Through the Mackenzie Basin

The terms upon which Canada obtained her great possessions in the West are generally known and much has been written regarding the tentative steps by which after long years of waiting, she acquired them. The distinctively prairie or southern portion of the country and its outliers constituting "Prince Rupert's Land", had been claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company since May, 1670 as an absolute freehold. This and the North West Territories in which under terminable lease from the Crown the Company exercised as in British Columbia, exclusive rights to trade only were as the reader knows transferred to Canada by Imperial sanction at the same time.