Hudson's Strait and Bay. 



273 



Hudson's Bay Company's posts they caught in one year as many as 

 2,800 porpoises, by a very inexpensive method. 



The walrus are now valuable for oil, ivory and the hides. A full 

 grown walrus represents a monetary value of over $150. I have seen 

 seventy or eighty of these huge beasts swimming about in close prox- 

 imity, and must confess that I looked with some regret at about 

 812,000 floating away. 



Of the value of the cod, salmon and trout fisheries it is not neces- 

 sary to say much. They will in the future prove to be of great value. 

 The opportunities which this region under discussion affords to the 

 fur-trader have been proved by the history of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, which in the past has been chiefly a fur-trading corporation. 



The valuable black fox is frequently captured, whose skin is worth 

 from $100 to $300 in the London market. The silver, the grey, the 

 red and the white foxes are very numerous; hundreds of polar-bear 

 skins, musk-ox robes, carcajou pelts, reindeer skins, wolf-skins, hides 

 of the square-flipper and hood seals, and other articles of barter are 

 obtained annually from the Eskimos and Indians, for prices varying 

 from a $3 gun, or a little ammunition, to a flew plugs of black strap 

 tobacco, worth about three cents a plug. 



Having glanced hastily at some of the resources of that region, we 

 come now to the question of the practicability of the Hudson's Bay 

 route, This is a question which I cannot with propriety discuss here, 

 as the complete reports of the officers of our expedition have not yet 

 been given to the public. 



I will make only a few remarks and give some facts which have 

 already been published. 



The only troublesome part of this route for navigation is in Hudson's 

 Strait and the entrance to it from the Atlantic. There is little doubt 

 that from three to four months can be relied upon for navigation each 

 war for properly-© instructed steamers. For the rest of the year, as a 

 rule, the door to Hudson's Bay is locked with a key of ice. Whether 

 that length of time is sufficient for purposes of commerce or not, I do 

 not pretend to say. Some good judges say it is. 



From the time of Hudson's first trip into the Bay up to 1882, seven 

 hundred and thirty round voyages had been made. The Hudson's 

 Bay Company formerly insured their ships at as low a rate as would 

 have obtained if they had cleared for Quebec or Montreal. Now, I am 

 informed, they do not insure them at all, as their losses have been 

 few and far between. No vessel, I believe, has ever been lost in Hud- 

 son's Strait. Bear in mind that all these voyages were made in sailing 



