Thomas Shaughnessy came to Canada at the invitation of William Van Home, another American. Van Home became the manager of the project after the government had given up hope of building a road across western Canada. It was he who carried it through the early period of desperate struggle with the wilderness and the equally desperate fight for money with which to meet the payroll. Years ago he established the present policy of courtesy to passengers, and placarded the system with a demand for “Parisian politeness on the C. P. R.” During their régime, both men had associated with them many other Americans whom they called to Canada to lend a hand in one of the greatest transportation jobs the world has ever known. CHAPTER XXII THE LAND OF FURS For four hundred years furs from Canada have been warming the flesh and enhancing the charms of feminine beauty. It is to-day the chief breeding place of animals valued for their skins, and it is likely to remain so for centuries to come. When the settlement of North America was at its beginning, the French adventurers making fortunes in furs did their best to discourage the incoming colonists, for they knew that this meant the death of the wilderness. If they could have had their way, all that is now Canada would have been left to the Indian trappers and the white traders who relieved them of their annual catches. As it is, improved methods of transportation, trapping, and hunting are reducing the available supply, and the demand is such that the furriers have had to popularize skins formerly despised as too common, and many Canadians have gone into the business of breeding fur-bearing animals. [Illustration: The fur business of Canada has its beginning when the company trader strikes a bargain with the Eskimo for his season’s catch of the white fox of the arctic and other skins.] [Illustration: The Hudson’s Bay Company has more than two hundred trading posts where Indians, Eskimos, and white trappers exchange furs for goods. Eighteen of the stations lie near or north of the Arctic Circle.] [Illustration: Most of the fine fox skins now marketed in Canada come from animals raised in captivity on fur farms. Occasionally a cat may act as a substitute mother for a litter of fox kittens.] Winnipeg has long been an important city in the Canadian fur trade, and here the world’s greatest fur organization has its headquarters. I refer, of course, to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which for more than two hundred and fifty years has been bartering goods for the furs of British North America. It was founded when the British had scarcely a foothold in Canada, and its operations won for them their dominion over the northwestern part of our continent. In the beginning it was but one of many trading enterprises of the New World. To-day it has adapted itself to the tremendous changes in our civilization and it is bigger, stronger, and richer than ever.