To be sure, when Charles II signed away sole rights of trade and possession to all countries bordering on the passage supposed to lead from the Atlantic to the South Sea, he had not the faintest notion that he was giving to “_the Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading on Hudson’s Bay_,” three-quarters of a new continent. Prince Rupert, Albermarle, Shaftsbury, the Carteretts and half a dozen others had helped him back to his throne, and with a Stuart’s good-natured belief that the world was made for the king’s pleasure, he promptly proceeded to carve up his possessions for his friends. Only one limitation was specified in the charter of 1670—the lands must be those _not_ already claimed by any Christian power. But Adventurers on booty bound would sail over the edge of the earth if it were flat, and when the Hudson’s Bay Company found, instead of a passage to the fabulous South Sea, a continental watershed whence mighty rivers rolled north, east, south, over vaster lands than those island Adventurers had ever dreamed—was it to turn back because these countries didn’t precisely border on Hudson’s Bay? The Company had been chartered as Lords of the Outer Marches, and what were Outer Marches for, but to march forward? For a hundred years, the world heard very little of these wilderness Adventurers except that they were fighting for dear life against the French raiders, but when Canada passed to the English, Hudson’s Bay canoes were threading the labyrinthine waterways of lake and swamp and river up the Saskatchewan, down the Athabasca, over the mountain passes to the Columbia. Hudson’s Bay fur brigades were sweeping up the Ottawa to Abbittibbi, to the Assiniboine, to MacKenzie River, to the Arctic Circle. Hudson’s Bay buffalo runners hunted the plains from the Red River to the Missouri. Hudson’s Bay Rocky Mountain brigades—one, two, three hundred horsemen, followed by a ragged rabble of Indian retainers—yearly scoured every valley between Alaska and Mexico in regular platoons, so much territory assigned to each leader—Oregon to McLoughlin, the Snake Country to Ogden, the Umpqua to Black or McLeod, the Buffalo Country to Ross or some other, with instructions not to leave a beaver alive on the trail wherever there were rival American traders. Hudson’s Bay vessels coasted from the Columbia to Alaska. The Adventurers could not dislodge Baranoff from Sitka, but they explored the Yukon and the Pelly, and the official books show record of a farm where San Francisco now stands. Beginning with a score of men, the Company to-day numbers as many servants as the volunteer army of Canada. Railroads to Eastern ports now do the work of the four or five armed frigates that used yearly to come for the furs, but two company ships still carry provisions through the ice floes of Hudson’s Bay, and on every navigable river of the inland North, floats the flag of the Company’s steamers. The brigades of fur canoes can