92 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



are the earlier ones, faded with age, but showing no signs of 

 rough usage. They are dated from Prince of Wales Fort, or 

 Fort Nelson (afterward York Factory), or one of the forts on 

 James Bay. They represent the long period of inactivity, when 

 the Hudson's Bay Company slumbered peacefully on the shores 

 of the bay, hugging its benevolent monopoly, not even dreaming 

 of the rude awakening that was to come from the south. But 

 here is a change. The journal is dated from Cumberland House, 

 on the Saskatchewan; the handwriting is vigorous, wide-awake; 

 the old company has at last been driven inland to fight for its 

 very existence with the enterprising traders from Montreal, 

 whom it had lately branded contemptuously as "peddlars," but 

 now recognized as formidable rivals. And here, of later date, 

 are scores of journals, battered and weather-beaten from their 

 long journeys by dog-sled or canoe or York boat from Chipewyan 

 or Dunvegan or Alexandria, Norman or Good Hope, Langley, 

 St. James or Simpson; from New Caledonia or the far-off valley 

 of the Mackenzie. They are grimed with the smoke of a hundred 

 camp-fires; blurred with the spray of many rivers. Between the 

 faded lines one may read the tragedies, comedies, romances of 

 the western fur-trade; of that life which in spite of its bitter 

 hardships held many attractions for a vigorous race of men. 

 What a rich mine these human documents offer to the historian, 

 the novelist, the ethnologist, the student of mankind in the rough. 



The origin of the Hudson's Bay Company was as romantic 

 as anyone could desire. Curiously enough the fathers of this 

 essentially British institution were a couple of French adven- 

 turers from Canada: Pierre Esprit Radisson, and his brother-in- 

 law, Medard Chouart, commonly called Groseilliers. The ex- 

 traordinary history of these extraordinary men is told in Radis- 

 son's own journals, edited some years ago by the Prince Society 

 of Boston. The original narratives, or what are supposed to be 

 the original narratives, are now in the British Museum and thf 

 Bodleian Library. 



Radisson made four journeys, or voyages as he calls them; 

 the first two from the St. Lawrence to the Iroquois country; 

 the third and fourth — I am getting on dangerous historic ground 

 here, for a war of controversy has been raging for years around 

 these two latter journeys of Radisson. It is asserted, and denied, 

 that on his third journey he discovered the Mississippi. It is 

 asserted, and denied even more fiercely, that on his fourth journey 



