Respectfully, MARTIN HUNTER. CANADIAN WILDS. CHAPTER I. THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. The Hudson's Bay Company was incorporated in the year 1670 and received its charter from Charles the Second, making it today the longest united company that ever existed in the world. In 1867 when the different provinces of old Canada were brought under the Dominion Confederation, the Company ceded its exclusive rights, as per its charter, to the government of Canada, making this vast territory over which the Company had held sway for nearly two hundred years, free for hunters, trappers and traders. Prince Rupert, of England, was associated with the first body of "Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay," for such were they designated in the charter and the charter gave them the right to trade on all rivers and their tributaries flowing into Hudson's Bay. They established their first forts or factories at the mouths of the principal rivers that fall into the bay on the east, south and west shores, such as East Main, Rupert's, Moose, Albany, Churchill and a few intermediate small outposts along the seashore. They endeavored to draw the interior Indians down to the coast to trade but after a few years they found that the long journey to the factories took up so much of the Indian's time and left them, after their return to their hunting grounds, so exhausted from their strenuous exertions in negotiating the turbulent and swift flowing waters, that the company's management decided to stretch out and establish trading places up the different rivers. This small beginning of a post or two up each river was gradually continued ever further south, ever further west, as the requirements of the fur trade necessitated, there the company pushed in and followed their own flag, a blood red ground with H. B. C. in white block letters in the center. This flag is known from Labrador to the Pacific and from the St. Lawrence river to the Arctic regions. Several would-be wits have given these mysterious letters odd meanings. Among several I call to memory, "Here Before Christ," "Hungry Belly Company" and "Here Before Columbus." Two ships visited the Bay each summer bringing supplies for the next winter and taking back to England the furs and oil collected during the past season. The coming of these ships, one to York Factory and the other to Moose Factory, was the event of the year as they brought the only mail the "Winterers" received from friends and relatives in far away Old England. Navigating the Bay was done pretty much by the rule of "Thumb." Notwithstanding its being one of the most dangerous bodies of water in America it is wonderful (now that the Bay is fairly well charted and shows up most of the dangerous reefs and shoals) how few accidents these old navigators had in taking their ships in and out of the Bay.