EARLY KOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 367 



boundaries the sole memorial of the beaver will probably be preserved, 

 erelong, only in some rare "Beaverton," "Beaver Creek," or other 

 topographical indication of a former settlement of the acquatic build- 

 ers, like the ancient Beverley of Yorkshire, or the sepulchral mound 

 still marked with the totem of its Indian hunter on his grave post.* 



The country lying between Lake Ontario and the Georgian Bay, 

 and extending eastward to the Ottawa, appears to have been the head 

 quarters of the beaver in Canada proper, at the time when the sole 

 value of Upper Canada to its European claimants was as a fur-trading 

 area. The old French writers repeatedly speak of it as the Great 

 Beaver Country. The Iroquois from the southern shores of the lake 

 frequently crossed for the purpose of beaver-hunting in the fall of the 

 year ; and one of the reasons assigned for the establishment of a 

 French post at Cataraquis was to intercept the trade in beaver skins on 

 its road to the British settlements. The whole country is full of old 

 beaver settlements, almost every stream having a succession of them 

 upon it, which, now that the dams have been broken down, are con- 

 verted into beaver meadows, from which the lumberers and early 

 settlers drew a large supply of hay. The older settlers speak of the 

 beaver having been almost unknown throughout this district, but 

 since the price of beaver skins has fallen from six or eight dollars, to 

 less than one dollar per pound, while the value of labour has been 

 constantly on the increase, the beaver has only been assailed at 

 irregular intervals by the stray sportsman or Indian hunter, and it 

 has been latterly increasing in some districts much more rapidly than 

 the settlers, by whom it must nevertheless ultimately be displaced. 



Were it not, indeed, for the peculiar habits of the beaver, which 



* Thfe same topographical evidence serves in Britain to indicate the ancient locations of 

 the beaver. Beverley, iu Yorkshire, has been referred to. The "Codex Diplomaticus^vi 

 Saxonici" supplies such names as Beferburne, Beferige, Jieferio, and Dr. Charles Wilson 

 further illustrates the subject as follows -. " In the Glossary of iBlfric the Anglo-Saxon 

 Archbishop of Canterbury near the close of the tenth century, appended to his ' Gramma- 

 tica Latino-Saxonica,' we have the Befer rendered as the Fiber or Castor Ponticus. The 

 annex in each name : hwme (brook), ige and ic, or icg (island), and luc (inclosed space, fence), 

 is entirely apposite, and suggests to us so perfectly the ordinary habitat of the animal, or the 

 construction of its dam, as to establish at once the certainty of its having existed at the 

 individual place in the Anglo-Saxon period. Again, in an ordinance of Edward I. for the 

 government of Scotland, dated in 1305, we find William of Bevercotes named as chancellor 

 of the kingdom; and here we are reminded of the huts (Anglo-Saxon cote), of the beaver, a 

 cluster of which had evidently led to the territorial designation of this dignitary. There is 

 a " Bevere Island," which lies about three miles north of the city of Worcester, which is 

 popularly understood to have been so denominated from its having been frequented by 

 beavers: and doubtless it might be easy to glean elsewhere many similar local designations." 



