Western law times of Canada - v. 1 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE WESTERN LAW TIMES. Vol. I. JUNE, 1890. No. 3. The Rise of Law in Rupert's Land. In order to obtain an intelligent idea of the circumstances relat... more »ing to the granting of the Hudson's Bay Company's Charter, fraught as it was, with such grave consequences to Canada, it is necessary to glance briefly at the events which led up to it. The history of the plantation of Rupert's Land practically begins with the discovery of Hudson's Bay in 1610, by the daring navigator of that name, who first ploughed the waters of the Bay, in his little ship, the Discoverie, of only 70 tons. His appalling death the following year in the icy waters of that inland sea, did not deter the intrepid mariners, who succeeded him, from further prosecuting his great discoveries in those northern reigons "at the Mention of which," says Old- mixon, "the reader will almost freeze as the Writer does; for that country is so prodigiously cold, that Nature is never impregnated by the sun ; or rather her barren Womb produces nothing for the subsistence of man." (1) The voyages of Captain Sir Thomas Button in 1611, of Bylot and Baffin, in 1615, and of Luke Fox and Thomas James in 1631, added very considerably to the knowledge of these seas, (1) but it is not till we come to the voyages of (1) Oldmixon's British Empire, Vol. II, p. 543; 1741. (2) Robson, Account of Hudson's Bay, 1752 p. 4, of appeudix I. Dcs Grosseiliers and Radisson, that any definite record of the erection of permanent buildings on the shores of the bay, is afforded. The pretensions to explorations and acquisitions in these latitudes based on the voyages of the Sicur Jean Bourdon, the attorney-general of Quebec in 1656; on that of the Jesuit Father Dablon in 1661, by order of the Sieur d'Argcnson, governor of Canada; on that of the...« less