New France produced. He was first on Hudson Bay in the late
summer of 1686, in a party of about a hundred men, led by the
Chevalier de Troyes, who had marched overland from Quebec through
the wilderness. The English on the Bay, with a charter from King
Charles II, the friend of the French, and in a time of profound
peace under his successor, thought themselves secure. They now
had, however, a rude awakening. In the dead of night the
Frenchmen fell upon Fort Hayes, captured its dazed garrison, and
looted the place. The same fate befell all the other English
posts on the Bay. Iberville gained a rich store of furs as his
share of the plunder and returned with it to Quebec in 1687, just
at the time when La Salle, that other pioneer of France, was
struck down in the distant south by a murderer's hand.

Iberville was, above all else, a sailor. The easiest route to
Hudson Bay was by way of the sea. More than once after his first
experience he led to the Bay a naval expedition. His exploits are
still remembered with pride in French naval annals. In 1697 he
sailed the Pelican through the ice-floes of Hudson Straits. He
was attacked by three English merchantmen, with one hundred and
twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the English ships
escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he captured.
That autumn the hardy corsair was in France with a great booty
from the furs which the English had laboriously gathered.

The triumph of the French on Hudson Bay was short-lived. Their
exploits, though brilliant and daring, were more of the nature of
raids than attempts to settle and explore. They did no more than
the English to ascend the Nelson or other rivers to find what lay
beyond; and in 1718, by the Treaty of Utrecht, as we have already