the Louvre and of the English court ; for, after winter- 

 ing and trading in a rough stone fort on the bay, he 

 returned to England with reports which gained for his 

 patrons the aid of many gallant but needy cavaliers in obtain- 

 ing from " Charles the Second, by the Grace of God, King of 

 England, Scotland, France and Ireland," in the year 1670, a 

 charter " of our ample and abundant grace " to " our dear 

 entirely beloved cousin, Prince Rupert," etc., etc., of what was 

 equal in extent to several European kingdoms, with powers 

 which no potentate in Europe would dare to exercise to-day. 



While the English monarch was thus disposing of empire 

 to his favored cousin and courtiers, Richelieu was equally 

 active in France, and parchment powers, signed " Henri " or 

 '■' Charles," were given with that easy and reckless indifference 

 to the rights of others peculiar to the time, leaving the overlapp- 

 ing boundaries of these vague grants to be rectified and adjusted 

 with the powder and steel of the grantees, and the tomahawk 

 and knife of their Indian allies. England assumed ownership 

 by right of maritime discovery ; France, by those land and 

 canoe explorations, which have left her language everywhere 

 in the West, in the names of river and lake, cape, promontory 

 and island. The English Company of Adventurers trading 

 into Hudson's Bay occupied the mouths of all the rivers with 

 palisaded forts or factories, and fished, hunted and traded 

 from them, visited once a year by ships, which were watched 

 for by that daring rover, D'Iberville, as Drake had watched 

 for the Spanish galleons. The forts were attacked, and often 

 destroyed, by the hardy voyageurs of New France. Surpiises 

 and reprisals continued, till Blenheim, Ramilies and Mapla- 

 quet had decided quarrels of more moment, and the Ti-eaty of 

 Utrecht, in 1713, left the English in peaceable possession of 

 their forts, " factories and plantations," on Hudson's Bay. 



With France thus prostrate, the English were to pursue, for 

 over sixty years, their profitable trade in peace ; but the 

 recollection of burning forts and plundered factories was still 

 keen, and the thunder of D'Iberville's guns not soon to be for- 



