boundary of this territory is from Deer lake to a point a little to the west of the Red river settlement. Its mountains are chiefly along the boundaries and consist of primitive rock. The soil is rich, but on account of the sever

ity of the climate, agriculture is almost entirely confined to the immediate neighborhood of the trading posts. The chief dependence of the inhabitants for food and clothing is on the animal kingdom. The royal charter rendered the members of this Hudson Bay Company absolute proprietors and lords. Prince Rupert was the first governor, and a general court was to be held in November of each year to choose officers. The company was empowered to make laws and ordinances, and to impose penalties and punishments. No English subject was to visit, frequent, or haunt, or adventure, or trade in the territory without leave in writing under the great seal of the company, under penalty of forfeiture of goods, of punishment, and of being seized and sent to England. Nor could the king grant any such privilege without permission of the company.

Prince Rupert was the son of Elector-Palatine Frederick V. and Elizabeth, daughter of James I., of England, and at this date was fifty-one years of age. He had been an officer in the doomed army of the unfortunate Charles I., where he distinguished himself by resolute daring and much too frequent lack of caution. The army consisted chiefly of men of gentle blood, whose chiefs are better known to the world of to-day than the majority of the worthies in the peerage books or present army lists. The gay temper of the cavalier, the courtier's wit, the soldier's jest, gave a cheerful air to those plumed and glittering groups. In 1673 Prince Rupert was commissioned to meet and escort Queen Henrietta Maria, who having spent a year in Holland, conciliating the Dutch government with admirable tact, had returned to her own hostile realm with a considerable addition to its military forces, and it is said that Rupert met her at Stratford-on-Avon, in the very house once owned and occupied by Shakespeare. This house was called "New Place," and Mrs. Nash, the poet's great-grand-daughter, and her husband were living there at the time.

An anecdote is related by Warburton, connected with the crossing of the channel by Henrietta Maria on her return from Holland. She was escorted by the gallant Van Tromp, who also conveyed for her twelve transports laden with military stores. A violent storm was encountered on the passage, and every one, even to the experienced sailor, was seriously alarmed. The queen, perfectly calm in the midst of the'panic, comforted her frightened ladies by assuring them that queens of England were never drowned. She was greatly amused at the same time by the confessions of her officers, who shouted aloud their most secret sins into the preoccupied ears of the seasick priests, proclaiming more gossip in a few moments of despair than would naturally have come to her knowledge in a life-time.

Among the cavaliers who hastened to pay homage to the queen when

she landed on this occasion was the gallant Marquis of Montrose, James Grahame, just arrived from Scotland, the stirring incidents of whose romantic career would fill a volume. He was at the time thirty-one years of age, classically educated, and a man who had exhibited in his early life a genuine predilection for literature. He was married at seventeen to

Magdalene Carnegie, daughter of Lord Carnegie of Kinnaird, and for a time lived quietly at Kinnaird Castle. On attaining his majority he left Scotland and traveled on the continent, visiting the academies of France and Italy, and perfecting himself in all the accomplishments becoming a gentleman and a soldier.

The bravery of Henrietta Maria was much praised by the faithful, but that of Lady Arundel of Wardour castle, the daughter of the fourth earl of Worcester, was of a higher type. It was during the same year, on the 2d of May, while Lord Arundel was absent with the cavaliers at Oxford,

that Sir Edward Hungerford presented himself before Wardour Castle, demanding admittance to search for malignants, and upon being denied, summoned a body of thirteen hundred troops to assist him in entering by force. With this army drawn up in line he ordered the surrender of the castle, and received the heroic reply: "Lady Arundel has had a command from her lord to keep it, which order she will obey." Cannons were then

brought into range, and firing upon the castle continued for six days and nights. The lady had only fifty servants, less than half of whom were fighting men, but the women were equally efficient, supplying the ammunition to the improvised soldiery, and valiantly extinguishing the fiery missiles thrown over the walls. Their powers of resistance were finally exhausted, and no relief appearing, a parley was offered, and the castle surrendered on capitulation. The terms, however, were ignored as soon as the

keys were given up, except so far as the lives of the besieged were concerned. The castle was plundered, rare pictures destroyed, and property sacrificed to the value of half a million dollars.

Prince Rupert was one of the few, engaged in the great struggle, who survived the Cromwell period. After many vicissitudes he reached France and joined his royal cousins in their exile. At the restoration he

was at once invested with various offices and dignities, became a privy councilor, a member of the admiralty, governor of Windsor castle, etc. He was something of a scholar, and a most earnest and generous patron of all promising adventures. He had been more or less concerned in the discovery of a new passage into the South sea prior to the mercantile operations of this new Hudson Bay Company, which, once established, extended over a period of two hundred years. "One might naturally pause," writes Dr. Ellis, "upon the almost grotesque disparity of pro

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