FOOTNOTES:

[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.

[3] As early as 1605, Quebec had been established, and had become an important settlement; before 1630, the Beaver and several other companies had been organized, at Quebec, for carrying on the fur-trade in the West, near and around the Great Lakes and in the North-West Territory; that the enterprise and trading operations of these French Companies, and of the French colonists generally, extended over vast regions of the northern and the north-western portions of the continent; that they entered into treaties with the Indian tribes and nations, and carried on a lucrative and extensive fur-trade with the natives. In the prosecution of their trade and other enterprises these adventurers evinced great energy, courage and perseverance. They had, according to subsequent French writers, extended their hunting and trading operations to the Athabasca country. It was alleged that some portions of the Athabasca country had before 1640 been visited and traded in, and to some extent occupied by the French traders in Canada and their Beaver Company. From 1640 to 1670 these discoveries and trading settlements had considerably increased in number and importance.

[4] In 1663 the charter of the Compagnie des Cents Assocés, granted by Richelieu in 1627, was ceded to the Crown. In 1665 the new Association "La Compagnie des Indes Occidentals" received its charter.

[5] "Several noblemen and other public-spirited Englishmen, not unmindful of the discovery and right of the Crown of England to those parts in America, designed at their own charge to adventure the establishing of a regular and constant trade in Hudson's Bay, and to settle forts and factories, whereby to invite the Indian nations (who live like savages, many hundred leagues up the country), down to their factories, for a constant and yearly intercourse of trade, which was never attempted by such settlements, and to reside in that inhospitable country, before the aforesaid English adventurers undertook the same."—Company's Memorial, 1699.

[6] Each writer seems to have followed his own fancy in spelling our hero's name, I find Groiseliez, Grozeliers, Groseliers, Groiziliers, Grosillers, Groiseleiz, and Groseillers. Charlevoix spells it Groseilliers. Dr. Dionne, following Radisson's Chouard, writes Chouart. But as Dr. Brymner justly observes "he is as little known by that name as Voltaire by his real name of Arouet, he being always spoken of by the name of des Groseilliers, changed in one affidavit into 'Gooseberry.'" The name literally translated is, of course, Gooseberry-bushes.

[7] For example, the adjoining colony of Connecticut had appealed to them for help in their laudable enterprise of despoiling the Dutch of their possessions. Raids upon the territory and trading-posts controlled by the Dutch were a constantly recurring feature in the history of those times, and nearly the whole of the zeal and substance remaining to the English colonists in Connecticut and Virginia, after their periodical strifes with the Indians, were devoted to forcing the unhappy Hollanders to acknowledge the sovereignty of King Charles of England.