The term fur is sometimes distinctively applied to hairy animal skins when prepared for being made into articles of dress, etc, while the name of peltry is given to them in an unprepared state or when merely dried. The animals chiefly sought after for the sake of their furs were the beaver, raccoon, musk-rat, squirrel, hare, rabbit, the chinchilla, bear (black, grey, and brown), otter, sea-otter, seal, wolf, wolverine or glutton, marten, ermine, lynx, coypou (nutria), polecat (fitch), opossum, fox, etc. All the preparation that skins require before being sent to the market is to make them perfectly dry, so as to prevent them from putrefying. This is done by exposing them to the heat of the sun or a fire. The small skins are sometimes previously steeped in a solution of alum. When stored in large quantities they must be carefully preserved from dampness, as well as from moths. The fur-dresser, on receiving the skins, first subjects them to a softening process. He next cleans them from loose pieces of the integument by scraping them with a metalblade. Finally, the fur is cleaned and combed, after which it is handed over to the cutter, who cuts the furs out into the various shapes required to make different articles.
In Europe the furtrade was fed chiefly by Russia, which yielded great quantities of furs, especially in the Asiatic portion of her dominions. Austria, Turkey, Scandinavia, etc, also yielded a certain quantity.
The furtrade of America has long been highly important, and several great trading companies were engaged in it, of which the Dutch East India Company was first. The French early took up the furtrade in Canada, and their chain of forts and trading posts at one time extended from Hudson's Bay to New Orleans. Quebec and Montreal were at first trading posts. In 1670 Charles II granted to Prince Rupert and others a charter empowering them to trade exclusively with the aborigines of the Hudson's Bay region. A company, then and after called the Hudson's Bay Company, was formed, which for a period of nearly two centuries possessed a monopoly of the furtrade in the vast tract of country known as the Hudson's Bay Territory. In the winter of 1783-1784 another company was formed at Montreal, called, the North-west fur Company, which disputed the right of the Hudson's Bay Company, and actively opposed it. After a long and bitter rivalry the two companies united in 1821, retaining the name of Hudson's Bay Company. The monopoly which had hitherto been enjoyed by the original company about Hudson's Bay was much extended; but in 1868 an act of parliament was passed to make provision for the surrender, upon certain terms, of all the territories belonging to the company, and for their incorporation with the Dominion of Canada. In 1869 the surrender was carried out, Canada paying 300,000 pounds to the company by way of compensation. The company still possessed large stretches of valuable land, and many houses, forts, and posts in the region formerly belonging to it. Its operations even extended beyond British America into the United States and to the Sandwich Islands and Alaska. It employed a large staff of agents, traders, Indian hunters, etc. Some of its posts were situated far north, almost approaching the Arctic Ocean.
In the United States, the fur-trade, especially that trade in beaverfur, was an important element in the economic life of all the colonies in the seventeenth century, and in the struggle between England and France for the possession of North America, also in all negotiations respecting the northwest boundary of the United States. In 1809 John Jacob Astor secured the incorporation of the American Fur Company. He founded Astoria in Oregon, and attempted to connect it with Mackinaw by a line of posts and consolidate the whole north-western fur-trade. After the War of 1812 he renewed his attempt. In 1816 the American Congress passed an act excluding foreign fur-traders. Research Fur-Trade
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet. He was born in 1759 at Alloway and died in 1796. His father was a poor gardener and Robert Burns and his brothers had to work non-stop around the house and the market garden his father kept. He was instructed in the ordinary branches of an English education by a teacher engaged by his father and a few neighbours; to these he afterwards added French and a little mathematics. But most of his education was got from the general reading of books, to which he gave himself with passion. In this manner he learned what the best English poets might teach him, and cultivated the instincts for poetry which had been implanted in his nature. At an early age he had to assist in the labours of the farm, and when only fifteen years old he had almost to do the work of a man.
In 1781 he went to learn the business of flax-dresser at Irvine. but the premises were destroyed by fire, and he was thus led to give up the scheme. His father dying in 1784, he took a small farm (Mossgiel) in conjunction with his younger brother Gilbert. He now began to produce poetical pieces which attracted the notice of his neighbours and gained him considerable reputation. His first lines had been written sometime previously, having been inspired by love, a passion to which he was peculiarly susceptible. While at Mossgiel he formed a connection with Jean Armour, a Mauchline girl, which resulted in her becoming pregnant. Robert Burns was willing to marry her, but her father, a respectable master mason, would not permit it, deeming Robert Burns, on account of his poor circumstances, and perhaps for other reasons, no suitable match. This affair rendered the poet's position so uncomfortable, and so wounded his pride, that he determined to emigrate to Jamaica, and engaged himself as assistant over-Beer on a plantation there.
To obtain the funds necessary for the voyage he was induced to publish, by subscription, a volume of his poetical effusions. It was printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, and Robert Burns, having thus obtained the assistance he expected, was about to set sail from his native land, when he was drawn to Edinburgh by a letter from Dr. Blacklock to an Ayrshire friend of his and the poet, recommending that he should take advantage of the general admiration his poems had excited, and publish a new edition of them.
This advice was eagerly adopted, and the result exceeded his most sanguine expectations. After remaining more than a year in the Scottish metropolis, admired, flattered, and caressed by persons of eminence for their rank, fortune, or talents, he retired to the country with the sum of some 500 pounds, which he had realized by the second publication of his poems. A part of this sum he advanced to his brother, and with the remainder took a considerable farm (Ellisland) near Dumfries, to which he subsequently added the office of exciseman.
He now married, his lover Jean Armour. But the farming at Ellisland was not a success, and in about three years Robert Burns removed to Dumfries and relied on his employment as an exciseman alone. He continued to exercise his pen, particularly in the composition of a number of beautiful songs adapted to old Scottish tunes. But his residence in Dumfries, and the society of the idle and the dissipated who gathered round him there, attracted by the brilliant wit that gave its charm to their convivialities, had an evil effect on Robert Burns, whom disappointment and misfortunes were now making somewhat reckless.
In the winter of 1795 his constitution, broken by cares, irregularities, and passions, fell into premature decline; and in July, 1796, a rheumatic fever terminated his life and sufferings at the early age of thirty-seven. He left a wife and four children, for whose support his friends and admirers raised a subscription, and with the same object an edition of his works, in four volumes was published in 1800 by Dr. Currie of Liverpool. His character, though marred by imprudence, was never contaminated by duplicity or meanness. He was an honest, proud, warm-hearted man, combining sound understanding with high passions and a vigorous and excursive imagination. He was alive to every species of emotion; and he is one of the few poets who have at once excelled in humour, in tenderness, and in sublimity. Research Robert Burns
My Gal Sal is a musical biopic starring Victor Mature and Rita Hayworth. It is a fictionalised story of the life of popular songwriter Paul Dresser. My Gal Sal was directed by Irving Cummings. Research My Gal Sal
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Research Fur-Trade
