Commercial Importance of Hudson's Bay. 491 



at all developed. The fur trade is the principle and best-known 

 business which has hitherto been carried on in these regions, but a 

 large amount of oil, derived from the larger whales, the porpoises, 

 walruses, white bears, and the various species of seals which fre- 

 quent the northern parts of the Bay, has been carried to New 

 England, and small quantities, principally of porpoise and seal oil, 

 have from time to time been brought to London by the Hudson's 

 Bay Company. The other exports from the Bay have been as yet 

 but trifling. They embrace whalebone, feathers, quills, castoreum, 

 lead ore, saw r n lumber, ivory, tallow, isinglass, and skins of seals and 

 porpoises. The fisheries, properly speaking, of Hudson's Bay have 

 not yet been investigated. Both the Indians and Eskimo find a 

 variety of fish for their own use, and fine salmon abound in the 

 rivers of Hudson's Strait ; and from one or two of them a consid- 

 erable number of barrels, in a salted condition, are exported every 

 year. Waterfowl are very numerous on both sides of the Bay, and 

 larger game on the ' barren grounds ' in the northern parts, so that 

 the natives, with prudence, may always have a plentiful supply of 

 food. 



" But perhaps the most important of the undeveloped resources 

 of the country around the Bay are its soil, timber and minerals. To 

 the south and west of James' Bay, in the latitude of Devonshire and 

 Cornwall, there is a large tract, in which much of the land is good 

 and the climate sufficiently favourable for the successful prosecution 

 of stock and dairy farming. A strip of country along the east side 

 of James' Bay may also prove available for these purposes. To the 

 south-west of the wide part of the Bay the country is well wooded, 

 and although little or no rock comes to the surface over an immense 

 area, still neither the soil nor the climate are suitable for carrying 

 on agricultural as a principal occupation until we have passed over 

 more than half the distance to Lake Winnipeg. This region, how- 

 ever, offers no engineering difficulties to the construction of a 

 railway from the sea-coast to the better country beyond, and this, at 

 present, is the most important point in reference to it. Some of the 

 timber found in the country which sends its waters into James' Bay 

 may prove to be of value for export. Among the kinds which it 



