THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 231 



and bring in the furs, and as many voyageurs or hands 

 as are required to transport the goods to the various 

 points at which their trade is carried on. The strictest dis- 

 cipline and regularity, and the most rigid economy, mark 

 all their proceedings ; and as the civil and criminal affairs 

 and tribunals are composed of their own subjects, the Com- 

 pany may be said to exercise all the functions of govern- 

 ment, saving to the Crown only due homage and a nominal 

 control. 



The posts of the Company are dotted all over Northern 

 America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The most 

 northern is situated on M'Kenzie's Eiver within the Arctic 

 circle, and is called Fort Good Hope. In all these 

 territories there are near 100 of these posts. They are, 

 with the exception of Fort Churchill, York Factory, and 

 one on Vancouver's Island, stockades, with little wooden 

 bastions at the corners capable of holding a travelling 

 party of thirty or forty persons. But the unrivalled in- 

 tercourse with the Indians has given them so complete 

 a control over them, that, for purposes of trade in safety, 

 they never need, and rarely have, more than four or five 

 tenants. The largest of these posts, prior to the late 

 treaty with the United States, was Fort Vancouver, on 

 the Colombia Eiver, about ninety miles from its mouth, 

 and accessible to vessels of fourteen feet draught. It 

 consisted of a stockade, inclosing four acres of ground, a 

 village of sixty houses, stores, mills, workshops, a farm 



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