System of Licenses re-adopted by the French—Verandrye sets out for the Pacific—His son slain—Disappointments—He reaches the Rockies—Death of Verandrye—Forts in Rupert's Land—Peter the Great and the Hudson's Bay Company—Expeditions of Bering—A North-West Passage—Opposition of the Company to its Discovery—Dobbs and Middleton—Ludicrous distrust of the Explorer—An Anonymous Letter.

It has already been observed how fearful had grown the demoralization of the Indians, chiefly through the instrumentality and example of the coureur des bois. This class seemed daily to grow more corrupt, and bade fair to throw off the last vestige of restraint and become merged in all the iniquity, natural and acquired, of the savage races. We have seen, too, how the missionaries intervened, and implored the civil authorities to institute some sort of reform. It was at their solicitation that the Government of Canada at length decided to re-adopt the system of licenses, and to grant the privileges of exclusive trade to retired army officers, to each of whom they accorded a certain fur-bearing district by way of recompense for services rendered by him. In order that the trader might be protected against hostile assault, permission was given to establish forts in certain places suitable for their construction.

One of the French Canadian youth, whom the exploits of Iberville against the Hudson's Bay Company had fired with a spirit of emulation and who was head and shoulders above all that race of soldiers turned fur-traders, who now began to spread themselves throughout the great west—was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verandrye.

Sieur de Verandrye.

This gallant soldier and intrepid explorer, to whose memory history has as yet done but scant justice, was born at Three Rivers on the 17th of November, 1685. At an early age he embraced the profession of arms, and at twenty-four fought so valorously against Marlborough's forces at Malplaquet that, pierced by nine wounds, he was left for dead upon the field of battle. Recovering, however, he returned to the colony, and at twenty-seven married the daughter of the Seigneur d'Isle Dupas, by whom he had four sons. These sons were all destined to be associated with their father in the subsequent explorations in Rupert's Land and the west.

At the hour when Verandrye was seized with his zeal for exploration and discovery, the Company's rivals already possessed numerous posts established by Iberville, Duluth, Frontenac and Denonville, and a host of lesser lights, in the west. Of one of these, on the shores of Lake Nepigon, at the extreme end of Lake Superior, Verandrye had been given the command.

Verandrye sets out to explore the West.

While at this fort, a rumour had reached him of a mighty river flowing into the great ocean. Credulous of the truth of this report, borne to him by the Indians, Verandrye lost little time in communicating it to a friend, Father de Gonor, at Michilimackinac. It was shortly thereafter carried to Governor Beauharnois, who was induced, but not without much pleading, to grant Verandrye fifty men and a missionary for the purposes of exploration. But, although he had thus far succeeded, the only pecuniary aid upon which the explorer could rely was from the fur-trade. He was accordingly given a license to trade, and on the strength of this concession, certain merchants advanced him an outfit. He set out and arrived at Rainy Lake in September, 1731, traversed it, and erected a fort near the site of the present Fort Francis of a later day, to which he gave the name of St. Peter.

A year later he built another fort on the western shore of the Lake of the Woods, and in 1733 paddled down to the mouth of the Winnipeg River to the lake of that name. Crossing Lake Winnipeg, he ascended the Assiniboine River and constructed Fort Rouge.[55]

In 1738 the explorer's three sons, under their sire's instructions, made their way up the Assiniboine and built Fort la Reine, on the site of the present Portage la Prairie.

Well may it be said that the five years from 1733 to 1738 were years of cruel grief and disappointment for Verandrye. He had been struggling on to a realization of his dream in spite of the bitterest discouragements. One of his sons had been slain by the Sioux; he was without funds; fur-trading being with him only a subsidiary employment. His men lacking both courage and faith became unmanageable, and Verandrye addressed the most affecting letters to his monarch in France, who looked upon him and his schemes coldly. Those merchants, who had advanced him money, loaded him with their distrust, perpetually harassed him for returns, and loudly demanded his recall, so that he was forced to stand still and engage in barter when his whole soul cried aloud for him to press on in his path and reach the Pacific.

Verandrye's son reaches the Rockies.

