190 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



hundreds of thousands are carried to the forts every 

 season. The little haycock houses of musk-rats offer 

 the trapper easy prey when frost freezes the sloughs, 

 shutting off retreat below, and heavy snow-fall has not 

 yet hidden the little creatures winter home. 



The trading is done in several ways. Among the 

 Eskimo,, whose arithmetical powers seldom exceed a 

 few units, the trader holds up his hand with one, two, 

 three fingers raised, signifying that he offers for the 

 skin before him equivalents in value to one, two, three 

 prime beaver. If satisfied, the Indian passes over the 

 furs and the trader gives flannel, beads, powder, knives, 

 tea, or tobacco to the value of the beaver-skins indicated 

 by the raised fingers. If the Indian demands more, 

 hunter and trader wrangle in pantomime till com 

 promise is effected. 



But always beaver-skin is the unit of coin. Beaver 

 are the Indian s dollars and cents, his shillings and 

 pence, his tokens of currency. 



South of the Arctics, where native intelligence is 

 of higher grade, the beaver values are represented by 

 goose-quills, small sticks, bits of shell, or, most com 

 mon of all, disks of lead, tea-chests melted down, 

 stamped on one side with the company arms, on the 

 other with the figures 1, 2, , J, representing so much 

 value in beaver. 



First of all, then, furs in the pack must be sorted, 

 silver fox worth five hundred dollars separated from 

 cross fox and blue and white worth from ten dollars 

 down, according to quality, and from common red fox 

 worth less. Twenty years ago it was no unusual thing 

 for the Hudson s Bay Company to send to England year 

 ly 10,000 cross fox-skins, 7,000 blue, 100,000 red, half 



