HENRY HUDSON'S BAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 240, 10 October 1934, Page 18

HENRY HUDSON'S BAY.

A WREATH FOR A HERO

When the Newfoundland left Liverpool in June among her passengers was Mr. Patrick Ashley Cooper, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, starting on a 10,000-milc journey; and among her possessions was a wreath for Henry Hudson's ocean grave. The Hudson's Bay Company has lived longer than any other company in existence, for it was founded in 1670, but Mr. Cooper is making new history for it, being the first of the company's governors to visit its Arctic trading posts. There are 232 of these posts in Canada, some so isolated that they receive letters and parcels once a year when a supply ship calle, but Mr. Cooper will be able to go to only 13 of them.

From Montreal the governor-is continuing his journey in the Nascopie, following as nearly as possible the course taken by the Nonsuch in 1068. On board the Nonsuch were the pioneers who obtained the company's Royal Charter from Charles the Second two years later, when Prince Rupert and 17 other gentlemen and noblemen were appointed as Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay. But the thoughts of those in the Nascopie will travel even farther back, for they will pass the spot where Henry Hudson and his son and friends were cast adrift in .in open boat in 1011. Here a short memorial service will be held, and Mr. Cooper will place on the sea a wreath presented by the Empire Day Movement in memory of the intrepid explorer.

The pennies of millions of schoolchildren have gone to buy this wreath for Henry Hudson, who perished, no one knows how, in 1011.

It is to be taken by the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Nascopie and cast into the sea where Henry Hudson and his boy were caet adrift. It is an old, old story, of how a young man the explorer had befriended led the mutineers; how they put him into an open boat to die in the bitter cold; how the traitor was slain in a light with Eskimos, others died of starvation, and how some of the mutineers sailed home to England and were imprisoned. But it is. not too old a story to touch young hearts, and so before the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company left London the other day he was given a wreath from children of the Empire which the explorer helped to build.