Of the character and trade of these forts we get an intelligent idea from a graphic sketch of the Hudson Bay Company, in an English periodical published in 1870 ("The Story of a Dead Monopoly:" Cornhill Magazine, August.) The writer is an old employee of the company:
"A typical fort of the Hudson Bay Company was not a very lively sort of affair at best. Though sometimes built on a commanding situation at the head of some beautiful river, and backed by wave after wave of dark pine forest, it was not unpicturesque in appearance. Fancy a parallelogram, enclosed by a picket twenty-five or thirty feet in height, composed of upright trunks of trees, placed in a trench, and fastened along the top by a rail, and you have the enclosure. At each corner was a strong bastion, built of squared logs, and pierced for guns that could sweep every side of the fort. Inside this picket was a gallery running right around the enclosure, just high enough for a man's head to be level with the top of the fence. At intervals, all along the side of the picket, were loopholes for musketry, and over the gateway was another bastion, from which shot could be poured on any party attempting to carry the gate. Altogether, though incapable of withstanding a ten-pounder for two hours, it was strong enough to resist almost any attack the Indians could bring against it. Inside this enclosure were the storehouses, the residences of the employees, wells, and sometimes a good garden. All night long a voyageur would, watch by watch, pace around this gallery, crying out at intervals, with quid of tobacco in his check, the hours and the state of the weather. This was a precaution in case of fire, and the hourcalling was to prevent him falling asleep for any length of time. Some of the less important and more distant outposts were only rough little log-cabins in the snow, without picket or other enclosure, where a 'postmaster' resided to superintend the affairs of the company.
"The mode of trading was peculiar. It was a system of barter, a 'made' or 'typical' beaver-skin being the standard of trade. This was, in fact, the currency of the country. Thus an Indian arriving at one of the company's establishments with a bundle of furs which he intends to sell, proceeds, in the first instance, to the trading-room: there the trader separates the furs into lots, and, after adding up the amount, delivers to the Indian little pieces of wood, indicating the number of 'made-beavers' to which his 'hunt' amounts. He is next taken to the storeroom, where he finds himself surrounded by bales of blankets, slop-coats, guns, scalping-knives, tomahawks (all made in Birmingham), powder-horns, flints, axes, etc. Each article has a recognized value in 'made beavers'; a slop-coat, for example, may be worth five 'made beavers,' for which the Indian delivers up twelve of his pieces of wood; for a gun he gives twenty; for a knife two; and so on, until his stock of wooden cash is expended. After finishing he is presented with a trifle besides the payment for his furs, and makes room for someone else."
Of these trading-establishments of the Hudson Bay Company the writer adds: "There were in 1860 more than 150, in charge of twenty-five chief factors and twenty-eight chief traders, with 150 clerks and 1200 other servants. The trading-districts of the company were thirty-eight, divided into five departments, and extending over a country nearly as large as Europe, though thinly peopled by about 160,000 natives, Esquimaux, Indians, and half-breeds."
“...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
– Hebrews 12:2