264 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



ioo beaver equalled 40 marten or 10 otter or 300 muskrat; 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 in one old trading list I found — vanity of 

 vanities — "one beaver equals looking-glass." 



Trading over, the trappers disperse to their winter hunting- 

 grounds, which the main body of hunters never leaves from Octo- 

 ber, when they go on the fall hunt, to June, when the long 

 straggling brigades of canoes and keel boats and pack horses 

 and jolting ox-carts come back to the fort with the harvest of 

 winter furs. 



Signs unnoted by the denizens of city serve to guide the trappers 

 over trackless wastes of illimitable snow. A whitish haze of frost 

 may hide the sun, or continuous snowfall blur every landmark. 

 What heeds the trapper ? The slope of the rolling hills, the lie 

 of the frozen river-beds, the branches of underbrush protruding 

 through billowed drifts are hands that point the trapper's compass. 

 For those hunters who have gone westward to the mountains, 

 the task of threading pathless forest stillness is more difficult. At 

 a certain altitude in the mountains, much frequented by game 

 because undisturbed by storms, snow falls — falls — falls, without 

 ceasing, heaping the pines with snow mushrooms, blotting out the 

 sun, cloaking in heavy white flakes the notched bark blazed as a 

 trail, transforming the rustling green forests to a silent spectral world 

 without a mark to direct the hunter. Here the woodcraftsman's 

 lore comes to his aid. He looks to the snow-coned tops of the 

 pine trees. The tops of pine trees lean ever so slightly towards 



