In 1783 no fewer than ten thousand five hundred bear-skins were sent to England from the northern ports of America.
In 1805, eleven years subsequent to the date of our story, the number had reached twenty-five thousand.
“It is going to be a great deal of work,” said Uncle Isaac, “to get these beavers now. The ice is thick in the pond, the houses are seven or eight feet thick, and frozen as hard as a stone. It will be hard work to break them up—a great deal of ice to cut, and frozen dirt. If we dull our tools, we’ve nothing but a file to sharpen them with. I think we’d better make a lot of dead-falls and box-traps, and set them for minks and sables, cut holes in the ice, and set steel-traps for the beaver and otters; and while we are tending them, go into the muskrats, coons, and bears, till the weather begins to get warmer; then the sun will thaw the south side of their houses, and the ice in the ponds, and we can get what beavers are left with half the work. What do you think, Joseph?”
“I think just as you do; but we must have fish to bait the otter traps. I have got hooks and lines in my pack. We can also make nets of willow bark, and set them under the ice.”
“Yes, and we can set for foxes. If we could get a silver-gray, it would be worth a lot of money.”
“I thought of that, and have brought some honey. That will tole them. A fox loves honey as well as a bear; so does a coon, and a coon is out every thawy day. I count heavy on bears. A bear’s pelt is worth forty shillings; and we may find a yard of deer. Just as soon as we begin to have carcasses of beaver and fish round, it will draw the foxes, and we can trap and shoot them on the bait.”
Uncle Isaac now brought out his pack, and began to remove some of the contents, laying them one by one on the table, while the boys looked on with great curiosity. The first thing he took out was a bunch of the largest sized mackerel hooks.
“What in the world did you bring them clear up here for?” asked John. “There are no mackerel here.”
“They are to make a wolf-trap.”
“How do you make it?”