one of the most expensive. A skin, purely white in the body, and black at the end of the tail, is considered as of the best quality. Many attempts, of course, are made to imitate ermine by dyeing inferior skins. Fitch, sable, and lynx, are the most durable of furs, and bear a high value. The squirrel and chinchilla furs are exceedingly elegant, but do not last very long. They are of a grayish tint. Fine bear-skins are of great value in the fur-trade, and are manufactured into articles of much beauty as well as durability. It ought to be mentioned, that the fur companies trade extensively in buffalo-skins, though no furs are derived from any animal of that class. An immense number of animals of other kinds are also frequently killed in the arctic regions, the bodies of which serve as food to the hunting-parties. A party of 80 men killed and consumed, in one winter, 90,000 white partridges and 25,000 hares. The friths and shores of Hudson's Bay are stocked with the grampus, seal, narwhal, sea-horse, and other creatures, of which many hundreds are killed annually, and their skins, particularly those of the sealtribe, added to the general store. As the killing goes on continually, there is an annual supply of furs in the British market. We shall now explain the consequences of this trade to the natives, or Indians, as they are termed, of the northern regions of America. They are the principal hunters of the animals whose skins are used, though those servants of the fur companies, who spend the winter in remote log-stations, are continually engaged likewise in this pursuit. Next to guns, hatchets, knives, powder, and other hunting-implements, the articles coveted by the Indians are coarse blue and red cloth, and fine scarlet, coarse cottons, hoes, beads, vermilion, ribbons, kettles, &c. The course of a private trader to the North-West is thus given in the American Encyclopædia (article, Fur-Trade), and we fear that the remarks made regarding the effects of the intercourse on the natives are but too true :- The trader starts from Michilimackinac, or St Louis, late in the summer, with a Mackinac boat, laden with goods. He takes with him an interpreter, commonly a half-breed,

and four or five engagées (boatmen or servants.) On his arrival at his wintering-ground, his men build a store for the goods, an apartment for him, and another for themselves. These buildings are of rough logs, plastered with mud, and roofed with ash or linden slabs. The chimneys are of clay; and though these habitations are rude in appearance, there is much comfort in them. This done, the trader gives a great portion of his merchandise to the Indians on credit. These credits are from 20 to 200 dollars in amount, according to the reputation of the applicant as a hunter. It is expected that the debtor will pay in the following spring, though, as many neglect this part of the business, the trader is compelled to rate his goods very high. Thus the honest pay for the dishonest. The skins are dried with care, being occasionally exposed to the sun, and rubbed with salt and alum, to keep the hair attached. This is partly done by the natives, and partly by the purchasers. Ardent spirits were never much used among the remote tribes. It is on the frontier, and in the immediate vicinity of the white settlers, that the Indians get enough to do them physical injury; though, in the interior, the traders, in the heat of opposition, employ strong liquors to induce the savages to commit outrage, or to defraud their creditors. By this means, the moral principle of the aborigines is overcome, and often eradicated. Spirit is commonly introduced into their country in the form of high wines, they being less bulky, and easier of transportation, than liquors of lower proof. Indians, after having once tasted, become extravagantly fond of them, and will make any sacrifice, or commit any crime, to obtain them. An interpreter is necessary to a fur-trader, whether he speaks the language of the tribe with which he deals or not. It is the duty of an interpreter to take charge of the house, and carry on the business in the absence of the principal. He also visits the camps, and watches the debtors. In the prairie regions, dog-sledges are used for the transportation of skins and goods in winter. The sledge is merely a flat board turned up in front like the runner of a sleigh. The

dogs are harnessed and driven tandem, and their strength and powers of endurance are very great.'

The same writer goes on to remark: The fur-trade demoralises all engaged in it. The way in which it operates on the Indians has been already partially explained. As to the traders, they are generally ignorant men, in whose breasts interest overcomes religion and morals. As they are beyond the reach of the law, at least in the remote regions, they disregard it, and often commit or instigate actions which they would blush to avow in civilised society. In consequence of the furtrade, the buffalo has receded hundreds of miles beyond his former haunts. Formerly, an Indian killed a buffalo, made garments of the skin, and fed on the flesh: now, he finds that a blanket is lighter and more convenient than a buffalo robe, and kills two or three animals with whose skins he may purchase it. To procure a gun, he must kill ten. The same causes operate to destroy the other animals. Some few tribes hunt on the different parts of their grounds alternately, and so preserve the game, but by far the greater part of the aborigines have no such regulations.'

