3-074-989 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lord Lonsdale's Travels in North America: noonday halt, temperature 55 degrees below zero, 1890. 'The enterprising and courageous performance of the Earl of Lonsdale in...crossing Alaska westward to the North Pacific...has excited much attention... The Hudson Bay Company's financial prosperity has rather declined from its ancient state; but it did good service to our nation long before Canada was a great British Colony; and none of our countrymen in exile lead a more rigorous life, with patient endurance of discomfort and the privation of social comforts, than the small bands and scattered detachments of hardy Britons in North America, collecting furs to send to the London market...The Company has the reputation of dealing liberally with those in its employment, and wisely and humanely with the Indian tribes from whom, as well as from numerous half-breed trappers and adventurous French Canadians, it gets its yearly supplies of valuable peltry [ie animal skins and furs]'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.