On the era prior to the Cession (1763) very few printed records of the Hudson's Bay Company exist. Most books on the later period--in which the conflict with the North-West Company took place--have cursory sketches of the early era, founded chiefly on data handed down by word of mouth among the servants and officers of the Company. On this early period the documents in Hudson's Bay House, London, must always be the prime authority. These documents consist in the main of the Minute Books of some two hundred years, the Letter Books, the Stock Books, the Memorial Books, and the Daily Journals kept from 1670 onwards by chief traders at every post and forwarded to London. There is also a great mass of unpublished material bearing on the adventurers in the Public Record Office, London. Transcripts of a few of these documents are to be found in the Canadian Archives, Ottawa, and in the Newberry Library, Chicago. Transcripts of four of the Radisson Journals--copied from the originals in the Bodleian Library, Oxford--are possessed by the Prince Society, Boston. Of modern histories dealing with the early era Beckles Willson's _The Great Company_ (1899), George Bryce's _Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_ (1900), and Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_ (1899) are the only works to be taken seriously. Willson's is marred by many errors due to a lack of local knowledge of the West. Bryce's work is free of these errors, but, having been issued before the Archives of Hudson's Bay House were open for more than a few weeks at a time, it lacks first-hand data from headquarters; though to Bryce must be given the honour of unearthing much of the early history of Radisson. Laut's _Conquest of the Great North-West_ contains more of the early period from first-hand sources than the other two works, and, indeed, follows up Bryce as pupil to master, but the author perhaps attempted to cover too vast a territory in too brief a space.