to sail beyond where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the north-west passage to China.  Instead he found the way into Hudson’s Bay.  Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to England with the news of his discovery.  Hudson was never heard of again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no punishment.

Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol, notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES, mapped the coasts of Hudson’s Bay and Baffin’s Bay and brought to the notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the region of Hudson’s Bay.

This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson, whose adventures will later on be described.  Radisson, conceiving himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.  They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the first cargo of furs from Hudson’s Bay.  This cargo so completely met the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in 1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay, a company chartered by Charles II and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of the present Dominion of Canada.

CHAPTER IV

Champlain and the Foundation of Canada

From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade.  Amongst these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Grave.  De Chastes dispatched with Pont-Grave a young man whose acquaintance he had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.[1] This was the man who, more than any other, created French Canada.

[Footnote 1:  Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain.  The title of Sieur (from the Latin Senior) is the origin of the English “sir”, and is about equivalent to an English baronetcy.]