Vague rumours of these secret proceedings permeated the town. They became a standing topic at the places where men foregathered. To the popular imagination, the north was a land of fable. The denizens of those countries were invested with strange attributes and clothed in weird and wonderful garments. The Hudson's Bay Company dealt with picturesque monarchs and a fierce, proud and noble people, whose ordinary attire was the furs of sable, of ermine, of fox, and of otter; who made treaties and exacted tributes after the fashion of the ceremonial East. Petty chiefs and sachems were described as kings and emperors; the wretched squaws of a redskin leader as queens. It was, perhaps, only natural for a generation which banqueted its imagination on the seductive fable of a North-West Passage to confuse the Red Indians of North America with the inhabitants of the East; a very long period was to pass away before the masses were able to distinguish between the tawny-skinned Indian of the North American continent and the swarthy servants of the East India Company. Nor were the masses alone sinners in this respect. The Indians of Dryden, of Congreve, of Steele, and even of writers so late as Goldsmith no more resembled the real Red-men than the bison of the western prairies was akin to the buffalo of the Himalayas. For such reasons as these, the Adventurers kept their ways and their superior knowledge with superior discretion to themselves. [Sidenote: Capital of the Company.] It was never known in the seventeenth century what actually constituted the original capital of the Adventurers. So small was it that when, in the course of the Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry in 1749, nearly eighty years after the Company had received its charter, the figures were divulged, the pettiness of the sum occasioned universal surprise. Each adventurer was apparently required to pay £300, sterling; and the gross sum was divided into thirty-four equal shares. Besides Prince Rupert's "sundry charges" (the euphemism employed to describe the sum paid him for his interest in obtaining the charter), his Highness was offered a share amounting to one equal share. "He having graciously signified his acceptance thereof," says the secretary in the minute-book, "credit given him for three hundred pounds." The capital thus stood at £10,500. FOOTNOTE: [16] The beaver, amphibious and intelligent, had for centuries a considerable place in commerce: and also a celebrity of its own as the familiar synonym for the common covering of a man's head, and here the animal becomes historic. By royal proclamation in 1638, Charles I., of England, prohibited the use of any material in the manufacture of hats "except beaver stuff or beaver wool." This proclamation was the death-warrant of beavers innumerable, sacrificed to the demands of the trade. CHAPTER VII. 1671-1673.