[5] "Several noblemen and other public-spirited Englishmen, not unmindful of the discovery and right of the Crown of England to those parts in America, designed at their own charge to adventure the establishing of a regular and constant trade in Hudson's Bay, and to settle forts and factories, whereby to invite the Indian nations (who live like savages, many hundred leagues up the country), down to their factories, for a constant and yearly intercourse of trade, which was never attempted by such settlements, and to reside in that inhospitable country, before the aforesaid English adventurers undertook the same."--_Company's Memorial_, 1699. CHAPTER II. 1659-1666. Groseilliers and Radisson -- Their Peregrinations in the North-West -- They Return to Quebec and lay their Scheme before the Governor -- Repulsed by him they Proceed to New England -- And thence Sail for France, where they Endeavour to Interest M. Colbert. The year 1659, notable in England as the last of the Puritan ascendancy and the herald of a stirring era of activity, may be reckoned as the first with which the annals of the Great Company are concerned. It is in this year that we first catch a glimpse of two figures who played an important part in shaping its destinies. Little as they suspected it, the two intrepid fur-traders, Groseilliers and Radisson, who in the spring of that year pushed their way westward from Quebec to the unknown shores of Lake Superior, animated in this, as in all their subsequent exploits, by a spirit of adventure as well as a love of gain, were to prove the ancestors of the Great Company. [Sidenote: Groseilliers' first marriage.] Medard Chouart, the first of this dauntless pair, was born in France, near Meaux, and had emigrated to Quebec when he was a little over sixteen years old. His father had been a pilot, and it was designed that the son should succeed him in the same calling. But long before this intention could be realized he fell in with a Jesuit, returned from Canada, who was full of thrilling tales about the New France beyond the seas; and so strongly did these anecdotes, with their suggestion of a rough and joyous career in the wilderness, appeal to his nature, that he determined to take his own part in the glowing life which the priest depicted. In 1641 he was one of the fifty-two _emigrés_ who sailed with the heroic Maissoneuve from Rochelle. Five years later we find him trading amongst the Hurons, the tribe whose doom was already sealed by reason of the enmity and superior might of the Iroquois; and at the close of another year comes the record of his first marriage. The bride is Etienne, the daughter of a pilot, Abraham Martin of Quebec, the "eponymous hero" of that plateau adjoining Quebec where, a century later, was to take place the mortal struggle between Wolfe and Montcalm.