Munck’s Voyages, written by himself and dedicated to the King of Denmark, appeared in Copenhagen in 1624. Unfortunately before his authentic account appeared, stories of his voyage had been told in France from mere hearsay, by La Peyrére. It is this erroneous version of Munck’s adventures that appears in various collections of voyages, such as Churchill’s and Jeremie’s Relation in the Bernard Collection. Of modern authorities on Munck, Vol. II of the Hakluyt Society for 1897, and the writings of Mr. Lauridsen of Copenhagen stand first. Data on the topography of the Straits and Bay and Baffin’s Land may be found in the Canadian Government Reports from 1877 down to 1906. But best of all are the directions of the old sailing masters employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which are only to be found in the Archives of Hudson’s Bay House, London. In English reports—though all English accounts of Munck except the Hakluyt Society’s are limited to a few paragraphs—his name is spelled Munk. He, himself, spelled it Munck.
PART II
1662-1713
How the Sea of the North is Discovered Overland by the French Explorers of the St. Lawrence—Radisson, the Pathfinder, Founds the Company of the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson’s Bay and Leads the Company a Dance for Fifty Years—He is Followed by the French Raiders Under d’Iberville.
CHAPTER VI
1662-1674
RADISSON, THE PATHFINDER, DISCOVERS HUDSON BAY AND FOUNDS THE COMPANY OF GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS
For fifty years the great inland sea, which Hudson had discovered, lay in a silence as of death. To the east of it lay a vast peninsular territory—crumpled rocks scored and seamed by rolling rivers, cataracts, upland tarns—Labrador, in area the size of half a dozen European kingdoms. To the south, the Great Clay Belt of untracked, impenetrable forests stretched to the watershed of the St. Lawrence, in area twice the size of modern Germany. West of Hudson Bay lay what is now known as the Great Northwest—Keewatin, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Mackenzie River and British Columbia—in area, a second Russia; but the primeval world lay in undisturbed silence as of death. Fox and James had come to the bay ten years after Jens Munck, the Dane; and the record of their sufferings has been compared to the Book of Lamentations; but the sea gave up no secret of its dead, no secret of open passage way to the Orient, no inkling of the immeasurable treasures hidden in the forest and mine and soil of the vast territory bordering its coasts.