Verandrye divided his little party in the spring of 1742 and ascended the Souris River. Those who came to be familiar with the territory in a later day, when it was frequented by traders, might well appreciate what were the perils these pioneers encountered, and what dangers they escaped when they finally left the country of the peace—leaving Ojibways at Red River, and struck off into the land of the Sioux, a tribe then, from their ferocity to the whites, called the "tigers of the plains." But they were to go still farther. Already the eldest son of the explorer had reached the tribe of the Mandans in the Missouri, but owing to inability to obtain guides his party had been forced to return. He was again despatched by his father, this time in company with the younger son, known as the Chevalier, and two other Frenchmen into the unknown country to the west. This little band of four made a journey of several hundred miles, entering into a league with one of the nations into whose country they penetrated, to lead them to the great Western Ocean. On the first day of January, 1743, they beheld, the first amongst white men, the eastern spurs of the northern Rocky Mountains. But here the Bow Indians, their guides, deserted them, and surrounded by hostile tribes, the party was forced to return. It was in this same year that the elder Verandrye, scarred and gaunt from his long wanderings in the wilderness, presented himself at Quebec to confront his enemies and traducers. They had represented as making an enormous fortune and leading an idle life, he who could point proudly to having taken possession of the country of the Upper Missouri for Lewis XV., and who had built a score and more of forts in the unknown regions of the West.

"If 40,000 livres of debt that I have over my head," said Verandrye bitterly, "are an advantage, then I can compliment myself on being very rich, and I would have been much more so in the end, if I had continued."

His license was given to another who, however, made a poor showing by means of it, and it was not until Beauharnois's successor investigated Verandrye's claims that the explorer received some recognition at court. He was given a captaincy and the Cross of St. Lewis.

But the explorer had not waited for this. He had been pushing on in his work, and in 1748 ascended the Saskatchewan. The progress of the French was marked by more forts, one in Lake Dauphin and another called Bourbon at the extremity of his discoveries. Verandrye was about to cross the Rocky Mountains when death overtook him, on the 6th of December, 1749.

The sons of Verandrye were eager to continue his work and attain at last the Pacific. But Bigot, the Intendant, was not their friend; he had other plans, and the Verandryes were deposed by favourites with not half their ability or their claims to honours and rewards. But they had paved the way and now the French were reaping the profits of the fur-trade in the North-West on a great scale.

Verandrye's work.

Thus were successively established, from 1731 to 1748, by Verandrye and his sons, Fort St. Pierre on Rainy Lake; Fort St. Charles on the Lake of the Woods; Fort Maurepas near the mouth of the Winnipeg; Fort Dauphin, on the north-west extremity of Lake Manitoba; Fort la Reine, on the southern extremity of the last-named lake; Fort Rouge, at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red River; Fort Bourbon, at the head of Lake Winnipeg; Fort Poskoyae, on the Saskatchewan, and Fort Lacerne (Nipawi), at the forks of the said river.

In 1752, some years prior to the conquest of Canada, a relative of Verandrye, named Niverville, established Fort Jonquiere at the foot of the mountains.[56] Which of all these forts were to pass, after many vicissitudes, into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, we shall see in the course of subsequent pages. Verandrye and his compeers chose their sites with great care and ability; so that it was rarely that their successors were able to improve upon them. On the foundations or charred remnants of the French forts, should the structures themselves have perished, the English fur-traders, when they came, reared anew their posts.

While thus the French were pressing forward from the south and east at the same moment, a new rivalry threatened to spring up in the far north-west.

Russia looks toward the New World.

The eighteenth century broke upon an abated zeal of the Spaniards in extending their discoveries and dominions in the New World. Almost contemporaneously, the threads they threw down were grasped by another power, which the zeal and energy of one man had suddenly transformed from a collection of savage, barbarous tribes into a great nation. Having achieved conquest over his neighbours and the cohesion of his new empire, Peter the Great turned his attention to a hardly inferior task. None knew as yet whether the two great continents, Asia and North America, united on the north-east. During Peter's residence in England, not the least of the institutions interesting him was the Hudson's Bay Company. A letter from Peter is quoted by a Russian writer, in which he alludes to the English rivalry for these trades "which had so long been the monopoly of Muscovy fur-hunting and fur-gathering." Doubtless even at this time he was speculating upon the chances of Russia competing with England for the fur traffic of the New World. But before such a competition could be brought about the question of the geographical connection between Asia and America must be settled. When he had been in Holland in 1717, he had been urged by some of the most eminent patrons of discovery amongst the Dutch to institute an expedition of investigation. But again other matters intervened; although in 1727 two Russian officers were equipped and in readiness to start overland when they were recalled for service in Sweden.

