The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-11-22
FUR TRADERS OF TO-DAY.
HOW VALUABLE SKINS ARE COLLECTED OF TRAPPERS.


 nies--Knowledge That the Agents
 Must POSsess--Rarest Furs nre siI-
 yer and Black Fox-EarnIngs of the
 Trappers.
 It is signiacantthat just a hundred years from the last great contest waged by the Hudson's Bay Fur com pany against rivals in the vast game preserve of northern Canada the old company should be called upon to face new and powerful opposition. And for the third time in the record of its war fare that opposition is French.
 Since Charles Stuart granted the re- gion inland from Hudson Bay to 'the Gentlemen Adventures" headed by Prince Rupert, the whole history of the "Adventurers" had been one of strenu- ous struggles against rivals Their territory in itself was equal in area to the whole Russian empire.
 Including furs taken by free traders peddlers, the company called themr-the AdA SOQllIl9 DL lllG HUI LII lC4uCd PSANS to the value of more than one million dollars year. Such prize was worth lighting for, says Agnes c. Laut in the Youths Companion, and like lion the old company has fought from the be- ginning.
 First there were the French poachers, tranlping a thousand miles through the pathless forests, from the St. Lawrtnce to the Ottawa, up the Ottawa and overland to the bay; or sailing around Labrador with a fleet of men of war, like Iberyille and La Perouse, to sweep the English from the bay and sail away with a cargo of half million dollars worth of furs.
 When New France passed into the hands of the English an enemy as per- sistent as a hornet Bwarmed into the northern domain. This was the North west company, made up of Scotch mer- chants, who hired the hordes of cast off French hunters-bush lopers, voya- geurs, traders-set adrift from the old French fur companies.
 Pushing up the Ottawa to their brigades of ninety foot birch canoes,
 
 the rhythm of their paddles, across the Great Lakes, up the Saskatchewan, down the Mackenzie river to the Are tic, down the Columbia to the Pacific, these free lances of a wild world war fare camped under the noses of the cannon bristling through the walls of the Hudson Bay peoples palisaded fur posts. They allied themselves with the Indians and lGughed to scorn the worst that the old lady, as they called the company, could do with her monopoly of royal grant.
 The end of this all the world knows drugged whiskey, the stab of the as- sassins dagger on the dark wooded trail, ammushed raids on each others posts, starving each other out of eer- tain regions by stealing incoming pro visions, retaliating by stealing outgo- ing furs, open massacre of Hudson Bay men at Red River, open destruction of the Northwesters' fort at Lake Superi- or-the banditti warfare of the lords of a@fhe north continued till out of sheer ex- haustion the two companies were com pelled to amalgamate.
 When the rivals united peace pre- vailed, So passed almost a hundred years. Even when the company sur- rendered it's monopoly of the fur trade it's peaceful prosperity was unaffected, for after 1S7d, when colonists began to pour into Manitoba, the company still had the territory of the Saskatchewan, in area one-third greater than Germa- ny; and the basin of Mackenzie river, which is half the size of Russia; and the Yukon region, which may be com pared to Spain; and northern British Columbia, a third greater than Ger many; and all the region encircling Hudson Bay, from Labrador on the east to the Coppermine on the west
 Colonists might keep pouring in for hundred years and the fur trader re- treating before them, yet there would remain a game preserve larger than European Russia.
 The company could bring goods into the country cheaper than the individu- al trader, and offer better terms to the Indian hunter. Besides, every Indian, of every district was personally known to the chief factor. The company man could speak the Indians language; the free trader had to learn it. In the language of the campfire the free tra- der was either run out of the ooun- try'' or went broke" and was com pelled to sue for provisions from the rivals.
 For a hundred years all the free tra- ders who poached on the company's do- main had very little other effect on the Hudson Bay fur traders than to drive the game farther afleld, from the Red River to the Saskatchewan, and from the Saskatchewan to the Athabason. Only recently has the scattered guer- fila warfare of the free traders opposi- ton been concentrated and mustered into what may be considered a serious rival to the ancient "Adventurers.
 The newcomer is known as the French company It Is backed by the capital of Paris, London and New York fur traders, and has gathered Into it's ranks the disorganized forces of the op- position, rich independent traders, French trappers from Quebec, from tiersmen from the Missouri and Texas and Pacific coasts, descendants of the old Northwesters, who refused to go into the union hundred years ago, All know the Indian language. All have been born and bred to the life of the hunter The majority know the field as well as the Hudson Bay men. For the first time in a century the English company is evenly matched in its rival,