“Their Nests, very artificial, are six Stories high,” says John Ogilby, Esq., in a big book published the year after the foundation of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1771. Now John Ogilby was a man of authority, “His Majesty’s Cosmographer, Geographick Printer and Master of the Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland.” Yet in one of his pictures the beaver is shown at the feet of a Unicorn (ridden by an eagle) which seems to have leapt off the Royal Coat of Arms. This beast, “seen sometimes on the Borders of Canada,” Mr. Ogilby says, has “cloven Feet, shaggy Mayn, one Horn just on their Forehead, a Tail like that of a wild Hog, black Eyes, and a Deer’s Neck: it feeds in the nearest Wildernesses.” The males at a certain season “grow so ravenous that they not onely devour other Beasts, but also one another.” The beaver’s performances alive were nothing compared to the wonders his dead body was supposed to work. A waxy material, called castoreum, was taken from it and used as medicine for madness, deafness, stomach-ache and all other aches, pleurisy and sciatica, weak sight and hiccoughs, tumors and abscesses; it killed fleas, and there was “nothing like it for gout”; it put people to sleep, and kept them from getting sleepy; it was even said to bring back lost memory. The fat was prescribed for asthma, giddiness and apoplexy; the skin, for bed sores and consumption; the hair, to stop bleeding. It was the precious castoreum that men chiefly hunted the beaver for, in ancient times. One of the ridiculous stories then believed was that the clever animal used to cut out its own castoreum glands and throw them to the hunter, who would then let it escape. [Illustration] _The Voyageurs’ Way_ _to the West_ [Illustration: _Chief Poundmaker_] [Illustration: _Chief Piapot_] [Illustration] _Beaver at Work_ [Illustration] _Left to Right: Beaver Hat, 1820_ _Clerical Beaver, 18th Century_ _Paris Beau, 1815_ [Illustration] _The Beaver and the Unicorn_ The beaver’s long, sharp-edged teeth were used as chisels by the Indians, before the white man brought in iron and steel. The meat I have spoken of already; some of my western readers know its taste well. It is something like tender pork; the choicest morsel, the tail, makes fine bacon. The animal used often to be roasted whole, in the skin, till its fur became too valuable to burn.