Note 41 — Chapter XVI · 1697-1712.

"Therefore, we shall proceed to inform your Lordships of the present melancholy prospects of our trade and settlement in Hudson's Bay, and that none of his Majesty's plantations are left in such a deplorable state as those of this Company, for by their great losses by the French, both in times of peace as well as during the late war, together with the hardships they lie under by the late Treaty of Ryswick, they may be said to be the only mourners by the peace. They cannot but inform your Lordships that the only settlement that the Company now have left in Hudson's Bay (of seven they formerly possessed) is Albany Fort, vulgarly called Checheawan, in the bottom of the said Bay, where they are surrounded by the French on every side, viz., by their settlements on the lakes and rivers from Canada to the northwards, towards Hudson's Bay, as also from Port Nelson (Old York Fort) to the southward; but beside this, the Company have, by the return of their ship this year, received certain intelligence that the French have made another settlement at a place called New Severn, 'twixt Port Nelson and Albany Fort, whereby they have hindered the Indians from coming to trade at the Company's factory, at the bottom of the Bay, so that the Company this year have not received above one-fifth part of the returns they usually had from thence, insomuch that the same doth not answer the expense of their expedition."