The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay Part 4

The French prisoners were finally set free and made their way to France, where the story of their wrongs aroused great indignation. D'Iberville, who was now in Newfoundland, carrying havoc from hamlet to hamlet, was the man best fitted to revenge the outrage. Five French wars.h.i.+ps were made ready--the _Pelican_, the _Palmier_, the _Profond_, the _Violent_, and the _Wasp_. In April 1697 these were dispatched from France to Placentia, Newfoundland, there to be taken in command by d'Iberville, with orders to proceed to Hudson Bay and leave not a vestige remaining of the English fur trade in the North.

Meanwhile preparations were being made in England to dispatch a mighty fleet to drive the French for ever from the Bay. Three frigates were bought and fitted out--the _Dering_, Captain Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton; the _Hudson's Bay_, Captain Smithsend; and the _Hamps.h.i.+re_, Captain Fletcher--each with guns and sixty fighting men in addition to the regular crew. These s.h.i.+ps were to meet the enemy sooner than was expected. In the last week of August 1697 the English fleet lay at the west end of Hudson Strait, befogged and surrounded by ice. Suddenly the fog lifted and revealed to the astonished Englishmen d'Iberville's fleet of five French wars.h.i.+ps: the _Palmier_ to the rear, back in the straits; the _Wasp_ and the _Violent_, out in open water to the west; the _Pelican_, flying the flag of the Admiral, to the fore and free from the ice; and the _Profond_, ice-jammed and within easy shooting range. The Hudson's Bay s.h.i.+ps at once opened fire on the _Profond_, but this only loosened the ice and let the French s.h.i.+p escape.

D'Iberville's aim was not to fight a naval battle but to secure the fort at Nelson. Accordingly, spreading the _Pelican's_ sails to the wind, he steered south-west, leaving the other s.h.i.+ps to follow his example. Ice must have obstructed him, for he did not anchor before Nelson till September 3. The place was held by the English and he could find no sign of his other s.h.i.+ps. He waited two days, loading cannon, furbis.h.i.+ng muskets, drilling his men, of whom a great many were French wood-runners sick with scurvy. On the morning of the 5th the lookout called down 'A sail.' Never doubting but that the sail belonged to one of his own s.h.i.+ps, d'Iberville hoisted anchor and fired cannon in welcome. No answering shot signalled back. There were sails of three s.h.i.+ps now, and d'Iberville saw three English men-of-war racing over the waves to meet him, while shouts of wild welcome came thundering from the hostile fort to his rear.

D'Iberville did not swerve in his course, nor waste ammunition by firing shots at targets out of range. Forty of his soldiers lay in their berths disabled by scurvy; but he quickly mustered one hundred and fifty able-bodied men and ordered ropes to be stretched, for hand hold, across the slippery decks. The gunners below stripped naked behind the great cannon. Men were marshalled ready to board and rush the enemy when the s.h.i.+ps locked.

The _Hamps.h.i.+re_, under Captain Fletcher, with fifty-two guns and sixty fighting men, first came up within range and sent two roaring cannonades that mowed the masts and wheel-house from the _Pelican_ down to bare decks. At the same time Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton's _Dering_ and Smithsend's _Hudson's Bay_ circled to the other side of the French s.h.i.+p and poured forth a pepper of musketry.

D'Iberville shouted orders to the gunners to fire straight into the _Hamps.h.i.+re's_ hull; sharpshooters were to rake the decks of the two off-standing English s.h.i.+ps, and the Indians were to stand ready to board. Two hours pa.s.sed in sidling and s.h.i.+fting; then the death grapple began. Ninety dead and wounded Frenchmen rolled on the _Pelican's_ blood-stained decks. The fallen sails were blazing. The mast poles were splintered. Railings went smas.h.i.+ng into the sea. The bridge crumbled.

The _Pelican's_ prow had been shop away. D'Iberville was still shouting to his gunners to fire low, when suddenly the _Hamps.h.i.+re_ ceased firing and tilted. D'Iberville had barely time to unlock the _Pelican_ from the death grapple, when the English frigate lurched and, amid hiss and roar of flame in a wild sea, sank like a stone, engulfing her panic-stricken crew almost before the French could realize what had happened. Smithsend at once surrendered the _Hudson's Bay_, and Mike Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton fled for Nelson on the _Dering_.

A fierce hurricane now rose and the English garrison at Nelson had one hope left--that the wild storm might wreck d'Iberville's s.h.i.+p and its absent convoys. Smas.h.i.+ng billows and ice completed the wreck of the _Pelican_; nevertheless the French commander succeeded in landing his men. When the storm cleared, his other s.h.i.+ps came limping to his aid.

