While Radisson became once more a man without habitat or country, the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were in the very springtime of wonderful prosperity. Despite French interlopers coming overland from the St. Lawrence, the ships of 1679 brought home cargoes totaling 10,500 beaver, 1,100 marten, 200 otter, 700 elk and a vast quantity of such smaller furs as muskrat and ermine. Cash to the value of half the Company’s capital lay in the strong box as a working fund, and by 1681 dividends to the value of just twice the Company’s stock had been paid to the shareholders. The first speculation in the stock began about this time, the shares changing hands at an advance of 33 per cent. and a new lot of shareholders coming in, among whom was the famous architect—Christopher Wrenn. At this time, too, one, Mr. Phillips, was expelled as a shareholder for attempting to conduct a private trade through members of the crews. Prince Rupert continued to be governor till the time of his death, in 1682, when James, Duke of York, was chosen to succeed. At first, the governing committee had met only before the ships sailed and after they returned. Committee meetings were now held two or three times a week, a payment of 6s 8d being made to each man for attendance, a like amount being levied as a fine for absence, the fines to be kept in a Poor Box for the benefit of the service. Bayly, who had been governor on the south coast of Hudson’s Bay, when Radisson left, now came home in health broken from long exposure, to die at Mr. Walker’s house on the Strand, whence he was buried with full military honors, the crew of _The John and Alexander_ and the Adventurers marching by “torch light” to St. Paul’s Churchyard. Hudson Bay—let it be repeated—can be compared in size only to the Mediterranean. One governor could no more command all the territory bordering it than one ruler could govern all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Nixon was commissioned to succeed Bayly as governor of the South Shore—namely of Rupert and Moose Rivers, territory inland about the size of modern Germany, which the new governor was supposed to keep in order with a force of sixteen men from the crew of _The John and Alexander_ and garrison of eight men at each of the two forts—thirty-two men in all, serving at salaries ranging from $60 (£12) to $100 (£20) a year, to police a barbarous pre-historic Germany; and the marvel is, they did it. Crime was almost unknown. Mr. Nixon’s princely salary as governor, poohbah, potentate, was £200 a year, and it is ordered, May, 1680, “that a cask of canary be sent out as a present to Governor Nixon.”