On Canada's Frontier Part 5

There came a lull, which gave us time to philosophize on the contrast between this sort of fis.h.i.+ng and the fas.h.i.+onable sport of using the most costly and delicate rods--like pieces of jewelry--and of calculating to a nicety what sort of flies to use in matching the changing weather of the varying tastes of trout in waters where even all these calculations and provisions would not yield a hatful of small fish in a day. Here I was, armed like an urchin beside a minnow brook, and catching bigger trout than I ever saw outside Fulton Market--trout of the choicest variety. But while I moralized my Indian grew impatient, and cut himself a new hole out over deep water. He caught a couple of two-and-a-half-pound brook trout and a four-pound gray trout, and I was as well rewarded. But he was still discontented, and moved to a strait opening into a little bay, where he cut two more holes. "Eas' wind," said he, "fish no bite."

I found on that occasion that no quant.i.ty of clothing will keep a man warm in that almost arctic climate. First my hands became cold, and then my feet, and then my ears. A thin film of ice closed up the fis.h.i.+ng holes if the water was not constantly disturbed. The thermometer must have registered ten or fifteen degrees below zero. Our lines became quadrupled in thickness at the lower ends by the ice that formed upon them. When they coiled for an instant upon the ice at the edge of a hole, they stuck to it, frozen fast. By stamping my feet and putting my free hand in my pocket as fast as I s.h.i.+fted my pole from one hand to the other, I managed to persist in fis.h.i.+ng. I noticed many interesting things as I stood there, almost alone in that almost pathless wilderness. First I saw that the Indian was not cold, though not half so warmly dressed as I. The circulation or vitality of those scions of nature must be very remarkable, for no sort of weather seemed to trouble them at all. Wet feet, wet bodies, intense cold, whatever came, found and left them indifferent. Night after night, in camp, in the open air, or in our log shanty, we white men trembled with the cold when the log fire burned low, but the Indians never woke to rebuild it. Indeed, I did not see one have his blanket pulled over his chest at any time.

Woodc.o.c.ks were drumming in the forest now and then, and the shrill, bird-like chatter of the squirrels frequently rang out upon the forest quiet. My Indian knew every noise, no matter how faint, yet never raised his head to listen. "Dat squirrel," he would say, when I asked him. Or, "Woodc.o.c.k, him calling rain," he ventured. Once I asked what a very queer, distant, m.u.f.fled sound was. "You hear dat when you walk. Keep still, no hear dat," he said. It was the noise the ice made when I moved.

As I stood there a squirrel came down upon a log jutting out over the edge of the lake, and looked me over. A white weasel ran about in the bushes so close to me that I could have hit him with a peanut sh.e.l.l.

That morning some partridge had been seen feeding in the bush close to members of our party. It was a country where small game is not hunted, and does not always hide at a man's approach. We had left our fish lying on the ice near the various holes from which we pulled them, and I thought of them when a flock of ravens pa.s.sed overhead, crying out in their hoa.r.s.e tones. They were sure to see the fish dotting the snow like raisins in a bowl of rice.

"Won't they steal the fish?" I asked.

"T'ink not," said the Indian.

"I don't know anything about ravens," I said, "but if they are even distantly related to a crow, they will steal whatever they can lift."

We could not see our fish around the bend of the lake, so the Indian dropped his rod and walked stolidly after the birds. As soon as he pa.s.sed out of sight I heard him scolding the great birds as if they were unruly children.

"'Way, there!" he cried--"'way! Leave dat fish, you. What you do dere, you t'ief?"

It was an outcropping of the French blood in his veins that made it possible for him to do such violence to Indian reticence. The birds had seen our fish, and were about to seize them. Only the foolish bird tradition that renders it necessary for everything with wings to circle precisely so many times over its prey before taking it saved us our game and lost them their dinner. They had not completed half their quota of circles when Brossy began to yell at them. When he returned his brain had awakened, and he began to remember that ravens were thieves. He said that the lumbermen in that country pack their dinners in canvas sacks and hide them in the snow. Often the ravens come, and, searching out this food, tear off the sacks and steal their contents. I bade good-bye to pork three times a day after that. At least twice a day we feasted upon trout.

VI

"A SKIN FOR A SKIN"

The motto of the Hudson Bay Fur-trading Company

Those who go to the newer parts of Canada to-day will find that several of those places which their school geographies displayed as Hudson Bay posts a few years ago are now towns and cities. In them they will find the trading stations of old now transformed into general stores.

