The Great Company — A Closer Reading

no secret.[3] Twice annually, for many years, had vessels anchored at Havre, laden with the skins of fox, marten and beaver, collected and shipped by the Company of the Hundred Associates or their successors in the Quebec monopoly. A feeling was current that England ought by right to have a larger share in this promising traffic, but, it was remarked, "it is not well seen by those cognizant of the extent of the new plantations how this is to be obtained, unless we dislodge the French as we have the Dutch, which his present Majesty would never countenance."

Charles had little reason to be envious of the possession by his neighbour Lewis, of the country known as New France.

[Sidenote: French fur-trade.]

Those tragic and melancholy narratives, the "Relations des Jesuites," had found their way to the English Court. From these it would seem that the terrors of cold, hunger, hardships, and Indian hostility, added to the cost and difficulties of civil government, and the chronic prevalence of official intrigue, were hardly compensated for by the glories of French ascendancy in Canada. The leading spirits of the fur-trade then being prosecuted in the northern wilds, were well aware that they derived their profits from but an infinitesimal portion of the fur-trading territory; the advantages of extension and development were perfectly apparent to them; but the difficulties involved in dealing with the savage tribes, and the dangers attending the establishment of further connections with the remote interior, conspired to make them content with the results attained by the methods then in vogue. The security from rivalry which was guaranteed to them by their monopoly did not fail to increase their aversion to a more active policy. Any efforts, therefore, which were made to extend the French Company's operations were made by Jesuit missionaries, or by individual traders acting without authority.

Such, in brief, was the state of affairs in the year 1666 when two intrepid bushrangers, employees of the old Company,[4] dissatisfied with their prospects under the new _régime_, sought their way out from the depths of the wilderness to Quebec, and there propounded to the Intendant, Jean Talon, a scheme for the extension of the fur-trade to the shores of Hudson's Bay. This enterprising pair saw their project rejected, and as a sequel to this rejection came the inception and establishment of an English association,[5] which subsequently obtained a charter from the King, under the name and title of "The Governor and Company of Merchants-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay."

To narrate the causes which first led to the formation of this Company, the contemporary interest it excited, the thrilling adventures of its early servants, of the wars it waged with the French and drove so valiantly to a victorious end; its vicissitudes and gradual growth; the fierce and bloody rivalries it combated and eventually overbore; its notable expeditions of research by land and sea; the character of the vast country it ruled and the Indians inhabiting it; and last but not least, the stirring and romantic experiences contained in the letters and journals of the Great Company's factors and traders for a period of above two centuries--such will be the aim and purpose of this work.

[1] "The great maritime powers of Europe," said Chief Justice Marshall, "discovered and visited different parts of this Continent at nearly the same time. The object was too immense for any of them to grasp the whole; and the claimants were too powerful to submit to the exclusive or unreasonable pretensions of any single potentate. To avoid bloody conflicts, which might terminate disastrously to all, it was necessary for the nations of Europe to establish some principle which all would acknowledge and which would decide their respective rights as between themselves. This principle, suggested by the actual state of things, was, 'that discovery gave title to the Government by whose subjects or by whose authority it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.'"

[2] "Prince Rupert, we hear, is of no mind to press his Plantation claims until this Dutch warre is over. A Jamaica pattent is spoke of."--_Pleasant Passages_, 1665.