July 8, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
71 
THE FURS OF CANADA. 
Less than a year ago, says a writer in Collier's, 
a great furrier of New York said to me: “What 
will we do when Canadian furs give out? The 
seal, the sea otter, and other furs which we once 
depended upon are fast becoming extinct. Each 
year finds us more and more dependent upon 
Canadian trappers. Alaskan and South Sea 
waters are almost stripped. Only a few corners 
of the United States furnish the kinds of furs 
we want. Only Canada furnishes the quality we 
want. It is impossible for us to fill demands, 
and I predict that within another ten years there 
will be a fur famine, and that ony rich people 
will be able to afford the furs which are cheapest 
to-day.” 
This furrier’s business amounts to a million 
dollars a year. He is an authority, and he is 
undoubtedly right. There will be a fur famine 
and the greater will be the treasure brought 
down from the Canadian wilds each year, for 
while three-quarters of the fur-bearing areas of 
the world can and will be stripped, vast areas of 
Canada will always remain a trapper’s paradise. 
This is a broad statement, but I make it only 
after a thorough study of the situation. 
Twelve years ago the author of this article 
trapped two seasons to secure funds to pay his 
way through college. At that time muskrat pelts 
sold as low as four and five cents, and good mink 
brought seventy-five. To-day muskrats sell as 
high as seventy, and prime Canadian mink are 
worth from $6 to $10 to the trapper. Only a 
few years ago it was impossible to get more than 
$2 for a lynx skin, while this year a good pelt 
will bring the trapper from $20 to $30. Three 
years ago the Canadian fisher-cat brought from 
$3_ to $5; to-day he is worth as high as $20. In 
this same way not only a few, but all furs have 
advanced in price. Taking an average of the 
twenty chief fur animals, this advance has been 
between 200 and 300 per cent, since six years 
ago. These facts alone give a good idea of 
the rapid and world-wide extinction of fur ani¬ 
mals outside of the Canadian wilderness. 
This year Canada’s catch of fur will bring to 
her people a treasure 30 per cent, greater than 
that of last year. just what this treasure 
amounts to it is impossible to estimate from 
official statistics a’one, for Government figures 
give only the export of raw furs, making no 
allowance for the vast quantities which remain 
and are made up in Canada. All of the Hudson 
Bay Company’s catch and that of Revillion 
Brothers go to Paris and London, but besides 
these two big fur companies there are now hun- 
dredes of lesser competitors in Canada whose 
furs remain in the country to be worn by Milady 
of Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, Winnipeg and 
other cities of the Dominion. 
My own estimate based on a thorough study 
of the fur situation is that the Government ex¬ 
port figures may be safely doubled. Last year 
Canada was given credit for $2,719,822 worth of 
raw furs, while the actual catch was worth at 
least $5,500,000. Three days before beginning 
this article I returned from a four months’ trip 
in the fur regions, and I have the best of au¬ 
thority for stating that the output of the year 
will .exceed $7,000,000, of which probably not 
more than $3,500,000 will be shown in export 
records. And this output will not decrease, as 
has. been the case in nearly all other fur-bearing 
regions of the world. It will continue to in¬ 
crease, and when the final chapter in the romance 
of fur has been written by every other nation; 
Canada will be found richer in fur than in this 
year of 1910. 
This of course does not mean that there has 
not. been a diminution in the actual fur supply, 
which as one official high in the Hudson’s Bay 
Company services, said to me “has been brought 
to a healthful balance.” Lord Strathcona, him¬ 
self, loves to tell of the old days when the prices 
of skins were so absurdly low that an Indian 
wanting a musket would be asked to pile up as 
many pelts on either side of the weapon as would 
come level with the muzzle. To-day this In¬ 
dian’s son may secure a fine repeating rifle for 
three or four fisher pelts or a couple of lynx. 
In the old days, and not so very old at that, a 
trapper would have to bring in a sledge packed 
high with furs to bring him what he can now 
get for a “catch” that he can carry in a small 
bundle in his arm. This explains the “health¬ 
ful balance,” referred to above. According to 
this official, and others who are frank enough to 
give their opinion, the actual supply of fur in 
the far north has reached a point which it will 
maintain for practically all time except in the 
country immediately along the Grand Trunk 
Pacific and the proposed railway to the bay. 
Outside of these regions it is safe to say there 
are 1,200,000 square miles of Canadian northland 
into which railroads will never penetrate, unless 
they are built at a colossal cost to bring down 
mineral wealth not yet discovered. Just as the 
Canadian west is destined to become the bread 
basket of the world, so these regions of ice and 
snow, romance, adventure and hardship are des¬ 
tined to remain forever the world’s great fur 
reserve. Not only the history of nearly 300 
years, but climate and physical conditions as 
well are proof of it. In large parts of Russia 
for instance fur animals are pursued for eight 
or nine months out of the year. In Canada the 
climate is such that wheat can be grown as far 
north as the sixtieth degree, even in the Hudson 
Bay regions. In other words, there are at least 
five months of a warm season in which fur is 
worthless, and which gives to the animal world 
a breeding season as long as that in the tem¬ 
perate zones. 
Unlike almost every other country in the world 
these 1,200,000 square miles of fur regions are 
a network of lakes and streams, so that as one 
northern factor said to me: “The country is 
one vast breeding ground." On the other hand 
it is a country in which only the strongest and 
most courageous of men care to bury themselves 
in quest of fur. In an area fully one-third as 
large as the whole of Europe there is not and 
never will be a white man’s town or village. 
Over this vast territory, at distances of from 
100 to 300 miles apart, are scattered the fur 
posts, and a post in nine cases out of ten con¬ 
sists only of the factor's log cabin, the com¬ 
pany’s storehouse and two or three cabins. 
