THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 201 



way, Athabasca and the Liard and the MacKenzie into 

 the land of winter night and micKight sun, extend Hud 

 son s Bay Company posts. We think of these northern 

 streams as ice-jammed, sluggish currents, with mean 

 log villages on their banks. The fur posts of the sub- 

 arctics are not imposing with picket fences in place of 

 stockades, for no French foe was feared here. But the 

 MacKenzie River is one of the longest in the world, with 

 two tributaries each more than 1,000 miles in length. 

 It has a width of a mile, and a succession of rapids that 

 rival the St. Lawrence, and palisaded banks higher than 

 the Hudson River s, and half a dozen lakes into one of 

 which you could drop two New England States without 

 raising a sand bar. 



The map again. Between the prairie and the Paci 

 fic Ocean is a wilderness of peaks, a Switzerland 

 stretched into half the length of a continent. Here, 

 too, like eagle nests in rocky fastnesses are fur posts. 



Such is the realm of the Hudson s Bay Company 

 to-day. 



Before 1812 there was no international boundary 

 in the fur trade. But after the war Congress barred 

 out Canadian companies. The next curtailment of 

 hunting-ground came in 1869 70, when the company 

 surrendered proprietary rights to the Canadian Gov 

 ernment, retaining only the right to trade in the vast 

 north land. The formation of new Canadian provinces 

 took place south of the Saskatchewan ; but north the 

 company barters pelts undisturbed as of old. Yearly 

 the staffs are shifted from post to post as the for 

 tunes of the hunt vary; but the principal posts not 

 including winter quarters for a special hunt have prob 

 ably not exceeded two hundred in number, nor fallen 



