Hudson Bay Company, the.
In 1666
Captain Gillam was sent from
England in a ship to search for a northwest passage to
India through
Hudson Bay.
He sailed into
Baffin Bay but was turned back at lat. 75° N. by the ice-pack.
He then entered
Hudson Bay, and sailed to the southern end of it, where, at the mouth of a river which he named
Rupert, he built a fort which he named Charles, and laid the foundations of a fur-trade with the natives.
Two years afterwards the Hudson Bay Company was chartered.
The
King gave to Prince Rupert, and several lords, knights, and merchants associated with him, a charter, under the title of the
Governor and Company of Adventurers of
England trading into Hudson's Bay.
The charter ceded to the company the whole trade of the waters within the entrance to
Hudson Strait and of the adjacent territories.
The original sum invested by the company was a little more than $50,000. No trade in the world was so profitable as that engaged in by the Hudson Bay Company.
It was said that at one time the proprietors of the stock, not ninety in number, gained about 2,000 per cent.
Hudson River, discovery of the