308 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
in which to hide their heads, or a suitable robe 
in which to dispense justice to their fellow-men ! 
Regarded from the philosopher’s point of view 
it is precisely on a level with rag and bone 
picking in the streets of cities. The Indian led 
a more respectable life before he was tempted 
to debase himself so much by the white man. 
Think how many musquash and weasel skins 
the Hudson’s Bay Company pile up annually 
in their warehouses, leaving the bare red car¬ 
casses on the banks of the streams throughout 
all British America, and this it is chiefly which 
makes it British America. It is the place 
where Great Britain goes a-mousing. When 
we see men and boys spend their time shooting 
and trapping musquash and mink, we cannot 
but have a poorer opinion of them, unless we 
thought meanly of them before. Yet the world 
is imposed on by the fame of the Hudson Bay 
and Northwest Fur Companies, who are only so 
many partners, more or less, in the same sort 
of business, with thousands of just such loafing 
men and boys in their service to abet them. On 
the one side is the Hudson Bay Company, on 
the other the company of scavengers who clear 
the sewers of Paris of their vermin. There is 
a good excuse for smoking out or poisoning rats 
which infest the house, but when they are as 
far off as Hudson’s Bay, I think that we had bet- 
