344 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



For instance, I knew a fellow who took into the wilder- 

 ness a large stock of Birmingham toys, specially brought 

 out for him, and smuggled into the country. The total 

 cost to him, as he himself told nie, was under seven 

 dollars a gross, but he sold them like wild-fire for a 

 dollar per trinket, and in three days got rid of his entire 

 stock of a hundred gross. That means that for an outlay 

 of 700 dollars he made 13,700 dollars clear profit. His 

 customers for these articles were nearly entirely cow- 

 boys and women, and the mischief he made can never be 

 known, for many of these silly fools spent large sums on 

 this trash, hoping to make a profit in turn among their 



acquaintances, for they swallowed all G said about 



the value of the articles. By-and-by there were angry 

 husbands and fathers, furious at the waste of dollars by 

 their female kind, and the next time I went that round 



many were the inquiries by irate cowboys after G . 



It was a Yankee peddler who invented the painted 

 wooden nutmegs, now forgotten, but which caused a great 

 commotion in the Eastern States at the beginning of the 

 century just closed. He sold thousands of them at 

 twentj^-five cents apiece, wandering from district to district, 

 and always carefully changing his quarters as soon as he 

 had done a good trade ; but I might write chapter after 

 chapter narrating the trickery of these rogues, who were 

 exceptions of their class. For the genuine peddler was a 

 man much looked and longed for, as will easily be realised 

 when it is remembered that thirty or forty years ago 

 many of his customers could not visit a store (shop) of 

 the meanest class without riding a hundred miles or 

 more. Such journeys were often taken, even by women, 

 for the purpose of shopping, so the visit of a genuine 

 prairie schooner to an outlying ranch or farm was an 

 event that the news of spread over the adjacent country 

 with simply marvellous rapidity. "P. F. is at Smith's 

 ranch. Have you heard the news ? " must have flown 

 over the country with almost the rapidity of a telegraph. 



