CASTOROLOGIA. 57 



The great slaughter began with the establishment of the first fur 

 trading post in 1604, when Champlain planted his colonists at Que- 

 bec, and followed with other settlements on the St. I^awrence, which, 

 from subsequent experience proves to have been the natural highway- 

 to the richest fields on the continent. 



Up the Cataraqui to the chain of lakes — " Ontario, or Fronte- 

 nac," " Errie, or DeConti," and the lakes of " the Hurons" and " the 

 Ilinois" — the trappers and traders pressed ; and though, as appears 

 in the accompanying map, the country contained many beaver- 

 reserves of the Iroquois and other tribes friendly to the French, these 

 must soon have been depopulated. 



The Dutch from New Amsterdam and the neighborhood of the 

 Hudson River, traded also into the lake district, and helped mate- 

 rially to thin the numbers of the beavers, from which followed 

 contention and conflicts with those who tried to control the Indian 

 trade in the rich peltries. 



On the north, the Company of Adventurers Trading into Hud- 

 son's Bay held absolute sway over an immense district, till the de- 

 creasing profits resulting from competition on the Cataraqui route, 

 suggested a search for new fields ; when from Montreal expeditions 

 were furnished, which, byway of the grand river of the " Outawas," 

 pressed westward to the Pacific, and northward to the Arctic Ocean, 

 thereby extending the operations of the beaver hunter, and greatly 

 increasing the profits of the traders, who found many quarters still 

 in a state of primitive savagery, though all had been indirectly en- 

 riching the Hudson's Bay Company. 



Now arose the struggle to break the monopoly, which had so 

 long been undisputed, and the worst consequences followed the 

 efforts to win the patronage of the Indians ; for not only was a 

 reckless slaughter of the beavers instituted, but robberies and blood- 

 shed frequently accompanied the riotous meeting of rival traders. 

 No toleration, no sense of justice, no thought of the inevitable re- 

 sults which would follow their open policy of extermination ; though 



