36 JOURNAL AND PROCEEtDINGS. 



gion. The Hudson's Bay Company obtained its charter from 

 Charles II in 1670, and throughout the territory known as Rupert's 

 land it was active and dominant for a period of two hundred years, 

 or until the surrender of the territory to the Queen in 1869, ^^ which 

 time it occupied about twenty-five forts and trading posts within 

 Ontario limits. Fort Albany, at the mouth of Albany river, was 

 built by this company in 1683 or 1684, Henley House on the same 

 river in 1744, and in 1730 a fort upon the Moose at or near where 

 Moose Factory now stands. But the French traders were earlier on 

 the field than the English, and for nearly a century they occupied a 

 much larger extent of it. In 1673, the same year in which Fort 

 Frontenac was built, they established two trading posts near the 

 parallel of 50", one on the Abitibi river and the other on the Mis- 

 sinaibi. The intrepid explorer, Daniel Dulhut, whose name is pre- 

 served in Duluth, built a fort at the mouth of the Kaministiquia 

 river in 1678, and called it Caministoygan ; and before 1684 he 

 built another far inland, the sight of which is supposed to be at the 

 foot of lake St. Joseph, on the northern boundary. The French 

 also built a fort at the mouth of the Moose river in 1686, and a post 

 at the foot of Abitibi lake before 1688. Their post at Sault Ste. Marie 

 was established in 1670, three years before Fort Frontenac was 

 built ; and in 1731 they had reached the head of Rainy river, where 

 La Verandrye built Fort St. Pierre, the ruins of which are yet visible 

 under the shadow of stately trees, which have grown from seed to 

 maturity since the time it was deserted.* The site of Fort St, Pierre, 

 as well as that of Fort Frances, two or three miles below it, is one 

 of the most beautiful in the New Ontario. 



But with the loss of Canada the activity and enterprise of the 

 French traders passed away, the blithe and hardy coureurs des bois 

 were scattered, and for the next twenty years the Hudson's Bay 

 Company enjoyed a monopoly of the trade in peltries with the 

 Indians, saving the extent to which a few individual merchants and 

 small companies in Montreal were able to send their agents and 

 goods into the country. 



*" At the entrance of the river there is a rapid," Sir Alexander Mac- 

 kenzie wrote in 1801, " below which is a fine bay, where there had been an 

 extensive picketed fort and building when possessed by the French ; the 

 site of it is at present a beautiful meadow, surrounded with groves of 

 oaks." Voyages from Montreal, p. Ivi. 



