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Show itl Ite Last Chapter Iro Tteippi Mil ROMANCE 3T PUR NHS LX-i ' " 1 (113 v5y JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD MS WlCSft COPYRIOHT ev PFARSOr PUB CO (liE'Vfl , f ir,.i,r. for nearly two n i rV t )- v JAY',,-, -.'W jfes vm UK day of romance romance Jifr.&L of the old sort, of pirate In- fented heas of peril ridden jf'.j.'T ImiilH of gold, of strange and M unl.nown count ries filled with BlS-iJf- the lure that has drawn men MJl from the beginning of time J has rapidly passed away. It la J followed now by the romance or Iron and Heel, the romance jf Invention, of progrehif. of a civilization that S fan! eru.'hitiK out the last vestige of the primitive and ai ling each day new chapters to Its own marvelous achievements. It seems like a lilting decree of fate that, the oldest and most romantic of all the industries of man. with the exception of his earliest tilit for food, should b-' tlii last to tile. There Is omethliiK of pathos in it. tpei ially vhen It Is pointed out to one as U wt pointed out to mc by Lord StiatliVoua and Mount Uoyal, head of tin' great 1 1 utlsoti's Itay Company, who said, "The last chapter In the romance Of fur is heiliK wiitten. It has been a glorious glor-ious story a glorious story." For three thousand years the ielts of wild beasts have played their part In the lives of men. For the last ten centuries fur has played an important part in history. It has Held out the lure of romance -of adventure and gold. It has caused wars, and has led to the discovery of new lands. Fur hunters have done more exploring than any other ono class of men. It was the beaver that lured , men from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, jjS and thence to the Rockies, opening up a con- f tlnent. It was the sable that drew the tribes- men of Asiatic Russia across to far Kam- l tiuitka, and the sea otter thnt led the Span- Ihh and the Knglish all around the world In cra.y craft, and gave us our first knowiedge of the I'uclllc const from Alaska to California. When, away back In 1670, a wandering and adventurous Frenchman by the name of Grose-ller Grose-ller fired Prince Huert's Imagination with glowing tales of s land filled with priceless furs, and a little company was formed with a rapital of $r,0.("i0. he did not dream that his wild project meant the opening up of a country coun-try almost as large as the whole of Europe and tho beginning of an adventure which was to run through centuries. It was this little company of "gentleman adventurers" who formed what Is today the Hudson's IJny company, com-pany, the greatest landed corporation on earth something which will remain f-ir all time In history as a cenotaph to the tremendous tremen-dous part which the furred things of forest and mountain and sea have played In the fortunes of men. Last year the raw fur Industry of the world amounted to forty million dollars. Next year It will be fifty million, and tho year after that the figures will be larger stll. Five years ago It was less than twenty millions. Yet In iplte of these "figures In the face of the fact that the fuf treasure of the world Is increasing increas-ing in Vblue each year, and will continue to Increas for perhaps another decade, the furred things of the earth are fast becoming xtlnct. k year ago a big London fur buyer, whos business amounts to over a mtllon dollars annually, said to me, "Within another five years only a very few people of moderate means will be buying furs. Only the wealthy j will be able to afford those furs which are cheapest today, and even the muskrat. whose pelt sold for five and six cents a few years igo, will be prized as a luxury." Ten months did much to verify this fur Sealer's Ktstements. Within that time raw pelts advanced from twenty to one hundred per cent. A Montreal dealer who purchased gO.000 muskrat skins at twenty cents per skin a year before sold them In I-ondon for seventy. seven-ty. A month later they had gone to eighty. Two months later they were bringing a dollar. dol-lar. In a single season the value of the world's snnual production of fur leaped from 125.000,000 to over $10,000,000. I bad Just pome down from my last trip to the Darren Lands, where I had spent eight weeks among the fsr northern fox hunters, when word was passed from post to post and from trapper to trarper throughout hundreds of thousands of square miles of Csnadlan wilderness that a fur famine had struck London and Paris, the fur centers of the world, ard that from Winnipeg. Winni-peg. Ottawa, Toronto snd Montreal both the "Independents" and the scuta of the big ropirn!es were making fabulous offers for pelts. It will be Interesting to note the conditions that this famine will bring shout d iring the next two or thre years. Millions of women are as yet unaware of what the great fur dealer I hsve quoted sbove describes as "the mine that is shout to explode under their feet." It cannot be said however, that they hsve not had some warning The woman who bought a mink mufT for twenty dollars five years ago pays sixty for the same grade of r-HIe today; she will pay from seventy to !