Hudson Bay, a gulf, or rather inland sea, in the north-east of North America, is completely landlocked except on the north, where Southampton Island and Fox Channel lie between it and the Arctic Ocean, and where Hudson Strait, running 500 miles south-east, connects it with the Atlantic. Including its south-eastern extension, James's Bay (q.v.), it measures about 1000 miles in length and 600 in average width, and has an area of some 500,000 sq. m. The eastern shore, called the East Main, is for the most part rocky, and is fenced with several small islands; the western shore, the West Main, is generally flat. This sea, the great drainage reservoir of the Canadian North-west Terri- ories, receives the precipitation from over an area of nearly 3,000,000 sq. m. Of the numerous rivers which bring down this water only two need be mentioned—the Churchill, whose deep and narrow mouth forms the best harbour on the shores of Hudson Bay, and the Nelson, of whose total course of 400 miles only 70 or 80 are navigable. Hitherto the only business that has been to any extent developed in this region has been the fur trade of the Hudson Bay Company (q.v.), though fish-oil has also been exported. Of late years, however, a movement has been on foot for opening up a direct communication from England with Manitoba and the North-west of Canada by way of Hudson Bay and Strait. The scheme provides for a railway from Winnipeg to Fort Nelson on the bay, a distance of 650 miles, of which 40 miles were constructed by the end of 1890. The chief objection to the project is that, although the bay is quite easy to navigate, and is only covered with ice in winter to a distance of about 10 miles from the shore, yet the passage of Arctic drift-ice through Fox Channel and Hudson Strait in early summer renders the successful navigation of the latter waterway somewhat uncertain. The strait can, however, be traversed by vessels on an average for about three months annually. This route would effect a saving of 775 miles as compared with the route by way of Montreal, and of 1130 as compared with that by New York.
See Captain W. Coats's Geography of Hudson's Bay, 1727-51, edited by J. Barrow for the Hakluyt Society (1852); Dr Robert Bell in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. (1881); W. Shelford in National Review (1886); and C. R. Markham in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. (1888).