By such yearly functions, by gifts, and a sober friendliness never dissociated from the authority of the ruling race, the English company held its sway after the French had retired. [Illustration: SIR ALEXANDER MACKENZIE (Celebrated North-West explorer)] About this time, however, loud complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Vérendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though they smugly counted on their business virtue to attract, and their yearly gifts and patronage to allure the fur-hunting tribes. A world lay spread around them, and they remained at the doors of their posts and forts. No joy of the woods possessed them, no faith in the future drew them on; they followed the makers of Empire, guessing nothing of what Empire meant, hating their rivals for gifts they neither possessed nor desired. One Joseph Robson, who worked as surveyor in the northern forts in 1744, relates a conversation held that year with the captain at York Factory:-- "I expressed my surprise," he writes, "that the Company did not send Englishmen up the rivers to encourage and endear the natives, and by that means put a stop to the progress of the French....He said that he believed the French would have all the country in another century. To which I could not help immediately replying that such an alienation could only be effected through the remissness of the English." Robson next requested leave to travel inland; and "this brought on dismal tales of the difficulties to be encountered in such an expedition; and when I talked of going up rivers, I was told of stupendous heaps of ice and dreadful waterfalls, which would not only obstruct my passage but endanger my life. To confirm this, he said that Governor Maclish once attempted to go a little way up Nelson River to look for timber in order to build a factory, but found such heaps of ice in the river that they were discouraged from proceeding any higher."[42] Umfreville, the writer and traveller already quoted, likewise challenges the Company for its "total want of spirit, to push on its work with that vigour which the importance of the contest deserves. The merchants from Canada," he continues, "have been heard to acknowledge that were the Hudson's Bay Company to prosecute their trade in a spirited manner, they must be soon obliged to give up all thoughts of penetrating into the country; as from the vicinity of the Company's factories to the inland parts, they can afford to undersell them in every branch." [Footnote 42: Robson, _Six Years' Residence in Hudson's Bay_, 1752.]