8 J GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OP CANADA. 



King of France.* This account has since been disproved, and it would 

 appear that Jean Bourdon never entered Hudson Bay.f 



The next expedition sent to Hudson Bay was for purposes of trade 



with the natives. According to Oldmixon J two Frenchmen, Messrs. 



DeGroisaeiier de Groisselier and Badisson, while trading with the Indians at Lake 



and Radisson , . . ,„. . . n . „ . , , ., ,, , 



reach Hudson Assimponals (Winnipeg) learned from them that it was possible to 

 Winnipeg. proceed by land to the bottom of the bay where the English had not 

 visited. They desired the savages to conduct them thither which they 

 did, they then returned to Quebec where they tried to persuade some 

 merchants to send a ship under their command to the bay to engage in 

 trado with the Indians ; being unsuccessful they proceeded to Paris, 

 hoping for a more favorable hearing at Court, but after presenting 

 several memorials and spending a great deal of money and time, they 

 were answered as they had been at Quebec. The English Ambassador 

 hearing their proposals, imagined he should do his country good ser- 

 vice in engaging them to serve the English who had already pretences 

 to the bay, so he persuaded them to go to London where they met with a 

 favorable reception from Prince Rupert and seven other wealthy men 

 and merchants who, in 1668, fitted out the Nonsuch 'Ketch under com- 

 mand of Zachariah Gillatn, a New England Captain. Accompanied by 

 De Groisselier and Radisson, he passed through the straits and thence 

 southward to lat. 51° N., where in the Nemiscow River, afterwards 

 Buiidine of called the Rupert, he held friendly intercourse with the natives, built a 

 ito Rupert* 8 ° n rou gh f° rt called Charles Fort, wintered there and returned safely the 

 following year. 



Upon the return ofGillam in 1669, Prince Rupert and others applied 



for a charter to King Charles II. This was granted 2nd May, 1670, in 



it they are styled the Governor and Company of Adventurers trading 



Charter to from England to Hudson Bay; § " and in consideration of their havino- 



Hudson Bay ° J ' & 



Company, 1670. at their own cost and charges," undertaken an expedition to Hudson 

 Bay in the north-east parts of America, for the discovery of a new 

 passage to the South Sea, and for the finding of some trade for furs, 

 minerals and other considerable commodites, and of their having 

 already made by such their undertakings such discoveries as did en- 

 courage them to proceed farther in pursuance of the said design, by 

 means whereof there might probably arise great advantage to the King 

 and his Kingdom, absolutely ceded and gave up to the said undertakers 

 the whole trade and commerce of all those creeks, seas, straits, bays, 

 rivers, lakes and sounds, in what latitude soever they might be, which 

 are situated within the entrance of the Hudson Straits, together with 



* Joseph Robson's Hudson Bay, 1752. 



t Clias. Bell's Hudson Bay. 



t Oldmixon's British Empire in America, 1741. 



§ Forster's Voyages. 



