ts; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
formerly to be."

The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
robes--the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
fox;[11] wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
the skunk--a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.

[Footnote 11: The blue fox is the Arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_) in its
summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
the common fox (_C. vulpes_); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
fox (_Canis velox_).]

* * * * *

A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directio