Between this and the old Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity--almost at times a state of war--arose, and continued until 1821, when the North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated.

It is necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the journeys which are about to be described.
Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior, after Canada had been handed over to the British.[1] In 1766-7 he reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St.Peter or Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota.

Thomas Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,[2] where there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon.

He was succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the Elder in 1775.
[Footnote 1: Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route being found to the Pacific coast.] [Footnote 2: The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this lake, is _Thuja occidentalis_.

There are no real "cedars" in America.] Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he was born in 1739.