While Anthony Hendry, the English smuggler, was making his way up the Saskatchewan to the land of the Blackfeet—the present province of Alberta—the English Adventurers were busy making good their claim to Labrador. Except as a summer rendezvous, Rupert, the oldest of the Company’s forts, at the southeast corner of the bay—had been abandoned, but far up the coast of Labrador on the wildest part of this desolate shore, was that fort which the Company was shortly forced to dismantle at great loss—Richmond. When Captain Coates was sent to cruise the east coast of Hudson Bay, thirty men under John Potts and Mr. Pollexfen, had been left on Richmond Gulf to build a fort. There was no more dangerous region on the bay. It was here Hudson’s crew had been attacked by the Eskimos, and here the Eskimos yearly came to winter and hunt the white whale. Between the rugged main shore and the outer line of barren islands was usually open water. Camped on the rocky islets, the timid Eskimos were secure from Indian foe, and if the white whale fisheries failed, they had only to scud across the open water or portage over the ice to the mainland and hunt partridge on Richmond Gulf. From one hundred and fifty to three hundred Eskimos yearly wintered within trading distance of Richmond. Quickly, storehouses, barracks, wareroom and guardroom were erected just inside the narrow entrance from Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf, and round all thrown a ten-foot palisade. This was in 1749. Coates had been attracted to Richmond Gulf—which he calls Artiwinipack—by its land-locked, sheltered position and the magnificent supply of lumber for building. The Eskimo whale fisheries were farther south at Whale River and East Main, with winter lodges subordinate to Richmond. The partridges of the wooded slopes promised abundance of food, and there was excellent fox and beaver trapping. Compared to the other rocky barrens of northern Labrador, Richmond Harbor seemed Paradise, “_but oh, my conscience_,” wrote Captain Coates, “_there is so profound silence, such awful precipices, no life, that the world seems asleep. The land is so tremendous high that wind and water reverberate between the cliffs entering two miles to our gulf. Inside are mountains, groves, cascades and vales adorned with trees. On the Hudson Bay side nothing is seen but barren rocks. Inside, all is green with stately woods.... On the high mountains is only snow moss; lower, a sort of rye grass, some snow drops and violets without odor, then rows of evergreens down to the very sea. On the right of the gulf is Lady Lake’s Grove under a stupendous mountain, whence falls a cascade through the grove to the sea. In short, such is the elegant situation of Richmond Fort that it is not to be paralleled in the world._”