it is pleasantly supposed that British laws
and British virtues are in the ascendant, for
the government of which territory a royal
charter was granted, having for one of its
expressed objects the public good of the
people — in this land, we say, the Indians
who have grown old in the service of
the Company are deprived, amidst their
infirmities, of the means of supporting
themselves ; and, failing this, famine and
disease sweep them away from the face of
the earth.

It is not without interest just at this
moment to find that one of the conditions upon
which the Hudson's Bay Company held their
charter, was that they should despatch ships
for the discovery of a north-west passage.
Nor will it be of less interest to notice in
what manner this Company were reported to
have been the cause of the offer of a premium
of twenty thousand pounds by the British
Government to any one who should succeed
in the attempt. It appears certain that,
during the first hundred years of their charter,
this Company made no more than two
attempts at Arctic discovery; the last having
been made in the year seventeen hundred and
sixty-nine, and the account of which was not
published until after a lapse of twenty-six
years. At the end of another period of
forty-six years their third Arctic expedition
was undertaken; being by a curious
coincidence set on foot in the same year in
which they made application for a renewal
of their license for exclusive trade; and,
moreover, at about the same time that
another expedition was being fitted out by
the Government under Captain Back. It is
not less singular and significant that their
next and latest expedition to the Arctic
regions, under Dr. Rae, was undertaken
simultaneously with that which in eighteen
hundred and forty-six went out under
Captain Sir John Franklin, and concerning which
so much painful suspense has been felt. In
this way we perceive that, during a period
of little less than two hundred years, the
Hudson's Bay Company have set on foot four
expeditions for the purpose of Arctic
discovery.

It is related in a chapter of Middleton's
Geography, published in seventeen hundred
and seventy-one — though we would hope
without good grounds for the statement —
that it was a matter of public notoriety
that Captain Middleton, who in seventeen
hundred and forty had been sent by the
Government upon a voyage of Arctic discovery,
was charged with having received a sum of
money as a bribe from the members of the
then company to defeat or conceal the success
of the undertaking; and that the Government,
in order to preclude the recurrence of
such bribery, passed an Act for the encouragement
of attempts to discover the north-west
passage, with a liberal premium as the
reward of the successful adventurer. However
little credit we may be disposed to give to
the impression of bribery alluded to, the
story at any rate shows what the popular
opinion was in those days concerning the
morale of the Company.

Having thus sketched the operations of
this Company, it now only remains to
examine the course taken by the North
American fur trader on this side the Atlantic.
London is the great centre of this, not
less than other branches of commerce.
Hither come the investments of the
Hudson's Bay Company, of the United States
dealers, and of those from Russia and Russian
America. Here, too, the dealings lie within
a limited space. Twice a year, sales of furs
take place by two parties; one of those is
the Company, the other, a gentleman who
conducts the sales of all the skins belonging
to private traders which find their way into
the country. Between these two, the trade
is about equally divided; each disposing of
furs to the yearly value of half a million
sterling in this market.

For a month or six weeks previous to each
of these periodical sales, the noble pile of
buildings devoted to the reception and assortment
of private importers' goods, presents an
animated and interesting appearance. Lofty,
well-aired warerooms are thickly studded
with wooden stands, piled up with countless
skins of every colour and quality. The visitor
may there find skins of the same animals
ranging in value from sixpence to forty
pounds. One would imagine that nothing
could be easier than to detect this amazing
difference, and such indeed is the case with
the party of workpeople employed at a long
table with piles of pretty looking furs before
them. These skilled hands have but to glide
their fingers through the hairy covering of
the skin, and with one sharp, experienced
glance, its classification into first, second,
third, or fourth class quality is at once
determined; yet the eye of the stranger would
not be able, at first, to detect the varieties.
And so, no doubt, it happens with the
Indians and Trappers of America, who value
all beaver skins, or martens' tails, by one
universal standard. The private importations
here spoken of, are the skins purchased by
the American citizens of the States of their
Indian neighbours and shipped from New
York chiefly.

Attending these bi-annual sales, are to be
seen a motley crowd of Germans, Parisians,
Turks, Russians, Greeks, and a sprinkling of
our own countrymen for the supply of the
home trade. Particular markets take off
particular qualities and kinds of skins. The
finest of any are sold at enormous, almost
fabulous prices, for the Russians; the emperor
and chief nobles of which country care
only for such furs as are too costly, on
account of their scarcity, to be within the
reach of any other class of wearers. Bear