The Great Company 16671871 Author:Beckles Willson Subtitle: Being a History of the Honourable Company of Merchants-Adventurers Trading Into Hudson's Bay : Compiled From the Company's Archives, From Diplomatic Documents and State Papers of France and England, From the Narratives of Factors and Traders, and From Many Accounts and Memoirs General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication... more » date: 1900 Original Publisher: Smith, Elder Subjects: Fur trade Canada Northwest, Canadian History / Canada / General History / Canada / Pre-Confederation (to 1867) History / North America Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II i659-1666 Groseilliers And Radisson -- Their Peregrinations In The North-west -- They Return To Quebec And Lay Their Scheme Before The Governor -- Repulsed By Him They Proceed To New England -- And Thence Sail For France, Where They Endeavour To Interest M. Colbert. The year 1659, notable in England as the last of the Puritan ascendency and the herald of a stirring era of activity, may be reckoned as the first with which the annals of the Great Company are concerned. It is in this year that we first catch a glimpse of two figures who played an important part in shaping its destinies. Little as they suspected it, the two intrepid fur-traders, Groseilliers and Radisson, who in the spring of that year pushed their way westward from Quebec to the unknown shores of Lake Superior, animated in this, as in all their subsequent exploits, by a spirit of adventure as well as a love of gain, were to prove the ancestors of the Great Company. Medard Chouart, the first of this dauntless pair, was born in France, near Meaux, and had emigrated to Quebec when he was a little over sixteen years old. His father had been a pilot, and i...« less