ing and exploiting effort for many years to come. Great Britain, he argued, should take away the monopoly of the Hudson Bay Company[1] because that company had refused to carry out its charter agreement to search for a northwest passage into the Pacific. The government should seek that passage, and having found it should establish naval stations in the North Pacific, say near California, and in the South Pacific, say at the Isle of Easter. From these stations as centres, explorations should be made throughout the great ocean, north and south. He believed there were thousands of islands, perhaps continents, still to be found there and these were doubtless peopled with tribes waiting to be supplied with British goods.
The Northwest Passage. Under Dobbs's stimulation a good deal was done, within the next few years, to find the Northwest passage, but without success. However, the government began at the close of the French war (1764) to send exploring expeditions into the Pacific and in the ten years following many new islands were brought to light by a succession of navigators—Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and especially Cook, the greatest discoverer of all.
Bering's Russian Exploration. These notable activities of the British were matched by similar activities of the Russians. In 1728 Vitus Bering, a Dane who set out some years before in the service of Peter the Great, sailed north from Kamchatka and settled
- ↑ The Hudson's Bay Company received its charter from King Charles II in 1669.
