hite worth
from ten dollars down, according to quality, and from common red fox
worth less. Twenty years ago it was no unusual thing for the Hudson's
Bay Company to send to England yearly 10,000 cross fox-skins, 7,000
blue, 100,000 red, half a dozen silver. Few wolf-skins are in the
trapper's pack unless particularly fine specimens of brown arctic and
white arctic, bought as a curiosity and not for value as skins. Against
the wolf, the trapper wages war as against a pest that destroys other
game, and not for its skin. Next to musk-rat the most plentiful fur
taken by the Indian, though not highly esteemed by the trader, will be
that of the rabbit or varying hare. Buffalo was once the staple of the
hunter. What the buffalo was the white rabbit is to-day. From it the
Indian gets clothing, tepee, covers, blankets, thongs, food. From it the
white man who is a manufacturer of furs gets gray fox and chinchilla and
seal in imitation. Except one year in seven, when a rabbit plague spares
the land by cutting down their prolific numbers, the varying hare is
plentiful enough to sustain the Indian.

Having received so many bits of lead for his furs, the Indian goes to
the store counter where begins interminable dickering. Montagnais's
squaw has only fifty "beaver" coin, and her desires are a hundredfold
what those will buy. Besides, the copper-skinned lady enjoys beating
down prices and driving a bargain so well that she would think the clerk
a cheat if he asked a fixed price from the first. She expects him to
have a sliding scale of prices for his goods as she has for her furs. At
the termination of each bargain, so many coins pass across the counter.
Frequently an Indian presents himself at the counter without beaver
enough to buy necessaries. What then? I doubt if in all the years of
Hudson's Bay Company rule one needy Indian has ever been turned away.
The trader advances what the Indian needs and chalks up so many "beaver"
against the trapper's next hunt.

Long ago, when rival traders strove for the furs, whisky played a
disgracefully prominent part in all bartering, the drunk Indian being an
easier victim than the sober, and the Indian mad with thirst for liquor
the most easily cajoled of all. But to-day when there is no competition,
whisky plays no part whatever. Whisky is in the fort, so is pain killer,
for which the Indian has as keen an appetite, both for the exigencies of
hazardous life in an unsparing climate beyond medi