t Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but is captured by the
French--Frightful Death of Norton and Suicide of Matonabbee

For a hundred years after receiving its charter to exploit the furs of
the North, the Hudson's Bay Company slumbered on the edge of a frozen
sea.

Its fur posts were scattered round the desolate shores of the Northern
bay like beads on a string; but the languid Company never attempted to
penetrate the unknown lands beyond the coast. It was unnecessary. The
Indians came to the Company. The company did not need to go to the
Indians. Just as surely as spring cleared the rivers of ice and set
the unlocked torrents rushing to the sea, there floated down-stream
Indian dugout and birch canoe, loaded with wealth of peltries for the
fur posts of the English Company. So the English sat snugly secure
inside their stockades, lords of the wilderness, and drove a thriving
trade with folded hands. For a penny knife, they bought a beaver skin;
and the skin sold in Europe for two or three shillings. The trade of
the old Company was not brisk; but it paid.

[Illustration: An Eskimo Belle. Note the apron of ermine and sable].

It was the prod of keen French traders that stirred the slumbering
giant. In his search for the Western Sea, De la Verendrye had pushed
west by way of the Great Lakes to the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains
and the Saskatchewan. Henceforth, not so many furs came down-stream to
the English Company on the bay. De la Verendrye had been followed by
hosts of free-lances--_coureurs_ and _voyageurs_--who spread through
the wilderness from the Missouri to the Athabasca, intercepting the
fleets of furs that formerly went to Hudson Bay. The English Company
rubbed its eyes; and rivals at home began to ask what had been done in
return for the charter. France had never ceased seeking the mythical
Western Sea that was supposed to lie just beyond the Mississippi; and
when French buccaneers destroyed the English Company's forts on the
bay, the English ambassador at Paris exacted such an enormous bill of
damages that the Hudson Bay traders were enabled to build a stronger
fortress up at Prince of Wales on the mouth of Churchill River than the
French themselves possessed at Quebec on the St. Lawrence. What--asked
the rivals of the Company in London--had been done in return for such
national protection? France had discovered and explored a whole new
world north of the Missouri. What had the E