A SETTLEMENT IN THE HUDSON REGION. Rupert's House, James Bay.

tended that King Charles gave away a vast territory of which he had no conception and that it was impossible to transfer property which could not be described. Canada at a far later period opposed the theory that the company possessed such absolute privileges as it claimed and again there was never any effective occupation of the northern seaboard of the territory. The great fur and trading trust remained undisturbed in its semi-arctic field. If the company did not possess an absolute monopoly of the fur trade rights of the region then it did not pos- . sess kindred fishing rights either, it has been argued. American citizens, in the

exercise of a privilege granted in 1818, 1818, could cruise up the Atlantic coast and enter every inlet, including Hudson Bay itself, unless the monopoly was effective. But if it were, British subjects could not enter there either, the company's charter being equally directed against them. Were this contention accepted it would follow that British fishermen had no rights within any waters within the jurisdiction of the Hudson Bay Company, or else that when British fishermen were admitted there American fishermen should be granted the same privilege. In 1857 a select com

CLINTON GORGE, EAST MAIN RIVER.

Canada through the imperial govern

ment.

Thus was doubt still thrown upon the company's exclusive rights and as the Scotch whalers began frequenting Hudson Bay in 1829, thirty years before the transfer of authority took place, it is shown that this monopoly cannot be maintained. No attempt was made to hinder the Scotchmen or the Americans who followed them and they have carried on the industry since then. Nevertheless Britain and the United States are at odds over the question of "rights" in the Bay. The British view is that all water within a line drawn from headland to headland is embayed and constitutes a "mare clausum," or closed sea of diplomacy. Uncle Sam does not incline to this view though the entrances to Boston, New York and Philadelphia might be held to bring him thereto. Hudson Strait, the entrance to the Bay, is 500 miles long and forty miles wide and the bay itself is the third largest sea in the world, only exceeded in size by the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the area of the first being 997,000 square miles, the second 680,000 and the third 567,000. No attempt has ever been made to hold the Mediterranean or Caribbean

as the exclusive possession of any one power and it is contended that Canada's claim to Hudson Bay is not tenable as American whalers have been virtually the only occupants of the western shore for sixty years.

If the American right to fish along Labrador and "northward indefinitely' is valid it gives these fisher folk the right to operate along Baffin Land, and now toward the north pole itself, and inasmuch as they would have authority to enter every estuary more than six miles wide the United States, through the State Department, is prepared to insist that they could not be successfully prevented from fishing in the Strait or Bay. The northern extremity of Labrador and the southern point of Baffin Land form the entrance to the Strait and according to the British view under the Hudson Bay Company's charter no ships but the company's can go west of a line drawn between Capes Chudleigh and Resolution, the promontories on either side of the entrance.

Canada's attempt to enforce this stand is certain to bring about the international issue that will follow the United States' effort to reach after trade long monopolized by the Hudson Bay Company just

as soon as rails are laid to the northern

sea.

Canadians view the matter of regaining their hold on the Bay region from a national standpoint and the subject of rights and authority there has become one of vital interest to all the people. Public men of the Dominion at last have awakened to the value of the fishery, peltry, forest, mineral and agricultural wealth of the Hudson Bay district, the area of which is in excess of 1,500,000 square miles and comprehends every kind of soil and climate. The Bay yields the northern whalebone, that of an adult whale being worth $1,500; the white whale or grampus, the nar whale or sea unicorn; the walrus, five species of seals and thirty species of edible fish. The peltries of sea and shore have remained unexhausted after three centuries of slaughter, and when the writer left the region the Hudson Bay Company had paid out in a single season more than $2,000,000 for furs alone, the most famous being bear, fox, wolf, moose, caribou, wolverine, lynx, sable, ermine,

marten, mink, otter and the finest beaver.

All the way across the southern end of the region agriculture may be practised and in the west will lie a fertile belt teeming with grain fields, while beyond that will be the grazing country and the ranches. Soil reports of the government bear out the prediction, and it will not be long after the railroad has made its Bay connection before a new transportation problem will arise-the same that all the rest of Canada faces during the harvesting season: insufficiency of cars to haul what the land produces.

Forest resources of the region are almost unlimited, though the trees are of smaller size than in the northwest. There are pine, spruce, elm, ash, birch, poplar, aspen, tamarack and fir. Smaller growths suitable for pulp-making are found in great quantities.

Existence of hematite, iron, copper, silver, gold, gypsum, antimony, asbestos and coal has been determined and should there be found a precious metal in workable quantity the history of the world's gold camps will repeat itself.