Old Quebec by Gilbert Parker — Read

But now to leave the fortress city for a little space, and see its influence working in the wilds which it had commanded by the valour of its adventurers and traders. While England and France had been contending on the St. Lawrence for mastery, and the struggle to gain or to retain the Gibraltar of America had dragged its length through generations, far off in the white north another strife between the civil energies of both nations was being waged. The English explorers -- Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and Baffin -- had been the first to reach the northern coast from the sea, giving their names to water and territory which have since become familiar to the civilised world. Theirs was the old dream -- a north-western route to India and China.

No such vision, however, had presented itself to the French explorers who, about the same time as the English, planted their flag upon those barren shores, and pushed up from the south, partly to explore, but more certainly to develop the trade in furs which the _Compagnie des cents Associes_, founded by Richelieu in 1627, had already worked to advantage. The charter of this Company, indeed, did not include the regions of Hudson's Bay, but was confined to the province of Canada alone. To-day, Canada comprises all the vast territory north of the 49th parallel of latitude, even to the pole; then its sphere of influence stretched westward to the Missouri and the Mississippi, and southward to Louisiana; while those regions now called Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Assiniboine, and the Klondike were as yet unknown.