To find the first champions of the great Northland as a prospective theatre of enterprise and development, and to trace the history of the exploration of the region from the beginning, it is necessary to go back many years, to a date, in fact, only two years more recent than the founding of Quebec by Samuel de Champlain. Henry Hudson, the great English sea captain, was engaged in the search for a northwest passage, when on August 3, 1610, he rounded the northwestern shoulder of Labrador and entered the bay which he thus discovered and which now bears his name. The exploration of this great inland sea was begun, not for the sake of gaining a knowledge of the country surrounding it, nor for the development of its resources, but in the delusive hope of finding a passage through it to the western ocean. In 1612, Captain (afterwards Sir) Thomas Button, commissioned to search for Hudson and to look for a northern passage, entered the bay with two ships, and, holding on his westward course, encountered land at about 60° 40′ north latitude. Being a Welshman, he called the land “New Wales,” a name which afterwards gave place to “New North Wales” for the northern part, and “New South Wales” for the southern; but all three designations, as applied to the Hudson bay coast, are now only of historic interest. Button wintered at Port Nelson, which he so named in memory of a shipmaster who, with many of the sailors, died there. When the ice broke up he went northwards past Cape Churchill and landed at a place about 60° north which he called “Hubbart’s Hope.” The southern coast of Hudson bay, east from Port Nelson (York Factory), was visited and explored by Captains Luke Foxe of London and Thomas James of Bristol in 1631, and again visited by James in 1632. These two navigators met off the coast near the mouth of Winisk river on August 29-30, 1631. Each had given a name to the country to the southwest. Foxe called it “New Yorkshire” and James “The South Principality of Wales,” probably on account of the previous name “New Wales” given by Button in 1612 to the land southwest of Port Nelson. These two navigators sailed together to the eastward, to the entrance to James bay, and there separated, Foxe to go north and James to the southward, to winter. Foxe called the bay he had left “Wolstenholme’s Ultimum Vale.” James, after rounding the cape, determined its latitude (55° 5′) and called it “Henrietta Maria Cape,” after the Queen, and also after his own ship. [Illustration: Oat field at Ile à La Crosse.]