(hty for It thin coming season a fcundapd r nrrs tto year from now. Th.. ' -ri"s are not mad at rmdom, hA ,,r , .., h !niu-t peronl ir -sttfa- IWimitlll!. ix mil V . v .. . w - and a half centuries. Last year, uctt.iiling to Canadian evpori llnures, this tteasiitv amount-ed amount-ed to 2.71922. but no credit was given for the enormous home consumption of raw pelts. The actual catch was worth at least ..."". lion 'I he coming season will see $7.ono.l.oii worth of furs taught In Canada, in spite of the fact that the initial number of skins IU be ut leiiBt a quarter less than a year ago. when the lives or between thirty and forty million wild things were taken that Milady of civilization might have her furs. As ic-.liMv as eight years ago. when the w i Iter lirl began his Journeys Into the north-land, north-land, one struck the gioat fur country us soon as he crossed Lake Su.cn..r. From there it ranged to the Arctic sta. Less thai, u decade has brought about tremendous change, ainl now one travels u hundred miles farther north before he enters tho "last gieat trapping ground" Fiom this great trapping ground comes seventy per cent, of the better class of furs worn by tho American woman and tier Ciu.uilian sister. la a vaH desolation one third as large as the whole of IMrope there Is no railroad, no white man's village, and its population Is less than that of the Sahara Desert. In its center cen-ter is Hudson's Pay. the great "!' o box" of the north nine times as large as the state of Ohio. Over this vast territory at dlsta of from ono to three hundred mlh s apart, nre scattered the Hudson's Pay Company's posts and those of Its French competitors, the Re-velllon Re-velllon llrothers, In most Instances a post consists of nothing more than a company "store," the factor's house, and two or threo log cabin. Except d'trlng the months of the trapping season these are practically the only points of human life In a country that runs two thousand miles east and west and rrom two to eight hundred north and south With the first breath of winter tho fur gatherers gath-erers begin to bury themselves In the vast desolation about them, traveling one and sometimes two hundred miles away from the post to their old trapping grounds From the moment he leaves his door to go over his line, three days' supply of food and a thick blanket In his pack sack, a knife, a belt ax find a rifle ns weapons, every hour Is filled with excitement for the hunter of fur. On his snow-shoes he speeds swiftly from trap to trap, every mile of snowy forests and swamps revealing the mysteries of the wild things to him as plainly as a picture-book. In one trap be finds a great white owl, and cuts off the beautiful wings for tho wife and children back In the cabin. In the next there Is a huge enow shoe rabbit, frozen stiff as It had died. And then, from through the thick and gloomy balsam ahead, he hears the faint clinking of a chain. His blood leaps now, for this royal sport of the wilderness never grows old to the fur hunter. The chain clinks loud- er,. and he draws in quick, excited breaths as I he lifts the hammer, of his rifle and stares ahead. He comes suddenly upon the next I house, and there Is a snarling, leaping, thing i In the air before him, a great sllvergray ( furred thing, lithe and beautiful as It crouches st bay a lynx. And a magnificent setimen. , Its six Inch fur. as fine as a woman's Imlr. i crumpled and lying richly Uion the blood-t blood-t stained enow as It waits for the man to come . within springing distance. Put tho hunter knows Iietter He alms carefully for a'siot where he run sew up the bullet I.oIp, and fires I Only a short time from now some gently nurtured nur-tured beauty of civilization will prom the warmth and rgal loveliness of that thing to her face, arid - Is It possible that a vision of i this wilderness tragedy will come to her then? No more than the dark fated hunter sees a i vision of that woman's loveliness as he skin his catch and hurries on To each Is given but i part of the picture. The forest man knows only that he has caught a "Numtx-r One. Extra" lynx, and that the Company wil pay I lm fifteen dollars for i It His mental visions go no farther than I that. He makes no effort to follow It In the I grest ship that will carry It to Paris or lin-! lin-! don, where It will be sold at great profit; nor to the furrier's ahop, nor to the dainty girl or the society matron In New York who . will psy lir.O for that same fifteen-dollar lynx In an "lmorted" muff He gws on, keyed to higher excitement, until the end of the day comes, snd In the first gray gloom of esrlv i night he stops at on of th three or four small log h-iir hfh he has built for him-I him-I self along the trap line, rets his supper, lights ; bis pipe, and reviews the happenings of the i day until slumber rloses his eyes i It will take him thre dsys to cover a forty- mile trap-line, and when he returns to his cabin at tie close of the third he Is welcomed by the glad cries of his children and the i laugh'er and Joy of bis wife, who has a ten-i ten-i der roat porcupine or a venison stew waiting t for him. For two