On Canada's Frontier Part 4

Finally we started for moose. Our Indians asked if they might take their guns. We gave the permission. Alexandre, a thin, wiry man of forty years, carried an old Henry rifle in a woollen case open at one end like a stocking. He wore a short blanket coat and tuque, and trousers tied tight below the knee, and let into his moccasin-tops. He and his brother Francois are famous Hudson Bay Company trappers, and are two-thirds Algonquin and one-third French. He has a typical swarthy, angular Indian face and a French mustache and goatee. Naturally, if not by rank, a leader among his men, his manner is commanding and his appearance grave.

He talks bad French fluently, and makes wretched headway in English.

Pierre is a short, thickset, walnut-stained man of thirty-five, almost pure Indian, and almost a perfect specimen of physical development. He seldom spoke while on this trip, but he impressed us with his strength, endurance, quickness, and knowledge of woodcraft. Poor fellow! he had only a shot-gun, which he loaded with buckshot. It had no case, and both men carried their pieces grasped by the barrels and shouldered with the b.u.t.ts behind them.

We set out in Indian-file, plunging at once into the bush. Never was forest scenery more exquisitely beautiful than on that morning as the day broke, for we breakfasted at four o'clock, and started immediately afterwards. Everywhere the view was fairy-like. There was not snow enough for snow-shoeing. But the fresh fall of snow was immaculately white, and flecked the scene apparently from earth to sky, for there was not a branch or twig or limb or spray of evergreen, or wart or fungous growth upon any tree that did not bear its separate burden of snow. It was a bridal dress, not a winding-sheet, that Dame Nature was trying on that morning. And in the bright fresh green of the firs and pines we saw her complexion peeping out above her spotless gown, as one sees the rosy cheeks or black eyes of a girl wrapped in ermine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MOOSE BULL FIGHT]

Mile after mile we walked, up mountain and down dale, slapped in the faces by twigs, knocking snow down the backs of our necks, slipping knee-deep in bog mud, tumbling over loose stones, climbing across interlaced logs, dropping to the height of one thigh between tree trunks, sliding, falling, tight-rope walking on branches over thin ice, but forever following the cat-like tread of Alexandre, with his seven-league stride and long-winded persistence. Suddenly we came to a queer sort of clearing dotted with protuberances like the bubbles on mola.s.ses beginning to boil. It was a beaver meadow. The b.u.mps in the snow covered stumps of trees the beavers had gnawed down. The Indians were looking at some trough like tracks in the snow, like the trail of a tired man who had dragged his heels. "Moose; going this way," said Alexandre; and we turned and walked in the tracks. Across the meadow and across a lake and up another mountain they led us. Then we came upon fresher prints. At each new track the Indians stooped, and making a scoop of one hand, brushed the new-fallen snow lightly out of the indentations. Thus they read the time at which the print was made. "Las'

week," "Day 'fore yesterday," they whispered. Presently they bent over again, the light snow flew, and one whispered, "This morning."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE MOOSE TRAIL]

Stealthily Alexandre swept ahead; very carefully we followed. We dared not break a twig, or speak, or slip, or stumble. As it was, the breaking of the crust was still far too audible. We followed a little stream, and approached a thick growth of tamarack. We had no means of knowing that a herd of moose was lying in that thicket, resting after feeding. We knew it afterwards. Alexandre motioned to us to get our guns ready. We each threw a cartridge from the cylinder into the barrel, making a "click, click" that was abominably loud. Alexandre forged ahead. In five minutes we heard him call aloud: "Moose gone. We los' him." We hastened to his side. He pointed at some tracks in which the prints were closer together than any we had seen.

"See! he trot," Alexandre explained.

In another five minutes we had all but completed a circle, and were on the other side of the tamarack thicket. And there were the prints of the bodies of the great beasts. We could see even the imprint of the hair of their coats. All around were broken twigs and balsam needles. The moose had left the branches ragged, and on every hand the young bark was chewed or rubbed raw. Loading our rifles had lost us a herd of moose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN SIGHT OF THE GAME--"NOW SHOOT!"]

