The mercantile revival came; it found the Orient robbed of none of its charm, but monopoly had laid its hand on East India. For over half a century the East India Company had enjoyed the exclusive right of trading in the Pacific between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and the merchants of London therefore were forced to cast about for other fields of possible wealth. As far as North America was concerned, the merest reference to a map of this period will reveal the very hazy conception which then prevailed as to this vast territory. Few courtiers, as yet, either at Whitehall or Versailles, had begun to concern themselves with nice questions of frontier, or the precise delimitation of boundaries in parts of the continent which were as yet unoccupied, still less in those hyperborean regions described by the mariners Frobisher, Button and Fox. To these voyagers, themselves, the northern half of the continent was merely a huge barrier to the accomplishment of their designs. [Illustration: EARLY MAP OF NORTH AMERICA.] Yet in spite of this destructive creed, it had long been a cardinal belief in the nation that the English crown had by virtue of Cabot's, and of subsequent discoveries, a right to such territories, even though such right had never been actively affirmed.[1] In the year 1664 the King granted the territory now comprised in the States of New York, New Jersey and Delaware to his brother, the Duke of York, and the courtiers became curious to know what similar mark of favour would be bestowed upon his Majesty's yet unrewarded cousin, Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland and Count Palatine of the Rhine.[2] The Duke of York succeeded in wresting his new Transatlantic possession from the Dutch, and the fur-trade of New Amsterdam fell into English hands. Soon afterwards the first cargo of furs from that region arrived in the Thames. Naturally, it was not long before some of the keener-sighted London merchants began to see behind this transaction vast possibilities of future wealth. The extent of the fur-trade driven in Canada by the French was no secret.[3] Twice annually, for many years, had vessels anchored at Havre, laden with the skins of fox, marten and beaver, collected and shipped by the Company of the Hundred Associates or their successors in the Quebec monopoly. A feeling was current that England ought by right to have a larger share in this promising traffic, but, it was remarked, "it is not well seen by those cognizant of the extent of the new plantations how this is to be obtained, unless we dislodge the French as we have the Dutch, which his present Majesty would never countenance." Charles had little reason to be envious of the possession by his neighbour Lewis, of the country known as New France. [Sidenote: French fur-trade.]