North-Western America 7

Lakes and westward over the prairies along two main lines
of travel.

The French monopoly was encroached upon in 1670
when Charles II. granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company,
headed by Prince Rupert, the Duke of Albemarle, Earl
Craven and others, exclusive control of the trade, commerce,
waters and lands lying within the entrance of Hudson Strait,
which were not actually possessed by the subjects of the
English king or any other Christian prince or state. This
organisation, although it made no serious attempt to explore
and possess the country west of Hudson Bay until 1772,
nevertheless met with much opposition from the French
during the first century of its existence.

As a matter of fact the French, led by the Vérendryes,
had executed a flank movement as early as 1731, establishing
posts which cut off the company’s supplies of furs in the
rear, without active interference from that corporation during
French rule. The first recorded meeting of a representative
of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the French traders west
of the Great Lakes occurred in 1754-5 when Anthony
Hendry, the first Englishman to emerge on the Saskatchewan,
encountered de la Corne at Pasquia, a French post on the
lower Saskatchewan; and it was not until nine years after
British traders had established themselves on the old French
locations that the Hudson’s Bay Company took action.

In 1727 the French Government became sufficiently
interested in the possibilities of the unexplored western
country, and the reports of a salt sea lying in that direction,
to commission Father Charlevoix to make inquiries among
all the Canadian posts regarding the existence of such a body
of water, as a result of which an expedition left Montreal
in June for the headquarters of the Mississippi where Fort

Beauharnois was established among the Sioux. This was to
B