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In 1826 twenty-five licenses were granted; in 1827, eleven; in 1830, thirteen; and in 1831, fourteen. The amount of this trade was very large, as is indicated by the case of Mr. Faribault who traded on the Cannon River. One year he marketed 50 buffalo-robes, 39,080 muskrats, 2050 pounds of deer skins, 125 pounds of beaver, 130 martin, 1100 mink, 663 raccoons, 331 otter, 25 lynx, and 5 foxes.

If a child can be put to sleep by singing to it, why cannot insensibility to pain or a cure be caused by the same process? He is told that the wafer becomes the body of Christ; this may confirm his belief that the Indian god Manobozho turned bits of his own flesh or his wife's into raccoons, for food.

Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow black-birds make amid the black cherry-trees as we pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after black cherries, and we see their marks at various points.

Up to this time, through the hungry weeks of late winter and the first thaws, the raccoons in the old sycamore had resisted the temptation of the farmer's hen-roosts. They knew that the wilderness hunting, though the most difficult, was safe, while any serious depredations at the farm would be sure to bring retaliation from that most crafty and dangerous creature, man.

The raccoons were promptly hunted out; and one of the young ones, before they could gain the shadowy refuge of the trees, was killed with sticks, the setter contributing much noise, but keeping at a very safe distance.

Then the Van Kortlandts, who lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with the long bow. Then the Van Bunschotens, of Nyack and Kakiat, who were the first that did ever kick with the left foot. They were gallant bushwhackers and hunters of raccoons by moonlight.

As these new clearings lie between the woods and the old cultivated land, the squirrels and raccoons first come at the crops on them, and thus those on the planter's land are saved from much waste. When the negro has had the land for the specified time, and it has become fit for the plough, the master takes it, and he is removed to another new piece.

It was barricaded with fallen tree-trunks and moss-covered rocks that had never felt the foot of man since that foot had worn a moccasin. Around the preserve was a high fence stout enough to keep poachers on the outside and to persuade the wild animals that inhabited it to linger on the inside. These wild animals were squirrels, rabbits, and raccoons.

The walls were festooned with all sorts of birds' eggs, carefully blown out and strung on a thread. The chimney piece was covered with stuffed squirrels, raccoons and opossums; and the shelves around were likewise crowded with specimens, among which were fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards, and other reptiles.

I fancied the pleasures of a sea life more than those of a hunter, but I was not yet altogether tired of the backwoods. I had still a hankering to trap a few more beavers, and to shoot some more raccoons and deer.