Alongside of the Canadian headquarters of the great corporation, where used to stand the walls of Fort Garry, they will see the princ.i.p.al store of the city of Winnipeg, an inst.i.tution worthy of any city, and more nearly to be likened to Whiteley's Necessary Store in London than to any shopping-place in New York. As in Whiteley's you may buy a house, or anything belonging in or around a house, so you may in this great Manitoban establishment. The great retail emporium of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is the Hudson Bay store; and in Calgary, the metropolis of Alberta and the Canadian plains, the princ.i.p.al shopping-place in a territory beside which Texas dwindles to the proportions of a park is the Hudson Bay store.

These and many other shops indicate a new development of the business of the last of England's great chartered monopolies, but instead of marking the manner in which civilization has forced it to abandon its original function, this merely demonstrates that the proprietors have taken advantage of new conditions while still pursuing their original trade.

It is true that the huge corporation is becoming a great retail shop-keeping company. It is also true that by the surrender of its monopolistic privileges it got a consolation prize of money and of twenty millions of dollars' worth of land, so that its chief business may yet become that of developing and selling real estate. But to-day it is still, as it was two centuries ago, the greatest of fur-trading corporations, and fur-trading is to-day a princ.i.p.al source of its profits.

Reminders of their old a.s.sociations as forts still confront the visitor to the modern city shops of the company. The great shop in Victoria, for instance, which, as a fort, was the hub around which grew the wheel that is now the capital of the province, has its fur trade conducted in a sort of barn-like annex of the bazaar; but there it is, nevertheless, and busy among the great heaps of furs are men who can remember when the Hydahs and the T'linkets and the other neighboring tribes came down in their war canoes to trade their winter's catch of skins for guns and beads, vermilion, blankets, and the rest. Now this is the mere catch-all for the furs got at posts farther up the coast and in the interior. But upstairs, above the store, where the fas.h.i.+onable ladies are looking over laces and purchasing perfumes, you will see a collection of queer old guns of a pattern familiar to Daniel Boone. They are relics of the fur company's stock of those famous "trade-guns" which disappeared long before they had cleared the plains of buffalo, and which the Indians used to deck with bra.s.s nails and bright paint, and value as no man to-day values a watch. But close to the trade-guns of romantic memory is something yet more highly suggestive of the company's former position.

This is a heap of unclaimed trunks, "left," the employes will tell you, "by travellers, hunters, and explorers who never came back to inquire for them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIVAL TRADERS RACING TO THE INDIAN CAMP]

It was not long ago that conditions existed such as in that region rendered the disappearance of a traveller more than a possibility. The wretched, squat, bow-legged, dirty laborers of that coast, who now dress as we do, and earn good wages in the salmon-fis.h.i.+ng and canning industries, were not long ago very numerous, and still more villanous.

They were not to be compared with the plains Indians as warriors or as men, but they were more treacherous, and wanting in high qualities. In the interior to-day are some Indians such as they were who are accused of cannibalism, and who have necessitated warlike defences at distant trading-posts. Travellers who escaped Indian treachery risked starvation, and stood their chances of losing their reckoning, of freezing to death, of encounters with grizzlies, of snow-slides, of canoe accidents in rapids, and of all the other casualties of life in a territory which to-day is not half explored. Those are not the trunks of Hudson Bay men, for such would have been sent home to English and Scottish mourners; they are the luggage of chance men who happened along, and outfitted at the old post before going farther. But the company's men were there before them, had penetrated the region farther and earlier, and there they are to-day, carrying on the fur trade under conditions strongly resembling those their predecessors once encountered at posts that are now towns in farming regions, and where now the locomotive and the steamer are familiar vehicles. Moreover, the status of the company in British Columbia is its status all the way across the North from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

To me the most interesting and picturesque life to be found in North America, at least north of Mexico, is that which is occasioned by this princ.i.p.al phase of the company's operations. In and around the fur trade is found the most notable relic of the white man's earliest life on this continent. Our wild life in this country is, happily, gone. The frontiersman is more difficult to find than the frontier, the cowboy has become a laborer almost like any other, our Indians are as the animals in our parks, and there is little of our country that is not threaded by railroads or wagon-ways. But in new or western Canada this is not so. A vast extent of it north of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which hugs our border, has been explored only as to its waterways, its valleys, or its open plains, and where it has been traversed much of it remains as Nature and her near of kin, the red men, had it of old. On the streams canoes are the vehicles of travel and of commerce; in the forests "trails" lead from trading-post to trading-post, the people are Indians, half-breeds, and Esquimaux, who live by hunting and fis.h.i.+ng as their forebears did; the Hudson Bay posts are the seats of white population; the post factors are the magistrates.

