Tue Last Years 161

as successors to the French and had opened
it for trade, were calmly told that they had
no right to be there and that they must clear
out when they were ordered to do so. A vote
at a shareholders’ meeting in London and a
few strokes of the pen had made them aliens
in their own territory. Were legal quibbles
and musty parchments to prevent them from
holding what they had? Both parties pre-
pared to fight; as the contest went on passions
were aroused, and both parties used any
means to attain their end.

One need not enter here into the course of
the struggle. It was fought in the North-West
and in the courts of Canada, and Mackenzie
remained in Great Britain. In its length and
fury it far exceeded the struggles of the
past between rival Canadian traders. Its
scope was soon extended beyond the issue of
the foundation of a colony on the Red River;
the Hudson’s Bay Company began to com-
pete in the whole area of the fur-trade east of
the Rockies, building posts wherever the
North West Company was established. The
contest flamed at times into open war, and the