d, of Edmonton, enjoy the
distinction of having received the highest price for a silver-fox pelt
ever paid on the London market,--$1700, that it was one of the most
beautiful skins seen in the history of the trade, and that it went to
the Paris Exposition. Official Russian records at St. Petersburg state,
"Of the American silver-fox (_Canis vulpes argentatus_) black skins have
a ready market at from $1500 to $4000. They are used for Court robes and
by the nobles."

[Illustration: Tracking a Scow across Mountain Portage]

And so the stories go on. A dealer in Calgary told us that last winter
he had handled a silver-fox skin that subsequently brought $1950 in the
London market. One quotes these tales blithely and with pleased
finality. Then arises from some unsuspected quarter the voice of one
cavilling in the wilderness, who contradicts your every story and finds
with keen discriminating sight, "Black's not so black nor white so very
white." Mr. Thompson-Seton makes declaration, "The silver-fox is but a
phase or freak of a common-fox, exactly as a black sheep is, but with a
difference--!" Yes, there's that fatal and fascinating difference. As we
must have salmon-hatcheries, so Nature demands intelligent fox-farms,
and beaver-farms, and skunk-farms. Forty acres under fur promises
greater interest than even forty-bushel wheat, and, to the imaginative,
the way opens up for the development of a new Cat-o-Dog or Dog-o-Cat,
Goatee-rabbiticus or Rabbito-goat.

I would not like to vouch for the story told on the mosquito-portage by
the half-breed driver, who declared that last year a red-fox on the
Slave stole a decoy duck and hunted with it for three seasons at the
river-lip, placing it among the sedges and pouncing on the lured game.
He was a serious-minded saturnine Scots-Slavi and told the story without
moving an eye-brow.

At Fort Smith we enjoyed a close study of the American White Pelican
_(Pelecanus crythrorhynchos)_ which in the Mountain Rapids of the Slave
finds its farthest north nesting-place. It, too, has the saving grace of
continuance exhibited by the grey wolf. Mackenzie, a century ago, came
across the birds here, and they have persisted ever since, although in
the direct line of the river-transit of the fur-traders. A wooded island
in the swirl of the rapids is their wild breeding-place, and while we
were there the young birds were very much in evidence. We found
something fascinating about this bird, so fam