All this is changing with a rapidity which history will liken to the sliding of scenes before the lens of a magic-lantern. Miners are crus.h.i.+ng the foot-hills on either side of the Rocky Mountains, farmers and cattle-men have advanced far northward on the prairie and on the plains in narrow lines, and railroads are pus.h.i.+ng hither and thither.

Soon the limits of the inhospitable zone this side of the Arctic Sea, and of the marshy, weakly-wooded country on either side of Hudson Bay will circ.u.mscribe the fur-trader's field, except in so far as there may remain equally permanent hunting-grounds in Labrador and in the mountains of British Columbia. Therefore now, when the Hudson Bay Company is laying the foundations of widely different interests, is the time for halting the old original view that stood in the stereopticon for centuries, that we may see what it revealed, and will still show far longer than it takes for us to view it.

The Hudson Bay Company's agents were not the first hunters and fur-traders in British America, ancient as was their foundation. The French, from the Canadas, preceded them no one knows how many years, though it is said that it was as early as 1627 that Louis XIII.

chartered a company of the same sort and for the same aims as the English company. Whatever came of that corporation I do not know, but by the time the Englishmen established themselves on Hudson Bay, individual Frenchmen and half-breeds had penetrated the country still farther west.

They were of hardy, adventurous stock, and they loved the free roving life of the trapper and hunter. Fitted out by the merchants of Canada, they would pursue the waterways which there cut up the wilderness in every direction, their canoes laden with goods to tempt the savages, and their guns or traps forming part of their burden. They would be gone the greater part of a year, and always returned with a store of furs to be converted into money, which was, in turn, dissipated in the cities with devil-may-care jollity. These were the _coureurs du bois_, and theirs was the stock from which came the _voyageurs_ of the next era, and the half-breeds, who joined the service of the rival fur companies, and who, by-the-way, reddened the history of the North-west territories with the little bloodshed that mars it.

Charles II. of England was made to believe that wonders in the way of discovery and trade would result from a grant of the Hudson Bay territory to certain friends and pet.i.tioners. An experimental voyage was made with good results in 1668, and in 1670 the King granted the charter to what he styled "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay, one body corporate and politique, in deed and in name, really and fully forever, for Us, Our heirs, and Successors."

It was indeed a royal and a wholesale charter, for the King declared, "We have given, granted, and confirmed unto said Governor and Company sole trade and commerce of those Seas, Streights, Bays, Rivers, Lakes, Creeks, and Sounds, in whatsoever lat.i.tude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the Streights commonly called Hudson's, together with all the Lands, Countries, and Territories upon the coasts and confines of the Seas, etc., . . . not already actually possessed by or granted to any of our subjects, or possessed by the subjects of any other Christian Prince or State, with the fis.h.i.+ng of all sorts of Fish, Whales, Sturgeons, and all other Royal Fishes, . . . . together with the Royalty of the Sea upon the Coasts within the limits aforesaid, and all Mines Royal, as well discovered as not discovered, of Gold, Silver, Gems, and Precious Stones, . . . . and that the said lands be henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of Our Plantations or Colonies in America called Rupert's Land." For this gift of an empire the corporation was to pay yearly to the king, his heirs and successors, two elks and two black beavers whenever and as often as he, his heirs, or his successors "shall happen to enter into the said countries." The company was empowered to man s.h.i.+ps of war, to create an armed force for security and defence, to make peace or war with any people that were not Christians, and to seize any British or other subject who traded in their territory. The King named his cousin, Prince Rupert, Duke of c.u.mberland, to be first governor, and it was in his honor that the new territory got its name of Rupert's Land.

In the company were the Duke of Albemarle, Earl Craven, Lords Arlington and Ashley, and several knights and baronets, Sir Philip Carteret among them. There were also five esquires, or gentlemen, and John Portman, "citizen and goldsmith." They adopted the witty sentence, "_Pro pelle cutem_" (A skin for a skin), as their motto, and established as their coat of arms a fox sejant as the crest, and a s.h.i.+eld showing four beavers in the quarters, and the cross of St. George, the whole upheld by two stags.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEAR TRAP]

The "adventurers" quickly established forts on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay, and began trading with the Indians, with such success that it was rumored they made from twenty-five to fifty per cent. profit every year.

