all for sailing to Kamtchatka and crossing the whole width of Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic, to reach Mr. Astor. The American fur trader knew only one rule of existence--to go ahead without any heroics, whether the going cost his own or some other man's life. That is the way the wilderness was won; and the winning is one of the most thrilling pages in history. * * * * * About the middle of the seventeenth century Pierre Radisson and Chouart Groseillers, two French adventurers from Three Rivers, Quebec, followed the chain of waterways from the Ottawa and Lake Superior northwestward to the region of Hudson Bay.[3] Returning with tales of fabulous wealth to be had in the fur trade of the north, they were taken in hand by members of the British Commission then in Boston, whose influence secured the Hudson's Bay Company charter in 1670; and that ancient and honourable body--as the company was called--reaped enormous profits from the bartering of pelts. But the bartering went on in a prosy, half-alive way, the traders sitting snugly in their forts on Rupert and Severn Rivers, or at York Factory (Port Nelson) and Churchill (Prince of Wales). The French governor down in Quebec issued only a limited number of licenses for the fur trade in Canada; and the old English company had no fear of rivalry in the north. It never sought inland tribes, but waited with serene apathy for the Indians to come down to its fur posts on the bay. Young Le Moyne d'Iberville[4] might march overland from Quebec to the bay, catch the English company nodding, scale the stockades, capture its forts, batter down a wall or two, and sail off like a pirate with ship-loads of booty for Quebec. What did the ancient company care? European treaties restored its forts, and the honourable adventurers presented a bill of damages to their government for lost furs. But came a sudden change. Great movements westward began simultaneously in all parts of the east.