198 TEAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



After many years of fruitless negotiation between 

 Canada and the Hudson Bay Company, in which 

 England acted as a sort of go-between or mutual 

 friend, it was arranged, in 1869, that the undefined 

 country officially known as Rupert's Land, together 

 with all the territorial rights appertaining to the 

 Company in North America, should be transferred to 

 the recently-established Dominion of Canada for the 

 sum of 300,000. That was practically the arrange- 

 ment ; but there was a three-cornered ceremony to be 

 gone through first, in accordance with which those 

 vast outlying portions of the empire were to be legally 

 transferred on paper to England, and then made over 

 by royal proclamation to the Dominion. 



The country had long been in the possession of 

 the Hudson Bay Company, who had received a char- 

 ter in 1670 from Charles II. , granting them sovereign 

 rights over a large proportion of the North American 

 continent. In the days of that gallant monarch our 

 geographical knowledge of the western hemisphere 

 was but small, and consequently the description of 

 the limits given over to their jurisdiction, as recorded 

 in the charter, was very vague. It may be fairly as- 

 sumed that this uncertainty of title was one of the 

 chief causes why the Company had never been de- 

 sirous of having its claims inquired into before the 

 courts of law. 



In 1783 a rival trading -company the "North- 

 Western" was started; and in 1812 Lord Selkirk 



