THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 195 



to its quality. And in one old trading list I found 

 vanity of vanities &quot; one beaver equals looking-glass.&quot; 



Trading over, the trappers disperse to their winter 

 hunting-grounds, which the main body of hunters never 

 leaves from October, 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 

 snow-fall blur every land-mark. What heeds the trap 

 per ? 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 trap 

 per s compass. For those hunters who have gone west 

 ward 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 un 

 disturbed by storms, snow falls falls falls, without 

 ceasing, heaping the pines with snow mushrooms, blot 

 ting out the sun, cloaking in heavy white flakes the 

 notched bark blazed as a trail, transforming the rus 

 tling 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 the rising sun. With his snow-shoes 

 he digs away the snow at the roots of trees to get down 

 to the moss. Moss grows from the roots of trees on 

 the shady side that is, the north. And simplest of all, 

 demanding only that a wanderer use his eyes which 

 the white man seldom does the limbs of the northern 



