Hudson's Bay not being a colony, but a great waste country, sprinkled with a few European dwellings, dealings are carried on by barter rather than by cash payments, and of money there is little or none. But, to facilitate trade with the Indians, there is a certain standard of value known as a castor, and represented by pieces of wood. We may conjecture the term to have originated in the French word _castor_, signifying a beaver--of which animal these wooden tokens were probably intended to represent the value. It stands to reason that such a coinage is too easily counterfeited for its general circulation to be permitted, and it consequently is current only in the Company's barter-rooms. "Thus an Indian arrives at a fort with a bundle of furs, with which he proceeds to the Indian trading-room. There the trader separates the furs into different lots, and valuing each at the standard valuation, adds the amounts together, and tells the Indian, who has looked on the while with great interest and anxiety, that he has got fifty or sixty castors; at the same time handing him fifty or sixty little bits of wood in lieu of cash, so that he may, by returning these in payment of the goods for which he really exchanges his skins, know how fast his funds decrease. The Indian then looks around upon the bales of cloth, powder-horns, guns, blankets, knives, &c., with which the shop is filled, and after a good while makes up his mind to have a small blanket. This being given him, the trader tells him that the price is six castors; the purchaser hands him six of his little bits of wood, and selects something else. In this way he goes on till the wooden cash is expended. The value of a castor is from one to two shillings. The natives generally visit the establishments of the Company twice a-year; once in October, when they bring in the produce of their autumn hunts, and again in March, when they come in with that of the great winter hunt. The number of castors that an Indian makes in a winter hunt varies from fifty to two hundred, according to his perseverance and activity, and the part of the country in which he hunts. The largest amount I ever heard of was made by a man named Piaquata-Kiscum, who brought in furs, on one occasion, to the value of two hundred and sixty castors. The poor fellow was soon afterwards poisoned by his relatives, who were jealous of his superior abilities as a hunter, and envious of the favour shown him by the white men."