Regarding the evils of competition in the fur-trade, Lord Selkirk relates many circumstances strongly corroborative of the observations just quoted. When the North-West Company was threatened with the competition of a new establishment, the murder of a gentleman belonging to the latter was actually traced to the instigation of the European or white servants of the old firm. Competition, however, has now in a great measure ceased, and it is to be hoped that the evils referrible to it have died with it. The American Company and the Hudson's Bay Company have the trade now in a great measure to themselves, and their business lies in quarters so far asunder, that their rivalry can produce no mischief.

The animals which supply the furs used in the civilised world, are certainly becoming every year more scarce. The plan followed by some of the native tribes, of hunting in different grounds every season, is the only one, if it

could be followed, capable of preserving a supply. Private trading would be a great obstacle to this, were there no other.

FRANCIS CHANTREY.

THE father of Chantrey was a small farmer near Sheffield. He died when his son was only twelve years of age. His mother seems to have had little respect for herself or the memory of her husband, for when she was but a few months a widow, she married one of her own farm-servants. This step greatly outraged the feelings of young Chantrey, who would never call his mother by her new name. To get rid of the youth, he was placed as a shopboy with a grocer in Sheffield; but disliking this profession, he was, after a few weeks, removed from behind the grocer's counter, and apprenticed to Robert Ramsay, a carver and gilder, the artistic attractions of whose window had fixed the attention of the lad. Francis began his apprenticeship in 1797, when he was sixteen years old.

Chantrey was now in a sphere which admitted of the cultivation of certain tastes with which he felt himself inspired. Besides being a carver in wood, his master was a dealer in prints and plaster - models, and these Chantrey at once set about imitating. It will here be observed, that in doing so he necessarily encroached on his private time. There was no call on him, in point of duty to his employer, to become either a draughtsman or a sculptor. Like hundreds of apprentice lads, he might just have done the work put before him, and consumed the remainder of his time in sleep and amusement. But Chantrey possessed the desire to improve his abilities, and his self-denial, patience, and industry at this period of his life, led the way to future renown.

'In Ramsay's shop,' to follow a good summary of his

biography in the Times newspaper, 'Chantrey copied the prints, worked at the carvings, cleaned pictures, and tried his 'prentice hand as a modeller upon the face of a fellow-workman. He did more. At a trifling expense, he hired a small room, to which he retired to spend every hour he could call his own in modelling and drawing. "It was often midnight," writes his biographer, Mr Holland, "before he came home; but neither master nor servant ever suspected he had been anywhere but in his obscure studio, drawing, modelling, or poring over anatomical plates." He was still an apprentice when he made the acquaintance of Jonathan Wilson, the medalengraver. In the old High Street of Sheffield was a low gloomy shop, called "Woollen's Circulating Library."

In a back chamber of these premises," Mr Holland informs us, "night by night, towards the close of his apprenticeship, did young Chantrey and his friend Wilson devote themselves to the pencil, their principal exercise being to copy the drapery of a series of French prints of statuary." Subsequently, meeting Mr Raphael Smith, "the distinguished draughtsman in crayon," at his master's house, and growing impatient of wood-carving, Chantrey induced Mr Ramsay to cancel his indentures two years before his term of apprenticeship expired. A friend advanced L.50 to effect his release, and freedom being obtained, Chantrey, then in his twenty-first year, made the best of his way to London. Reaching that scene of his future greatness, he called immediately upon an uncle and aunt, both living in the service of Mrs D'Oyley, in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and that lady, much to her credit, gave the young artist a room over her stable to work in, and requested his uncle to see him daily supplied with a necessary knife and fork.

'At Mrs D'Oyley's, Chantrey was still a man-of-all-work -cleaning the pictures in that lady's house, and occupying himself now with painting and now with sculpture, yet doubtful as to which pursuit he should finally and exclusively devote his powers. A very few months after taking up his residence in Mayfair, we find the active youth