f an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
September he reached the country of the Newatamipoets, and presented
to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
of Hudson Bay.

The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
Hendry.[2] Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan--the first
Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".[3]
Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
of the French Canadians.

[Footnote 2: The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
must be made between the _Anthony_ Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated _Alexander_ Henry
the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
occurred between 1799 and 1814.]

[Footnote 3: _The Search for the Western Sea_, by Lawrence J. Burpee.]

[Illustration: Map of EASTERN CANADA and NEWFOUNDLAND]

The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
was a thorn in the side o