(1) The charter conferred arbitrary powers to which a private company had no right;
(2) The Company was a mere stock-jobbing concern of no benefit to the public;
(3) Beaver was sold at an extortionate advance; bought at 6d. and sold for 6s.
(4) The English claim to a monopoly drove the Indians to the French;
(5) Nothing was done to carry out the terms of the charter in finding a North-West Passage.
All this, however, did not answer the great question: if the Company retired from the Bay, who or what was to resist the encroachments of the French? This consideration saved the situation for the adventurers. Their charter was confirmed.
The opposition to the extension of the charter compelled the Company to show what it had been doing in the way of exploration; and the journey of Henry Kelsey, the London apprentice boy, to the country of the Assiniboines, was put on file in the Company records. Kelsey had not at first fitted in very well with the martinet rules of fort life at Nelson, and in 1690, after a switching for some breach of discipline, he had jumped over the walls and run away with the Indians. Where he went on this first trip is not known. Some time before the spring of the next year an Indian runner brought word back to the fort from Kelsey: on condition of pardon he was willing to make a journey of exploration inland. The pardon was readily granted and the youth was supplied with equipment. Accordingly, on July 15, 1691, Kelsey left the camping-place of the Assiniboines—thought to be the modern Split Lake—and with some Indian hunters set off overland on foot. It is difficult to follow his itinerary, for he employs only Indian names in his narrative. He travelled five hundred miles west of Split Lake presumably without touching on the Saskatchewan or the Churchill, for his journal gives not the remotest hint of these rivers. We are therefore led to believe that he must have traversed the semi-barren country west of Lac du Brochet, or Reindeer Lake as it is called on the map. He encountered vast herds of what he called buffalo, though his description reminds us more of the musk ox of the barren lands than of the buffalo. He describes the summer as very dry and game as very scarce, on the first part of the trip; and this also applies to the half-barren lands west of Reindeer Lake. Hairbreadth escapes were not lacking on the trip of the boy explorer. Once, completely exhausted from a swift march, Kelsey fell asleep on the trail. When he awoke, there was not a sign of the straggling hunters. Kelsey waited for nightfall and by the reflection of the fires in the sky found his way back to the camp of his companions. At another time he awoke to find the high dry grass all about him in flames and his musket stock blazing. Once he met two grizzly bears at close quarters. The bears had no acquired instinct of danger from powder and stood ground. The Indians dashed for trees. Kelsey fired twice from behind bunch willows, wounded both brutes, and won for himself the name of honour—Little Giant. Joining the main camp of Assiniboines at the end of August, Kelsey presented the Indian chief with a lace coat, a cap, guns, knives, and powder, and invited the tribe to go down to the Bay. The expedition won Kelsey instant promotion.
Our old friend Radisson, from the time we last saw him—when 'the Committee had discourse with him till dinner'—lived on in London, receiving a quarterly allowance of £12 10S. from the Company; occasional gratuities for his services, and presents of furs to Madame Radisson are also recorded. The last entry of the payment of his quarterly allowance is dated March 29, 1710. Then, on July 12, comes a momentous entry: 'the Sec. is ordered to pay Mr Radisson's widow as charity the sum of £6.' At some time between March 29 and July 12 the old pathfinder had set out on his last journey. Small profit his heirs reaped for his labours. Nineteen years later, September 24, 1729, the secretary was again ordered to pay 'the widow of Peter Radisson £10 as charity, she being very ill and in great want.'
Meanwhile hostilities had been resumed between France and England; but the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought the game of war again to a pause and restored Hudson Bay to England. The Company received back all its forts on the Bay; but the treaty did not define the boundaries to be observed between the fur traders of Quebec pressing north and the fur traders of the Bay pressing south, and this unsettled point proved a source of friction in after years.
After the treaty the adventurers deemed it wise to strengthen all their forts. Moose, Albany, and Nelson, and two other forts recently established—Henley House and East Main—were equipped with stone bastions; and when Churchill was built later, where Munck the Dane had wintered, its walls of solid stone were made stronger than Quebec's, and it was mounted with enough large guns to withstand a siege of European fleets of that day.