By 1670 the English had found trade to Hudson Bay so promising
that they then created the Hudson's Bay Company, which remains
one of the great trading corporations of the world. With the
English on Hudson Bay, New France was between English on the
north and English on the south and did not like it. On Hudson Bay
the English showed the same characteristics which they had shown
in New England. They were not stirred by vivid imaginings of what
might be found westward beyond the low-lying coast of the great
inland sea. They came for trade, planted themselves at the mouths
of the chief rivers, unpacked their goods, and waited for the
natives to come to barter with them. For many years the natives
came, since they must have the knives, hatchets, and firearms of
Europe. To share this profitable trade the French, now going
overland to the north from Quebec, now sailing into Hudson Bay by
the Straits, attacked the English; and on those dreary waters,
long before the Great West was known, there had been many a naval
battle, many a hand-to-hand fight for forts and their rich prize
of furs.
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