But the fur traffic, whatever it might have been formerly, was now not the
main, if any part of the object he had in view. The times had changed,
closing many of the old avenues of trade, but opening new ones to tempt the
ever restless spirit of gain. And, although the fur trade was still
profitable, there was yet another springing up, which, for those who, like
him, had no scruples about engaging in it, promised to become far more so.
The restrictions which it had been the policy of our government to throw
around commerce, in the incipient stages of our last national quarrel with
Great Britain, had caused an unprecedented rise in the prices of silks and
other fine fabrics of foreign import. This had put whatever there was of
the two alleged leading traits of Yankee character, acquisitiveness and
ingenuity, on the _qui vive_ to obtain those goods at the former prices,
for the purpose of home speculation. And Canada, being separated by a land
boundary only from the States, presented to the greedy eyes of hundreds of
village mammonists, who, like Elwood, were plodding along at the slow jog
of twenty per cent profits, opportunities of so purchasing as to quadruple
their gains; which were quite too severe a test for their slender stock of
patriotism to withstand. It was but a natural consequence, therefore, that
all of them whose love of gain was not overcome by their fear of loss by
detection and the forfeiture of their goods, should soon be found, in spite
of all the vigilance and activity of the host of custom-house officers by
whom the government had manned the Canadian lines, secretly engaged in that
contraband traffic.

The history of smuggling as carried on between the Northern States and
Canada, from the enactment of the embargo at the close of 1807, and
especially from the enactment of the more stringent non-intercourse law of
1810, to the declaration of war in 1812, and even, to a greater or less
extent, to the proclamation of peace in 1815, is a portion of our annals
that yet remains almost wholly unwritten. Although the contraband trade in