Back once again at the beaver dam, Alexandre and Pierre studied the moose-tramped snow and talked earnestly. They agreed that a desperate battle had been fought there between two bull moose a week before, and that those bulls were not in the "yard" where we had blundered. They examined the tracks over an acre or more, and then strode off at an obtuse angle from our former trail. Pierre, apparently not quite satisfied, kept dropping behind or disappearing in the bush at one side of us. So magnificent was his skill at his work that I missed him at times, and at other times found him putting his feet down where mine were lifted up without ever hearing a sound of his step or of his contact with the undergrowth. Alexandre presently motioned us with a warning gesture. He slowed his pace to short steps, with long pauses between. He saw everything that moved, heard every sound; only a deer could throw more and keener faculties into play than this born hunter.

He heard a twig snap. We heard nothing. Pierre was away on a side search. Alexandre motioned us to be ready. We crept close together, and I scarcely breathed. We moved cautiously, a step at a time, like chessmen. It was impossible to get an un.o.bstructed view a hundred feet ahead, so thick was the soft-wood growth. It seemed out of the question to try to shoot that distance. We were descending a hill-side into marshy ground. We crossed a corner of a grove of young alders, and saw before us a gentle slope thickly grown with evergreen--tamarack, the artist called it. Suddenly Alexandre bent forward and raised his gun.

Two steps forward gave us his view. Five moose were fifty yards away, alarmed and ready to run. A big bull in the front of the group had already thrown back his antlers. By impulse rather than through reason I took aim at a second bull. He was half a height lower down the slope, and to be seen through a web of thin foliage. Alexandre and the artist fired as with a single pull at one trigger. The foremost bull staggered and fell forward, as if his knees had been broken. He was. .h.i.t twice--in the heart and in the neck. The second bull and two cows and a calf plunged into the bush and disappeared. Pierre found that bull a mile away, shot through the lungs.

It had taken us a week to kill our moose in a country where they were common game. That was "hunter's luck" with a vengeance. But at another season such a delay could scarcely occur. The time to visit that district is in the autumn, before snow falls. Then in a week one ought to be able to bag a moose, and move into the region where caribou are plenty.

Mr. Remington, in the picture called "Hunting the Caribou," depicts a scene at a critical moment in the experience of any man who has journeyed on westward of where we found our moose, to hunt the caribou.

There is a precise moment for shooting in the chase of all animals of the deer kind, and when that moment has been allowed to pa.s.s, the chance of securing the animal diminishes with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity--with more than the rapidity with which the then startled animal is making his flight, because to his flight you must add the increasing ambush of the forest. What is true of caribou in this respect is true of moose and red deer, elk and musk-ox in America, and of all the horned animals of the forests of the other great hemisphere. Every hunter who sees Mr.

Remington's realistic picture knows at a glance that the two men have stolen noiselessly to within easy rifle-shot of a caribou, and that suddenly, at the last moment, the animal has heard them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUCCESS]

Perhaps he has seen them, and is standing--still as a Barye bronze--with his great, soft, wondering eyes riveted upon theirs. That is a situation familiar to every hunter. His prey has been browsing in fancied security, and yet with that nervous prudence that causes these timid beasts to keep forever raising their heads, and sweeping the view around them with their exquisite sight, and a.n.a.lyzing the atmosphere with their magical sense of smell. In one of these cautious pauses the caribou has seen the hunters. Both hunters and hunted seem instantly to turn to stone. Neither moves a muscle or a hair. If the knee or the foot of one of the men presses too hard upon a twig and it snaps, the caribou is as certain to throw his head high up and dart into the ingulfing net-work of the forest trunks and brush as day is certain to follow night. But when no movement has been made and no mishap has alarmed the beast, it has often happened that the two or more parties to this strangely thrilling situation have held their places for minutes at a stretch--minutes that seemed like quarters of an hour. In such cases the deer or caribou has been known to lower his head and feed again, a.s.sured in its mind that the suspected hunter is inanimate and harmless. Nine times in ten, though, the first to move is the beast, which tosses up its head, and "Shoot! shoot!" is the instant command, for the upward throwing of the head is a movement made to put the beast's great antlers into position for flight through the forest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNTING THE CARIBOU--"SHOOT! SHOOT!"]

