, they were arrested and fined for illicit
trading. After a vain appeal to Paris, finding themselves rejected and
discredited among their own countrymen, the two adventurers performed
the first of those political somersaults which made them a nine days'
wonder alternately in London and Paris, and finally brought to one, at
least, an inglorious competency of L10 a month. Fifty eventful years
were, however, to roll past before that anti-climax to the drama of
their lives. To begin with, when they had shaken off the dust of New
France, they repaired to Boston, propounding to the New England
traders the novel scheme for furnishing an expedition to be sent round
to Hudson's Bay by way of the sea; at the same time offering their own
experience for service in the undertaking. Although disposed to favour
the proposal, the Boston merchants had no available ships of their
own, but advised an application to the English Court. Arriving in
England in 1667, the two friends were introduced by Lord Arlington,
then ambassador in Paris, to Prince Rupert, the natural patron of all
adventurers at the time, and who, moreover, was then expecting a grant
of territory in America as a reward for his services to the royal
cause. Already the merchants of London had been roused to the
possibilities of this trade by the recent arrival of the first cargo
of furs from New Amsterdam; and now when the two impartial Frenchmen
pointed out to them that the trade was being choked in Quebec, and
that England had a golden opportunity of profitable enterprise, two
vessels, the _Nonsuch_ and the _Eagle_, were fitted out without delay,
and one Captain Gillam received instructions to investigate and
report.

[Illustration: PRINCE OF WALES'S FORT, HUDSON'S BAY, 1777]

[Illustration: PRINCE RUPERT]

Such was the beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having spent a
winter at Fort Charles, the first fort on the Bay, so named after
the royal patron, the adventurers returned to England in 1670 with
such solid proofs of the soundness of the speculation, that the new
Company received a charter from the King under the title of "_The
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, Trading into Hudson's
Bay_." The Company were constituted lords and proprietors of the
territories round Hudson's Bay, now called Rupert's Land, having
powers like those of the feudal lords of an earlier time--"to employ
ships of war, to erect forts, to make reprisals, to send home English