The history of this northwest, whose rolling prairies now constitute so large a proportion of the wealth of Canada was, until 1867, entirely the history of the fur trade. Two centuries and a half ago a company of traders, known as the "honourable company of adventurers from England trading into Hudson's Bay," received from Charles II. a royal licence in what was long known as Rupert's Land, and first raised its forts on the inhospitable shores of the great bay, only accessible to European vessels during the summer months. Among the prominent members of this company was the cousin of the King, Prince Rupert, that gallant cavalier. The French in the valley of the St. Lawrence looked with jealousy on these efforts of the English to establish themselves at the north, and Le Moyne d'Iberville, that daring Canadian, had destroyed their trading-posts. Still the Hudson's Bay Company persevered in their enterprise, and rebuilt their forts where they carried on a very lucrative trade with the Indians who came from all parts of that northern region to barter their rich furs for the excellent goods which the company always supplied to the natives. In the meantime, while the English were established at the north, French adventurers, the Sieur de La Verendrye, a native of Three Rivers, and his two sons, reached the interior of the northwest by the way of Lake Superior and that chain of lakes and rivers which extends from Thunder Bay {382} to Lake Winnipeg. These adventurous Frenchmen raised rude posts by the lakes and rivers of this region, and Verendrye's sons are said to have extended their explorations in January, 1743, to what was probably the Bighorn Range, an outlying buttress of the Rocky Mountains, running athwart the sources of the Yellowstone. The wars between France and England, however, stopped French trade in that northwestern region, and the Hudson's Bay Company's posts at the north were the only signs of European occupation when Wolfe and Montcalm fell on the Plains of Abraham, and the fleur-de-lis was struck on the old fort of the Canadian capital.