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GREAT NORTH LAND OF FUR Modem Methods of Trappers and Companies in the Trade. Sport, Daiifter anil Hardship in Plenty for All in the Pursuit. In the northern fur trade of today the same dauntless audacity and romantic adventure prevail that made the rivalry among the big companies in the past one of the most picturesque pages in American history. The intrigues between the Hudson Bay Comnany and the Nor Westers; the clashes between Ashleys men from Missouri and Mac-Loughlins brigades from the Columbia, are wild but brave history. The same game is being played in the north today, but with more refined and cunning methods. lp to twenty years ago the fur trade of the Canadian Northwest was practically in the hands f the company up north they emphasize the "The," which means the Hudson Bay Company, the King and the Commons; "H. B. C, here before Christ." There were, besides merely a half dozen free traders who led a precarious existence, scoring big gains one year, when muskrats or martens were plentiful, and the next season, perhaps, finding their profits wiped out by having advanced iredit to the Indians, who failed of the hunt or rarricd their furs to The Company. Outside Winnipeg and St. Paul, there was scarcely an independent buyer in the field. A Chicago or St. Louis house might send a buyer up to Edmonton or Athabasca for a season; but, somehow or other, the buyer would fail to make good, or find himself "scooped." Small free traders who never went in debt for the advance to the Indians succeeded in keeping alive, but the number .could be counted on one hand. Then came a rival on the field as powerful as The Hudson Bay itself. As no official directors of either company could possibly have been aware of the part played by their underlings, the story may surely be told without offense to either side. The fur trade had been open to all comers from the time the Hudson Bay relinquished its charter, nenrlv fiftv years ago; but The Company had taken good care that there should not be many newcomers, particularly in the remote regions where, settlement could never come and where furs are best. Fifteen years or so ago, when summer had passed, up at "Moose Factory, on James Bay, and The Companys ships had come and gone, and the little fur post was settling down to the drowsy routine of seven months of hibernating at this very tail of the season a ship was reported heading for harbor. The only ships that come to the south end of James l.av are an occasional whaler, and. once in ten years, perhaps, a government survey boat. The newcomer was none of these. USING THE "MOCCASIN TELEGRAM." The ship heading south at this late season belonged to the great Paris house of Itcvillon Freres. come to prospect chances for buying furs. How such news travels at these back of beyond places, where there is neither . telegraph nor printed word, I can onlv explain in the fur traders own language. "Moccasin telegram"; and moccasin telegram brought indisputable word that the ship of a big rival company -had invaded the Bay. tp on the Bay, you must remember. The Company men had been in charge for forty years, from the days of the monopoly, when a rival was a law-breaker to be fought and expelled. There was no way to obtain instructions from the directors of The Company what course to take; and the Moose Factory man was not going to run any risk of letting rivals gain a foothold. Whether he cut harbor buoys and put out beacon lamps, as they used to gf old, I was unable to learn. Probably he did not. What with equinoctial gales, saud-bars and ice-jam at the south end of James Bay. The Company man no doubt thought he could afford to let events take their natural course, and call it Providence. Every tliree voars, on an average. The Company loses a ship iii this part of the bay. A dozen years ago a ship with three hundred thousand dollars worth of furs went down. The next year another ship was eaught in the ice-jam, but the cargo was saved; and in lJOS, a cargo worth almost half a million went to the bottom. Anyway, right opposite the harlwr, the Revillons ship crumbled up like a smashed eggshell and the crew of a score or more scrambled ashore, destitute of everything but the garments on their backs and the money on their persons. Here was as pretty a dilemma as ever occurred in the days of the old fur fights pas-sengew and crew wrecked three thousand miles from home at the door of an implacable rival. AViutcr was closing in and they had neither food, nor fire, nor covering, and they were more than a thousand miles from help overland, and never an Indian to guide them out. As for The Hudson Bay man. did not exactly slam the door in their faces. That isnt the way of The Comnany. He simply had not any provisions for sale. The castaways offered double price, treble price, a hundred fold, any price for food and a man to guide them out. The Company could not spare any provisions; and, as for a guide, the best of the guides had already scattered for tho winter hunt; and there was something, too, to be said in favor of The Company. Hardly a season passes at any of these remote posts but provisions run short, or close to the margin of short, before spring. Anyhow, the Moose Factory man refused