48 GEOKGE BETCE'S PLEA FOR 



The well-known name of Champlaiu is connected in the minds of very few with the 

 pernsal of his own writings. Yet his works, published in qnarto form in Quebec in 1870, 

 are interesting memorials of the life and habits of the Indians and of his own valour as an 

 explorer. In IGOT, the RecoUet priest, Loiiis Hennepin, published at Utrecht the record of 

 his journeys. Among the rare books of this period is the amusing account of travels pub- 

 lished by Baron Lahoutan, at Amsterdam in 1*705, and The Hague in ITIS. "U'ho can fail 

 to feel the highest admiration for the six-volume edition of Father Charlevoix, pub- 

 lished in Paris in 1*744. The " Jesuit Relations," issued by the Canadian G-overnment, 

 contains a vast amount of information. The twelve large quarto A^olumes of the documen- 

 tary histoiy of the State of New York are a treasury of information about the early history 

 of Canada, as well as of the state to which they belong. The events connected with the 

 early voyage to Hudson Bay are discussed by M. de Bacqueville de la Pother ie and M. 

 Jérémie, while the names of Lafiteau, Sagard, and others, speak of interesting memorials 

 of this, the heroic period of Canadian history. 



II. 



Through not very numerous, the books connected with the early days of the English 

 occupancy of Hudson Bay are of great value. " An Account of Hudson Bay, 1*744," by 

 Arthur Dobbs, is one of the rarest and most A^aluable of these. " A Voyage to Hud- 

 son's Bay," by Henry Ellis, published in 1*748, is worthy of note ; and an " Account of Six 

 Years' Residence in Hudson's Bay, ending in 1747," by Joseph Robson, bristles with 

 opposition to the great company of fu.r-traders. There is the work known as " The Ameri- 

 can Traveller, 1770 ;" while the Blue-book, containing the investigations by the British 

 House of Commons, gives an account of the fur trade and the unsiiccessful efforts of its 

 rivals to overturn the great monopoly. 



III. 



A French period comes next : it is full of the adventurous exploits of the discoverer of 

 Lake Winnipeg and its tributaries. The fact that Veraudrye's discoveries, extending from 

 1731 to 1745, preceded by so short a time the loss of Canada to France, no doubt explains 

 why so little is known of that era, now springing into greater prominence as the historian 

 strives to trace the pathway of early adventure in the Canadian Northwest. We are 

 indebted to the researches, in the documents of the archives of the Dei:)artment of Marine 

 and the Colonies at Paris, made by their former custodian, M. Pierre Margry, for almost 

 all we know of it. 



lY. 



The Scoto-French movement from Montreal, resulting in the Northwest Company, has 

 a considerable literature from its beginning, about the time of the Treaty of Paris, 1763, to 

 the union of the rival fur companies in 1821. Among the most noticeable books of travel 

 relating to this period is the now rare book of Jonathan Carver, published in 1778, of a long 



