to a million and a half under the new adjustment, and were thrown
upon the market in shares of twenty pounds sterling each. Sir
Edmund Head, an old ex-Governor of Canada, was made Governor
of the new company. The Stock Exchange was not altogether
favourable, and the remaining shares were only sold in the
Winnipeg land boom of 1881.

The alien element in the new company seemed to inspire the
politicians of the United States with surpassing hopes and
ideas. An offer to purchase its territorial interests was made
in January, 1866, by American capitalists, which was not
unfavourably glanced at by the directorate. It was capped later
on. The corollary of the proposal was a bill, actually introduced
into the United States Congress in July following, and read twice,
"providing for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West, and for the organization
of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan and Columbia." The
bill provided that "The United States would pay ten millions of
dollars to the Hudson's Bay Company in full of all claims to
territory or jurisdiction in North America, whether founded on
the Charter of the Company, or any treaty, law, or usage." The
grandiosity, to use a mild phrase, of such a measure needs no
comment. But though it seems amusing to the Canadian of to-day,
it was by no means a joke forty years ago. As a matter of fact,
the then most uninhabited Territories, cut off from the centres
of Canadian activity by a wilderness of over a thousand miles,
would have been invaded by Fenians and filibusters but for the
fact that they were a part of the British Empire. An attempt
at this was indeed made at a later date. This possibility was
afterwards formulated, evidently as a threat, by Senator Charles