point-blank to sell a single pound of food to the Revil lons; and, when words grew hot, coolly told them they had brought the misfortune on themselves by invading the bay. Money did not avail with the few Indians still about; for money was not used in trade. The infuriated rivals went across to the English church mission, then in charge of the present Bishop of Prince Charles Newnham. The clergyman threw wide open the doors of his small mission and welcomed the unfortunates in to such fare as he had not a light thing to do when you consider that missionaries begin on a salary of three hundred dollars and seldom receive more than six hundred dollars. Instantly came word from The Company man that if the missionary helped the rivals he need expect no help from The Company; that he ,would not be sold one pound of provisions. Xewnham exploded furiously. He would take the Ilevillons in; he would keep and feed them as long as he chose; he would send them overland by snowshoes or canoe, and The Company might be blowed: xjnly a reverend gentleman puts it in canonical language. And Xewuhnm kept his word. His Indian hunters scoured the woods for extra meat, and the invaders stayed with him until he could send them out by canoe. When Missionary Xewnham became Bishop at Prince Albert, a splendid set of solid silver came to him from Paris. All that happened fifteen years or so ago, but that was not the end. If The Company was so jealous of intrusion, it must be Jealous from the best of reasons hig profits: and so, wherever The Company had a post, the rivals came and planted themselves, establishing on one region alone as many as fifty-nine posts; in others buying out the free traders, or making arrangements with them to take over their hunt. Today the rival traders arc friends in the wilderness on all subjects save one pelts. The coming of a second big, powerful company has revolutionized the fur trade of the north. Barter is forever past. Furs are bought outright for cash at all but few of the ppsts. Prices for furs have doubled, prices for provisions halved. The debt system with the Indians is being eliminated as fast as the traders can effect the change. Buyers from the big cities of the United States are on the field. You ask the Indian how he likes it and he shakes his head. He makes more money he will tell you double wages for the voyageur, double prices for the hunter; but there he loses his chain of reasoning in a maxe of taciturnity. SYSTEM ABOUT GROG DRINKING. Drink as well as debt is being lessened under the new regime of Commissioner Chipmnn and the Itevillons. Time was, not so many years ago. when the chief factor of the outlying posts would call his men at ten oclock: "Come, boys, have your grog." At twelve again came the call, "Drinks." and at three it was "Get your glasses." At six a double portion was served all round. But, if any man dared to drink between times, ho was called to the back office and rated till his hair stood stiff. The irate old rulers would wind up with the words: "If we want any drinking done between hours, we will do it ourselves." The influence of this regime on the native can be guessed. But now new men have been sent out to clean up debt and drink at the remotest posts. It is a liousecleaning that cannot be effected in a day. Mounted police are called to arrest men found drunk on the reserves. Indians are told at treaty to lay up a store of ammunition for the year, for the company will not make advances on the limit. At places where the nearest base of supplies may be from three hundred to a thousand miles away a shortage of flour in spring is a menacing danger. "Did you ever run short of supplies?" was asked of a Mr. Itosser of Cumberland House, whose district extends northward five hundred miles beyond Lac du Brochet. "Almost, once. We were, down to nearly nothing. It was at Pelly. I did not think it safe to wait any longer for weather to clear. I struck out with dogs and snowshoes for the nearest post, a hundred miles away. Yes, I was alone, of course. Well. I got a whole sleighload of flour sacks. It took twelve days to conn? hack it was r4 below zero, anil the snow was so deep that half the way I had to shovel the trail open with my snow-shoes for tilt dogs. If I had charged 50 a sack for the flour it would not have represented what it cost me. I brought only enough to prevent starvation at the post. On the way home I met an Indian with a silver fox skin. He was starving, lie pleaded to trade it for a few pounds of flour. I gave him all I could spare half a sack for that silver fox; and I venture to say It is the cheapest silver fox skin and the dearest sack of flour the company ever handled." HOW THE FURS ARE TRANSPORTED. Railroads now carry the furs to the outside world in place of the ninety-foot canoes that used to ply back and forth across the continent. But this has not lessened the old-time adventure of bringing out the furs, for north of the railroads stretch two thousand miles of muskeg country, where roads can never be built. Here dog-train, scow, York boat and canoes traverse the lonely wastes as of old, with never a landmark or mile-post but the Indians lone "lobstick" a tree stripped of all foliage save a tuft at the toil to mark some event or some crossing