"After reflecting," he wrote to Colbert, "on all the nations that might have penetrated as far north as that, I can only fall back on the English, who, under the conduct of one named Groseilliers, in former times an inhabitant of Canada, might possibly have attempted that navigation, of itself not much known and not less dangerous. I design to send by land some men of resolution to invite the Kilistinons,[14] who are in great numbers in the vicinity of that Bay, to come down to see us as the Ottawas do, in order that we may have the first handling of what the savages bring us, who, acting as retail dealers between ourselves and those natives (_i.e._, the Kilistinons), make us pay for this roundabout way of three or four hundred leagues." The rivalry of French and English north of the St. Lawrence had begun. With that rivalry began also from this moment that long series of disputes concerning the sovereignty of the whole northern territories, which has endured down to our own generation. [Sidenote: A much vexed controversy.] Few historical themes have ever been argued at greater length or more minutely than this--the priority of discovery, occupation, and active assumption of sovereignty over those lands surrounding Hudson's Bay, which for two centuries were to be held and ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company. The wisest jurists, the shrewdest intellects, the most painstaking students were destined to employ themselves for over a century in seeking to establish by historical evidence, by tradition and by deduction, the "rights" of the English or of the French to those regions. A great deal of importance has been attached to the fact that in 1627 a charter had been granted by Lewis XIII. to a number of adventurers sent to discover new lands to the north of the River of St. Lawrence. The clause of the charter reads as follows:--"Le fort et habitation de Quebec, avec tout le pays de la Nouvelle France dite Canada, tant le long des Cotes depuis la Floride que les predecesseurs Rois de Sa Majeste ont fait habiter en rangeant les Cotes de la Mer jusqu'au Cercle Artique pour latitude, et de longitude depuis l'Ile de Terreneuve tirant a l'ouest au Grand Lac dit la Mer douce et au dela que de dans les terres, et le long des Rivieres qui y passant et se dechargent dans le fleuve dit St. Laurent, ou autrement la grande Riviere du Canada, et dans tous les autres fleuves qui se portent a la mer." But most writers have omitted to verify the fact that in this charter to the French Company, the only portions of land granted to the French Company are the lands or portions of lands which had already been occupied by the Kings of France, and the object of the charter was simply to give them an exclusive right of trade therein. Thus it was clearly indicated that the charter did not go further than the land occupied by the predecessors of Lewis XIV.