The caribou has very wide, heavy horns, and they are almost always circular--that is, the main part or trunk of each horn curves outward from the skull and then inward towards the point, in an almost true semicircle. They are more or less branched, but both the general shape of the whole horns and of the branches is such that when the head is thrown up and back they aid the animal's flight by presenting what may be called the point of a wedge towards the saplings and limbs and small forest growths through which the beast runs, parting and spreading every pair of obstacles to either side, and bending every single one out of the way of his flying body. The caribou of North America is the reindeer of Greenland; the differences between the two are very slight. The animal's home is the arctic circle, but in America it feeds and roams farther south than in Europe and Asia. It is a large and clumsy-looking beast, with thick and rather short legs and bulky body, and, seen in repose, gives no hint of its capacity for flight. Yet the caribou can run "like a streak of wind," and makes its way through leaves and brush and brittle, sapless vegetation with a modic.u.m of noise so slight as to seem inexplicable. Nature has ingeniously added to its armament, always one, and usually two, palmated spurs at the root of its horns, and these grow at an obtuse angle with the head, upward and outward towards the nose. With these spurs--like shovels used sideways--the caribou roots up the snow, or breaks its crust and disperses it, to get at his food on the ground. The caribou are very large deer, and their strength is attested by the weight of their horns. I have handled caribou horns in Canada that I could not hold out with both hands when seated in a chair. It seemed hard to believe that an animal of the size of a caribou could carry a burden apparently so disproportioned to his head and neck. But it is still more difficult to believe, as all the woodsmen say, that these horns are dropped and new ones grown every year.

It is not the especial beauty of Frederic Remington's drawings and paintings that they are absolutely accurate in every detail, but it is one of their beauties, and gives them especial value apart from their artistic excellence. He draws what he knows, and he knows what he draws.

This scene of the electrically exquisite moment in a hunter's life, when great game is before him, and the instant has come for claiming it as his own with a steadily held and wisely chosen aim, will give the reader a perfect knowledge of how the Indians and hunters dress and equip themselves beyond the Canadian border. The scene is in the wilderness north of the Great Lakes. The Indian is of one of those tribes that are offshoots of the great Algonquin nation. He carries in that load he bears that which the plainsmen call "the grub stake," or quota of provisions for himself and his employer, as well as blankets to sleep in, pots, pans, sugar, the inevitable tea of those lat.i.tudes, and much else besides. Those Indians are not as lazy or as physically degenerate as many of the tribes in our country. They turn themselves into wonderful beasts of burden, and go forever equipped with a long, broad strap that they call a "tomp line," and which they pa.s.s around their foreheads and around their packs, the latter resting high up on their backs. It seems incredible, but they can carry one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds of necessaries all day long in the roughest regions. The Hudson Bay Company made their ancestors its wards and dependents two centuries ago, and taught them to work and to earn their livelihood.

V

BIG FIs.h.i.+NG

In October every year there are apt to be more fish upon the land in the Nepigon country than one would suppose could find life in the waters.

Most families have laid in their full winter supply, the main exceptions being those semi-savage families which leave their fish out--in preference to laying them in--upon racks whereon they are to be seen in rows and by the thousands.