of the ways. Between the wheat plains aud Hudson Bay lies an area four hundred by seventy miles of pure muskeg, quaking silt on a bed of water, covered by goosegrass and muskrat reed sixteen feet high, with lanes of water crisscrossing in endless maze. This is the great country for mink and muskrat. Though the muskrat fur sells at from ten to forty cents a skin, the Indians, when they take as many as half a million, make a rich harvest in this region. You can stand on the gunwale of your big Klondike canoe without rocking it and look over the top of the reeds as far as the eye can reach; there Is nothing but reeds and waterways, waterways and reeds. The Indian hunters here use only light, unlincd birch canoes, with seven pieces of the dark red bark on each side and the scams tarred black in circular rings. The fur traders use the ordinary slate-gray Hudson Bay canoe. YiM can travel two weeks at a stretch and never find a piece of dry land the size of your bootsolc for camping. Xot a sign of human life for hundreds of miles. And yet. -at earliest dawn, one occasionally hears the Indian hunters bang bang banging at duck and rat in the endless swamps. West of the muskeg country and north toward Churchill and Athabasca you are in a rocky region of swift waters and big game. Birch canoes are too frail for this country. Basswood and cedar canoes may serve, but the favorite mode of traveling is by scow and York boat. Scows are built to float down stream, and at the end of the voyage are broken up for lumber. Big trees lashed to each side, branch end down, keep them in mid-current. Provisions and pelts are piled in the middle under an oil-skin covering, and in the stern is a permanent tent with cook stove and sleeping rugs. Long poles and a big sweep at the stern are used in going down rapids; but it is not always .as easy and safe as it sounds. A famous riverman, who has probably taken more cargoes down the Saskatchewan than any living man today, told of an occurrence on Grand Itapids. The crew ahead of his, under old Lestang, failed of nerve to lift just at the right moment when the guide shouted for them to catcli the swirl that would have shot them past a dangerous rock. The struck and stuck fast amid the roar of angry waters. The rivermans crew, coming behind at race horse leaps and gallops and plunges, grazed so close to the wrecked craft that they carried away the poles in the hands of Lestangs men. In forty years of river work this was the only time that Lestang failed, and the mishap broke his nerve. He would never again run the rapids. METHODS OF RIVER NAVIGATION. York boats carry bigger cargoes, require bigger crews and make faster time. Sail is hoisted. Tho men pole on each side; and, where they are going up stream, track as well as pole. With tump-line around shoulders and top-rope fastened back from the bow to prevent sidling, half the crew run along shore pulling, half remain on board poling. Where the banks are steep as a wall, tho men must wade out to their necks in water cold as ice over a river bottom like quicksand. On lakes like Great Bear and Lesser Slave and Cumberland tracking along shore or from island to island is dangerous as well as hard. Let a landward wind blow aud the united strength of trackers and polers will hardly keep the craft off the rocks. Indians simply refuse to track lakes in a gale. But where waiting posts are hard pushed for provisions, white men cannot always refuse to track, and boat work today calls forth the same heroism that it did a hundred years ago. In the fur country of the Canadian Rockies transportation is by pack horse in summer and by dog train in winter. While it is the big company that the world hears about, and the middleman or trader who brings the furs out it is the hunter or trapper who fares afield alone on whom the whole fur trade depends. These knights of the wilderness go out lightly equipped. The cauoeman will take little else than a small duck lean-to, some moose pemmi-can. some matches, firearms, and perhnps some babiche reindeer thong, slim as darning wool, but strong enough to bear a weight of over two hundred pounds. In winter many a trapper sets out for a two thousand-mile tramp with nothing but a single blanket wrapped up in a lean-to, firearms and gunny-sack of flour and bacon strapped on his dogs back. With such equipment one trapper on the Saskatchewan River traversed the Peace River country for nine months at a time every year. On one of his long trip-! ho reached a deserted shack. He had wrapped himself up in his blanket for the night, when he was awakened by a sharp pain in both eyes. For three days lie lay in the shack snow blind, keeping his eyes covered with fat pork. The fourth day he was able to see and went on Ills way. The same riverman who used to convey the cargoes down Grand Rapids in winter took dog trains across the prairie from Red River to the Rockies. Clad only in blue flannel shirt and heavy trousers, with fur mitts and lined moccasins and a Highland plaid belt around the waist, he used to run the entire one thousand eight hundred miles, averaging from sixty to ninety miles a day. DANGER AND HARDSHIP IN WORK. One time, in a storm, his dogs bolted off at a tangent nfter a pack of wolves. On account of the thickly