BEAVER AND CANADIAN HISTORY 199 
50,000 beaver received from both ‘ expeditions.’ 
I take it that these came from the Chipewyan 
Indians of the distant Athabasca and intervening 
country, reaching Churchill by way of the English 
and Churchill rivers. 
“ Doctor Bryce, in his concise history, writes that 
so effective and successful were the operations of 
the Great Northwest Company of Montreal, 
that toward the end of the eighteenth century a 
single year’s trade produce was enormous, and 
comprised 106,000 beaver, 32,000 martens, 11,800 
minks, 10,000 musquash, and 17,000 skins of other 
animals. Still, if we knew the total Hudson’s Bay 
Company’s catch for that year, I doubt if both 
returns of beaver would much exceed the total of 
172,042 skins given in the London fur sale state- 
ment for 1867. From 1858 to 1884 the district 
of Athabasca contributed 445,014, or an average 
of 17,116 a year, to the Company’s London sales. 
The average for the self-same posts for the five 
outfits (1885 to 1889) is about 8,000 ; and with the 
‘opposition ’ trade added from 1890 to the spring 
of 1903, both will undoubtedly exhibit a further 
decline. From 1868 to 1883 Mackenzie River 
District exported a total of 183,216 beaver, giving 
an average of 11,822 a year. For the three years 
(1886, 1887, 1889) of which I hold data, it had 
fallen to 6,852, and is, I fear, very much lower at 
the present time. These are but samples of the 
general decrease in beaver receipts experienced at 
