366 EARLY NOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 



pose. One of these was the fur of the Coypoti, {moyopotamus Bona' 

 riensis of Commerson,) an aquatic rodent, somewhat smaller than the 

 beaver, which abounds in Chili, Buenos Ayres, and other parts of 

 South America. Like the beaver and the seal, it has two kinds of 

 fur : a long and coarse ruddy hair, with soft and downy fur under- 

 neath. Its commercial value is dependent on the latter, which supplies 

 the place of the beaver down, and the demand became so great, that 

 within recent years the exportations for Great Britain alone, in a single 

 season, principally from the Rio de la Plata, have been stated as high 

 as 800,000 skins, besides those sent to France and other countries. 

 Even those, however, in addition to the immense importations of the 

 true beaver fur, proved inadequate to the demands of commerce ; and 

 by their great cost contributed to the introduction of silk as a substi- 

 tute, which has now to a considerable extent superseded the beaver 

 down. The ultimate consequence has been the greatly diminished 

 zeal in the chase of the beaver, owing to the constant decrease in the 

 value of the skin. Nevertheless, the beaver skins imported into 

 Britain from Canada and the United States, so recently as 1829, were 

 valued at upwards of 2670,000 stg. Compared with the value of im- 

 portations forty years previously, this shows a decrease of considerably 

 more than one half; but the existence of sources for such a supply, 

 after the relentless warfare waged against the beaver settlements, without 

 intermission, for upwards of two centuries, proves how prolific the 

 beaver is, and how numerous and widely diffused the species must origi- 

 nally have been. Traces of ancient beaver villages are said to have been 

 noted as far south as Louisiana, and from that southern latitude their 

 disappearance has gradually preceded that of the red Indian, in his 

 escape from the exterminating pressure of the white man, into the 

 wilds of the north-west. 



The geographical range of the beaver commences about latitude 

 70° extending across the continent wherever the soil is sufficiently 

 fertile to furnish a wooded retreat, and the requisite vegetable food. 

 Dr. Richardson describes them on the banks of the Mackenzie, the 

 largest and best wooded of all the rivers falling into the Polar Sea,— 

 and as still pretty numerous to the northward of Fort Franklin, in the 

 swampy grounds near the Great Bear Lake, There it is probable 

 that some remnant of the beaver tribe, which once built its huts on 

 the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi, may escape extermination ; 

 but throughout the whole of Canada proper, and far beyond its 



