x 
* 
i) 
4 
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 
niore of each other, the rate of service is now 
eenerally asked for in blankets, shirts, or the 
‘almighty dollar.’ 
But in early days, ere the red and white men 