Nelson stood back four miles from the sea, but by September 11 the French had their cannon placed under the walls. A messenger was sent to demand surrender, and he was conveyed with bandaged eyes into the fort.

Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton,[3] Smithsend, Bailey, Kelsey--all were for holding out; but d'Iberville's brother, Serigny, came in under flag of truce and bade them think well what would happen if the hundred Indians were turned loose on the fort. Finally the English surrendered and marched out with the honours of war. Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton sailed for England with as many of the refugees as his s.h.i.+p, the _Dering_, could convey. The rest, led by Bailey and Smithsend, marched overland south to the fort at Albany.

[3] Gr.i.m.m.i.n.gton, with the _Dering_, had reached the fort in safety.

Smithsend's captive s.h.i.+p, the _Hudson's Bay_, had been wrecked with the _Pelican_, but he himself had escaped to the fort.

The loss of Nelson fell heavily on the Hudson's Bay Company. Their s.h.i.+ps were not paid for; dividends stopped; stock dropped in value. But still they borrowed money to pay 20 each to the sailors. The Treaty of Ryswick, which halted the war with France, provided that possession on the Bay should remain as at the time of the treaty, and England held only Albany.

CHAPTER VIII

EXPANSION AND EXPLORATION

When the House of Orange came to the throne, it was deemed necessary that the Company's monopoly, originally granted by the Stuarts, should be confirmed. Nearly all the old shareholders, who had been friends of the Stuarts, sold out, and in 1697, the year of the disaster related in the last chapter, the Company applied for an extension of its royal charter by act of parliament. The fur buyers of London opposed the application on the grounds that:

(1) The charter conferred arbitrary powers to which a private company had no right;

(2) The Company was a mere stock-jobbing concern of no benefit to the public;

(3) Beaver was sold at an extortionate advance; bought at 6d. and sold for 6s.

(4) The English claim to a monopoly drove the Indians to the French;

(5) Nothing was done to carry out the terms of the charter in finding a North-West Pa.s.sage.

All this, however, did not answer the great question: if the Company retired from the Bay, who or what was to resist the encroachments of the French? This consideration saved the situation for the adventurers.

Their charter was confirmed.

The opposition to the extension of the charter compelled the Company to show what it had been doing in the way of exploration; and the journey of Henry Kelsey, the London apprentice boy, to the country of the a.s.siniboines, was put on file in the Company records. Kelsey had not at first fitted in very well with the martinet rules of fort life at Nelson, and in 1690, after a switching for some breach of discipline, he had jumped over the walls and run away with the Indians. Where he went on this first trip is not known. Some time before the spring of the next year an Indian runner brought word back to the fort from Kelsey: on condition of pardon he was willing to make a journey of exploration inland. The pardon was readily granted and the youth was supplied with equipment. Accordingly, on July 15, 1691, Kelsey left the camping-place of the a.s.siniboines--thought to be the modern Split Lake--and with some Indian hunters set off overland on foot. It is difficult to follow his itinerary, for he employs only Indian names in his narrative. He travelled five hundred miles west of Split Lake presumably without touching on the Saskatchewan or the Churchill, for his journal gives not the remotest hint of these rivers. We are therefore led to believe that he must have traversed the semi-barren country west of Lac du Brochet, or Reindeer Lake as it is called on the map. He encountered vast herds of what he called buffalo, though his description reminds us more of the musk ox of the barren lands than of the buffalo. He describes the summer as very dry and game as very scarce, on the first part of the trip; and this also applies to the half-barren lands west of Reindeer Lake.

Hairbreadth escapes were not lacking on the trip of the boy explorer.

Once, completely exhausted from a swift march, Kelsey fell asleep on the trail. When he awoke, there was not a sign of the straggling hunters.

Kelsey waited for nightfall and by the reflection of the fires in the sky found his way back to the camp of his companions. At another time he awoke to find the high dry gra.s.s all about him in flames and his musket stock blazing. Once he met two grizzly bears at close quarters. The bears had no acquired instinct of danger from powder and stood ground.

The Indians dashed for trees. Kelsey fired twice from behind bunch willows, wounded both brutes, and won for himself the name of honour--Little Giant. Joining the main camp of a.s.siniboines at the end of August, Kelsey presented the Indian chief with a lace coat, a cap, guns, knives, and powder, and invited the tribe to go down to the Bay.

