The lonely fur trader in his canoe with his Indian guides soon symbolized the occupation of New France. The deeper he penetrated into the country the farther the fame of his conquest spread abroad. New France was more than a claim; without colonization it was becoming a recognized French possession. Geographers so indicated it on their maps. The front line of this French conquest was to become known as the beaver frontier. The coast of the fishermen had been the first fur trading frontier, but when that trade began moving rapidly inland and _castor canadensis_ took over the chief victim’s role in the drama of destruction, it became the beaver frontier. For _castor canadensis_ is not a highly reproductive animal and he is not a migrant. He is also hindered from flight in the face of danger by the large capital investment he has made in his home. The beaver is an amphibious rodent whose natural environment is a pond or a sluggish stream. An industrious home body, operating on a self-imposed economy, he hews trees and builds protecting dams and apartment houses in which he cohabits with other beavers, all under a system of government much like man’s. Physically, the beaver is distinguished by his thick coat of soft fur, his hard, incisor-like teeth with which he can cut through the stoutest oak, his palmated hind feet and his horizontally-flattened, scaly tail. He depends very much on that tail, which probably was a model for Indian canoe paddles. It serves him as a rudder when he swims and as a balance for his awkwardly-proportioned body when he runs. As the foreman of a community construction project he uses his tail with telling effect to lash laggards in the matter of pushing logs about or sealing crevices in structures with good, hard clay. Frequently it comes in handy to smack the surface of the water as a warning that an enemy approaches as well as a protest to the unwelcome intruder. No sound impresses itself more sharply on the woodsman than the crash of an angry beaver’s tail on the quiet waters of his home preserve. The fur of this busy little animal was much in demand in the old world. Not only was it preferred as a coating because of its beauty, warmth and durability, but the hat industry then centering about La Rochelle was requisitioning it in increasing quantities. With European reserves being depleted, the lovely blue-brown, blanket-like pelt of the larger Canadian animal found eager bidders in the French market at twenty or more livres a pound, the average beaver pelt weighing one and a half to two pounds.