216 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 
for their faith in castoreum, but they were not 
altogether alone in their belief, for it is to-day 
highly prized if we may judge from the fact that 
it is sold for about ten dollars per pound. It takes 
the “ castors ” of four or five or even six beavers to 
yield a pound of the substance and the demand 
always, I am told, exceeds the supply. From this 
we must believe that we do not differ very much 
from the ancients. 
Besides the castoreum the beaver fat also was 
considered valuable for medicinal purposes by the 
Indians who used it, among other things, for pre- 
venting and curing frost-bite and for rubbing limbs 
afflicted with rheumatism just as some of the 
African tribes use the lion’s fat. Beaver teeth 
were employed to some extent by Indians as chisels 
before they learned the value of metal. 
But perhaps the greatest commercial value of 
the beaver was the fur which was used for making 
hats. During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies the beaver hat was of even greater import- 
ance than the silk hat is to-day, and very much 
more expensive, for the price of a good “beaver” 
ranged as high as eighty or ninety shillings, and, 
strange to say, old skins that had been in use 
were more sought after than new ones. Later on 
other furs were used for making hatter’s felt ; this 
reduced the demand for the beaver skins, while the 
discovery of silk plush, as a substitute material for 
hats, practically ended the use of beaver fur so far 
