Aa is the case with so many of the provinces of our world-wide Empire the earlier history of '*Greater Canada" is essentially a chapter—and that not the least interesting!—in the annals of British commerce. The exploration of the North-West was almost entirely the work of cor-tain great fur-trading corporations; to the oldest und greatest of which—the Hudson Bay Company—we owe our pence fal actu sition of a territory as large ax the whole of Burope. For, though the French were the first to travel beyond the Great Lal and establish trading-posts and missions on the Saskatchewan and other inland rivers, they lacked the px and power of organisation necessary to hold what they had grasped; and Loi fore Quebec and the French king's had changed hands, the Fi found that the inland tribes were ssu much under the influence of the H. 1. Ca. atticers xg to refuse to deal with them. Thus in 1750 Lo Gardeur St. Pierre, who had been continuing Verandrye's exploration of the interior, reported that "the English on the Bay by their threats alone are able to muke the Indians undertake anything they wish," and that, in consequence, no Frenehman could hope to do much business in those regions. It will be seen, therefore, Indians by the Hudson's Bay Company—that the authority maintained over the
an authority never disputed, though never backed by force of arms, and still us strong in many parts of the North-West as it was fifty years ago—was already a political influence of importance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.