For straight seams the machines are excellent, making as neat a seam as is found in glove work, unless, of course, the pelts are especially heavy, such as bears and sheep rugs.
The French adventurers, bent on finding either a "North-west passage" or some land route to the Pacific (which they believed to be no farther west than the Mississippi), naturally went west by the water routes of Wisconsin; as a fine field for their bartering and trading with water-courses by which they could convey their pelts and skins back to Montreal, the region attracted the coureurs de bois and fur traders; and it seemed promising also to the zealous French Catholic missionaries.
Moreover the export of sheep skins and pelts was valued at £680,000 in the lastmentioned year.
During the 18th century a considerable trade in sheep, wool, wine and pelts developed, chiefly with Chihuahua and with the Indians of the plains.
The manufacture of fur into a felt is of comparatively modern origin, while the use of fur pelts as a covering for the body, for the couch, or for the tent is coeval with the earliest history of all northern tribes and nations.
