“One of the quaintest customs that I found in the minute books,” writes Agnes C. Laut, the company’s painstaking historian, “was regarding the home-coming ships. The money that had accrued from sales during the ships’ absence was kept in an iron box in the warehouse on Fenchurch Street. It ranged in amount from £2,000 to £11,000. To this, only the governor and deputy-governor had the keys. Banking in the modern sense of the word was not begun till 1735. When the ships came in, the strong box was hauled forth and the crews paid. . . . An average of ten thousand beaver a year was brought home. Later, otter and mink and marten became valuable. These, the common furs, whalebone, ivory, elks’ hoofs and whale blubber made up the list of the winter sales. Before the days of newspapers, the lists were posted in the Royal Exchange, and sales held ‘by candle’ in lieu of the auctioneer’s hammer—a tiny candle being lighted, pins stuck in at intervals along the shaft, and bids shouted till the light burned out. One can guess with what critical caress the fur fanciers ran their hands over the soft nap of the silver fox, blowing open the fur to examine the depth and find whether the pelt had been damaged in the skinning. Half a dozen of these rare skins from the fur world meant more than a cargo of beaver. What was it, anyway—this creature; rare as twentieth-century radium, that was neither blue fox nor grey, neither cross nor black? . . . Was it senility or debility or a splendid freak in the animal world like a Newton or a Shakespeare in the human race? Of all the scientists from Royal Society and hall of learning, who came to gossip over the sales at the coffee houses, not one could explain the silver fox.” The Adventurers’ right to the greater part of the present Dominion of Canada was disputed by the French. A nation went to war with a company. France dispatched fighting fleets. So did the Adventurers; for, what with the high price of silver fox and the low price of beads, the iron box at Fenchurch Street kept well filled. Hudson Bay was again and again the scene of horrible carnage; now one party having the best of it, now another. Anybody wishing to have his eyes opened to what happened between 1682 and 1713 should read “The Conquest of the Great North West,” by the authoress I have just quoted. Let us fix our gaze on one typical scene in the grim retrospect.