The expedition won Kelsey instant promotion.

Our old friend Radisson, from the time we last saw him--when 'the Committee had discourse with him till dinner'--lived on in London, receiving a quarterly allowance of 12 10s. from the Company; occasional gratuities for his services, and presents of furs to Madame Radisson are also recorded. The last entry of the payment of his quarterly allowance is dated March 29, 1710. Then, on July 12, comes a momentous entry: 'the Sec. is ordered to pay Mr Radisson's widow as charity the sum of 6.' At some time between March 29 and July 12 the old pathfinder had set out on his last journey. Small profit his heirs reaped for his labours.

Nineteen years later, September 24, 1729, the secretary was again ordered to pay 'the widow of Peter Radisson 10 as charity, she being very ill and in great want.'

Meanwhile hostilities had been resumed between France and England; but the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought the game of war again to a pause and restored Hudson Bay to England. The Company received back all its forts on the Bay; but the treaty did not define the boundaries to be observed between the fur traders of Quebec pressing north and the fur traders of the Bay pressing south, and this unsettled point proved a source of friction in after years.

After the treaty the adventurers deemed it wise to strengthen all their forts. Moose, Albany, and Nelson, and two other forts recently established--Henley House and East Main--were equipped with stone bastions; and when Churchill was built later, where Munck the Dane had wintered, its walls of solid stone were made stronger than Quebec's, and it was mounted with enough large guns to withstand a siege of European fleets of that day.

The Company now regularly sent s.h.i.+ps to Russia; and from Russia the adventurers must have heard of Peter the Great's plan to find the North Pa.s.sage. The finding of the Pa.s.sage had been one of the reasons for the granting of the charter, and the fur buyers' pet.i.tion against the charter had set forth that small effort had been made in that direction. Now, at Churchill, Richard Norton and his son Moses, servants of the Company, had heard strange rumours from the Indians of a region of rare metals north-west inland. All these things the governor on the Bay, James Knight, pondered, as he cruised up and down from Albany to Churchill. Then the gold fever beset the Company. They sent for Knight.

He was commissioned on June 3, 1719, to seek the North-West Pa.s.sage, and, incidentally, to look for rare minerals.

Four s.h.i.+ps were in the fleet that sailed for Hudson Bay this year.

Knight went on the _Albany_ with Captain Barlow and fifty men. He waited only long enough at Churchill to leave provisions. Then, with the _Discovery_, Captain Vaughan, as convoy, he sailed north on the _Albany_. On his s.h.i.+p were iron-bound caskets to carry back the precious metals of which he dreamed, and the framework for houses to be erected for wintering on the South Sea. With him went iron-forgers to work in the metals, and whalers from Dundee to chase the silver-bottoms of the Pacific, and a surgeon, to whom was paid the extraordinary salary of 50 on account of the unusual peril of the voyage.

What became of Knight? From the time he left Churchill, his journal ceases. Another threescore lives paid in toll to the insatiable sea! No word came back in the summer of 1720, and the adventurers had begun to look for him to return by way of Asia. Then three years pa.s.sed, and no word of Knight or his precious metals. Kelsey cruised north on the _Prosperous_ in 1719, and Hanc.o.c.k on the _Success_ in 1720; Napper and Scroggs and Crow on other s.h.i.+ps on to 1736, but never a trace did they find of the argonauts. Norton, whaling in the north in 1726, heard disquieting rumours from the Indians, but it was not till Hearne went among the Eskimos almost fifty years later that Knight's fate became known. His s.h.i.+ps had been totally wrecked on the east point of Marble Island, that white block of granite bare as a gravestone. Out of the wave-beaten wreckage the Eskimos saw a house arise as if by magic. The savages fled in terror from such a mystery, and winter--the terrible, hard, cutting cold of hyperborean storm--raged on the bare, unsheltered island. When the Eskimos came back in the summer of 1720, a great many graves had been scooped among the drift sand and boulders. The survivors were plainly starving, for they fell ravenously on the Eskimos' putrid whale meat. The next summer only two demented men were alive. They were clad in rabbit and fox skins. Their hair and beards had grown unkempt, and they acted like maniacs. Again the superst.i.tious Eskimos fled in terror. Next summer when the savages came down to the coast no white men were alive. The wolves had sc.r.a.ped open a score of graves.

