Two Weeks' Sport on the Coulonge River

PETER is an Indian. The scene is laid on the banks of the Ottawa River, at Sand Point, the railway terminus, fifty-six miles above Ottawa City.

The occasion of my meeting with Peter was a summons which I had sent to him that morning by telegraph from Portage du Fort, twelve miles farther up the river, on my return from an unsuccessful hunt.

Having heard, during a period of two years, from various sources, contradicting each other in all important points, of the wonders of the Ottawa Valley, the picturesqueness of the scenery, the deer, moose, caribou, bears, wolves, beavers, Indians, lumbermen, and ruffians that frequented its banks, browsed in its forests, dived or paddled in its tributary streams, and pitched their tents or built their shanties among its pines and spruces ; and having utterly failed, in all this time, by extensive correspondence and exhaustive search in all the libraries of my native city, to extract one atom of reliable information about the region, I had ventured into it at last to find it out for myself.

One word, mere hearsay, let drop two years before by a hunter in the New York woods to the effect that you could see deer in herds upon the Ottawa River, had possessed my imagination ever since.

With one friend and two guides,— Abbanike half-breeds, one pure fool, the other more than half knave, — I had spent a month upon the Black River ; and during all that time, by one trick and another, for want of a map, had been kept travelling in a circle from pond to pond, within two days’ journey of the mouth, camping in neighboring cowyards, and subjected to all the extortions of the thieves who live upon the banks and call themselves Christians. My friend’s time was up, and we were on our return. I had made several attempts to engage a reliable guide, without success. If he was willing enough to go when he was sober, he would refuse when he was drunk, or vice versa.

At Sand Point, having telegraphed as stated above, I bade adieu to my friend in the historic words, “ The battle indeed is lost; but there is time to win another.”

Five feet high, swart, short of speech, dressed like a dandy in reds and yellows, was Peter. He was not a bit like Salomon, the “ head guide ” of the former expedition. Salomon was voluble to distraction, and bragged of hundreds of deer, for two dollars a day ; but all that I could get out of Peter was that he got two dollars and a half, and that when he went off hunting he generally found something. He came up to me like a Fate, without a smile or salutation, but the simple question, “Did you send for me?” The cars were waiting, by which, if this business failed, and I got through with it in season, I might overtake my friend and accompany him on the long journey home. Peter had been informed of the situation, and I had asked him if he would like to engage with me for a fortnight, to hunt moose.

For half an hour he stood there with averted face, and never a change of expression came over his countenance.

I was scanning him with all my might, to see how I liked him. The cars had gone. At length he opened his mouth. “ I can’t go to-day ; I can’t go in these clothes,” said Peter, “ and I have work to do,” finally proposing that I should spend the intervening time at his house.

In a one-story hut on the banks of the Ottawa, three miles up stream, I passed a pleasant day with him and his good-humored but rather long-favored squaw and two little Indian boys, idly contemplating, at the back window, a view that a millionnaire could not have commanded,— a river a mile wide, with islands, and trees upon its shores, stretching in either direction as far as the eye could reach. Upon its glassy surface, opposite the house, a flock of mallard ducks were playing, their plumage glistening like silver in the sun. They were cunning enough to keep just so far out that nobody could tell how far they were ; and although I stole round the corner of the next house and had a crack at them, every shot fell short. The next house was that of Peter’s father-in-law, and coming back I stumbled into it. Squaws were sitting all round the room, mute and motionless as mummies ; among the rest a handsome black one, who did not look more than nineteen years old. Perceiving my mistake, I backed out, followed by Peter, whose laugh was the only comment I overheard.

A neighbor came in during the day, perched himself upon a chair by the door, said never a word, and, after he had stayed as long as he liked, walked out. I could not perceive that he took any notice of anything. He was nearly white, and was, as 1 learned afterwards, Peter’s brother-in-law, husband of the beauty next door.

I asked Peter if he was full blooded, and he replied, “I think I am.” You could not get a positive, unqualified opinion out of him.

I noticed, however, that he was very polite at meals, and urged me to make a dinner, or a supper, after each repast of bread, pork, and tea had been disposed of. They gave me the bed, in a little room on the ground floor, and I had no reason to complain of it.

The train which leaves Ottawa at Io.Io in the morning reaches Sand Point at 1.40, and connects there with the boat for Portage du Fort, which we reached at 6 o’clock the next day. The necessary purchases of provisions delayed me an hour, when we took the stage.

Wonderful was the change in Peter. His face had grown three shades darker. His black eyes snapped and rolled about with unwonted fire. He howled and sang, and every moment or two he would turn round to me and repeat, what was plain enough, “ I have a good many friends, here,” and again, with great emphasis, “I'm all right, and so long as I'm all right, you 're all right.”