days after that he rest. I smokes bis pipe, and tells of his adventures. while bis wife scrapes th fat from his pel's and stretches them on sticks Tien, once more, be shoulders his pack, and goes stain upon bis round of excitement, advrntu-e and i profit Hon of the fur situation as It exists today, and after a long acquaintance with the great fur companies, buyers, and trappers. Put a few facts are necessary to show at what ruthless ruth-less pace the slaughter of fur animals has gone on during the past decade. It was not long ago that 1S0.000 skins of the sea otter were taken from the Aleutian Islands each year. Today there are less than 400 skins fa-ken fa-ken annually. Ten years ago sea otter was a popular fur; today It Is worn only by the royal blood of Europe. Twenty years ago It was estimated that seal herds of the Pry-blloffs Pry-blloffs numbered over five millions. Today. In spite of' International treaties for their protection, there are not more than 1S0.OO0 seals on the Island! About 10.0n0 skins were taken last year, and so relentless was the slaughter on account of the princely sums offered for the fur that 10.000 baby seals died during the season, chiefly of starvation because be-cause of the death of their mothers. The glosty little wood marten Is dying out Four years ago I met two Canadian trappers who were coming down from the upper New Ontario game regions with 300 marten, worth then from four to five dollars a skin. Today they are worth twenty-five dolars, and a half a dosen are a big "catch" for any one man In a single season. Five years ago 1.760,000 foxes were killed to supply the world's market. mar-ket. Thre years ago the number had fallen to 1.200.000. Ijist year less thsn a million were caught. From two dollars a skin the red fox Jumped to twelve; the "cross" fox from twenty five to as high as a hundred, silver sil-ver and black fox to prices that made their skins ten times the value of their weight In gold! The silver and black are now so rare that tl.ev are "bid" for only by dukes and ri..r hs. the rulers snd the heirs of klnn-don klnn-don s and empires. Seldom does one sell In the Ixmdon or Paris markets for less than from 1700 to $1,000. A year ago one pelt sold for $10"0. In this asm, way are going the black sable and th little white ermine whose pelt has been worn In tie robes of roynrfty for more than seven centcrles It was not long ago that 100.000 skins f the black sable found ttelr way into the market each year. Last year this number bad dwindled to fifteen thousand! The "sign of the chaug" are now at hand in another way. and as a consequence never in history will the women of y world be "up against" a greater asoitpient of substi tutes In the fur Hue than during the coming seasons. The world's prosperity and Its rapid Increase In-crease In population are, of course, the chief causes of th extinction of fur. As recently as ten yesrs ago th people of the I'nlted States were not counted among the great buyers of fur. Now the majority of women among ninety million people are purchasers of fur of one kind or another. Five years ago I-ondon was the world's greatest fur center, cen-ter, with Paris a close second. Today, so enormous has the demand for fur become In this country as well as across the sea. that there are over 3,ooo establishnu nts for the treatment of fine furs and the nrvklug of fur garments In New York City alone. London and Paris have now taken second and third places In the actual making of fur garments, though Ixmdon handles more raw fur than the other two combined, l-ast year the value of New York's "finished" output was nearly $20. 000,000, and fully sixty per cent, of this was represented by the furs which a few years ago were considered almost wortn-less. wortn-less. "Three years will clean out tie cheaper clafs of fur," said a Montreal buyer to me, "and then the real famine will be at hand " This raising of the old romance of fur Is marked not only by the pathos of the furred things themselves, but by that of the wild and picturesque life of those thousands of wilderness people whose centuries-old vocation voca-tion must go with the things which gsve It birth. There Is some comfort for the lover of the wild and what It holds In the thought that at bast In s great part of the far Cana dian wilderness the picturesque fur hunter will never. lik the courier du bols. quite die out In a country one-third as large as the whole of En rot railroads and civilization will never go This vsst wilderness region, long described as a "waste," stretches from the coast of Labrador, through I'ngava. skirts Hudson's Hay ana swings north and west to Mackenzie land and the polar seas. It Is a land where for six months out of the year man's life Is a bitter fight against deep snows and fierce billiards against hardships of all kinds, starvation, and a cold that reaches sixty degrees below sero and which Is so "dry" that one may freex almost to the point of death without being aware of especial espe-cial discomfort or pain. It Is. as Lord Strath-cons Strath-cons says, "the last great trapping ground." Out of this trapplrg ground there has corns |