Note 3 — Part II
Reading edition
Probably referring to the Hudson’s Bay Company, although that was actually organized in 1670; and the explorations of 1746–47 here mentioned evidently allude to the expedition of William Moor and Henry Ellis in those years, “for discovering a Northwest Passage”—a discovery for which the English parliament had offered a reward of 20,000 pounds. This expedition, however, was not under the auspices of the company, whose officials, on the contrary, treated Moor and Ellis with much harshness and even inhumanity. ↑