The Masters Of Posts And Wintering Partners Of The Companies
Deemed This Criminal Indulgence To The Vices Of Their Servants Necessary
To Stimulate Them To Exertion For The Interest Of Their Respective
Concerns.
Another practice may also be noticed as showing the state of
moral feeling on these subjects amongst the white residents of the fur
countries.
It was not very uncommon amongst the Canadian voyagers for one
woman to be common to and maintained at the joint expense of two men; nor
for a voyager to sell his wife, either for a season or altogether, for a
sum of money proportioned to her beauty and good qualities but always
inferior to the price of a team of dogs.
The country around Cumberland House is flat and swampy and is much
intersected by small lakes. Limestone is found everywhere under a thin
stratum of soil and it not unfrequently shows itself above the surface.
It lies in strata generally horizontal but in one spot near the fort
dipping to the northward at an angle of 40 degrees. Some portions of this
rock contain very perfect shells. With respect to the vegetable
productions of the district the Populus trepida, or aspen, which thrives
in moist situations, is perhaps the most abundant tree on the banks of
the Saskatchewan and is much prized as firewood, burning well when cut
green. The Populus balsamifera or taccamahac, called by the Crees matheh
meteos, or ugly poplar, in allusion to its rough bark and naked stem,
crowned in an aged state with a few distorted branches, is scarcely less
plentiful. It is an inferior firewood and does not been well unless when
cut in the spring and dried during the summer; but it affords a great
quantity of potash. A decoction of its resinous buds has been sometimes
used by the Indians with success in cases of snow-blindness, but its
application to the inflamed eye produces much pain. Of pines the white
spruce is the most common here: the red and black spruce, the balsam of
Gilead fir, and Banksian pine also occur frequently. The larch is found
only in swampy spots and is stunted and unhealthy. The canoe birch
attains a considerable size in this latitude but from the great demand
for its wood to make sledges it has become rare. The alder abounds on the
margin of the little grassy lakes so common in the neighbourhood. A
decoction of its inner bark is used as an emetic by the Indians who also
extract from it a yellow dye. A great variety of willows occur on the
banks of the streams and the hazel is met with sparingly in the woods.
The sugar maple, elm, ash, and the arbor vitae,* termed by the Canadian
voyagers cedar, grow on various parts of the Saskatchewan but that river
seems to form their northern boundary. Two kinds of prunus also grow
here, one of which,** a handsome small tree, produces a black fruit
having a very astringent taste whence the term choke-cherry applied to
it.
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