The French fur traders found their best market in Russia and Poland; but the fur-wearing fashion “caught on” in France itself, and spread to England. Then it was found that the shorter hairs of the beaver made the finest felt, and beaver hats of many shapes became the rage. When English hatters took to mixing cheap rabbit fur with the more expensive material, a law was passed forbidding them to use anything but beaver. If silk had not taken its place, in the last century, the beaver would probably have been hunted out of existence in Canada. It disappeared from England hundreds of years ago, and very few are now left in northern Europe and Siberia. Even when the beaver’s fur was no longer wanted for felting, and there was choice of many fur animals for other purposes of luxurious clothing, it was still greatly sought after, and a few years ago the beaver was disappearing. Then Canadian governments forbade its capture for a while, and to-day our beaver colonies are growing fast. Look back now to the day when the beaver first became King of the West—when the Company settled on the shores of the Bay. The domain granted by Charles the Second to this company included “all the lands, countries, and territories upon the coasts and confines” of “all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks and sounds lying within the entrance of Hudson’s Straits,” excepting only such land as might be in the possession of other Christian nations. As we look on the map we see that the area thus granted included not only a strip of land two or three hundred miles wide around the eastern and southern shores of Hudson Bay, but an empire of forest and prairie stretching westward to the Rocky Mountains, where the Saskatchewan had its sources—a thousand miles across. Over the whole of this territory of “Rupert’s Land” the Company was to reign. Some of its powers were greater than the king himself dared to exercise in the mother-country. An absolute monopoly of trade; power to make laws, inflict punishment, plant colonies, build towns and forts, maintain armies—all these were conferred on Prince Rupert and his partners; and, to crown all, no British subject was so much as to set foot on the soil of Rupert’s Land without the Company’s written leave. The reason given for this imperial grant was that the Adventurers had “at theire owne great cost and charge undertaken an Expedition for the discovery of a new Passage into the South Sea, and for the finding some Trade for Furrs, Mineralls, and other considerable Commodityes,” by which the king hoped for “very great advantage” to himself and his kingdom. As rent for the whole vast domain the Company was to pay his Majesty “two elks and two black beavers” per annum. * * * * *