falling suo.w he could not see which way they had gone, and the wind prevented him from hearing the howls. He could not go on. Unfastening the plaid, he stretched it as a wind break between two Sticks. Then he kindled a hig. jfire to keep the wolves off, for the dogs had carried his gun away on the sleigh. Turning face first, . then back, he dried ids clothes of the sleet, and when the wind settled, the howls of the dogs guided him down the river bank, where the tracings had caught in a snarl of fallen timber. But "It was nothing it was nothing," he said, when asked what would have happened if he had not heard the howl. What the canoe is in summer the dog train is in winter. A good team of dogs is more costly than the average canoe, and almost as costly as a team of horses. Such dogs are well treated by their masters, kept in big corrals or on islands, with fish diet; in summer, and in winter, when in harness, are fed as regularly as their drivers. But the half starved mongrel Indian dogs are allowed to roam the woods in packs, as savage as wolves. "My dogs always used to come through the summer half starved and ravenous as wolves," said Young, a retired company man. "I mind, in seventy-one, or thereabouts, when surveyors were huntin a right-of-way for a railroad, McConnells party arrived at my post dead tired. My huskies were pretty savage, and I advised the surveyors to put their stuff in the fort shed and sleep in the companys house. After supper they were all too tired to bother about changing, and tumbled to sleep in their own tent. In the morning everything but their survey instruments and flannels had been cleaned out. That day they came to me and said: "Say, if you dont mind, well "sleep in tha.t shed of yours tonight." " Youre welcome, I answered, but what in mischief do you want to sleep in that shed for now that you have lost everything V " Well, they said, if these dogs could clean out our camp last night without even wakening us, tonight they would probably eat us without wakening us. " DOGS IMPORTANT AID TO TRAPPERS. While the mongrels of the Indians pack trains rove the wilds in wolfish packs the well-trained huskies of the white hunter become lioon companions of their master, and combine the cunning of the wolf with the intelligence of the domestic dog. Dog races are as great a feature at the fur posts as horse races in other lands; and it would be hard to imagine a more picturesque scene than half a hundred silver, huskies, decked with bells and colored ribbon, hitched tandem in fives and in fours to red-painted sleighs, and doing time over the glassed ice of a river bed. The head dog acts as pilot to break the way, and on him the success of the race depends. The most famous husky of the Atliabasca today is the Revillons Eskimo Silver, born up on the Mackenzie River one winter, half dog, half wolf. The puppy was so beautifully silvered that the manager at Athabasca Lake at once bought him aud brought him down to Edmonton. Silver no sopner readied his prime than he refused to harness up in traces, and killed every other dog that contested mastership with him. But out of harness he would act as pilot; with the tump-line in his teeth he would track a canoe up stream; he would hunt anything of any size, and he would carry his masters pack as an individual favor. But to act as a beast of burden the wolf iii him would not permit. The fame of Silvers intelligence became so great that one of the Revillons brought him out to civilization. The translation of the savage was not a success. He was sent back to .Athabasca, where he still rules the dog population and takes an occasional pull on the tump-line. Before the rush to the Klondike it was the way for hunters to take their pack train out laden with provisions, and cache such quantities as would be needed on the return trii all along the trail. By caching, I do not mean hiding. The provisions, sewed up in gunny sacks, would be slung up on a platform in the tree tops, or suspended from some limb which animals could not reach. You would see dozens of such caches when you traveled through the fur country. A single hunter might leave as much as five hundred dollars worth of provisions in this unguarded fashion. Though the .Indians passed and repassed this trail, and were often hungry, not a dollars worth would be stolen. After the Klondike rush there was a change. The Indians learned that the white mans laws and the white mans practices are two different things, and caches are now concealed. INVESTMENT AND PROFITS IN FUR. Long ago tliree thousand dollars worth of goods would stock a big canoe for a years trade; and, if the trader did not lose his scalp he might come out with big enough profits to retire for the rest of his life. Such profits are no longer made. Gains are still enormous 100 per cent on the pelts, 50 per cent on the goods sold; but risks are enormons, too. "It takes from three to four thousand dollars to stock out a small trader," said a free trader. "He will turn that capital over two or three times a year. Ten dollars cash will buy a good black otter. In trade, that would cost 5; but on the trade there would be the profit of GO per cent. The skin . : 1 ; . , ; f 1 j on the London market sells for 0 to 0. The same scale holds good with