For years there was sharp contest whether the terminus on the Bay should be Nelson or Churchill. Churchill is one of the best harbors in the world, land locked, rock protected and fathomless; and Nelson is probably one of the worst--shallow, with sand bars caused by the confluence of the two great rivers emptying here, exposed to open sea. But the balance of favor on the Bay is how long can navigation be kept open. Navigation is open a month earlier and a month later at Nelson than at Churchill; so the Dominion dredges have gone to work to make Nelson a fit harbor. How long is navigation open on the Bay? The Dominion government has sent three expeditions to ascertain this, though data might have been obtained from the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company covering the record of over two hundred years. Both the Archives and the official expeditions record the same--navigation opens between the middle of May and the first of June, and closes about the end of October. Seasons have been known when navigation remained open till New Year's, but this was unusual. So as far as the opening and closing of navigation is considered, the Hudson Bay route is not far different from the Great Lakes. Hudson Bay itself is in area about the size of the Mediterranean. Because it is so far north the impression prevails that it is afloat with ice. This is a false impression. Hudson Bay lies in the same latitude as the North Sea and the Baltic, which are freighted with Russian and German commerce, but the climate, of course, is colder. The ice, which has given the great inland sea its ill repute, comes from the Pole and goes out through the Straits, seldom coming down the Bay in the season of navigation. The Straits are the real crux of the Hudson Bay route to Europe, and there is no narrow neck of land to cut a way of escape through to open sea as at Kiel and Cape Cod. The Straits have been navigated by fur-traders since 1670, but the fur-traders could take a week or a month to the four hundred and fifty miles of Straits. They could afford the time to float back and forward with the ice packs for six weeks, and as many as seven vessels have been wrecked in ten years. To this tale of wreckage in the Straits, friends of the Hudson Bay route answer as follows: