Massachusetts Colony was not fifty years old when the _Nonsuch_, loaded to the waterline with the first cargo of furs, sailed for England from Hudson Bay. The success of the voyage led the dukes and lords who backed the venture to ask King Charles II for a charter. This was granted in 1670, and thus came into existence, so far as the word of a king could make it so, “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay,” exclusive lords and proprietors of a vast and but vaguely known region extending from Hudson Bay westward, with sole rights to fish, hunt, and trade therein. It remained for the Company to make good the privileges conferred by the charter and maintain the profits, which at that period sometimes amounted to one hundred per cent. a year. For nearly a century the company’s ships and forts did battle with the armed forces of the French. For another long period its factors and traders had to meet the attacks of rival companies. At times the company was nearly wiped out by the heavy losses it sustained. For almost two centuries it furnished the only government of the Canadian Northwest, and without the use of a standing army it administered a vast region, out of which provinces and territories have since been carved. The “Company of Adventurers” has now become a fifteen million dollar corporation, paying regularly five per cent. on ten million dollars’ worth of preferred stock. A fleet of river, lake, and ocean steamers has succeeded the _Nonsuch_. The early trading posts, stocked with crude tools, weapons, and ornaments for the Indians, have been supplemented by a chain of eleven department stores, extending from Winnipeg to Vancouver, and at the same time the number of trading posts exchanging goods for furs is greater than ever. There are about two hundred of these posts, eighteen of which are near or north of the arctic circle. The Company no longer actually governs any territory, and it is selling to settlers the remainder of the seven million acres in the fertile belt it has received from the Dominion since the surrender of its ancient rights in the Northwest. The story of the Hudson’s Bay Company is a large part of the history of Canada. Many books have been written about it, and countless romances built upon the lives of its men stationed in the wilds. Here at Winnipeg the company has an historical exhibit where one may visualize the life of the trappers and the traders, and gain an idea of the adventures that are still commonplaces in their day’s work. The company museum contains specimen skins of every kind of Canadian fur-bearing animal. The life of the Indians and the Eskimos is reproduced through the exhibits of their tools, boats, weapons, and housekeeping equipment.