Even at so early a period as 1690 was the method of transacting trade with the Indians devised and regulated. The tribes brought down their goods, beaver skins, martens, foxes and feathers, to the Factory and delivered them through a small aperture in the side of the storehouse. They entered the stockade three or four at a time; trading one by one at the window over which presided the traders. The whole of the actual trading of the Factory was in the hands of two officials known as traders. None other of the Company's servants at any fort were permitted to have direct intercourse with the Indians, save in exceptional circumstances. The trade was chiefly carried on in summer when the rivers were free from ice, although occasionally the natives in the immediate region of the factories came down in winter; the factors never refusing to trade with them when they so came. No partiality was shown to particular tribes, but the actual hunters were favoured more than those who merely acted as agents or carriers. It was not unusual for the chief factors, as the Governors came to be called after 1713, to make presents to the chiefs in order to encourage them to bring down as many of their tribe the ensuing year as possible. [Illustration: TRADING WITH THE INDIANS.] Before the era of the standard of trade, it was customary at all the forts, as it was at one or two long afterwards, for remuneration for the furs of the savages to be left at the chief factor's discretion. Many things conspired to alter the values from season to season, and even from day to day, but no cause was so potent as the contiguous rivalry of the French. When the French were close at hand in the vicinity of Fort Nelson, as they were from 1686 to 1693, the price of beaver would fluctuate with surprising rapidity. It should be borne in mind that the western country at this period, and for long afterwards, was frequented by roving, adventurous parties of _coureurs des bois_, whose activity in trade tended to injure the Company's business. Even an enactment prescribing death for all persons trading in the interior of the country without a license, had proved insufficient to abate their numbers or their activity. [Sidenote: Activity of "coureurs des bois."]