230 APPENDIX. 



can kill six hundred beaver in one season, and can only carry one 

 hundred to market. If that was really the case in Lefranc's time, 

 the canoes must have been much smaller than they are at present ; 

 for it is well known that the generality of the canoes which have 

 visited the Company's Factories for the last forty or fifty years, are 

 capable of carrying three hundred beaver- skins with great ease, ex- 

 clusive of the Indians luggage, provisions, &c. 



If ever a particular Indian killed six hundred beaver in one 

 Winter, (which is rather to be doubted,) it is more than probable 

 that many in his company did not kill twenty, and perhaps some 

 none at all, so that by distributing them among those who had bad 

 success, and others who had no abilities for that kind of hunting, 

 there would be no necessity of leaving them to rot, or for singing 

 them in the fire, as related by the Author. During my residence 

 among the Indians I have known some individuals kill more beaver, 

 and other heavy furs, in the course of a Winter, than their wives 

 could manage ; but the overplus was never wantonly destroyed, but 

 always given to their relations, or to those who had been less suc- 

 cessful ; so that the whole of the great hunters labours were always 

 brought to the Factory. It is indeed too frequently a custom among 

 the Southern Indians to singe many otters, as well as beaver ; but 

 this is seldom done except in Summer, when their skins are of so 

 little value as to be scarcely worth the duty ; on which account it 

 has always been thought impolitic to encourage the natives to kill 

 such valuable animals at a time when their skins are not in season. 



The white beaver, mentioned by Lefranc, are so rare, that instead 

 of being "blown upon by the Company's Factors," as he asserts, 

 I rather doubt whether one-tenth of them ever saw one during the 

 time of their residence in this country. In the course of twenty 

 years experience in the countries about Hudson's Bay, though I 

 travelled six hundred miles to the West of the sea-coast, I never saw 

 but one white beaver- skin, and it had many reddish and brown hairs 

 along the ridge of the back, and the sides and belly were of a glossy 

 silvery white. It was deemed by the Indians a great curiosity ; and 

 I offered three times the usual price for a few of them, if they could 