Not until he was on his death-bed did Czar Peter pen with his own hand the instructions to Admiral Aproxin which bore fruit later. It was then, too, that the idea, according to Lestkof, was discussed of a Russian Fur Company, similar in its methods and organization to the Hudson's Bay Company.

Peter directed first that one or two boats with decks should be built at Kamschatka, or in the vicinity; that with these a survey should be made of the most northerly coasts of his Asiatic Empire, to determine whether they were or were not contiguous to America. Also that the persons to whom the expedition might be entrusted should endeavour to ascertain whether there was any port in those regions belonging to Europe, and to keep a strict look-out for any European ship, taking care also to employ some skilful men in making enquiries regarding the names and situation of the coasts which they discovered. They were to keep an exact journal and to transmit it to St. Petersburg.

Peter died, but the Empress Catherine, his successor, was equally favourable to the scheme, and gave orders to fit out the expedition. To Captain Vitus Bering was entrusted the command. Under him were two lieutenants, Martin Spangberg and Alexi Tchirikoff; and besides other subalterns were several excellent ship-carpenters.

On February 5, 1735, they set out from St. Petersburg, and on March 16 arrived at Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia.

Bering's discoveries.

Bering returned from his first voyage satisfied that he had reached the utmost limits of Asia, and that no junction with America existed. Some years elapsed, and in 1741 Bering, Spangberg and Tchirikoff again volunteered. This expedition was destined to prove fatal to the explorer; he got lost in a fog, intense cold prevailed, scurvy broke out amongst the men, and on a little island in Bering's Sea he breathed his last.

Although many years were to elapse before the Russians took any more active steps, they had, by virtue of Bering's discoveries, got a footing on the North American Continent, and were thus already neighbours, if not yet rivals, of the Hudson's Bay Company.

"It is very evident," wrote one of the contemporary chroniclers, "that for upwards of two centuries and a half an opinion has prevailed amongst the most knowing and experienced persons, that there is a passage to the north-west, and this built partly upon science, partly upon tradition. Now, it is very hard to conceive how such an opinion should maintain its credit if it was not founded in reality; for it is an old and true maxim that specious opinions endure but a short time, whereas truth is everlasting."

For many years the notion of a north-west passage had slept; but in 1737 it again attracted public attention. In that year Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman of some means and of scientific bent, made formal application to the Hudson's Bay Company that a search be undertaken. Upon his representations the Company sent forth two of their ships upon the quest. These, the Churchill and the Musquash went, however, no farther north than latitude 62° 15' and returned without seeing anything worthy of notice, save "a number of small islands, abundance of black whales, but no very great tides, the highest about two fathoms, the flood coming from the northward."

There had been for a great many years in the Company's employ an able mariner, Captain Christopher Middleton. For some reason or other Middleton had become dissatisfied with their service and one of his friends placed him in communication with the patron of discovery, Dobbs, and a close correspondence ensued.[57]

Dobbs was eager to employ Middleton in a search for the long-sought straits. This was by no means an easy matter. In the first place the Company flatly declined to participate in the scheme, alleging that they had already done enough in that direction[58] and that the whole idea was a fallacy.

There was no north-west passage to India, and the sooner the public mind divested itself of the folly of supposing one existed the better it would be for the public purse and the public wisdom.

The Company pointed out that if Middleton should winter at either of the Company's factories it might drive the natives to trade with the French, who were always on the alert; and trade so lost would never return or be regained. They begged the Admiralty to restrain Captain Middleton from interfering with the Company's trade and invading their property and rights.

Dobbs, however, secured from the Admiralty for Middleton's use the bomb ketch Furnace, which, with another small vessel, the Welcome, was ready to sail early in June.

The Company opposes further exploration.

So opposed do the Company appear to have their domains meddled with by these fruitless explorations that they sent out a letter to their Governor at Churchill, which was the most convenient harbour for the explorers to winter in, not to receive Middleton into their fort. Dobbs and his friends getting wind of this, complained to the Admiralty, who wrote to the Honourable Adventurers in a tone of decided reproof, observing that even if Middleton were to receive assistance and provisions, payment would be made for these to the Company on the return of the expedition to England.

