“Owning half a continent, what in thunder did they want with a ten-mile shore strip?” a British diplomat asked; but it takes more than a British diplomat to fathom the motives of a Hudson’s Bay Company man. The short strip was a mere bagatelle. The English Company wanted to get into trade relations with the Russians. For this purpose any wedge would do--any wedge but asking trade as a favor. The fine point was to put the other fellow at a disadvantage and make him sue for the privilege of granting the favor, which the Hudson’s Bay Company wanted. Curious--you may search the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the time of Radisson to Simpson; the method is always the same; motives not only secret but deliberately hidden by every subterfuge and trick that craft could devise; a secret aim worked out by diplomatic cunning, so that the other party to the aim shall sue for the privilege of doing exactly what the Hudson’s Bay Company wants. Altogether, it is very funny; and altogether, marvelously clever; and with it all--don’t forget--was the _noblesse oblige_ of the grand old gentlemen of the grand old school, who play patron to every good cause and would not rob man, woman, child, bird or beast of as much as a crumb. Where does it come from--that curious diplomacy of the Hudson’s Bay Company? Is it an inheritance of feudalism, of the mediæval court ways, when a prince made his subjects thankful to God for having their pockets picked by his dainty fingers? To Radisson, the Company owed its existence. Yet they made him glad to beg for a penny. The French won the bay fairly in open war. Yet the Company made France glad to give up all possessions by the simple trick of presenting claims of £200,000. And when negotiations opened with Canada for the surrender of the monopoly in the Northwest, by some legerdemain of diplomacy, Canadian statesmen were glad to pay millions in cash and millions in land for the relinquishment of a charter--which, from the Canadian point of view--the Company ought never to have been allowed to possess. The very year that Russian negotiations are in progress, Pelly, the English governor of the Company, and Simpson, the colonial governor, have both been knighted for their loyal care of British interests abroad. * * * * * Let us follow the diplomacy of the ten-mile strip. While diplomats are busy in England, Fort Simpson has been rebuilt on a better site by the same men of _The Dryad_ repulsed at Stickine. At the mouth of the Skeena, the H. B. C. flag now flies above Port Essington (1835). Also on the Stickine inland from the Russian strip, Glenora and Mumford have been built.