196 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. 



bed-covering, sides of bacon, guns, knives, and a 

 few prettily-worked Indian trinkets. In a loft 

 above the store are piles of mink and marten 

 skins, beaver and fox skins, hides of moose and 

 cariboo, though as yet the winter's hunt has 

 hardly begun. 



Nothing could be higher than the character 



Mr. gives his Indian friends. It seems 



that each hunter has his own particular range, 

 and it is a point of honour among them not to 

 poach each other's preserves. Hunger, of course, 

 has no law, so that a redskin who is hungry 

 allows himself to kill a beaver upon a neighbour's 

 1 shoot ;' but having done so and eaten the beaver, 

 he is bound to keep the skin, and at the yearly 

 delivery of pelts to the Hudson Bay Company, 

 he hands over the skin, neatly wrapped in birch- 

 bark, to the factor, and requests that he will put 



it to So-and-so's credit. Every year Mr. 



has to make note of several such transactions. 

 Credit is given to the Indians by the company 

 sometimes for more than a year, and such things 

 as bad debts do not occur in the company's books. 



In a few minutes Jocko arrives, a short, square- 

 built half-breed of forty or thereabouts, dressed 

 in European clothes, and an abominable ' bowler ' 

 hat. His feet only wear the natural Indian 

 dress ; moccasins are about the last of the com- 



