With what happened subsequently, to the authors and participators in this celebrated joint stock swindle, it is not my present purpose to deal, except to say that the Hudson's Bay Company was saved in the nick of time from sharing the fate of its neighbour and rival. A meeting on the 23rd of December was held, at which it was resolved that the "said subscription be vacated; and that the Company's seal be taken off from the said instrument." Nevertheless one permanent result remained. The capital had been trebled, and it was now further resolved that each subscriber should have £30 of stock "for each £10 by him paid in." This trebled, the total capital stood, at the beginning of 1721, at £94,500. The Company had had a narrow escape. To what extent its shares would have been inflated may be conjectured; but it is certain that it could not have avoided being swept into the vortex and sharing the same fate which overtook so many of its commercial contemporaries. Its enemies were on the watch, and they would have proved relentless. The revocation of its charter would have accomplished its final downfall. Already the Company was being assailed because it had not complied with one of the provisions named in that instrument: that of making search for a north-west passage. It was not, however, to quiet these reproaches, so persistently levelled at it, that a year before the bursting of the South Sea Bubble an expedition was actually set on foot to accomplish the long-deferred exploration. Knight, the Company's aged Governor at York Factory, had long listened to the tales of the Indians concerning the copper mines to the north; and resolved, on his return to England, to bring the matter before the Company. This he did, but it was by no means an easy matter to induce the Adventurers to consent to the expense of further exploration. Nevertheless Knight's insistence prevailed, more especially as, besides the profitable results to be obtained through such a voyage, he was careful to point out that the Company were expected by their charter to undertake such an expedition. [Sidenote: Expedition to explore the north-west passage.] In 1719 the Company, therefore, fitted out two ships for the purpose of discovery north of Churchill. One of these, called the _Albany_, a frigate, was commanded by George Barlow, whom we have already seen as Deputy-Governor at Albany in 1704, when the French failed to capture that post. The other, named the _Discovery_, a sloop, under David Vaughan. But the command of the expedition itself was entrusted to Knight, who was a man of great experience in the Company's service, who had been for many years Governor of different Factories in the Bay, and who had made the first settlement at Churchill River.