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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

Harper and Brothers Publishers. . New York. 1902.

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