tand on prow or stern and far as eye can see is
naught but reeds and waterways, waterways and reeds.

Below the muskeg country lies Cumberland Lake. At its widest the lake is
some forty miles across, but by skirting from island to island boatmen
could make a crossing of only twenty-three miles. Far to the south is
the blue rim of the Pas mountain, named from the Indian word Pasquia,
meaning open country.

Hendry's canoes were literally loaded with peltry when he drew in at the
Pas. There he learned a bitter lesson on the meaning of a rival's
suavity. The French plied his Indians with brandy, then picked out a
thousand of his best skins, a trick that cost the Hudson's Bay Company
some of its profit.

On June 1 the canoes once more set out for York. With the rain-swollen
current the paddlers easily made fast time and reached York on June 20.
James Isham, the governor of the fort, realized that his men had brought
down a good cargo of furs, but when Hendry began to talk of Indians on
horseback, he was laughed out of the service. Who had ever heard of
Indians on horseback? The Company voted Hendry L20 reward, and Isham by
discrediting Hendry's report probably thought to save himself the
trouble of going inland.

But the unseen destiny of world movement rudely disturbed the lazy
trader's indolent dream. In four years French power fell at Quebec, and
the wildwood rovers of the St Lawrence, unrestricted by the new
government and soon organized under the leadership of Scottish merchants
at Montreal, invaded the sacred precincts of the Company's inmost
preserve.

In other volumes of this Series we shall learn more of the fur lords and
explorers in the great West and North of Canada; of the fierce warfare
between the rival traders; of the opening up of great rivers to
commerce, and of the founding of colonies that were to grow into
commonwealths. We shall witness the gradual, stubborn, and unwilling
retreat of the fur trade before the onmarching settler, until at last
the Dominion government took over the vast domain known as Rupert's
Land, and the Company, founded by the courtiers of King Charles and
given absolute sway over an empire, fell to the status of an ordinary
commercial organization.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

On the era prior to the Cession (1763) very few printed records of the
Hudson's Bay Company exist. Most books on the later period--in which the
conflict with the North-West Company took place--have c