BEAVER AND CANADIAN HISTORY 199 



50,000 beaver received from both * expeditions.' 

 I take it that these came from the Chipewyan 

 Indians of the distant Athabasca and intervening 

 country, reaching Churchill by way of the English 

 and Churchill rivers. 



" Doctor Bryce, in his concise history, writes that 

 so effective and successful were the operations of 

 the Great Northwest Company of Montreal, 

 that toward the end of the eighteenth century a 

 single year's trade produce was enormous, and 

 comprised 106,000 beaver, 32,000 martens, 11,800 

 minks, 10,000 musquash, and 17,000 skins of other 

 animals. Still, if we knew the total Hudson's Bay 

 Company's catch for that year, I doubt if both 

 returns of beaver would much exceed the total of 

 172,042 skins given in the London fur sale state- 

 ment for 1867. From 1858 to 1884 the district 

 of Athabasca contributed 445,014, or an average 

 of 17,116 a year, to the Company's London sales. 

 The average for the self-same posts for the five 

 outfits (1885 to 1889) is about 8,000 ; and with the 

 'opposition' trade added from 1890 to the spring 

 of 1903, both will undoubtedly exhibit a further 

 decline. From 1863 to 1883 Mackenzie River 

 District exported a total of 183,216 beaver, giving 

 an average of 11,822 a year. For the three years 

 (1886, 1887, 1889) of which I hold data, it had 

 fallen to 6,852, and is, I fear, very much lower at 

 the present time. These are but samples of the 

 general decrease in beaver receipts experienced at 



