And, in the official seal of New York, full recognition was given to the little furred animal that had so properly occupied a prominent place in the seal of the Dutch colony. _Castor canadensis_ appeared twice, in fact, within the shield of the British seal. Even after the American Revolution, after the eagle had supplanted the crown in the seal of New York, these two beavers remained there as a permanent reminder of the important role of fur in the genesis of our greatest port. XVII _Westward the Fur Frontier of America_ With the elimination of New Netherland in 1664 the main obstacle to British colonial policy had been removed. Laws providing for a more closely knit relationship between the colonies and the mother country, such as the Navigation Acts, could be enforced. Soldiers now backed up the merchants. Indeed, from this time the expansion of England’s imperial trade system in America would proceed at the point of a gun. That it would expand however, and solidly, was because the English had what it took in addition to guns. They possessed all those stubborn qualities required of true empire builders, of colonizers. The farmers who pressed hard behind the fur traders were land-hungry, persistent and numerous. They kept the beaver traders, and the soldiers, on the move. Although the English flag waved over America in 1664 from Spanish Florida to French Canada, it was planted only along the coast. The farthest inland post was Fort Albany on the Hudson, formerly Dutch Fort Orange. Beyond that, however, lay the boundless hinterland, a seemingly inexhaustible fur frontier to be rolled westward toward the South Sea, toward China! Of course there was the matter of protecting the English flanks against the Spaniards and the French. On the left flank, in the south, this had been accomplished by the Carolina Patent which extended England’s claim in those parts far below Cape Fear to 31°, and later even farther, although Spain did manage to keep the border north of its stronghold at St. Augustine. On the right flank the French coastal boundary had been neatly settled, or so the British colonials thought, when the northernmost limit of the widely scattered lands granted to the Duke of York was placed at the St. Croix River, roughly 45°, which had been England’s traditional claim there. [Illustration: THE TRADERS KEPT PUSHING THEIR BIRCH-BARK CANOES DEEPER INTO THE WILDERNESS.] Then, too, there was the matter of the French traders already in the northwestern hinterland. But, since England had inherited the Dutch trade with the Iroquois, those fierce savages were counted upon to act as buffer allies in the interior, to keep the French trade routes north of the lake country.