Nepigon, the old Hudson Bay post which is the outfitting place for this region, is 928 miles west of Montreal, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and on an arm of Lake Superior. The Nepigon River, which connects the greatest of lakes with Lake Nepigon, is the only roadway in all that country, and therefore its mouth, in an arm of the great lake, is the front door to that wonderful region. In travelling through British Columbia I found one district that is going to prove of greater interest to gentlemen sportsmen with the rod, but I know of no greater fis.h.i.+ng country than the Nepigon. No single waterway or system of navigable inland waters in North America is likely to wrest the palm from this Nepigon district as the haunt of fish in the greatest plenty, unless we term the salmon a fresh-water fish, and thus call the Fraser, Columbia, and Skeena rivers into the rivalry. There is incessant fis.h.i.+ng in this wilderness north of Lake Superior from New-year's Day, when the ice has to be cut to get at the water, all through the succeeding seasons, until again the ice fails to protect the game. And there is every sort of fis.h.i.+ng between that which engages a navy of sailing vessels and men, down through all the methods of fish-taking--by nets, by spearing, still fis.h.i.+ng, and fly-fis.h.i.+ng. A half a dozen sorts of finny game succ.u.mb to these methods, and though the region has been famous and therefore much visited for nearly a dozen years, the field is so extensive, so well stocked, and so difficult of access except to persons of means, that even to-day almost the very largest known specimens of each cla.s.s of fish are to be had there.

If we could put on wings early in October, and could fly down from James's Bay over the dense forests and countless lakes and streams of western Ontario, we would see now and then an Indian or hunter in a canoe, here and there a lonely huddle of small houses forming a Hudson Bay post, and at even greater distances apart small bunches of the cotton or birch-bark tepees of pitiful little Cree or Ojibaway bands.

But with the first glance at the majestic expanse of Lake Superior there would burst upon the view scores upon scores of white sails upon the water, and near by, upon the sh.o.r.e, a tent for nearly every sail. That is the time for the annual gathering for catching the big, chunky, red-fleshed fish they call the salmon-trout. They catch those that weigh from a dozen to twenty-five or thirty pounds, and at this time of the year their flesh is comparatively hard.

Engaged in making this great catch are the boats of the Indians from far up the Nepigon and the neighboring streams; of the chance white men of the region, who depend upon nature for their sustenance; and of Finns, Norwegians, Swedes, and others who come from the United States side, or southern sh.o.r.e, to fish for their home markets. These fish come at this season to sp.a.w.n, seeking the reefs, which are plentiful off the sh.o.r.e in this part of the lake. Gill nets are used to catch them, and are set within five fathoms of the surface by setting the inner buoy in water of that depth, and then paying the net out into deeper water and anchoring it. The run and the fis.h.i.+ng continue throughout October. As a rule, among the Canadians and Canada Indians a family goes with each boat--the boats being sloops of twenty-seven to thirty feet in length, and capable of carrying fifteen pork barrels, which are at the outset filled with rock-salt. Sometimes the heads of two families are partners in the owners.h.i.+p of one of these sloops, but, however that may be, the custom is for the women and children to camp in tents along-sh.o.r.e, while the men (usually two men and a boy for each boat) work the nets. It is a stormy season of the year, and the work is rough and hazardous, especially for the nets, which are frequently lost.

Whenever a haul is made the fish are split down the back and cleaned.

Then they are washed, rolled in salt, and packed in the barrels. Three days later, when the bodies of the fish have thoroughly purged themselves, they are taken out, washed again, and are once more rolled in fresh salt and put back in the barrels, which are then filled to the top with water. The Indians subsist all winter upon this October catch, and, in addition, manage to exchange a few barrels for other provisions and for clothing. They demand an equivalent of six dollars a barrel in whatever they get in exchange, but do not sell for money, because, as I understand it, they are not obliged to pay the provincial license fee as fishermen, and therefore may not fish for the market. Even sportsmen who throw a fly for one day in the Nepigon country must pay the Government for the privilege. The Indians told me that eight barrels of these fish will last a family of six persons an entire winter. Such a demonstration of prudence and fore-thought as this, of a month's fis.h.i.+ng at the threshold of winter, amounts to is a rare one for an Indian to make, and I imagine there is a strong admixture of white blood in most of those who make it. The full-bloods will not take the trouble. They trust to their guns and their traps against the coming of that wolf which they are not unused to facing.

