Le Moyne d’Iberville’s French Rangers and Canadian Wood-runners Besieging Fort Nelson 90 Bienville 106 Photograph of the Copy of Radisson’s Voyage 114 Rupert House 130 Copy of Robson’s Drawing of York Harbor 170 Silver Fox Skins 178 Montagu House 202 Petition of the H. B. C. Signed by Churchill, or Marlborough 218 Terms of Surrender Between Le Moyne d’Iberville and Governor Walsh at York Fort 234 Radisson’s House 258 Fort Rae, on Great Slave Lake 362 Traders Leaving Athabasca Landing 378 FOREWORD It has become almost a truism to say that no complete account of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers has yet been written. I have often wondered if the people who repeated that statement knew what they meant. The empire of the fur trade Adventurers was not confined to Rupert’s Land, as specified by their charter. Lords of the Outer Marches, these gay Gentlemen Adventurers setting sail over the seas of the Unknown, Soldiers of Fortune with a laugh for life or death carving a path through the wilderness—were not to be checked by the mere fiction of limits set by a charter. They followed the rivers of their bay south to the height of land, and looking over it saw the unoccupied territory of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. It was American territory; but what did that matter? Over they marched and took possession in Minnesota and the two Dakotas and Montana. This region was reached by way of Albany River. Then they followed the Saskatchewan up and looked over its height of land. To the north were MacKenzie River and the Yukon; to the west, the Fraser and the Columbia. By no feat of imagination could the charter be stretched to these regions. Canadian merchants were on the field in MacKenzie River. Russians claimed Alaska. Americans claimed Oregon down as far as the Spanish Settlements; but these things did not matter. The Hudson’s Bay Adventurers went over the barriers of mountains and statecraft, and founding their fur empire of wildwood rovers, took toll of the wilderness in cargoes of precious furs outvaluing all the taxes ever collected by a conqueror. All this was not enough. South of the Columbia was an unknown region the size of half Europe—California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. The wildwood rovers of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers swept south in pack-horse brigades of two- and three-hundreds from the Columbia to Monterey. Where Utah railroads now run, their trappers found the trail. Where gold seekers toiled to death across Nevada deserts, Hudson’s Bay trappers had long before marched in dusty caravans sweeping the wilderness of beaver. Where San Francisco