A change has also taken place in methods of barter. Up to 1820, beaver was literally coin of the realm. Mink, marten, ermine, silver fox, all were computed as worth so much or so many fractions of beaver. A roll of tobacco, a pound of tea, a yard of blazing-red flannel, a powderhorn, a hatchet, all were measured and priced as worth so many beaver. This was the Indian’s coinage, but this, too, has given way to modern methods, though the old system may perhaps be traced among the far Northern tribes. The account system was now used, so much being consigned to each factor, for which he was responsible. The trader, in turn, advanced the Indian whatever he needed for a yearly outfit, charging it against his name. This was repaid by the year’s hunt. If the hunt fell short of the amount, the Indians stood in debt to the Company. This did not in the least prevent another advance for the next year. If the hunt exceeded the debt, the Indian might draw either cash or goods to the full amount or let the Company stand in his debt, receiving coins made from the lead of melted tea chests with 1, 2, 3 or 4 _B_—beaver—stamped in the lead, and the mystic letters N. B., A. R., Y. F., E. M., C. R., H. H., or some other, meaning New Brunswick House, Albany River, York Fort, East Main, Churchill River, Henley House—names of the Company’s posts on or near the bay. And these coins have in turn been supplanted by modern money. One hears much of the Indians’ slavery to the Company owing to the debts for these advances, but any one who knows the Indians’ infinite capacity for lounging in idleness round the fort as long as food lasts, must realize that the Company had as much trouble exacting the debt as the Indian could possibly have in paying it. A more serious charge used to be leveled against the fur traders—the wholesale use of liquor by which an Indian could be made to give away his furs or sell his soul. Without a doubt, where opposition traders were encountered—Americans west of the Mississippi, Nor’Westers on the Saskatchewan, French south of the bay, Russians in Alaska—liquor and laudanum, bludgeon and bribe were plied without stint. Those days are long past. For his safety’s sake, the fur trader had to relinquish the use of liquor, and for at least a century the strictest rules have prohibited it in trade, the old Russian company and the Hudson’s Bay binding each other not to permit it. And I have heard traders say that when trouble arose at the forts the first thing done by the Company was to split open the kegs in the fort and run all liquor on the ground.