Up along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Nepigon, which is thirty miles by an air line north of Lake Superior, many of the Indians lay up white-fish for winter. They catch them in nets and cure them by frost. They do not clean them. They simply make a hole in the tail end of each fish, and string them, as if they were beads, upon sticks, which they set up into racks. They usually hang the fishes in rows of ten, and frequently store up thousands while they are at it. The Reverend Mr. Renison, who has had much to do with bettering the condition of these Indians, told me that he had caught 1020 pounds of white-fish in two nights with two gill nets in Lake Nepigon. It is unnecessary to add that he cleaned his.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS HAULING NETS ON LAKE NEPIGON]

Lake Nepigon is about seventy miles in length, and two-thirds as wide, at the points of its greatest measurement, and is a picturesque body of water, surrounded by forests and dotted with islands. It is a famous haunt for trout, and those fishermen who are lucky may at times see scores of great beauties lying upon the bottom; or, with a good guide and at the right season, may be taken to places where the water is fairly astir with them. Fishermen who are not lucky may get their customary experience without travelling so far, for the route is by canoe, on top of nearly a thousand miles of railroading; and one mode of locomotion consumes nearly as much time as the other, despite the difference between the respective distances travelled. The speckled trout in the lake are locally reported to weigh from three to nine pounds, but the average stranger will lift in more of three pounds'

weight than he will of nine. Yet whatever they average, the catching of them is prime sport as you float upon the water in your picturesque birch-bark canoe, with your guide paddling you noiselessly along, and your spoon or artificial minnow rippling through the water or glinting in the sunlight. You need a stout bait-rod, for the gluttonous fish are game, and make a good fight every time. The local fishermen catch the speckled beauties with an unpoetic lump of pork.

A lively French Canadian whom I met on the cars on my way to Nepigon described that region as "de mos' tareeble place for de fish in all over de worl'." And he added another remark which had at least the same amount of truth at the bottom of it. Said he: "You weel find dere dose Mees Nancy feeshermans from der Unite State, which got dose hunderd-dollar poles and dose leetle humbug flies, vhich dey t'row around and pull 'em back again, like dey was afraid some feesh would bite it. Dat is all one grand stupeedity. Dose man vhich belong dere put on de hook some pork, and catch one tareeble pile of fish. Dey don't give a ---- about style, only to catch dose feesh."

To be sure, every fisherman who prides himself on the distance he can cast, and who owns a splendid outfit, will despise the spirit of that French Canadian's speech; yet up in that country many a scientific angler has endured a failure of "bites" for a long and weary time, while his guide was hauling in fish a-plenty, and has come to question "science" for the nonce, and follow the Indian custom. For gray trout (the namaycush, or lake trout) they bait with apparently anything edible that is handiest, preferring pork, rabbit, partridge, the meat of the trout itself, or of the sucker; and the last they take first, if possible. The suckers, by-the-way, are all too plenty, and as full of bones as any old-time frigate ever was with timbers. You may see the Indians eating them and discarding the bones at the same time; and they make the process resemble the action of a hay-cutter when the gra.s.s is going in long at one side, and coming out short, but in equal quant.i.ties, at the other.

The namaycush of Nepigon weigh from nine to twenty-five pounds. The natives take a big hook and bait it, and then run the point into a piece of s.h.i.+ny, newly-sc.r.a.ped lead. They never "play" their bites, but give them a tight line and steady pull. These fish make a game struggle, leaping and diving and thras.h.i.+ng the water until the gaff ends the struggle. In winter there is as good sport with the namaycush, and it is managed peculiarly. The Indians cut into the ice over deep water, making holes at least eighteen inches in diameter. Across the hole they lay a stick, so that when they pull up a trout the line will run along the stick, and the fish will hit that obstruction instead of the resistant ice. If a fish struck the ice the chances are nine to one that it would tear off the hook. Having baited a hook with pork, and stuck the customary bit of lead upon it, they sound for bottom, and then measure the line so that it will reach to about a foot and a half above soundings--that is to say, off bottom. Then they begin fis.h.i.+ng, and their plan is (it is the same all over the Canadian wilderness) to keep jerking the line up with a single, quick sudden bob at frequent intervals.