It may be stated here that before 1759 the books of the Hudson's Bay Company show 100,000 spent in bootless searching and voyaging for the mythical North-West Pa.s.sage. Nevertheless study-chair explorers who journeyed round the world on a map, continued to accuse the Company of purposely refusing to search for the Pa.s.sage, for fear of disturbing its monopoly. So violent did the pamphleteers grow that they forced a parliamentary inquiry in 1749 into the Company's charter and the Company's record, and what saved the Company then, as in 1713, was the fact that the adventurers were the great bulwark against French aggression from Quebec.

Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and a scholar, had roused the Admiralty to send two expeditions to search for the North-West Pa.s.sage. It is unnecessary for history to concern itself with the 'tempest in a teapot' that raged round these expeditions. Perhaps the Company did not behave at all too well when their own captain, Middleton, resigned to conduct the first one on the _Furnace Bomb_ and the _Discovery_ to the Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' s.h.i.+ps to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury that the Company had bribed Middleton with 5000 not to find the Pa.s.sage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor fas.h.i.+on, that 'there was no pa.s.sage and never would be.' At once the Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. Baseless charges were hurled about with the freedom of bombs in a battle. Parliament was roused to offer a reward of 20,000 for the discovery of the Pa.s.sage, and the indefatigable Dobbs organized an opposition trading company--with a capital of 10,000--and pet.i.tioned parliament for the exclusive trade.

The _Dobbs Galley_, Captain Moon, and the _California_, Captain Smith, with the _Shark_, under Middleton, as convoy for part of the way, went out in 1746 with Henry Ellis, agent for Dobbs, aboard. The result of the voyage need not be told. There was the usual struggle with the ice jam in the north off Chesterfield Inlet, the usual suffering from scurvy.

Something was accomplished on the exploration of Fox Channel, but no North-West Pa.s.sage was found, a fact that told in favour of the Company when the parliamentary inquiry of 1749 came on.

In the end, an influence stronger than the puerile frenzy of Arthur Dobbs forced the Company to unwonted activity in inland exploration. La Verendrye, the French Canadian, and his sons had come from the St Lawrence inland and before 1750 had established trading-posts on the Red river, on the a.s.siniboine, and on the Saskatchewan. After this fewer furs came down to the Bay. It was now clear that if the Indians would not come to the adventurers, the adventurers must go to the Indians. As a beginning one Anthony Hendry, a boy outlawed from the Isle of Wight for smuggling, was permitted to go back with the a.s.siniboines from Nelson in June 1754.

Hendry's itinerary is not difficult to follow. The Indian place-names used by him are the Indian place-names used to-day by the a.s.siniboines.

Four hundred paddlers manned the big brigade of canoes which he accompanied inland to the modern Oxford Lake and from Oxford to Cross Lake. The latter name explains itself. Voyageurs could reach the Saskatchewan by coming on down westward through Playgreen Lake to Lake Winnipeg, or they could save the long detour round the north end of Lake Winnipeg--a hundred miles at least, and a dangerous stretch because of the rocky nature of the coast and the big waves of the shallow lake--by portaging across to that chain of swamps and nameless lakes, leading down to the expansion of the Saskatchewan, known under the modern name of the Pas. It is quite plain from Hendry's narrative that the second course was followed, for he came to 'the river on which the French have two forts' without touching Lake Winnipeg; and he gave his distance as five hundred miles from York,[4] which would bring him by way of Oxford and Cross Lakes precisely at the Pas.

[4] Nelson. Throughout this narrative Nelson, the name of the port and river, is generally used instead of York, the name of the fort or factory.

The Saskatchewan is here best described as an elongated swamp three hundred miles by seventy, for the current of the river proper loses itself in countless channels through reed-grown swamps and turquoise lakes, where the white pelicans stand motionless as rocks and the wild birds gather together in flocks that darken the sky and have no fear of man. Between Lake Winnipeg and c.u.mberland Lake one can literally paddle for a week and barely find a dry spot big enough for a tent among the myriad lakes and swamps and river channels overwas.h.i.+ng the dank goose gra.s.s. Through these swamps runs the limestone cliff known as the Pasquia Hills--a blue lift of the swampy sky-line in a wooded ridge. On this ridge is the Pas fort. All the romance of the most romantic era in the West clings to the banks of the Saskatchewan--'Kis-sis-kat-chewan Sepie'--swift angrily-flowing waters, as the Indians call it, with its countless unmapped lakes and its countless unmapped islands. Up and down its broad current from time immemorial flitted the war canoes of the Cree, like birds of prey, to plunder the Blackfeet, or 'Horse Indians.'

