[HUDSON'S BAY TO THE SOUTH SEA.]
"Many a shoal marks this stern coast."
The Hudson's Bay Company's grant was meant to promote the discovery of a North-west Passage to India: so the people of England, in giving away such large privileges, expected this would be done without delay.
But the company, at first, made little or no effort in this direction. It was chiefly occupied with making money, and making it from the start. Hence every thing was made to work to that end.
HUDSON'S BAY SLED, LOADED.
England did not know what she was doing when she created this monopoly. Ignorance led to delusion, and delusion to the inconsiderate granting away of an empire. It was thought the company would explore and settle its grant, and thus England would reap the benefits without spending a penny. The company, on the other hand, meant to do nothing of the sort, unless driven to it by popular clamor. Then it would do as little as it could. Colonization was fatal to the fur-trade, and the company was an association of fur-traders, nothing else. Hence, given a warehouse in London, a ship to carry goods back and forth, a port and factory at Hudson's Bay, a score or more of trading-posts scattered here and there over a vast extent of territory, to which the hunters could bring furs and get goods at the company's price, and we have, briefly told, the whole machinery of this giant monopoly. In dealing with the outside world it pursued a policy of Spanish exclusion and silence. It was not making history, but money.
Yet the company was all the time building better than it knew, for even the coming and going of its own traders gradually enlarged geographical knowledge of the country, so smoothing the way for the future.
From time to time the natives who came to the factories showed specimens of copper ore, which they said came from the Far Off Metal River of the North. The English traders consequently named it the Coppermine. It became an object with them to find the mine, or mines, whence these specimens had been taken. The governor accordingly (1769) sent one of his most trusty men into the unknown wilderness in search of them.