The spring is the time to catch the big Nepigon jack-fish, or pike. They haunt the gra.s.sy places in little bogs and coves, and are caught by trolling. A jack-fish is what we call a pike, and John Watt, the famous guide in that country, tells of those fish of such size that when a man of ordinary height held the tail of one up to his shoulder, the head of the fish dragged on the ground. He must be responsible for the further a.s.sertion that he saw an Indian squaw drag a net, with meshes seven inches square, and catch two jack-fish, each of which weighed more than fifty pounds when cleaned. The story another local historian told of a surveyor who caught a big jack-fish that felt like a sunken log, and could only be dragged until its head came to the surface, when he shot it and it broke away--that narrative I will leave for the next New Yorker who goes to Nepigon. And yet it seems to me that such stories distinguish a fis.h.i.+ng resort quite as much as the fish actually caught there. Men would not dare to romance like that at many places I have fished in, where the trout are scheduled and numbered, and where you have got to go to a certain rock on a fixed day of the month to catch one.

The Indians are very clever at spearing the jack-fish. At night they use a bark torch, and slaughter the big fish with comparative ease; but their great skill with the spear is shown in the daytime, when the pike are sunning themselves in the gra.s.s and weeds along-sh.o.r.e. But when I made my trip up the river, I saw them using so many nets as to threaten the early reduction of the stream to the plane of the ordinary resort.

The water was so clear that we could paddle beside the nets and see each one's catch--here a half-dozen suckers, there a jack-fish, and next a couple of beautiful trout. Finding a squaw attending to her net, we bought a trout from her before we had cast a line. The habit of buying fish under such circ.u.mstances becomes second nature to a New Yorker. We are a peculiar people. Our fishermen are modest away from the city, but at home they a.s.sume the confident tone which comes of knowing the way to Fulton fish-market.

The Nepigon River is a trout's paradise, it is so full of rapids and saults. It is not at all a folly to fish there with a fly-rod. There are records of very large trout at the Hudson Bay post; but you may actually catch four-pound trout yourself, and what you catch yourself seems to me better than any one's else records. I have spoken of the Nepigon River as a roadway. It is one of the great trading trails to and from the far North. At the mouth of the river, opposite the Hudson Bay post, you will see a wreck of one of its n.o.blest vehicles--an old York boat, such as carry the furs and the supplies to and fro. I fancy that Wolseley used precisely such boats to float his men to where he wanted them in 1870. Farther along, before you reach the first portage, you will be apt to see several of the sloops used by the natives for the Lake Superior fis.h.i.+ng. They are distinguished for their ugliness, capacity, and strength; but the last two qualities are what they are built to obtain. Of course the prettiest vehicles are the canoes. As the bark and the labor are easily obtainable, these picturesque vessels are very numerous; but a change is coming over their shape, and the historic Ojibaway canoe, in which Hiawatha is supposed to have sailed into eternity, will soon be a thing found only in pictures.

