of the Far North. But his
rival, the Briton, had qualities which outwore him, and the
patriarchal and stable methods of the Hudson's Bay Company prevailed
in the end.

The heroic age of the Company had passed away; and now a long and
uneventful period began, in which, as in the Middle Ages, the energies
of men were slowly gathering for the more strenuous activity of modern
conditions.

"_Pro pelle cutem_," the chosen motto of the Company, was perhaps
humorously understood as conveying loosely the notion of an exchange
of peltries; for certainly the vindictive principle, "a skin for a
skin," did not mark their dealings with the Indian tribes. From the
first they were fortunate in encountering more peaceable races than
those opposing the colonists further south; and a regular trade was
conducted upon the basis of a fixed scale of values, the unit of
calculation being one beaver skin. Thus a gun could be procured for
eight, or ten, or twelve winter beavers, according to the
classification of the skin by size and weight. One beaver was the
equivalent of a hatchet, or four pounds of shot, or half a pound of
beads, or a pound of tobacco. A laced coat was worth six beavers, and
a looking-glass and comb cost two beavers; and so on through all the
luxuries and necessities of Indian life, other pelts being always
reduced to the terms of beaver skins.

A traveller[41] who visited the country at a somewhat later period of
the eighteenth century has drawn a picture of the ornate ceremony,
which, on the Indian side at least, transformed barter into a solemn
function, and provided the exiled traders with a comedy of manners. He
describes how, salutes having been fired on both sides, the Indians
are elaborately welcomed within the fort, where, after long silence
and much tobacco-smoking, the subject of the visit is distantly
broached, and the chief receives propitiatory gifts of brightly
coloured apparel: "A coarse cloth coat, either red or blue, lined with
baize, and having regimental cuffs; and a waistcoat and breeches of
baize. The suit is ornamented with orris lace. He is also presented
with a white orris shirt; his stockings are of yarn, one of them red,
the other blue, and tied below the knee with worsted garters; his
Indian shoes are sometimes put on, but he frequently walks in his
stocking feet; his hat is coarse, and bedecked with three ostrich
feathers of various colours, and a worsted sash tied round the crown;
a small