or a blanket. Profits were
great, and with the margin of gain so enormous, jealousies and quarrels
without number were certain to arise between rival fur traders.

[Illustration: Joseph Frobisher, a partner in the North-West Company.
From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library.]

The right to the fur trade in America had been granted--given away, as
the English of the time thought--by the hand of Charles II of England.
In prodigal fashion Charles {23} conceded, in 1670, a charter, which
conveyed extensive lands, with the privileges of monopoly, to the
'Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' But if
the courtiers of the Merry Monarch had any notion that he could thus
exclude all others from the field, their dream was an empty one.
England had an active rival in France, and French traders penetrated
into the region granted to the Hudson's Bay Company. Towards the close
of the seventeenth century Le Moyne d'Iberville was making conquests on
Hudson Bay for the French king, and Greysolon Du Lhut was carrying on
successful trading operations in the vicinity of Lakes Nipigon and
Superior. Even after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) had given the Hudson
Bay territories to the English, the French-Canadian explorer La
Verendrye entered the forbidden lands, and penetrated to the more
remote west. A new situation arose after the British conquest of
Canada during the Seven Years' War. Plucky independent traders, mostly
of Scottish birth, now began to follow the watercourses which led from
the rapids of Lachine on the St Lawrence to the country beyond Lake
Superior. These men treated with disdain the royal charter of the
Hudson's {24} Bay Company. In 1783 a group of them united to form the
North-West Company, with headquarters at Montreal. The organization
grew in strength and became the most powerful antagonist of the older
company, and the open feud between the two spread through the wide
region from the Great Lakes to the slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

The Nor'westers, as the partners and servants of the North-West Company
were called, were bold competitors. Their enthusiasm for the conflict
was all the more eager because their trade was regarded as illicit by
their rivals. There was singleness of purpose in their ranks; almost
every man in the service had been tried and proved. All the Montreal
partners of the company had taken the long trip to the Grand Portage, a
transit stat