After deliberating for some time, the Company thereupon wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty, saying that they had sent a further letter to Governor Norton requiring him to extend the necessary hospitality to Middleton. That the sort of hospitality the Company was prepared to dispense was not of too warm a character may be adjudged from the following:

A duplicate of this was put in Middleton's possession, who still dissatisfied, rushed off instantly with it to Whitehall. It was deemed necessary to apply to the Lords of the Regency that the Secretary of State might, by their orders, write to the Company to request the assistance they refused to the Admiralty. The Company, thus hemmed in, gave a letter couched in a more friendly style.

"It is plain," remarks a contemporary writer, "that the Company believe there is a passage, which they want to conceal; for otherwise it would have been their interest to have the attempt made. If not found there would have been an end to prosecuting it any further, and they might probably have enjoyed their trade to the Bay, without its being coveted or enquired into."

Middleton owned to Dobbs that just before his departure the Company had endeavoured to bribe him with an offer of £5,000 to return to their service, or that if he was determined to go, to pursue the voyage by Davis' Straits, or by any other way than the west of the Bay. They alleged that it would cost the Company that amount to support their right against the Crown and against private adventurers, and that "as he had been their friend, and knew all their concerns, it would be better to give him that sum than to give it to their lawyers." The Company did not deny that such an offer had been made by two or three of the committee privately.

Middleton explores for a north-west passage.

Middleton now proceeded on his journey in quest of the famed north-west passage. It is charged that on his arrival in the Bay he never once went ashore or sent his boat to search for any inlet or to try the tide. He tried the current in latitude 63° 20', and found it very rapid, in spite of the fact that there existed a great deal of ice to the northward. Its presence compelled him to stand off from shore until he passed Cape Dobbs, beyond which he found an opening northwestward. In this opening he sought shelter for three weeks.

Trouble between Middleton and his men.

No voyage of discovery since the world began was ever made under such circumstances. Numerous members of the crew, who had got wind of the situation, were filled, or professed to be filled, with distrust of their captain. Caring nothing about the voyage itself or the object for which it was undertaken, they entered with zeal a hundred times a day into plots to make the commander's life unbearable. The supposed passage was christened the "Forbidden Straits," and the crews vastly amused themselves with Middleton's supposed discomfiture. Several were very nearly yard-armed for spreading reports that the captain had purposely sailed past the straits. Sometimes the captain merely laughed at the views of his subordinates; at other times, it is said, he flew into a temper, and indulged in threats and abuse. Once, when from the number of whales and the breadth and depth of the river, word sped from mouth to mouth that it was a strait they were in, and no river, "he rated several of them for pretending to say so against his opinion, saying his clerk was a double-tongued rascal, that he would cane the lieutenant, broomstick the master, and lash any others who would concern themselves about the voyage." It was, moreover, charged against Middleton that he interdicted the keeping of private journals, and that if any disobeyed this order he threatened to break open their boxes and get possession of such records. Once when the lieutenants and masters were absent down the river to look for a cove for the ships, Middleton grimly observed that he supposed the former would bring back "some romantick account of a strait or passage." Nevertheless, for his part, he would not take the ships a foot farther. Intrigue characterized the whole of this voyage of discovery.

The officers of both the Furnace and the Discovery took turns in making jaunts into the country. On the 8th of August, Captain Middleton, the clerk, gunner, and carpenter went ashore at Cape Frigid, and after pacing some fifteen miles into the country, returned, to find the ship drifted, although it lacked some hours of high water. Rankin and the men on board from this had become convinced that it was the effects of the flood from the supposed strait. The captain laughed them to scorn, and said that if it came from any strait at all it was Hudson's Strait.

Two northern Indians were taken on board the Discovery, and Thompson, the surgeon, who could speak some of the southern tongue, began busying himself making a vocabulary of their language. At this innocent occupation he was observed by Middleton, who threatened to "crop him" in case he persisted. When they reached Marble Island, although the two Indians were desirous of going to England, he put the pair ashore in a bad boat they were ignorant of how to manage. The supplications of the unhappy savages were useless to turn the Company's captain from his purpose. In vain they told him that the island was three leagues from the mainland, and a hundred miles from their own country; that it was inhabited by the Esquimaux, their enemies.

