20 CANADIAN WILDS. 



the whiskey trader could keep the Indians 

 camped at the place they first met for two or 

 three days. Once he had got them to take the 

 second glass he could name his own price for 

 the vile liquor and put his own valuation on 

 their furs. 



I have heard of an Indian giving an otter 

 skin for a bottle of whiskey. The skin was 

 worth $15 and the whiskey possibly thirty cents. 

 I knew positively of a trapper who gave a new 

 overcoat worth $6 for a second glass of whiskey 

 and when this took effect on his brain, for a 

 third glass he gave a heavy Hudson Bay blanket 

 that had cost him $8. The trader seeing he had 

 nothing else worth depriving him of turned him 

 out of doors on a bitter February morning. 



Since these men have overrun the country 

 the Hudson Bay Company has spent hundreds 

 of thousands of dollars trying to protect the In- 

 dians against themselves. The laws of the 

 Dominion are stringent enough as they are set 

 down in the blue book of the Indian Depart- 

 ment, but they are very seldom enforced. The 

 difficulty is to get sufficient evidence to secure 

 judgment or committal of the offender. 



The Hudson Bay Company seeing the giving 

 of liquor to Indians abased and impoverished 

 him, abolished it by a law passed in committee 

 in 1853. They saw that selling liquor to an In- 



