176 REVIEWS—RED RIVER AND ATSINIBOINE EXPLORATIONS, 
From the attention which those expeditions have already excited in 
the Province, and the extent of our former notice of them, it is 
scarcely necessary that we should now do more than call attention to 
this revised edition of the reports. They have been augmented 
by information derived from various sources; new maps and plans 
greatly add to their practical value, and the whole work is reproduced 
in a highly creditable permanent form. To the topographer it supplies 
much valuable material; the ethnologist will find in it many references 
full of interest to him; while to the future historian of the extending 
provinces and colonies of British North America it will be indispensa- 
ble as a book of reference. In this latter department, the history of 
British America, like that of our great Indian Empire, is intimately 
interwoven with that of one of the great trading companies of the 
remarkable people whom the first Napoleon sneeringly designated a 
nation of shopkeepers. That they do now constitute a nation depen- 
dent for their enduring greatness on their world-wide trading relations 
and commercial enterprise is indisputable; and among the powerful 
trading corporations by which their territorial influence and wealth 
have been extended, an important place must be given to that 
company, which, deriving its name from the great Arctic Bay that 
bears the name of the bold explorer Henry Hudson, has extended its 
forts and trading-posts from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to Van- 
couver’s Island and the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. 
Professor Hind gives this condensed sketch of the great Fur Com- 
pany’s history : 
“The Hudson’s Bay Company was incorporated in the year 1670, under a royal 
charter of Charles the Second, which granted them certain territories in North 
America, together with exclusive privileges of trade and other rights and advan- 
tages. During the first twenty years of their existence the profits of the Company 
were so great that, notwithstanding considerable losses sustained by the capture 
of some of their establishments by the French, amounting in value to £118,014, 
they were enabled to make a payment to the proprietors in 1684 of fifty per cent., 
another payment in 1688 of fifty per cent., and a farther payment in 1689 of 
twenty-five per cent. 
In 1690 the stock was trebled without any call being made, besides affording a 
payment to the proprietors of twenty-five per cent. on the increased or newly 
created stock ; from 1692 to 1697 the Company incurred loss and damage to the 
amount of £97,500 sterling from the French. In 1720 their circumstances were 
so far improved that they again trebled their capital stock, with only a call of ten 
per cent. from the proprietors, on which they paid dividends averaging nine per 
cent, for many years, showing profits on the originally subscribed capital stock 
