The Porpoise, the Walrus, the Narwhal and the Seal. 209 



fo midland these many years, I am justified in the supposition that 

 future investigation will discover that in the month of April the 

 moving ice in Hudson Strait is as heavily freighted with young 

 harps as are the ice-pans of the North Atlantic, north of New- 

 foundland. 



However this may be, enough is now known to warrant the 

 belief — nay, to assure beyond a doubt — that the almost inexhaustible 

 numbers of oil-bearing animals in the northern waters of the 

 Dominion invite the establishment of an oil industry, and of oil 

 industries, there — industries, too, that may be developed into an 

 export trade of millions of dollars annually, yielding immense profits 

 to those who undertake the enterprise. 



There is probably no opening in which capital can find employ- 

 ment to-day with such a certainty of large returns as that of the 

 oil business of Hudson's Bay. A few Americans are reaping fortunes 

 in an adventurous way in the whaling industry already, and the 

 Hudson's Bay Company reap over $50,000 annually from the blubber 

 of the porpoise and walrus, an enterprise which they regard as only 

 in a small way auxiliary to their immense fur trade. 



14 



