More than just pelts of value
Northern Ocean” he wrote: “I cannot refrain from smiling when I read the accounts of different authors who have written on the economy of those animals, as there seems to be a contest between them, who shall most exceed in fiction … Little remains to be added beside a vocabulary of their language, a code of their laws, and a sketch of their religion.”
Hearne also addressed the claim that the beaver’s tail was actually a natural trowel used in the construction of their apartments or for plastering the inner walls. “It would be as impossible for a beaver to use its tail as a trowel,” he wrote, “… as it would have been for Sir James Thornhill to have painted the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral without the assistance of scaffolding.”
Nevertheless, Hearne was fond of beavers, and when he was a senior officer at one of the Company’s forts in the 1780s, he kept beavers as pets and reported that “they were remarkably fond of rice and plum pudding.”
It wasn’t just the beaver’s pelt that was considered valuable. A seemingly miraculous substance known as castoreum, a yellowish exudate secreted by the teardrop-shaped castor glands, or “beaver stones,” located between the pelvis and tail of mature male and female beavers. It was used both as scent to mark territory and to keep their fur greasy and waterproof, and beavers were so attracted to the smell that it was often used as bait in traps.
Once removed from the beaver, the castoreum was preserved by smoking it over a fire. Today it is occasionally used in perfume or as an exotic and expensive form of artificial vanilla or strawberry flavouring. In more credulous eras it had other, reputedly beneficial properties.
Since ancient times in the Mediterranean, castoreum was variously deployed by physicians as a cure for epilepsy, to induce abortions and to assuage the ravages of tuberculosis. It also had other properties that were suitable to a difficultto-obtain and expensive medicinal ingredient: it could cure dementia, toothaches and gout as well as relieve headaches and fevers. (Castoreum does contain salicylic acid, the main ingredient in Aspirin, so this last was probably an accurate claim.)
According to the writings of the 17th-century French physician Johannes Francus, castoreum was also beneficial for improving eyesight, getting rid of fleas, preventing hiccups, promoting sleep and preventing sleep, and of clearing the brain. He also reported that “in order to acquire a prodigious memory and never to forget what one had once read, it was only necessary to wear a hat of the beaver’s skin, to rub the head and spine every month with that animal’s oil, and to take twice a year the weight of a gold crown-piece of castoreum.”
Equally grounded in amusing ancient lore was the beaver’s apparent antics when hunted. According to a bestiary from the 12th century, “There is an animal called Castor the Beaver, none more gentle, and his testicles make a capital medicine. For this reason, so Physiologus says, when he (the beaver) notices that he is being pursued by the hunter, he removes his own testicles with a bite, and casts them before the sports-man, and thus escapes by flight.
“What is more, if he should again happen to be chased by a second hunter, he lifts himself up and shows his members to him. And the latter, when he perceives the testicles to be missing, leaves the beaver alone.” Hence the reason the beaver is called Castor — because it is castrated.
Of course, the beaver wasn’t castrated, even in this fanciful tale, since the castor glands are not testicles but scent glands. Nevertheless, many hundreds of thousands of glands were shipped to Europe by the Company along with the pelts.
That such a gentle and innocuous creature should inspire such artistic liberty seems unusual, but the money to be had from processing their pelts and castoreum was also unusual. Whether there was any empirical evidence justifying the value of castoreum is open to question. But when has fashion had anything to do with science or proof? Or even common sense? The hunt for beavers was beginning the economic transformation of a continent. Excerpted from “The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Company” by Stephen R. Bown.. Copyright © 2020 by Stephen R. Bown.. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.