to provide fifteen or sixteen young able men to go to H. B.
This expedition for five years, which he may promise to have wages, viz.: 8 the 1st year; 10 the 2nd; 12 the 3rd and 14 for the two last years, and to be advanced 3 each before they depart from Gravesend.” The result of this was that in June, 1711, the first batch of these servants came aboard the Company's s.h.i.+p at Stromness. But they were not destined to sail away to the Bay in their full numbers.
Overhauled by one of Her Majesty's s.h.i.+ps, eleven of the young men were impressed into the service. For many years after this incident it was not found easy to engage servants in the Orkneys.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”The younger men now stole again to the French camp and ma.s.sacred all the others in their sleep.”
(_See page 185._)]
Captain Barlow was governor at Albany Fort in 1704 when the French came overland from Canada to besiege it. The Canadians and their Indian guides lurked in the neighbourhood of Albany for several days before they made the attack, and killed many of the cattle that were grazing in the marshes. A faithful Home Indian (as those Crees in the vicinity were always termed), who was on a hunting excursion, discovered those strangers, and correctly supposing them to be enemies, immediately returned to the fort and informed the governor of the circ.u.mstance. Barlow, while giving little credit to the report, yet took immediately every measure for the fort's defence. Orders were given to the master of a sloop hard by to hasten to the fort should he hear a gun fired.
In the middle of the night the French came before the fort, marched up to the gate and demanded entrance. Barlow, who was on watch, told them that the governor was asleep, but he would go for the keys at once.
The French, according to the governor, on hearing this, and expecting no resistance, flocked up to the gate as close as they could stand.
Barlow took advantage of this opportunity, and instead of opening the gate opened two port-holes, and discharged the contents of two six-pounders into the gathering. This quant.i.ty of grape-shot slaughtered great numbers of the French, and amongst them their commander, who was an Irishman.
A precipitate retreat followed such an unexpected reception; and the master of the sloop hearing the firing proceeded with the greatest haste to the spot. But some of the enemy, who lay in ambush on the river's bank, intercepted and killed him, with his entire crew.
Seeing no chance of surprising the fort, the French retired reluctantly, and did not renew the attack; although some of them were heard shooting in the neighbourhood for ten days after their repulse.
One man in particular was noticed to walk up and down the platform leading from the gate of the fort to the launch for a whole day. At sundown Fullerton, the governor, thinking his conduct extraordinary, ventured out and spoke to the man in French. He offered him lodgings within the fort if he chose to accept them; but to such and similar proposals the man made no reply, shaking his head. Fullerton then informed him that unless he would surrender himself as his prisoner he would have no alternative but to shoot him. In response to this the man advanced nearer the fort. The governor kept his word, and the unhappy Frenchman fell, pierced by a bullet. No explanation of his eccentric behaviour was ever forthcoming, but it may be that the hards.h.i.+ps he expected to encounter on his return to Canada had unbalanced his mind, and made him prefer death to these while scorning surrender.
[Sidenote: Desperate condition of the French at Fort York.]
It was some solace to know that their French rivals were in trouble, and that York Factory had hardly proved as great a source of profit to the French Company as had been antic.i.p.ated. The achievements of Iberville and his brothers had done little, as has been shown, to permanently better its fortunes. To such an extent had these declined, that the capture, in 1704, of the princ.i.p.al s.h.i.+p of the French Company by an English frigate, forced these traders to invoke the a.s.sistance of the Mother Country in providing them with facilities for the relief of the forts and the transportation of the furs to France. In the following year, the garrison at Fort Bourbon nearly perished for lack of provisions. The a.s.sistance was given; but two years later it was discontinued, because they could no longer spare either s.h.i.+ps or men.
Although both were urgently needed for defence against the New Englanders. Owing to the enormous increase of unlicensed bushrangers, the continued hostilities and the unsettled state of the country, no small proportion of the entire population chose rather to adventure the perils of illicit trade in the wilderness, than to serve the king in the wars at home.[45] Unaccustomed for so long a period to till the soil, their submission was not easily secured, no matter how dire the penalties.
Finding their continual pet.i.tions to the Lords of Trade ineffectual, the Company now drew up a more strongly worded one and presented it to Queen Anne herself. The memorial differed from any other, inasmuch as the Company now lay stress for the first time on some other feature of their commerce than furs.
”The said country doth abound with several other commodities (of which your pet.i.tioners have not been able to begin a trade, by reason of the interruptions they have met with from the French) as of whale-bone, whale-oil (of which last your subjects now purchase from Holland and Germany to the value of 26,000 per annum, which may be had in your own dominions), besides many other valuable commodities, which in time may be discovered.”
If the French, it was argued, came to be entirely possessed of Hudson's Bay, they would undoubtedly give up whale fis.h.i.+ng in those parts, which will greatly tend to the increase of their navigation and to their breed of seamen.
When your Majesty, in your high wisdom, shall think fit to give peace to those enemies whom your victorious arms have so reduced and humbled, and when your Majesty shall judge it for your people's good to enter into a treaty of peace with the French King, your pet.i.tioners pray that the said Prince be obliged by such treaty, to renounce all right and pretensions to the Bay and Streights of Hudson, to quit and surrender all posts and settlements erected by the French, or which are now in their possession, as likewise not to sail any s.h.i.+ps or vessels within the limits of the Company's charter, and to make rest.i.tution of the 108,514, 19s. 8d., of which they robbed and despoiled your pet.i.tioners in times of perfect amity between the two Kingdoms.
This pet.i.tion seems actually to have come into the hands of the Queen and to have engaged her sympathy, for which the Honourable Adventurers had to thank John Robinson, the Lord Bishop of London. This dignitary, _persona grata_ in the highest degree to the sovereign, was also a close personal friend of the Lake family, whose fortunes[46] were long bound up with the Hudson's Bay Company. The Company was asked to state what terms it desired to make. In great joy they acceded to the request.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF TRADES AND PLANTATIONS.
_The Memorandum of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay:_
That for avoiding all disputes and differences that may, in time to come, arise between the said Company and the French, settled in Canada, they humbly represent and conceive it necessary--
That no wood-runners, either French or Indians, or any other person whatsoever, be permitted to travel, or seek for trade, beyond the limits hereinafter mentioned.
That the said limits began from the island called Grimington's Island, or Cape Perdrix, in the lat.i.tude of 58 north, which they desire may be the boundary between the English and the French, on the coast of Labrador, towards Rupert's Land, on the east main, and Novia Britannia on the French side, and that no French s.h.i.+p, bark, boat or vessel whatsoever, shall pa.s.s to the northward of Cape Perdrix or Grimington's Island, towards or into the Streights or Bay of Hudson, on any pretence whatever.
[Sidenote: Demand of the Company.]