which its waters flow, and is also remarkable for rising gradually from its eastern limits in three distinct elevations or steppes as far as the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains.  Forests of trees, small for the most part, are found only when the prairies are left and we reach the more picturesque undulating country through which the North Saskatchewan flows.  An extraordinary feature of this great region is the continuous chain of lakes and rivers which stretch from the basin of the St. Lawrence as far as the distant northern sea into which the Mackenzie, the second largest river in North America, carries its enormous volume of waters.  As we stand on the rugged heights of land which divides the Winnipeg from the Laurentian basin we are within easy reach of rivers which flow, some to arctic seas, some to the Atlantic, and some to the Gulf of Mexico.  If we ascend the Saskatchewan River, from Lake Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains, we shall find ourselves within a measurable distance not only of the sources of the Mackenzie, one of whose tributaries reaches the head waters of the Yukon, a river of golden promise like the Pactolus of the eastern lands—­but also within reach of the head waters of the rapid Columbia, and the still more impetuous Fraser, both of which pour into the Pacific Ocean, as well as of the Missouri, which here accumulates strength for its alliance with the Mississippi, that great artery of a more southern land.  It was to this remarkable geographical feature that Oliver Wendell Holmes referred in the following well-known verses: 

   “Yon stream whose sources run
      Turned by a pebble’s edge,
   Is Athabaska rolling toward the Sun
      Through the cleft mountain ledge.”

   “The slender rill had strayed,
      But for the slanting stone,
   To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
      Of foam-flecked Oregon.”

[ILLUSTRATION:  MAP OF BRITISH AMERICA TO ILLUSTRATE THE CHARTER OF THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY]

A great company claimed for two centuries exclusive trading privileges over a large portion of these territories, known as Rupert’s Land, by virtue of a charter given by King Charles II, on the 2nd May, 1670, to Prince Rupert, the Duke of Albemarle, and other Englishmen of rank and wealth.  The early operations of this Company of Adventurers of England were confined to the vicinity of Hudson and James Bays.  The French of Canada for many years disputed the rights of the English company to this great region, but it was finally ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht.  Twenty years after the Treaty of Paris (1763) a number of wealthy and enterprising merchants, chiefly Scotch, established at Montreal the North-West Company for the purpose of trading in those north-western territories to which French traders had been the first to venture.  This new company carried on its operations with such activity that in thirty years’ time it employed four thousand persons and occupied sixty posts in different parts of the territories.