But the greatest activity displayed by the English at this time was inland from the bay. If Joseph La France could come overland from Lake Superior, English traders could be sent inland. Andrew Graham is ordered to keep his men at Severn and Albany moving up stream. One Isaac Butt is paid £14 for his voyaging, and in 1756 the Company votes £20 to Anthony Hendry for his remarkable voyage from York to the Forks of the Saskatchewan—the first Englishman to visit this now famous region. Hendry’s voyage merits a detailed account in the next chapter.
Notes to Chapter XVII.—The list of governors at this period is: Sir Bibye Lake, 1712-1743; Benjamin Pitt, 1743-1746, when he died; Thomas Knapp, 1746-1750; Sir Atwell Lake, 1750-1760; Sir William Baker, 1760-1770; Bibye Lake, Jr., 1770-1782.
The controversy between the Company and Dobbs fills volumes. Ellis and Dobbs need not be taken seriously. They were for the time maniacs on the subject of a passage that had no existence except in their own fancy. Robson is different.
Having been a builder at Churchill, he knew the ground, yet we find him uttering such absurd charges as that the Company purposely sent Governor Knight to his death and were glad “that the troublesome fellow was out of the way.” This is both malicious and ignorant, for as Robson knew, the Northwest Passage played a very secondary part in Knight’s fatal voyage. The Company just as much as Knight was infatuated with the lure of gold-dust. Perhaps, it will some day prove not so foolish an infatuation. Gold placers have been found in Klondike. Indian legend says they also exist in the ices of the East.
The Parliamentary Report for 1749 is an excellent example of investigating “off the beat.” The only thing of value in the report is Joseph La France’s Journal. It is valuable not as a voyage—for this trip was well tracked from the days of Radisson and Iberville—but as a description of the French posts on the Saskatchewan, which Hendry visited—Pachegoia or Pasquia or the Pas and Bourbon—and as helping to identify the Indians, whom Hendry met.
La Vérendrye voyages are not given here, because not relative to the subject. His life will be found in “Pathfinders of the West.”