But they exhibited all of that timidity which capital is ever said to possess. They were nothing like as enterprising as the French _coureurs du bois_. In a hundred years they were no deeper in the country then at first, excepting as they extended their little system of forts or "factories" up and down and on either side of Hudson and James bays. In view of their profits, perhaps this lack of enterprise is not to be wondered at. On the other hand, their charter was given as a reward for the efforts they had made, and were to make, to find "the Northwest pa.s.sage to the Southern seas." In this quest they made less of a trial than in the getting of furs; how much less we shall see. But the company had no lack of brave and hardy followers. At first many of the men at the factories were from the Orkney Islands, and those islands remained until recent times the recruiting-source for this service. This was because the Orkney men were inured to a rigorous climate, and to a diet largely composed of fish. They were subject to less of a change in the company's service than must have been endured by men from almost any part of England.

I am going, later, to ask the reader to visit Rupert's Land when the company had shaken off its timidity, overcome its obstacles, and dotted all British America with its posts and forts. Then we shall see the interiors of the forts, view the strange yet not always hard or uncouth life of the company's factors and clerks, and glance along the trails and watercourses, mainly unchanged to-day, to note the work and surroundings of the Indians, the _voyageurs_, and the rest who inhabit that region. But, fortunately, I can first show, at least roughly, much that is interesting about the company's growth and methods a century and a half ago. The information is gotten from some English Parliamentary papers forming a report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1749.

Arthur Dobbs and others pet.i.tioned Parliament to give them either the rights of the Hudson Bay Company or a similar charter. It seems that England had offered 20,000 reward to whosoever should find the bothersome pa.s.sage to the Southern seas _via_ this northern route, and that these pet.i.tioners had sent out two s.h.i.+ps for that purpose. They said that when others had done no more than this in Charles II.'s time, that monarch had given them "the greatest privileges as lords proprietors" of the Hudson Bay territory, and that those recipients of royal favor were bounden to attempt the discovery of the desired pa.s.sage. Instead of this, they not only failed to search effectually or in earnest for the pa.s.sage, but they had rather endeavored to conceal the same, and to obstruct the discovery thereof by others. They had not possessed or occupied any of the lands granted to them, or extended their trade, or made any plantations or settlements, or permitted other British subjects to plant, settle, or trade there. They had established only four factories and one small trading-house; yet they had connived at or allowed the French to encroach, settle, and trade within their limits, to the great detriment and loss of Great Britain. The pet.i.tioners argued that the Hudson Bay charter was monopolistic, and therefore void, and at any rate it had been forfeited "by non-user or abuser."

In the course of the hearing upon both sides, the "voyages upon discovery," according to the company's own showing, were not undertaken until the corporation had been in existence nearly fifty years, and then the search had only been prosecuted during eighteen years, and with only ten expeditions. Two s.h.i.+ps sent out from England never reached the bay, but those which succeeded, and were then ready for adventurous cruising, made exploratory voyages that lasted only between one month and ten weeks, so that, as we are accustomed to judge such expeditions, they seem farcical and mere pretences. Yet their largest s.h.i.+p was only of 190 tons burden, and the others were a third smaller--vessels like our small coasting schooners. The most particular instructions to the captains were to trade with all natives, and persuade them to kill whales, sea-horses, and seals; and, subordinately and incidentally, "by G.o.d's permission," to find out the Strait of Annian, a fanciful sheet of water, with tales of which that irresponsible Greek sea-tramp, Juan de Fuca, had disturbed all Christendom, saying that it led between a great island in the Pacific (Vancouver) and the main-land into the inland lakes. To the factors at their forts the company sent such lukewarm messages as, "and if you can by any means find out any discovery or matter to the northward or elsewhere in the company's interest or advantage, do not fail to let us know every year."

