FUR MARKETS OF WORLD 17 



to moccasins, men who strode erect as an Indian or an arrow, if 

 they had not had too much Jamaica rum — literally owned the little 

 frontier town. 



Here, too, the furs were again sorted and shipped down the river 

 to New Orleans to go out by sail boat to New York and London 

 and Hamburg. The Napoleonic Wars had bedevilled international 

 currency ; so the boats of the American fur trader did not bring back 

 gold. Instead, they brought back merchandise, Japanese silks, Chi- 

 nese teas, London wools and cottons and cambrics and beads, Ham- 

 burg rifles and powder and ball and awls and traps and sugar and 

 flour and rice, to be sent back up the same long lonely canoe trail 

 to the trappers' rendezvous in the Rockies. 



By 1800 to 1820, Fur Fairs had long since passed away in New 

 York ; but John Jacob Astor was in the midst of his great fight to 

 wrest the fur trade from the two great Canadian companies, the 

 Hudson's Bay and the Nor'-Westers. They were too strong for 

 him. They beat him off the field up in the mountains and on the 

 mouth of the Columbia ; but while the New York genius of the Yan- 

 kee fur trade was beaten at a staggering loss to his hard-earned 

 savings, the Bostonnais — those merchants to the Far East, 

 who had outfitted the discoverer of the Columbia — were reaping 

 a golden harvest in sea otter along the Pacific Coast far north as 

 Alaska ; but their furs, too, were shipped abroad — to China, or 

 Hamburg, or London. 



America at that time was only a trader in furs, not a dresser, 

 nor manufacturer. 



And now time swings round the cycle of another century after 

 another great war ; and there are held in Montreal and New York 

 and St. Louis great world fur auctions, which have practically 

 wrested the world fur trade — in part if not in whole — from Europe 

 to America. 



For months bales and bundles and bags and express and freight 

 and mail lots of raw furs of every variety under the sun have been 

 pouring into the fur auction rooms of each city. There are about 



