216 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
resolved itself into a mere commercial undertaking 
for trade in the furs of the vast region in the space 
between Canada or New France and the Arctic Sea, 
inhabited only by wandering bands of Indians. 
When the great Succession War broke out, involv- 
ing all Europe, it could not fail to reach America; 
for the possessions of three of the four principal 
Powers engaged,—France, Great Britain, and Spain, 
—occupied alternate points on the coast of the At- 
lantic. The French, of course, endeavored to avail 
themselves of the opportunity to drive out or to 
weaken the English on both sides of them, and es- 
pecially in Rupert’s Land, which they invaded and 
partly conquered, but restored by the subsequent 
Treaty of Utrecht. 
After this time, the Company, safe in its arctic sol- 
itudes, prospered without check for a century, filling 
Rupert’s Land with forts and factories, and engross- 
ing the fur trade of North America. 
Thereupon a rival Company entered the field, un- 
der the auspices of the Province of Canada, founding 
its enterprise on the assertion that Rupert’s Land 
had only a limited extension south and west, to cov- 
er no more than the water-shed terminating at Hud- 
son’s Bay, with no rights or jurisdiction southward 
and westward to the great Lakes and the Rocky 
Mountains. 
After a long and violent controversy, the North- 
west Fur Company was by agreement of parties 
merged to the Hudson’s Bay Company. 
The combined influence of the parties interested in 
