Universal Bindery Ltd. BOOKBINDING - GOLD LETTERING Edmonton, Alberta — n style tering of Back and illow exact wording Bind — angement) Checkbind Case Title - Author Color No. Red . Maroon Orange Blue — Tan Fawn _ Brown Black . Grey _ Rust _ Wine Green Other Directions Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/chroniclesofcana18wron CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes i 18 THE ‘ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND’ ON HUDSON BAY BY AGNES C. LAUT fart VI pioneers of the North and West rHE ‘ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND’ ON I HUDSON BAY I A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North I BY AGNES C. LAUT Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention pRBss OB The Hunter-Rose Go., Limited, Toronto ONIVERSITT USfuftY THE UHUtESSIIX OB ' ' I f CONTENTS Page I. THE FUR HUNTERS l I II. THE TRAGEDY OF HENRY HUDSON . 9 Ijlll. OTHER EXPLORERS ON THE BAY . 23 jIV. THE ‘ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND’ . 34 V. FRENCH AND ENGLISH ON THE BAY . 51 VI. I THE GREAT OVERLAND RAID ... 73 i^II. YEARS OF DISASTER .... 89 J III. EXPANSION AND EXPLORATION . 103 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . .125 INDEX 129 1 ! 1 ,1 113871 A VIEW OF THE Drawn by INTERIOR H. A. OF Strong OLD FORT GARRY I ILLUSTRATIONS I^RINCE RUPERT .... Frontispiece From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. I IL VIEW OF THE INTERIOR OF OLD FORT GARRY Facing page 2 I ...... Drawn by H. A. Strong. TRACK SURVEY OF THE SASKATCHEWAN I BETWEEN CEDAR LAKE AND LAKE |: H WINNIPEG ..... „ 4 i jJ-HE PRINCIPAL POSTS OF THE HUDSON’S ! BAY COMPANY 6 I Map by Bartholomew. pHE ROUTES OF HUDSON AND MUNCK . „ lo ' Map by Bartholomew. I ipHE LAST HOURS OF HUDSON . „ i8 the painting Collier. I From by j jjOHN CHURCHILL, FIRST DUKE OF MARL- BOROUGH 42 || From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. I *pN THE HAYES RIVER .... ,,58 From a photograph by R. W. Brock. I j hENTRANCE TO THE NELSON AND HAYES I RIVERS ! 60 Map by Bartholomew. i CAMP IN THE SWAMP COUNTRY . „ 120 From photograph. j a CHAPTER I THE FUR HUNTERS IHIRTY or more years ago, one who stood at lie foot of Main Street, Winnipeg, in front the stone gate leading to the inner court r Fort Garry, and looked up across the fyer flats, would have seen a procession as icturesque as ever graced the streets of old Juebec^—the dog brigades of the Hudson’s py Company coming in from the winter’s jiint. Against the rolling snowdrifts appeared a j tjie, at first grotesquely dwarfed under the i|ock suns of the eastern sky veiled in a soft 3pst fog. Then a husky -dog in bells and har- r^ss bounced up over the drifts, followed by iiother and yet another—eight or ten dogs to ,ch long, low toboggan that slid along loaded id heaped with peltry. Beside each sleigh iaerged out of the haze the form of the driver •a swarthy fellow, on snow-shoes, with hair tund I back by a red scarf, and corduroy 2 THE ADVENTURERS ON HUDSON BA trousers belted in by another red scarf, and gauntlets to his elbows—flourishing his w] and yelling, in a high, snarling false! * ’ marche ! marche ! —the rallying-cry of French woodrunner since first he set out fr Quebec in the sixteen-hundreds to thread way westward through the wilds of the c< tinent. Behind at a sort of dog-trot came worn clothed in skirts and shawls made of red i green blankets ; papooses in moss bags their mothers’ backs, their little heads wobbl under the fur flaps and capotes. Then, the dog teams sped from a trot to a ga. with whoops and jingling of bells, th whipped past a long, low, toboggan-sha sleigh with the fastest dogs and the fir robes—the equipage of the chief factor trader. Before the spectator could take any more of the scene, dogs and slei^ runners and women, had swept inside gate. At a still earlier period, say in the seven! one who in summer chanced to be on L Winnipeg at the mouth of the great Sasl chewan river—which, by countless portc and interlinking lakes, is connected with all vast water systems of the North—would h THE FUR HUNTERS een the fur traders sweeping down in huge fotillas of canoes and flat-bottomed Mackinaw loats—exultant after running the Grand Rapids, /here the waters of the Great Plains converge Id a width of some hundred rods and rush nine liles over rocks the size of a house in a furious ataract. Summer