nticipations of reaching the
East held only by the sailors.

La Salle, when he fitted out his expeditions from the Island of Montreal
for the West, named his point of departure La Chine, so certain was he
that his canoes would eventually reach Cathay. And La Chine still exists
to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent,
reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt
another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast
volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their
unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water
must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might
the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of
arduous toil through swamp and forest, he stood at last on the low shores
of the Mississippi and beheld in thought the enormous space which lay
between him and the spot where such a river had its birth.

The East--it was always the East. Columbus had said the world was not so
large as the common herd believed it, and yet when he had increased it by
a continent he tried to make it smaller than it really was. So fixed were
men's minds upon the East, that it was long before they would think of
turning to account the discoveries of those early navigators. But in time
there came to the markets of Europe the products of the New World. The
gold and the silver of Mexico and the rich sables of the frozen North
found their way into the marts of Western Europe. And while Drake
plundered galleons from the Spanish Main, England and France commenced
their career of rivalry for the possession of that trade in furs and
peltries which had its sources round the icy shores of the Bay of Hudson.
It was reserved however for the fiery Prince Rupert to carry into effect
the idea of opening up the North-west. Through the ocean of Hudson Bay.

Somewhere about 200 years ago a ship sailed away from England bearing in
it a company of adventurers sent out to form a colony upon the southern
shores of James's Bay. These men named the new land after the Prince who
sent them forth, and were the pioneers of that "Hon. Company of
Adventurers from England trading into Hudson Bay."

More than forty years previous to the date of the charter by which
Charles II. conferred the territory of Rupert's Land upon the London
company, a similar grant had been made by the French monarch, Louis
XIII, to "L