Except in the trapping season these are the 
only points of human life in the vast desolation 
of the north. For at least six months in the 
year all Indian life gravitates toward and cen¬ 
ters about him, and during this season the earth’s 
last and greatest wilderness is in fact an empty 
and voiceless world. Scarcely the sound of an 
axe breaks the stillness. 
Hundreds of forest shacks tenanted by ven¬ 
turesome trappers in winter are empty and de¬ 
serted. Now and then a canoe glides swiftly 
down the waterways on a brief visit to civiliza¬ 
tion, or an adventurous explorer works his way 
up into the wilds and that is all. From late 
spring until early autumn the vast breeding 
grounds are undisturbed. There is nothing to 
lure the settler. Thousands of miles of rock- 
strewn “barren,” the home of the caribou and 
the fox, reach down from the arctic to meet 
other thousands of almost impenetrable moun¬ 
tain country of scrub timber and plains of 
stunted bush. Almost every black and broken 
ridge of rocks, called mountains in the north, 
shelters its nameless lakes, and innumerable 
creeks and streams find their way between them. 
Here and there are small areas of tillable land, 
but shut out forever from the reach of civiliza¬ 
tion. The warm sun of summer, the thousands 
of lakes rich in their wealth of fish, the innumer¬ 
able spring and snow-fed streams seem to have 
been created by nature for a single purpose— 
the forming of a trappers’ paradise that will 
exist for all time. 
When away back in 1670 a Frenchman by the 
name of Grossillier fired Prince Rupert’s imagin¬ 
ation with tales of an arctic territory filled with 
a wonderful treasure of rare and precious furs, 
and a little company was formed with a capital 
of $150,000, it was schemed to send into the 
Canadian wilds hundreds of venturesome spirits 
from Europe to do the trapping. It is interest¬ 
ing to note that not only did this plan of em¬ 
ploying white men fail, but that to-day there are 
almost no white trappers beyond the height of 
land. The northern fur seeker is of course 
largely Indian, and when he is not wholly In¬ 
dian, he is what is technically known as “breed.” 
French, Indian and English blood has been mix¬ 
ing for 200 years, and the result is a people 
which is neither French, Indian or English, but 
yet which is a composite of all three, with the 
Indian blood predominating and the halfbreed 
following next in number. 
These people, half wild, like their own sledge 
dogs, are the vital part of the great Hudson’s 
Bay Company. Without them the world’s oldest 
and greatest of all landed corporations would 
crumble into inevitable ruin. Without them 
Canada would be poorer by something like $7,- 
000,000 a year. As a consequence there has 
grown up between the company and its forest 
allies a union and a faith like that which exists 
between a parent and her children. I am aware 
that the Hudson’s Bay Company has been-one 
of the most criticised of all corporations. Like 
Rockefeller and the Standard Oil it has had 
coals of fire heaped unceasingly upon its head. 
It has been accused of illimitable cruelty, and 
of robbing the Indians to the point of starva¬ 
tion, and as a proof of this robbery the low 
prices which the Indians receive for their furs 
are always emphasized. And yet to-day the 
Indians of the north could no more exist with¬ 
out the Hudson’s Bay Company than the com¬ 
pany could exist without them. Each is com¬ 
pletely dependent upon the other. 
The man from civilization roughing it for 
pleasure seldom sees anything of life in the 
wilderness outside of the posts, for his guides 
always take him by the shortest and most 
traveled waterways. At these posts he sees a 
little of the romance of fur hunting, but none 
of its excitement and peril. Just as a whole 
world is deserted by human life during the warm 
months, so the posts are deserted late in Sep¬ 
tember or October, when the forest people begin 
leaving for their trapping grounds. In canoes, 
afoot, laden with packs of supplies, or with dog 
teams dragging toboggans, the Indians and breeds 
bury themselves in the wilderness. Not only the 
men, but women and children are filled with the 
passion for the hunt, and if milady in London 
or Paris or New York could see them picking 
their way through the pathless wilderness, cross¬ 
ing the mountains, buried in black swamps, lost 
in a maze of rivers and lakes, I am sure there 
would be a deeper and more sentimental in¬ 
terest attached to the precious furs she wears. 
Ahead of the little family goes the man, a pack 
so huge upon his back that it is a wonder how 
he bears it, and a rifle always in hand. Behind 
him follows his wife, another and smaller pack, 
and between these two trail the children, one, 
two or perhaps half a dozen of them, leading 
by stout babiche thongs the half wild dogs that 
will be used in the winter snows. It may be 
that they do not stop until they are 100 miles 
or more from the post. Their last year's shack 
is waiting for them and at the first glimpse of 
it the half savage little children run ahead with 
loud cries of joy, for this is home. And so, 
from one end of a vast deso’ation to the other, 
a silent world in its life. Smoke begins to rise 
from the mud and stone chimneys, of a thou¬ 
sand hidden cabins, and wild things begin to 
sniff at strange and startling odors that come to 
them in the winds. A nearest neighbor may be 
twenty-five or fifty miles away; in nine cases 
out of ten no man or woman will see another 
until they congregate again at the posts. 
The Indian is sure of his trapping ground. 
It is an unwritten law of the wilderness that no 
other trapper shall invade it. His “marks” map 
out his territory, 'and for another trapper, be he 
white or red, to encroach upon this would be a 
transgression of the most sacred code of the 
forest man. Occasionally white trappers have 
ventured north, filled with the greed and the 
selfishness of their race, and have broken this 
law. Some of them have returned a little later 
stripped of their outfits; others bolder, and more 
heedless of the golden rule of the north, have 
left their bones to whiten under the winter 
snows and the summer suns of the silent places. 
But this does not happen often. The red trapper 
is a man of honor, and he respects his neighbors’ 
rights. 
Knowing that his own grounds are safe, and 
