Towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, the merchants of Canada, who were individually dealing in furs, formed an association which, under the title of the Northwest Company, was long the rival of the Hudson's Bay adventurers. Both these companies were composed of Englishmen and Scotchmen, but they were nevertheless bitter enemies, engaged as they were in the same business in the wilderness. The employes of the Hudson's Bay Company were chiefly Scotch, while the Canadian Company found in the French Canadian population that class of men whom it believed to be most suitable to a forest life. The differences in the nationality and religion of the servants of the companies only tended to intensify the bitterness of the competition, and at last led to scenes of tumult and bloodshed. The Northwest Company found their way to the interior of Rupert's Land by the Ottawa River and the Great Lakes. Their posts were seen {383} by the Assiniboine and Red rivers, even in the Saskatchewan and Athabascan districts, and in the valley of the Columbia among the mountains of the great province which bears the name of that noble stream. The Mackenzie River was discovered and followed to the Arctic Sea by one of the members of the Northwest Company, whose name it has always borne. At a later time a trader, Simon Fraser, first ventured on the river whose name now recalls his famous journey, and David Thompson, a surveyor of the Northwest Company, discovered the river of the same name. Previous, however, to these perilous voyages, the Hudson's Bay Company had been forced by the enterprise of its rival to reach the interior and compete for the fur traffic which was being so largely controlled by the Canadian Company. In 1771, Samuel Hearne, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's employes, discovered the Coppermine River, and three years later established a fort on the Saskatchewan, still known as Cumberland House. In later years, Sir John Franklin, George Back, and Thomas Simpson added largely to the geographical knowledge of the northern parts of the great region watered by the Coppermine, the Great Fish--also called the Back,--and other streams which fall into the Arctic Seas. As we glance at the map of this vast region, we still see the names of the numerous posts where the servants of the fur companies passed their solitary lives, only relieved by the periodical visits of Indian trappers, and the arrival of the "trains" of dogs with supplies from Hudson's Bay. Forts Enterprise, Providence, Good {384} Hope, and Resolution are among the names of posts which tell in eloquent terms the story of the courage, endurance, and hope that first planted them throughout that solitary land.