In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before the whole canoe trade fell under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company, it was the custom to distribute 8 gallons of rum to each canoe for consumption during the run, and it was also the custom for all hands to see how much of this they could drink before starting out. This grandiose undertaking usually began as soon as the local priest, who gave his blessing to the canoemen, had left the scene. The magnificent drunk lasted one day and the next morning the crew had to be underway. The first day's run, old accounts repeatedly show, not only was short but was often beset by difficulties. The era of the bark trading canoe did not close with a dramatic change. Its ending was a long, slow process. By the last decade of the 19th century the bark trading canoe had disappeared from most of the old routes, and even in the Northwest it had been almost wholly displaced by York boats, scows, bateaux, and canvas or wooden canoes of white-man construction. By the beginning of the first World War, the _maître canots_ and _canots du nord_ were finished, except as curiosities--hardly even as these, for not one was preserved in a museum. Indeed, so complete was the disappearance of the fur-trade canoe that any attempt to record its design, construction, and fitting would have been almost hopeless, had it not been for the notes, sketches, and statements of such men as L. A. Christopherson, aided by a few models and pictures, and for the memories of a few Indian builders who had worked on the canoes. _Chapter Six_ NORTHWESTERN CANADA Indians of the Northwest Territories and the Province of British Columbia in Canada, and the States of Alaska and Washington, built bark canoes that may be divided into three basic models.