who had made their way thither from Boston, and were struggling, in spite of the rigorous climate, scarcity of food, etc., to gain a permanent footing in the country. Leaving these unexpected rivals to fight out their battles as best they could, Grosseliez completed his own survey of the surrounding districts, and hastened with it to France, hoping to gain the patronage of the French monarch for an emigration scheme of his own. He entirely failed in this purpose, but his pertinacity won for him the notice of Mr. Montague, at that time English ambassador at Paris, who gave him a letter of recommendation to Prince Rupert, then, after many vicissitudes, in the very zenith of his prosperity.
Though at this time engaged in the eager prosecution of the newly-discovered art of mezzotint engraving, which owed so much of its perfection to him, Prince Rupert at once turned his attention to the geographical problem laid before him by Grosseliez. The desirability of securing to England the monopoly of the fur-trade of the North, with the possibility of winning a new water highway to the North through the as yet unexplored ice-blocked channels of the Great Bay, or to the Pacific through some inland passage still to be discovered, was recognized at once. Prince Rupert obtained the consent of his cousin, Charles II., to the sending out of a pioneering expedition under Captains Zachariah Gillam and Grosseliez; and in the summer of 1668, their little vessel entered Hudson's Straits.
This time the eastern shores of the bay were explored, and a little river flowing into the south-eastern extremity from Lake Mistassinie was discovered, to which the name of Rupert was at once given. A fort was erected at its mouth, and the adventurers returned home with a report that lands rich in furs stretched away as far as the eye could reach, on the east as well as on the west of Hudson's Bay.
Encouraged by the result of this preliminary experiment, Prince Rupert now obtained from Charles a charter, conferring on himself and nine associates absolute proprietorship, subordinate sovereignty, and exclusive traffic in a territory of undefined extent, embracing, however, all the regions discovered or to be discovered within Hudson's Straits, and all lands from which rivers flowed into Hudson's Bay, saving only such as were already in the possession of any Christian State or prince.
Now, as we know, the French, who claimed all lands from Canada to the Pacific seaboard on the west, and to the Arctic circle on the north, had already penetrated to the shores of Hudson's Bay, and up the Saskatchewan
