[Celix-directorio] {Spam?} that one o' the men there, I think they call him Laroche--bu

Wed Dec 30 04:24:33 CET 2009

Es out of almost every other style of shop in the world. Accordingly,
you will find collected within the four walls of that little room,
knives and guns from Sheffield, cotton webs from Manchester, grindstones
from Newcastle, tobacco from Virginia, and every sort of thing from I
know not where all! You can buy a blanket or a file, an axe or a pair of
trousers, a pound of sugar or a barrel of nails, a roll of tobacco or a
tin kettle,--everything, in short, that a man can think of or desire.
And you can buy it, too, without money! Indeed, you _must_ buy it
without money, for there is not such a thing as money in the land. The
trade is carried on entirely by barter, or exchange. The Indian gives
the trader his furs, and the trader gives him his goods. In order to
make the exchange fair and equitable, however, everything is rated by a
certain standard of value, which is called a _made-beaver_ in one part
of the country, a _castore_ in another. The first man that stepped
forward to the counter was a chief. A big, coarse-looking, disagreeable
man, but a first-rate hunter. He had two wives in consequence of his
abilities, and the favourite wife now stood at his elbow to prompt,
perhaps to caution, him. He threw down a huge pack of furs, which the
trader opened, and examined with care, fixing the price of each skin,
and marking it down with a piece of chalk on the counter as he went
along. There were two splendid black bear-skins, two or three dozen
martens, or sables, five or six black foxes, and a great many silver
foxes, besides cross and red ones. In addition to these, he had a number
of minks and beaver-skins, a few otters, and sundry other furs, besides
a few buffalo and deer-skins, dressed, and with the hair scraped off.
These last skins are used for making winter coats, and also moccasins
for the feet. After all had been examined and valued, the whole was
summed up, a
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