They don't generally understand figures, but they all understand that X stands for 10. As the Indian kills his furs, he adds them to his pack in saits often, at the same time scoring out one of the crosses on his debt slip. After all has been cancelled, he then hunts a few more skins to cover any misvaluation on his part, or to have something extra to barter for finery. After the chief leaves the shop another man and wife are called in according to their standing in the band, and thus it goes on till we reach the last one. Six to eight families are about all we can get thru in a day, as there is so much time wasted in talk. If we begin on the Monday, we generally see the grand departure take place on the following Saturday. We only import the best of everything and the Indian buying from our stores is assured of the purest provisions and the strongest and most durable goods. This is no boast for where we have no opposition the Indians and our interests are identical, and the company's agent at such posts has the Indians' welfare at heart. On the frontier we are obliged by other buyers and circumstances over which we have no control to take common out of season skins. As the Indians find sale for skins of any kind, they hunt actually ten months out of the twelve. At our interior posts, where our word is law, we appoint the 25th of October to begin hunting and the 25th of May to finish; except for bears, and these they are allowed to hunt up to the 10th of June. What a sad sight it is for an officer coming from some interior district to a frontier post, where he left well-clothed contented Indians to find those swindled by the unprincipled traders, in rags, drunken and the seeds of consumption marked in their faces. CHAPTER IV. TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. What appears marvelous and positively uncanny to a town person is simple to a bushman. Years of continuous observation develops the bump of locality, every object has a place and meaning to a trapper; his eye is ever on the alert, and what his eye sees is photographed on the brain and remains there for future reference at any time he may require it. This bump of locality is highly developed in all Indians and whites who have passed many years in the bush. Without the faculty of remembering objects a bushman could not find his way through the dense forests. Providing the trapper has once passed from one place to another, he is pretty sure to find his way through the second time, even if years should have elapsed between the trips. Every object from start to finish is an index finger pointing out the right path. A sloping path, a leaning tree, a moss-covered rock, a slight elevation in land, a cut in the hills, the water in a creek, an odd-looking stone, a blasted tree--all help as guides as the observant trapper makes his way through a pathless forest.