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.

It sometimes happens in very cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house, they begin to eat one another.

At last there may be only one rat left out of a whole lodge.