isions of Acadia and
Canada, and it became the immediate duty of its public men to complete
the union by the admission of Prince Edward Island and British
Columbia, and by the acquisition of the vast region which had been so
long under the rule of a company of fur-traders. In the language of
the eloquent Irishman, Lord Dufferin, when governor-general, "the
historical territories of the Canadas--the eastern sea-boards of New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Labrador--the Laurentian lakes and valleys,
corn lands and pastures, though themselves more extensive than half a
dozen European kingdoms, were but the vestibules and antechambers to
that, till then, undreamt {381} of dominion whose illimitable
dimensions alike confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the
verification of the explorer."

The history of this northwest, whose rolling prairies now constitute so
large a proportion of the wealth of Canada was, until 1867, entirely
the history of the fur trade. Two centuries and a half ago a company
of traders, known as the "honourable company of adventurers from
England trading into Hudson's Bay," received from Charles II. a royal
licence in what was long known as Rupert's Land, and first raised its
forts on the inhospitable shores of the great bay, only accessible to
European vessels during the summer months. Among the prominent members
of this company was the cousin of the King, Prince Rupert, that gallant
cavalier. The French in the valley of the St. Lawrence looked with
jealousy on these efforts of the English to establish themselves at the
north, and Le Moyne d'Iberville, that daring Canadian, had destroyed
their trading-posts. Still the Hudson's Bay Company persevered in
their enterprise, and rebuilt their forts where they carried on a very
lucrative trade with the Indians who came from all parts of that
northern region to barter their rich furs for the excellent goods which
the company always supplied to the natives. In the meantime, while the
English were established at the north, French adventurers, the Sieur de
La Verendrye, a native of Three Rivers, and his two sons, reached the
interior of the northwest by the way of Lake Superior and that chain of
lakes and rivers which extends from Thunder Bay {382} to Lake Winnipeg.
These adventurous Frenchmen raised rude posts by the lakes and rivers
of this region, and Verendrye's sons are said to have extended their
explorations in January, 1743, to what was probably t