occasionally called. The Company's territory was divided into four
departments--the Western, the Southern, the Northern, and the
Montreal--while each department was again sub-divided into many
districts, the total number being thirty-four. The non-commissioned
employees at the various posts were: clerks, postmasters, and servants.
Besides the regular post servants there were others employed such as:
voyageurs, among whom were the guides, canoe-men, boatmen, and scowmen;
then, again, there were fur-runners, fort-hunters, and packeteers.

In the morning a miserable northeaster was blowing a heavy fall of snow
over the country, and the Factor offered to show me the fur-loft where
the clerk and a few half-breed men-servants were folding and packing
furs. First they were put into a collapsible mould to hold them in the
proper form, then when the desired weight of eighty pounds had been
reached, they were passed into a powerful home-made fur-press, and
after being pressed down into a solid pack, were corded and covered
with burlap, and marked ready for shipment. The room in which the men
worked was a big loft with endless bundles of skins of many sizes and
colours hanging from the rafters, and with long rows of shelves stacked
with folded furs, and with huge piles of pelts and opened bales upon
the floor. Also there were moose and caribou horns lying about, and
bundles of Indian-made snowshoes hanging by wires from the rafters, and
in one corner kegs of dried beaver castors.


THE WINTER MAIL ARRIVES

On the morning of the second day of the storm I happened to be in the
Indian shop, where I had gone to see the Factor and the clerk barter
for the furs of a recently arrived party of Indian fur-hunters, when