established. Then there began an era that was truly terrible for
the Indians of the northern forest. In their eagerness to get the
valuable furs the companies offered the Indians strong liquors in
an abundance that ruined the poor red man, body and soul.
Moreover the fur-bearing animals were killed not only in winter
but during the breeding season. Many mother animals were shot and
their little ones were left to die. Hence in a short time the
wild creatures of the great northern forest were so scarce that
the Indians well-nigh starved.

In spite of this slaughter of fur-bearing animals, the same
Company still draws fat dividends from the northern forest and
its furry inhabitants. If the forest had been more habitable, it
would long ago have been occupied by settlers, as have its
warmer, southern portions, and the Company would have ceased to
exist. Aside from the regions too cold or too dry to support
any vegetation whatever, few parts of the world are more
deadening to civilization than the forests of the far north. Near
the northern limit of the great evergreen forest of North America
wild animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can
scarcely find a living in a thousand square miles. Today the
voracious maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and
hemlock by means of relentless saws and rattling pulp-mills. In
the wake of the lumbermen settlers are tardily spreading
northward from the more favored tracts in northern New England
and southern Canada. Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests
of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and
trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur
company to maintain a practical monopoly.