lynx and marten, mink and the staple furs. But the risks: Taking your provisions down in a scow, you may lose everything hi a wreck. Thousands of dollars worth or goods are lost on the rapids of the north. Or there may come a poor vear in furs. You may count on one in every seven years being a failure in furs, they say. If you dont advance goods to the Indians and hold them through the bad year, they will not bring their hunt when the good years come. That is how the small traders go broke. They cannot afford credit for so long. Perhaps you get the banks to back you up. Then you find out the Indians to whom you have advanced credit had prior debts to the big companies. You not only lose but close the year heavily in debt. What has put so many free traders out of business is simply this: The Indians are well off and prosperous in good years. Any good hunter can make seven hundred dollars a year, and that is a lot for an Indian: but they will not lay up store for hard times. Hard times come; and "the Indians go to your outfit in Marcli for flour and powder. If you cant give it to them, you are down and out; for they go back to their tribe and tell that another free trader has been beaten by The Company. " The biggest profits from the trade are not made from the occasional rare pelt bought at a song, hut from accumulated small profits on the small skins. Millions of muskrat every year are sent out from the north. Mink are found in the same country as the muskrat where fish and water are plentiful: but the rare martens come from the mouse ami berry country. When the marten eats mice, its fur is poor. When It eats the small blue scrub berry, the skin becomes glossy as silk, varying in value from eight to thirty-two dollars. Steel traps are. of course, used; in the far north, whero steel is scarce, "the deadfall and snare are used for nearly all game, even black bear. The deadfall varies in size according to the game, but the principle is always the same a circle of logs or sticks, an opening on one side just big enough to admit half the body of the game, the bait inside, a log below the opening, and a heavy log above so supported that when the bait is touched it crashes down breaking the back of the victim. For the big game, the hunter goes to the timbered regions of Ontarios hinterland, Peace River and the Rockies. Since cash was introduced, instead of barter, the base of trade is tliree beaver to the dollar. Will the fur country ever be trapped out, and the haunts of game and wildfowl be shot clean of life as the plains have been cleared of buffalo? GAME PLENTIFUL AS EVER. When you go seventy miles north of the Saskatchewan, you are in a muskeg region. This swamp land cannot be reclaimed. It is five feet deep at the shallowest, aud forever bars out settlers. It will also bear out railroads, except, perhaps, along two or three ridges of rock from Lake AVinnipeg to Hudson Bay, from Prince Albert to Lac la Bouge", from Edmonton to Athabasca and the Peace. Even if you built your railroad elsewhere as the ninety miles built by Mackenzie and Mann from the wheat plains to the Pas prove you cannot operate it in summer. Yon cannot operate it with a hand-car or a wheelbarrow for the floods. You can run your train over muskeg only in winter when the water is adamant ice, and then you have the consideration of blizzards to keep your track open. The Pas Road today cannot be used. West of the muskeg region, from the nature of the country wildly rocky with the worst of cataracts only Indians will act as hunters; and, while the Indian is a thriftless husbandman as to saving, he is a thrifty hunter. His carelessness of the morrow keeps him from being a pot-hunter. He hates the "hig white mans fire," because it scares game away. Coming across such a fire, or acting as guide where there is one, it is always the Indian who thinks to put out the coals. How plentiful is game in these regions now after two hundred years of hunting? As plentiful as it has ever leen. A traveler coming through the mus-key country one night passed through n long lane of reed-lined water to a lagoon about seven miles across and screened from him by a fringe of willows. He declared he was afraid to set down what he saw on that swamp, for, when someone fired a shot, the surface of the waters literally lifted. The air whistled with wings diicks and geese In their hidden breeding ground. They had n sens of fear, no thought of rising more than a paddle length out of your way. In an hour here an Indian could easily shoot enough food for a month forty to a hundred birds is a record for half a days hunt. That game preserve is less than three hundred miles from a railroad by one route, less than ninety; but it is as safe behind its barrier of muskeg as if it were one thousand miles distant. Strike north toward Churchill, or west toward Peace River, and you are in a region just as full of big game, where moose are shot from traders scows, and bear and timber wolves nightly visit your camp, perhaps hamstring your pack horses if you are traveling that way; and these regions, only from seven to ten days travel from a railroad, are forever safe from the invasion of the pothunter behind tiie barrier of a wildly rocky country. II. F. Sweet in Ilnnter-Trader-Trapper.
