England
The Hudson's Bay Company, organized in London in
1667, had long held actual dominion over the sub-arctic regions
to the north of New France; and on paper
claimed the far-stretching lands to the south and
west, upon which the more adventurous French had actively
ranged from Lake Superior westward to the headwaters of the
Saskatchewan—a distance of twelve hundred miles. At first
disinclined to explore beyond the sphere of influence immediately
exerted by her profitable posts on Hudson and James
bays, "the old lady of Fenchurch Street" was early in the
eighteenth century forced by public opinion in England to
make a show of seeking from the East the waterway which
Sir Francis Drake, in the "Golden Hind," had sought from
the Pacific as early as 1579, and for which both Spain and
France were still vainly striving. The company's spasmodic,
apathetic, and fruitless searches for the "Northwest Passage"
extended through half a century.
When New France fell, both independent and organized
English and Scotch fur-traders, with headquarters at Montreal
and Mackinac, disregarding the claims of the Hudson's Bay
Company at once occupied the vast country through which
Vérendrye and his compatriots had so long conducted their
wilderness barter. The story of the rival trading corporations
—chiefly the Hudson's Bay Company on the one hand, and the
North West Company (1783) on the other—although with
occasional disruptions of the latter, and several kaleidoscopic
reshiftings and amalgamations—is a stirring and sometimes
bloody chapter in the history of the continental interior.
The situation cultivated mighty passions within strong men.
One of these, Samuel Hearne, in the employ of the Hudson's
Bay Company, stirred by great ambitions, descended the
Coppermine River in 1770, and reached the Arctic Ocean.
Nineteen years later (1789), Alexander Mackenzie, a "Nor'
Wester" in charge of the Athabasca department, reached the
Arctic Ocean by way of Mackenzie River; in 1793, after
almost incredible difficulties, he crossed the Canadian Rockies
and descended Fraser River to the Pacific, a feat preceding
Lewis and Clark's venture by a dozen years.
