ss all about him in flames and his musket
stock blazing. Once he met two grizzly bears at close quarters. The
bears had no acquired instinct of danger from powder and stood ground.
The Indians dashed for trees. Kelsey fired twice from behind bunch
willows, wounded both brutes, and won for himself the name of
honour--Little Giant. Joining the main camp of Assiniboines at the end
of August, Kelsey presented the Indian chief with a lace coat, a cap,
guns, knives, and powder, and invited the tribe to go down to the Bay.
The expedition won Kelsey instant promotion.

Our old friend Radisson, from the time we last saw him--when 'the
Committee had discourse with him till dinner'--lived on in London,
receiving a quarterly allowance of L12 10s. from the Company; occasional
gratuities for his services, and presents of furs to Madame Radisson are
also recorded. The last entry of the payment of his quarterly allowance
is dated March 29, 1710. Then, on July 12, comes a momentous entry: 'the
Sec. is ordered to pay Mr Radisson's widow as charity the sum of L6.' At
some time between March 29 and July 12 the old pathfinder had set out on
his last journey. Small profit his heirs reaped for his labours.
Nineteen years later, September 24, 1729, the secretary was again
ordered to pay 'the widow of Peter Radisson L10 as charity, she being
very ill and in great want.'

Meanwhile hostilities had been resumed between France and England; but
the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought the game of war again to a pause
and restored Hudson Bay to England. The Company received back all its
forts on the Bay; but the treaty did not define the boundaries to be
observed between the fur traders of Quebec pressing north and the fur
traders of the Bay pressing south, and this unsettled point proved a
source of friction in after years.

After the treaty the adventurers deemed it wise to strengthen all their
forts. Moose, Albany, and Nelson, and two other forts recently
established--Henley House and East Main--were equipped with stone
bastions; and when Churchill was built later, where Munck the Dane had
wintered, its walls of solid stone were made stronger than Quebec's, and
it was mounted with enough large guns to withstand a siege of European
fleets of that day.

The Company now regularly sent ships to Russia; and from Russia the
adventurers must have heard of Peter the Great's plan to find the North
Passage. The finding of the Passage had been one of the r