Between these high, steep banks came the voyageurs of the old fur companies--'ti-aing-ti-aing' in monotonous sing-song day and night, tracking the clumsy York boats up-stream all the way from tide water to within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Up these waters, with rapids so numerous that one loses count of them, came doughty traders of the Company with the swiftest paddlers the West has ever known. The gentleman in c.o.c.ked hat and silk-lined overcape, with knee-buckled breeches and ruffles at wrist and throat, had a habit of tucking his sleeves up and dipping his hand in the water over the gunnels. If the ripple did not rise from knuckles to elbows, he forced speed with a shout of 'Up-up, my men! Up-up!' and gave orders for the regale to go round, or for the crews to s.h.i.+ft, or for the Highland piper to set the bagpipes skirling.

Hither, then, came Hendry from the Bay, the first Englishman to ascend the Saskatchewan. 'The mosquitoes are intolerable,' he writes. 'We came to the French house. Two Frenchmen came to the water side and invited me into their house. One told me his master and men had gone down to Montreal with furs and that he must detain me till his return; but Little Bear, my Indian leader, only smiled and said, "They dare not."'

Somewhere between the north and south branches of the Saskatchewan, Hendry's a.s.siniboines met Indians on horseback, the Blackfeet, or 'Archithinues,' as he calls them. The Blackfeet Indians tell us to-day that the a.s.siniboines and Crees used to meet the Blackfeet to exchange the trade of the Bay at Wetaskiwin, 'the Hills of Peace.' This exactly agrees with the itinerary, described by Hendry, after they crossed the south branch in September and struck up into the Eagle Hills. Winter was pa.s.sed in hunting between the points where Calgary and Edmonton now stand. Hendry remarks on the outcropping of coal on the north branch.

The same outcroppings can be seen to-day in the high banks below Edmonton.

It was on October 14 that Hendry was conveyed to the main Blackfeet camp.

The leader's tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo skin, attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders [the a.s.siniboines] set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their custom. Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader who lives on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with their furs.

They would receive in return powder, shot, guns and cloth. He made little answer; said it was far off, and his people could not paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents, which we pitched a quarter of a mile outside their lines. The chief told me his tribe never wanted food, as they followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who frequented the settlements often starved on their journey, which was exceedingly true.

Hendry gave his position for the winter as eight hundred and ten miles west of York, or between the sites of modern Edmonton and Battleford.

Everywhere he presented gifts to the Indians to induce them to go down to the Bay. On the way back to York, the explorers canoed all the way down the Saskatchewan, and Hendry paused at Fort La Corne, half-way down to Lake Winnipeg. The banks were high, high as the Hudson river ramparts, and like those of the Hudson, heavily wooded. Trees and hills were intensest green, and everywhere through the high banks for a hundred miles below what is now Edmonton bulged great seams of coal. The river gradually widened until it was as broad as the Hudson at New York or the St Lawrence at Quebec. Hawks shrieked from the topmost boughs of black poplars ash.o.r.e. Whole colonies of black eagles nodded and babbled and screamed from the long sand-bars. Wolf tracks dotted the soft mud of the sh.o.r.e, and sometimes what looked like a group of dogs came down to the bank, watched the boatmen land, and loped off. These were coyotes of the prairie. Again and again as the brigades drew in for nooning to the lee side of some willow-grown island, black-tailed deer leaped out of the brush almost over their heads, and at one bound were in the midst of a tangled thicket that opened a magic way for their flight. From Hendry's winter camp to Lake Winnipeg, a distance of almost a thousand miles, a good hunter could then, as now, keep himself in food summer and winter with but small labour.

Most people have a mental picture of the plains country as flat prairie, with sluggish, winding rivers. Such a picture would not be true of the Saskatchewan. From end to end of the river, for only one interval is the course straight enough and are the banks low enough to enable the traveller to see in a line for eight miles. The river is a continual succession of half-circles, hills to the right, with the stream curving into a shadowy lake, or swerving out again in a bend to the low left; or high-walled sandstone bluffs to the left sending the water wandering out to the low silt sh.o.r.e on the right. Not river of the Thousand Islands, like the St Lawrence, but river of Countless Islands, the Saskatchewan should be called.

More ideal hunting ground could not be found. The hills here are partly wooded and in the valleys nestle lakes literally black with wild-fowl--bittern that rise heavy-winged and furry with a boo-m-m; grey geese holding political caucus with raucous screeching of the honking ganders; black duck and mallard and teal; inland gulls white as snow and fearless of hunters; little match-legged phalaropes fis.h.i.+ng gnats from the wet sand.