They were soon off again, however, on another extended trading expedition, this time to build a palisaded fort among savage tribes living north of Lake Superior and eventually to cross the wilderness to Hudson’s Bay. Radisson’s account of the perils encountered on this venture puts one in mind of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece--and the tale’s denouement is no less reminiscent of that ancient Greek legend. In any case, the brothers-in-law took along a particularly fine supply of merchandise on this expedition into what is now northwestern Ontario--knives, hatchets and swords, ivory combs and tin looking-glasses, awls, and needles--all those things designed to send the red men in breathless pursuit of beaver. And, when they returned home, they had the greatest single cargo of pelts ever before seen in America. Their convoy included a great fleet of fur-laden canoes, requiring hundreds of Indians to paddle them. Such a kingly treasure was too much for the grasping French governor at Quebec to resist. What he couldn’t take away from Radisson and Des Grosseilliers in taxes he took away in fines. This, he informed them, was because they had gone on their journey without his personal permission. The share left for the two traders, who had taken the risks, opened the country and brought back the beaver, hardly compensated them for their labor. They quit Canada in disgust to cast their lot with the English, the important consequence of which was the birth of the great Hudson’s Bay Company. Radisson and his brother-in-law first spent some time trying to interest merchants in Nova Scotia, then under British control, in establishing a fur trading post on Hudson’s Bay. An expedition did set out in an English ship but the captain turned back on encountering ice floes, due to the lateness of the season. Then the Frenchmen went to Boston, where they gained considerable interest in their project but not enough capital to launch it. Finally, in England, they obtained sufficient backing from Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles II, to finance such a costly adventure. In 1668 a trading post was established “at the bottom of Hudson’s Bay,” in the southernmost part of James Bay, and the first cargo of furs to arrive in England was magnificent enough to insure a royal charter. The king granted domain over all the vast area drained by waters flowing into Hudson’s Bay to Prince Rupert and seventeen associates, incorporating them in 1670 as the “Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading in Hudson’s Bay.” These merchant adventurers became virtual rulers over “Rupert’s Land,” approximately 1,400,000 square miles of territory, and so their successors of the Hudson’s Bay Company were to be for over 200 years.