S62 EARLY NOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 



tatement of Crescide " printed in all the earlier editions of Chaucer's 

 works, but assigned by Urry and later editors to the Scottish poet, 

 B-obert Henrysone, (cir. 1450,) we find the costume of one of his 

 characters thus described : 



Whan in a mantell and a hever hat. 



With, cuppe and clapper wonder priuely 

 He opened a secrete Kate and out thereat 



Conveyed her, that no man should espie. 



It was not however, till the vast resources of the forests of the new 

 World had become known, that beaver wool became the indispensable 

 material for the fashionable European hat. Nearly a century and a 

 half after the discovery of America we at length find Charles I. in 

 1638, by royal proclamation prohibiting the use of any materials 

 fexcept beaver wool in the manufacture of hats, unless made for ex- 

 portation. This royal prohibition amounted to a declaration of war 

 by the king of England against the beaver settlements of his North 

 American Colonies and the Hudson Bay Company's territories ; and 

 within less than a century thereafter, they appear to have been almost 

 totally exterminated from the colonies to the south of the St. liaw- 

 rence and the great lakes. The French traders in 1743, imported 

 into Eochelle, 127,080 beaver skins, and the British Hudson's Bay 

 Company sold 26,750 skins the same year. Within less than half a 

 century thereafter, when Canada had become a British possession, 

 the trade in beaver peltries seems to have reached its maximum, and 

 to have been maintained with only a slight decline till the commeuce- 

 ment of the present century. In 1788, upwards of 170,000 beaver 

 skins were exported from Canada, and the value of those forwarded 

 to England from Quebec alone, in 1808, is estimated at nearly 

 £119,000 stg. The effect of such a wholesale destruction of the 

 poor beaver could not fail to become apparent, notwithstanding the 

 vast regions of the North- West over which the Hudson's Bay trapper 

 and the Indian hunter ranged in pursuit of their defenceless prey. 

 The great fur companies at length became impressed with the danger 

 this profitable branch of their trade was exposed to, and even the 

 improvident Indian learned to systematize his mode of beaver trap- 

 ping so as to avert its total extermination. The Iroquois and 

 Hurons, — among whom the beaver was known as the Tsoutaye, — 

 were especially skilled in its pursuit, and their habit was always to 

 leave at least one pair in the beaver-dam, and to let this remain un- 



