24 BEAVER THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE. 



to be done ; but in making this agreement, it is 

 not understood that the employer must really 

 pay so many beaver-skins. What is meant is 

 this that the Indian gets an order from you on 

 the trading-post of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 for goods equal to the value of the beaver-skins 

 you contract to pay him. 



Every article given in exchange by the 

 Hudson's Bay Company is calculated according 

 to the value of beaver-skin, and as beaver may 

 be either plentiful or scarce (or, in other words, 

 dear or cheap), so are goods bartered for fur cal- 

 culated as to value. Bears, foxes, otters, martens, 

 fishers, and lynxes are respectively worth so many 

 beaver- skins each, or, beaver being dear, it will 

 require two marten-skins to equal a beaver. 

 Then, as a blanket is worth so many beaver- 

 skins, or as a beaver will pay for so many 

 charges of powder or strings of beads, the beaver 

 becomes the standard of value. If you buy a 

 horse, a dog, a wife, or a salmon, you contract 

 to pay so many skins. On the seacoast, where 

 the savage and the paleface have seen much 

 more of each other, the rate of service is now 

 generally asked for in blankets, shirts, or the 

 1 almighty dollar.' 



But in early days, ere the red and white men 