The att.i.tude of the company towards discovery suggests a Dogberry at its head, bidding his servants to "comprehend" the North-west pa.s.sage, but should they fail, to thank G.o.d they were rid of a villain. In truth, they were traders pure and simple, and were making great profits with little trouble and expense.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUSKIE DOGS FIGHTING]

They brought from England about 4000 worth of powder, shot, guns, fire-steels, flints, gun-worms, powder-horns, pistols, hatchets, sword blades, awl blades, ice-chisels, files, kettles, fish-hooks, net-lines, burning-gla.s.ses, looking-gla.s.ses, tobacco, brandy, goggles, gloves, hats, lace, needles, thread, thimbles, breeches, vermilion, worsted sashes, blankets, flannels, red feathers, b.u.t.tons, beads, and "s.h.i.+rts, shoes, and stockens." They spent, in keeping up their posts and s.h.i.+ps, about 15,000, and in return they brought to England castorum, whale-fins, whale-oil, deer-horns, goose-quills, bed-feathers, and skins--in all of a value of about 26,000 per annum. I have taken the average for several years in that period of the company's history, and it is in our money as if they spent $90,000 and got back $130,000, and this is their own showing under such circ.u.mstances as to make it the course of wisdom not to boast of their profits. They had three times trebled their stock and otherwise increased it, so that having been 10,500 shares at the outset, it was now 103,950 shares.

And now that we have seen how natural it was that they should not then bother with exploration and discovery, in view of the remuneration that came for simply sitting in their forts and buying furs, let me pause to repeat what one of their wisest men said casually, between the whiffs of a meditative cigar, last summer: "The search for the north pole must soon be taken up in earnest," said he. "Man has paused in the undertaking because other fields where his needs were more pressing, and where effort was more certain to be rewarded with success, had been neglected. This is no longer the fact, and geographers and other students of the subject all agree that the north pole must next be sought and found. Speaking only on my own account and from my knowledge, I a.s.sert that whenever any government is in earnest in this desire, it will employ the men of this fur service, and they will find the pole.

The company has posts far within the arctic circle, and they are manned by men peculiarly and exactly fitted for the adventure. They are hardy, acutely intelligent, self-reliant, accustomed to the climate, and all that it engenders and demands. They are on the spot ready to start at the earliest moment in the season, and they have with them all that they will need on the expedition. They would do nothing hurriedly or rashly; they would know what they were about as no other white men would--and they would get there."

I mention this not merely for the novelty of the suggestion and the interest it may excite, but because it contributes to the reader's understanding of the scope and character of the work of the company. It is not merely Western and among Indians, it is hyperborean and among Esquimaux. But would it not be pa.s.sing strange if, beyond all that England has gained from the careless gift of an empire to a few favorites by Charles II., she should yet possess the honor and glory of a grand discovery due to the natural results of that action?

To return to the Parliamentary inquiry into the company's affairs 140 years ago. If it served no other purpose, it drew for us of this day an outline picture of the first forts and their inmates and customs. Being printed in the form our language took in that day, when a gun was a "musquet" and a stockade was a "palisadoe," we fancy we can see the b.u.mptious governors--as they then called the factors or agents--swelling about in knee-breeches and c.o.c.ked hats and colored waistcoats, and relying, through their fear of the savages, upon the little putty-pipe cannon that they speak of as "swivels." These were ostentatiously planted before their quarters, and in front of these again were ma.s.sive double doors, such as we still make of steel for our bank safes, but, when made of wood, use only for our refrigerators. The views we get of the company's "servants"--which is to say, mechanics and laborers--are all of trembling varlets, and the testimony is full of hints of petty sharp practice towards the red man, suggestive of the artful ways of our own Hollanders, who bought beaver-skins by the weight of their feet, and then pressed down upon the scales with all their might.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAINTING THE ROBE]

The witnesses had mainly been at one time in the employ of the company, and they made the point against it that it imported all its bread (_i.e._, grain) from England, and neither encouraged planting nor cultivated the soil for itself. But there were several who said that even in August they found the soil still frozen at a depth of two and a half or three feet. Not a man in the service was allowed to trade with the natives outside the forts, or even to speak with them. One fellow was put in irons for going into an Indian's tent; and there was a witness who had "heard a Governor say he would whip a Man without Tryal; and that the severest Punishment is a Dozen of Lashes." Of course there was no instructing the savages in either English or the Christian religion; and we read that, though there were twenty-eight Europeans in one factory, "witness never heard Sermon or Prayers there, nor ever heard of any such Thing either before his Time or since." Hunters who offered their services got one-half what they shot or trapped, and the captains of vessels kept in the bay were allowed. "25 _l. per cent._" for all the whalebone they got.