or winter, it was a life of wild dventure and daily romance. Here on the Saskatchewan every paddle-dip, very twist and turn of the supple canoes, evealed some new caprice of the river’s moods, n places the current would be shallow and the il anoes would lag. Then the paddlers must catch |ie veer of the flow or they would presently e out waist-deep shoving cargo and craft off ind bars. Again, as at Grand Rapids, where le banks were rock-faced and sheer, the anoes would run merrily in swift-flowing aters. No wonder the Indian voyageurs re- arded all rivers as living personalities and lade the River Goddess offerings of tobacco nt5»r fair wind and good voyage. And it is be kept in mind that no river like the isifkskatchewan can be permanently mapped, p map or chart of such a river could serve s purpose for more than a year. Chart it -day, and perhaps to-morrow it jumps its — 4 THE ADVENTURERS ON HUDSON BA\ is river bed ; and where was a current no a swampy lake in which the paddlemen rm lose their way. When the waters chanced to be low at Grar Rapids, showing huge rocks through the whi spray, cargoes would be unloaded and tl peltry sent across the nine-mile portage 1 tramway but when the river was high ; in June after the melting of the mounta snows—-the voyageurs were always keen f the excitement of making the descent » canoe. Lestang, M‘Kay, Mackenzie, a doz( famous guides, could boast two trips a di down the rapids, without so much as grazii a paddle on the rocks. Indeed, the differe crews would race each other into the ve wildest beti vortex of the water ; and woe the old voyageur whose crew failed of the stro: pull into the right current just when the cn took the plunge ! Here, where the watc of the vast prairie region are descending ov huge boulders and rocky islets between ban not a third of a mile apart, there is a wild rw scene. Far ahead the paddlers can hear t roar of the swirl. Now the surface of the rh rounds and rises in the eddies of an underto swifi and the canoe leaps forward ; then, a plunge through the middle of a furious overfs Bartholomew. LdinT finM Hindk Report >859 THE FUR HUNTERS 5 Jie steersman rises at the stern and leans ^rward like a runner. ‘ ^ I Pull shouts the steersman ; and the inoe shoots past one rock to catch the current iat will whirl it past the next, every man bend- Ig to his paddle and almost lifted to his feet, jie canoe catches the right current and is itapulted past the roaring place where rocks take the water white. Instantly all but the eersman drop down, flat in the bottom of the j,noe, paddles rigid athwart. No need to pull ! )w The waters do the work ; and motion 1 the part of the men would be fatal. Here ie strongest swimmer would be as a chip on a |,taract. The task now is not to paddle, but steer—to keep the craft away from the rocks, iiis is the part of the steersman, who stands aced to his paddle used rudder-wise astern ; id the canoe rides the wildest plunge like a ja-gull. One after another the brigades dis- >pear in a white trough of spray and roaring kters. They are gone ! No human power in bring them out of that maelstrom ! But ok ! like corks on a wave, mounting and 'limbing and riding the highest billows, there ley are again, one after another, sidling and |ting and falling and finally gliding out to ilm water, where the men fall to their 6 THE ADVENTURERS ON HUDSON BA^ paddles and strike up one of their lust voyageur songs ! The Company would not venture its peltr on the lower rapid where the river rush down almost like a waterfall. Above this tl If cargoes were transferred to the portage, an prosaically sent over the hill on a tram-c« pulled by a horse. The men, however, wou not be robbed of the glee of running that la rapid, and, with just enough weight for balla in their canoes and boats, they would make til furious descent. At the head of the tramway on the Grar Rapids portage stands the Great House, facir old warehouses through which have passe millions of dollars’ worth of furs. The Gre, House is gambrel-roofed and is built of heavi timbered logs whitewashed. Round it is cellars. It picket fence ; below are wine dismantled and empty now but here no dou ; good wines abounded and big oaths rolled : the days when the lords of an unmapped empi: held sway. A glance at the map of the Hudson’s Be Company’s posts will show the extent of tl fur traders’ empire.