These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
great white mountain goat-antelopes (_Oreamnus montanus_) from
northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
weasels, polar hares (_Lepus timidus_), beavers, musquash, lemming,
gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
in southern Canada.
The musquash (_Fiber zibethicus_) is such a characteristic animal of
northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
it (I would mention it is really a huge _vole_, and no relation of the
beaver):--
"The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
consists of the roots of grass or arums.
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