on territory or trade. They yawned and
were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though
they smugly counted on their business virtue to attract, and their
yearly gifts and patronage to allure the fur-hunting tribes. A world
lay spread around them, and they remained at the doors of their posts
and forts. No joy of the woods possessed them, no faith in the future
drew them on; they followed the makers of Empire, guessing nothing of
what Empire meant, hating their rivals for gifts they neither
possessed nor desired. One Joseph Robson, who worked as surveyor in
the northern forts in 1744, relates a conversation held that year with
the captain at York Factory:--

"I expressed my surprise," he writes, "that the Company
did not send Englishmen up the rivers to encourage and
endear the natives, and by that means put a stop to the
progress of the French....He said that he believed the
French would have all the country in another century. To
which I could not help immediately replying that such an
alienation could only be effected through the remissness
of the English." Robson next requested leave to travel
inland; and "this brought on dismal tales of the
difficulties to be encountered in such an expedition; and
when I talked of going up rivers, I was told of
stupendous heaps of ice and dreadful waterfalls, which
would not only obstruct my passage but endanger my life.
To confirm this, he said that Governor Maclish once
attempted to go a little way up Nelson River to look for
timber in order to build a factory, but found such heaps
of ice in the river that they were discouraged from
proceeding any higher."[42]

Umfreville, the writer and traveller already quoted, likewise
challenges the Company for its "total want of spirit, to push on its
work with that vigour which the importance of the contest deserves.
The merchants from Canada," he continues, "have been heard to
acknowledge that were the Hudson's Bay Company to prosecute their
trade in a spirited manner, they must be soon obliged to give up all
thoughts of penetrating into the country; as from the vicinity of the
Company's factories to the inland parts, they can afford to undersell
them in every branch."

[Footnote 42: Robson, _Six Years' Residence in Hudson's Bay_, 1752.]

[Illustration: Sir John Colborne, (afterwards Lord Seaton)
Governor General of Canada 1838-1841.]

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