lla warfare of the Iroquois against the French.

By the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the whole of French America was
ceded to England, which also obtained possession of Florida from
Spain, in exchange for the Philippines, captured during the war.
As a compensation all the country west of the Mississippi became
joined on to the Spanish possessions in Mexico. These of course
became, nominally French when Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed
on the Spanish throne, but Napoleon sold them to the United States
in 1803, so that no barrier existed to the westward spread of the
States. Long previously to this, a Chartered Company had been formed
in 1670, with Prince Rupert at its head, to trade with the Indians
for furs in Hudson's Bay, then and for some time afterwards called
Rupertsland. The Hudson Bay Company gradually extended its knowledge
of the northerly parts of America towards the Rocky Mountains,
but it was not till 1740 that Varenne de la Varanderye discovered
their extent. In 1769-71 a fur trader named Hearne traced the river
Coppermine to the sea, while it was not till 1793 that Mr. (after
Sir A.) Mackenzie discovered the river now named after him, and
crossed the continent of North America from Atlantic to Pacific.
One of the reasons for this late exploration of the north-west of
North America was a geographical myth started by a Spanish voyager
named Juan de Fuca as early as 1592. Coasting as far as Vancouver
Island, he entered the inlet to the south of it, and not being
able to see land to the north, brought back a report of a huge sea
spreading over all that part of the country, which most geographers
assumed to pass over into Hudson Bay or the neighbourhood. It was
this report as much as anything which encouraged hopes of finding
the north-west passage in a latitude low enough to be free from
ice.

As soon as the United States got possession of the land west of
the Mississippi they began to explore it, and between 1804 and
1807 Lewis and Clarke had explored the whole basin of the Missouri,
while Pike had investigated the country between the sources of the
Mississippi and the Red River. We have already seen that Behring
had carried over Russian investigation and dominion into Alaska,
and it was in order to avoid her encroachments down towards the
Californian coast that President Monroe put forth in 1823 the doctrine
that no further colonisation of the Americas would be permitted by
the United States. In this year