e devises when it darts up through the snow with its
spear-teeth clutched in the throat of a poor rabbit. Smearing his
hunting-knife with grease, he lays it across the track. The little
ermine comes trotting in dots and dashes and gallops and dives to the
knife. It smells the grease, and all the curiosity which has been
teaching it to forage for food since it was born urges it to put out its
tongue and taste. That greasy smell of meat it knows; but that
frost-silvered bit of steel is something new. The knife is frosted like
ice. Ice the ermine has licked, so he licks the knife. But alas for the
resemblance between ice and steel! Ice turns to water under the warm
tongue; steel turns to fire that blisters and holds the foolish little
stoat by his inquisitive tongue a hopeless prisoner till the trapper
comes. And lest marauding wolverine or lynx should come first and gobble
up priceless ermine, the trapper comes soon. And that is the end for the
ermine.

Before settlers invaded the valley of the Saskatchewan the furs taken at
a leading fort would amount to:

Bear of all varieties 400
Ermine, medium 200
Blue fox 4
Red fox 91
Silver fox 3
Marten 2,000
Musk-rat 200,000
Mink 8,000
Otter 500
Skunk 6
Wolf 100
Beaver 5,000
Pekan (fisher) 50
Cross fox 30
White fox 400
Lynx 400
Wolverine 200

The value of these furs in "beaver" currency varied with the fashions of
the civilized world, with the scarcity or plenty of the furs, with the
locality of the fort. Before beaver became so scarce, 100 beaver
equalled 40 marten or 10 otter or 300 musk-rat; 25 beaver equalled 500
rabbit; 1 beaver equalled 2 white fox; and so on down the scale. But no
set table of values can be given other than the prices realized at the
annual sale of Hudson's Bay furs, held publicly in London.

To understand the values of these furs to the Indian, "beaver" currency
must be compared to merchandise, one beaver buying such a red
handkerchief as trappers wear around their brows to notify other hunters
not to shoot; one beaver buys a hunting-knife, two an axe, from eight to
twenty a gun or rifle, according to its quality. And i