"The Captain gave them some provisions, ammunition, hatchets and toys. The excuse he made for not bringing them to England was, that upon his return his friends might be out of the Admiralty, and as he had no orders to take them home, they would be left a charge upon him." This was plausible, but Middleton's detractors did not rest there. They accused the captain of saying that he was afraid the Indians, when they learned to speak English, would be talking of the copper mine and the north-west passage, and would thereby put the public to the expense of sending out more ships in quest of it. "And this, no doubt," commented Dobbs, "was the true reason for that piece of cruelty, for he thought if they came to England he should not be able to conceal the passage."

On Middleton's return, after his quest, he was accused of saying, "My character is so well established as a discoverer that no man will ever, hereafter, attempt to discover the north-west passage."

Middleton returns without discovering the passage.

He certainly received a cordial invitation from the Government, the Admiralty and the Court. Immediately upon his arrival in London he communicated with several of the partners of the Hudson's Bay Company. The preparation of his journal occupied for a time his leisure. "He himself," says Dobbs, "had got great reputation from the Royal Society for his observations upon cold; and for what he had discovered had got a medal from them. He was upon good terms with the Lords of the Admiralty, and was to dedicate his charts and discoveries to the King and noblemen of the first rank as well as to the Lords of the Admiralty." That the Lords of the Admiralty were perfectly satisfied with his conduct, there is every reason to believe, as in the following year Middleton was placed in command of the Shark, a sloop. All this naturally put him into a position to serve those under him. All his recommendations for promotion only strengthened the suspicions gathering in the mind of Dobbs and his fellow-patrons. "He had recommended also his lieutenant, and thought none other on board had weight enough to impeach his proceedings, which, if they failed in, would ruin their characters; so that securing his officers, he thought all things would be safe amongst the crew. But Middleton was not one to forget the patron and prime mover of the expedition, whom he endeavoured to propitiate by sending him an abstract of his journal. This abstract seemed, to Dobbs, to be so full of contradictions and discrepancies, that he wrote to the explorer to send him, if possible, the journal itself. He had scarcely dispatched this communication when he received a letter from Lanrick, "a gentleman who had been bred a scholar," who had accompanied Middleton on the voyage. It was substantially the same account rendered by the captain, with this added paragraph:

"Sir,—This account I should have sent you before now but that the Captain, for reasons to himself best known, desired that none of us should say anything about it relating to the discovery for a little."

This very natural desire on the part of an explorer, about to become an author, seems to have been fraught with deep and incriminating significance to Dobbs. After a short time the whole of Middleton's journal reached him; it appeared to confirm all Dobbs's presentiments.

Suspicion attaches to Middleton.

Dobbs and the other patrons were therefore convinced that Middleton had played them false for the Hudson's Bay Company; and their belief in a north-west passage was strengthened rather than weakened. In their report, after going over the whole account of the voyage furnished them, they were especially severe upon Middleton. "His whole conduct," they said, "from his going to Churchill until his return to England, and even since his return, it will appear plainly that he intended to serve the Company at the public expense, and contrived everything so as to stifle the discovery, and to prevent others from undertaking it for the future so as to secure the favour of the Company and the reward they said they promised him before he began the voyage."

An informer appeared, who testified that Middleton had declared in presence of the others at a council held at York Factory, Churchill, that he "should be able to make the voyage, but none on board should be any the wiser and he would be a better friend to the Company than ever."

Middleton was charged in public with neglect in having failed to explore the line of coast which afforded a probability of a passage to the north-west. The principal points at issue appear to have been in respect to the discovery by Middleton, of the Wager River, Repulse Bay, and the Frozen Strait. In this century Sir Edward Parry has remarked: "The accuracy of Captain Middleton is manifest upon the point most strenuously argued against him, for our subsequent experience has not left the smallest doubt of Repulse Bay and the northern part of the Welcome being filled by a rapid tide flowing into it from the eastward through the Frozen Strait." Dobbs, fully impressed with a conviction that the captain's story of the Frozen Strait was all chimera, as well as everything Middleton had said concerning that part of the voyage, confidently insisted on the probability of the tide finding its way through Wager River, or at least through some arm of the sea communicating with that inlet from the westward.[59]

One detail only was lacking to render the situation farcical—an anonymous letter. This reached Dobbs on the 21st of January, and ran in this absurd vein:—

It was now clear that Middleton's voyage had been made in vain, and that another would shortly be attempted.