There is good sport with the rod wherever you please to go in "the bush," or wilderness, north of the Canadian Pacific Railway, in Ontario and the western part of Quebec. My first venture in fis.h.i.+ng through the ice in that region was part of a hunting experience, when the conditions were such that hunting was out of the question, and our party feasted upon salt pork, tea, and tomatoes during day after day. At first, fried salt pork, taken three times a day in a hunter's camp, seems not to deserve the harsh things that have been said and written about it. The open-air life, the constant and tremendous exercise of hunting or chopping wood for the fire, the novel surroundings in the forest or the camp, all tend to make a man say as hearty a grace over salt pork as he ever did at home before a holiday dinner. Where we were, up the Ottawa in the Canadian wilderness, the pork was all fat, like whale blubber. At night the cook used to tilt up a pan of it, and put some twisted ravellings of a towel in it, and light one end, and thus produce a lamp that would have turned Alfred the Great green with envy, besides smoking his palace till it looked as venerable as Westminster Abbey does now. I ate my share seasoned with the comments of Mr. Frederic Remington, the artist, who a.s.serted that he was never without it on his hunting trips, that it was pure carbonaceous food, that it fastened itself to one's ribs like a true friend, and that no man could freeze to death in the same country with this astonis.h.i.+ng provender. We had canned tomatoes and baker's bread and plenty of tea, with salt pork as the _piece de resistance_ at every meal. I know now--though I would not have confessed it at the time--that mixed with admiration of salt pork was a growing dread that in time, if no change offered itself, I should tire of that diet. I began to feel it sticking to me more like an Old Man of the Sea than a brother. The woodland atmosphere began to taste of it. When I came in-doors it seemed to me that the log shanty was gradually turning into fried salt pork. I could not say that I knew how it felt to eat quail a day for thirty days. One man cannot know everything. But I felt that I was learning.

One day the cook put his hat on, and took his axe, and started out of the shanty door with an unwonted air of business.

"Been goin' fish," said he, in broken Indian. "Good job if get trout."

A good job? Why the thought was like a floating spar to a sailor overboard! I went with him. It was a cold day, but I was dressed in Canadian style--the style of a country where every one puts on everything he owns: all his stockings at once, all his flannel s.h.i.+rts and drawers, all his coats on top of one another, and when there is nothing else left, draws over it all a blanket suit, a pair of moccasins, a tuque, and whatever pairs of gloves he happens to be able to find or borrow. One gets a queer feeling with so many clothes on.

They seem to separate you from yourself, and the person you feel inside your clothing might easily be mistaken for another individual. But you are warm, and that's the main thing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TROUT-FIs.h.i.+NG THROUGH THE ICE]

I rolled along the trail behind the Indian, through the deathly stillness of the snow-choked forest, and presently, from a knoll and through an opening, we saw a great woodland lake. As it lay beneath its unspotted quilt of snow, edged all around with balsam, and pine and other evergreens, it looked as though some mighty hand had squeezed a colossal tube of white paint into a tremendous emerald bowl. Never had I seen nature so perfectly unalloyed, so exquisitely pure and peaceful, so irresistibly beautiful. I think I should have hesitated to print my ham-like moccasin upon that virgin sheet had I been the guide, but "Brossy," the cook, stalked ahead, making the powdery flakes fly before and behind him, and I followed. Our tracks were white, and quickly faded from view behind us; and, moreover, we pa.s.sed the signs of a fox and a deer that had crossed during the night, so that our profanation of the scene was neither serious nor exclusive.

The Indian walked to an island near the farther sh.o.r.e, and using his axe with the light, easy freedom that a white man sometimes attains with a penknife, he cut two short sticks for fish-poles. He cut six yards of fish-line in two in the middle of the piece, and tied one end of each part to one end of each stick, making rude knots, as if any sort of a fastening would do. Equally clumsily he tied a ba.s.s hook to each fish-line, and on each hook he speared a little cube of pork fat which had gathered an envelope of granulated smoking-tobacco while at rest in his pocket. Next, he cut two holes in the ice, which was a foot thick, and over these we stood, sticks in hand, with the lines dangling through the holes. Hardly had I lowered my line (which had a bullet flattened around it for a sinker, by-the-way) when I felt it jerked to one side, and I pulled up a three-pound trout. It was a speckled trout. This surprised me, for I had no idea of catching anything but lake or gray trout in that water. I caught a gray trout next--a smaller one than the first--and in another minute I had landed another three-pound speckled beauty. My pork bait was still intact, and it may be of interest to fishermen to know that the original cubes of pork remained on those two hooks a week, and caught us many a mess of trout.