Article January 17, 1901 Issue

Railroad to Frozen North

Boston Herald

The railroad newly started which is to connect the great lakes with Hudson's Bay will open up a country hitherto to a great extent unexplored. It will tap the resources of a region vastly productive in furs, and will exploit the coal fields of the valley of the Saskatchewan, through which runs a river navigable by steamers, affording every facility for transportation. These coal fields are believed to be among the greatest in the world. Hudson's Bay itself, which is almost a landlocked sea, with three thousand miles of coast line, abounds in whales and fishes commercially valuable.

Hudson's Bay is the southernmost of a great system of sounds which runs up into the Arctic. Its only outlet is through straits which, being in 60 degrees north latitude, are blocked by ice except for two months in the year; and even during those two months they are so obstructed that the passage is difficult and dangerous.

Two hundred and ninety years ago Hendrik Hudson, the famous navigator, had wintered in the bay, after making a fourth attempt to find the much-desired northwest passage to the Pacific, and, being out of provisions, was about to return home, when his crew mutinied. The mutineers set him adrift in an open boat, with his son and seven others—never to be heard of again, though doubtless they perished of cold and hunger—and coolly navigated the ship back to England.

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