One witness said: "The method of trade is by a standard set by the Governors. They never lower it, but often double it, so that where the Standard directs 1 Skin to be taken they generally take Two." Another said he "had been ordered to shorten the measure for Powder, which ought to be a Pound, and that within these 10 Years had been reduced an Ounce or Two." "The Indians made a Noise sometimes, and the Company gave them their Furs again." A book-keeper lately in the service said that the company's measures for powder were short, and yet even such measures were not filled above half full. Profits thus made were distinguished as "the overplus trade," and signified what skins were got more than were paid for, but he could not say whether such gains went to the company or to the governor. (As a matter of fact, the factors or governors shared in the company's profits, and were interested in swelling them in every way they could.)

There was much news of how the French traders got the small furs of martens, foxes, and cats, by intercepting the Indians, and leaving them to carry only the coa.r.s.e furs to the company's forts. A witness "had seen the Indians come down in fine _French_ cloaths, with as much Lace as he ever saw upon any Cloaths whatsoever. He believed if the Company would give as much for the Furs as the _French_, the _Indians_ would bring them down;" but the French asked only thirty marten-skins for a gun, whereas the company's standard was from thirty-six to forty such skins. Then, again, the company's plan (unchanged to-day) was to take the Indian's furs, and then, being possessed of them, to begin the barter.

This shouldering the common grief upon the French was not merely the result of the chronic English antipathy to their ancient and their lively foes. The French were swarming all around the outer limits of the company's field, taking first choice of the furs, and even beginning to set up posts of their own. Canada was French soil, and peopled by as hardy and adventurous a cla.s.s as inhabited any part of America. The _coureurs du bois_ and the _bois-brules_ (half-breeds), whose success afterwards led to the formation of rival companies, had begun a mosquito warfare, by canoeing the waters that led to Hudson Bay, and had penetrated 1000 miles farther west than the English. One Thomas Barnett, a smith, said that the French intercepted the Indians, forcing them to trade, "when they take what they please, giving them Toys in Exchange; and fright them into Compliance by Tricks of Sleight of Hand; from whence the _Indians_ conclude them to be Conjurers; and if the _French_ did not compel the _Indians_ to trade, they would certainly bring all the Goods to the _English_."

This must have seemed to the direct, practical English trading mind a wretched business, and worthy only of Johnny c.r.a.peau, to worst the n.o.ble Briton by monkeyish acts of conjuring. It stirred the soul of one witness, who said that the way to meet it was "by sending some _English_ with a little Brandy." A gallon to certain chiefs and a gallon and a half to others would certainly induce the natives to come down and trade, he thought.

But while the testimony of the English was valuable as far as it went, which was mainly concerning trade, it was as nothing regarding the life of the natives compared with that of one Joseph La France, of Missili-Mackinack (Mackinaw), a traveller, hunter, and trader. He had been sent as a child to Quebec to learn French, and in later years had been from Lake Nip.i.s.sing to Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ouinipigue (Winnipeg) or Red River, and to Hudson Bay. He told his tales to Arthur Dobbs, who made a book of them, and part of that became an appendix to the committee's report. La France said:

"That the high price on _European_ Goods discourages the Natives so much, that if it were not that they are under a Necessity of having Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets, and other Iron Tools for their Hunting, and Tobacco, Brandy, and some Paint for Luxury, they would not go down to the Factory with what they now carry.

They leave great numbers of Furs and Skins behind them. A good Hunter among the _Indians_ can kill 600 Beavers in a season, and carry down but 100" (because their canoes were small); "the rest he uses at home, or hangs them upon Branches of Trees upon the Death of their Children, as an Offering to them; or use them for Bedding and Coverings: they sometimes burn off the Fur, and roast the Beavers, like Pigs, upon any Entertainments; and they often let them rot, having no further Use of them. The Beavers, he says, are of Three Colours--the Brown-reddish Colour, the Black, and the White. The Black is most valued by the Company, and in _England_; the White, though most valued in _Canada_, is blown upon by the Company's Factors at the Bay, they not allowing so much for these as for the others; and therefore the _Indians_ use them at home, or burn off the Hair, when they roast the Beavers, like Pigs, at an Entertainment when they feast together. The Beavers are delicious Food, but the Tongue and Tail the most delicious Parts of the whole. They multiply very fast, and if they can empty a Pond, and take the whole Lodge, they generally leave a Pair to breed, so that they are fully stocked again in Two or Three Years. The _American_ Oxen, or Beeves, he says, have a large Bunch upon their backs, which is by far the most delicious Part of them for Food, it being all as sweet as Marrow, juicy and rich, and weighs several Pounds.