The fur trade was certainly an interesting factor in the growth of the Dutch settlement. Fort Orange, or Albany, called the _Fuyck_, was the natural topographical _fuyck_ or trap-net to catch this trade, and in the very first season of its settlement fifteen hundred beaver and five hundred otter skins were despatched to Holland. In 1657 Johannes Dyckman asserted that 40,900 beaver and otter skins were sent that year from Fort Orange to Fort Amsterdam (New York City). As these skins were valued at from eight to ten guilders apiece (about $3.50 and with a purchasing value equal to $20 to-day), it can readily be seen what a source of wealth seemed opened. The authorities at Fort Orange, the patroons of Renssalaerwyck and Beverwyck, were not to be permitted to absorb all this wondrous gain in undisturbed peace. The increment of the India Company was diverted and hindered in various ways. Unscrupulous and crafty citizens of Fort Orange (independent _handaelers_ or handlers) and their thrifty, penny-turning _vrouws_ decoyed the Indian trappers and hunters into their peaceful, honest kitchens under pretence of kindly Christian welcome to the peltry-bearing braves; and they filled the guileless savages with Dutch schnapps, or Barbadoes “kill-devil,” until the befuddled or half-crazed Indians parted with their precious stores of hard-trapped skins and threw off their well-perspired and greased beaver coats and exchanged them for such valuable Dutch wares as knives, scissors, beads, and jews’-harps, or even a few pints of quickly vanishing rum, instead of solid Dutch guilders or substantial Dutch blankets. And even before these strategic Dutch citizens could corral and fleece them, the incoming fur-bearers had to run as insinuating a gantlet of _boschloopers_, bush-runners, drummers, or “broakers,” who sallied out on the narrow Indian paths to buy the coveted furs even before they were brought into Fort Orange. Much legislation ensued. Scout-buying was prohibited. Citizens were forbidden “to addresse to speak to the wilden of trading,” or to entice them to “traffique,” or to harbor them over night. Indian houses to lodge the trappers were built just outside the gate, where the dickering would be public. These were built by rates collected from all “Christian dealers” in furs.