Somebody, in recommending Peter, the day before, for knowing his business, had told me that he would serve me faithfully, and never get drunk at inconvenient times, so as to incapacitate himself for duty ; but that if I wanted to have trouble with him I could have it. That was just the kind of man I wanted, and I should have regarded it as a great deprivation if I could n’t have trouble when I wanted it. The stage took us eight miles to Havelock, where we stopped at Macdonald’s, a comfortable hotel, and next morning at six were off for Grand Marris, thirteen miles up the river, in a small steamer. At Grand Marris we were carried across in a wagon, canoe and all, four miles for two dollars, and set down at the Coulonge above the fall and some five miles from the mouth. It was noon, and presently we were paddling up stream, our destination being Windfall Lake, six days’journey up the Coulonge River.

There are five or six houses the first five miles, and then the wilderness, the rapids, the sandy banks with their long memories of bears and wolves and moose, and here and there that which makes the hunter’s heart beat and his nostrils quiver with excitement.

At Amyot’s, the last house but two, we stopped to talk French and buy potatoes. The father was tall, affable, and a polyglot. One little girl, twelve years old, bare-armed and barelegged, sat at a spinning-machine of their own contrivance. She had a simple, unintellectual cast of face, pretty enough, while for bodily symmetry and grace she was truly remarkable.

I sat and admired her under cover of a conversation with her father, and the quick play and perfect poise of hand and foot were wonderful to behold. Every attitude was grace itself. The great wheel went like lightning, guided by the perfect hand and arm. The spools whirled like mad, obedient to the foot which discovered a shape that Phidias might have copied. An elder sister stood by, correspondingly ugly, aged fourteen. I asked if they had been to school. “ Vous n’avez jamais été à I'école ? ” No answer. They do not understand you. You must speak the jargon they are accustomed to in these parts, which has for its foundation the French of two hundred years ago, and has assimilated all the slang that has been invented since. If you have patience to repeat the question two or three times you will get an answer. “Fee' la men' (Philamène), not so fast! ” suddenly exclaims the mother, with unheard-of severity and sharpness, for the little one has broken the thread. Mother Amyot is a study, — not less than five feet seven inches in height and four feet six inches in circumference, nor much less than three hundred pounds in weight, brawny rather than fat, coarse beyond comparison, furiously voluble and good-natured from her irrepressible vitality, still in the prime ol life, and mother of eleven children.

We had left behind us a gang of shanty-men, bound, some up the West Branch (the river forks thirty-five miles above), some up the East Branch by which we must go, to Brigham’s shanty on Osborne’s Lake, three or four days’ journey up stream. There is a third or north fork, called the John Bull Creek, and good hunting thereon in favorable seasons. The law forbids the shooting of game before September I, and it lacked yet a fortnight of that date. It was early for the shantymen, but these were going up in advance of the main body to make hay, build shanties, locate timber, and make other preparations for their reception. When we reached the Coulonge they were playing in the water at the landing above the fall, diving, and splashing one another, riding logs, swimming and tumbling, and dancing, all over the banks, and the river, and the boats, almost naked, enjoying themselves with all the energy of youth. Several immense flat-boats, painted red and laden with trunks, were drawn up along the bank. In these they travel. Each is manned by a dozen men with long oars, and they force them up stream and drag them through the woods by sheer strength. It is a sight to see one of them going up a rapid !

We must keep ahead of these demons, who were making the woods ring with their insane merriment and careless but tremendous efforts to force their way up against the current, or we stood no chance of getting game. So on we go from Amyot’s.

Within a mile we had passed the last house, and began to think of what we should have for supper. I was glad to desist from my awkward and unaccustomed efforts at poling and paddling, when Peter said, as we came to a deep place in the river, “ You may throw out here.” I had a spoon hook which was good for a meal when everything else failed, and flung it overboard at the word. A two-pound pickerel mistook it for a fish, and was soon flapping in the bottom of the canoe. Back through the hole and up again we went, this time luring an old one from his hiding-place. He might have weighed six pounds, shone like a rainbow with hues of the most vivid orange, and had sheet-iron scales, and spines on his back as sharp and stiff as darning-needles. There was more fish than we could possibly eat, and after another turn we went ahead. It took me a good hour to prepare that big fellow for the fire with my penknife, and gave me a back-ache worse than if I had been sawing a cord of wood. He was so slippery I could not hold on to him at all to scale him until 1 hit upon the expedient of rubbing him in the sand first. Such solid flesh ! We made a good supper and breakfast off him, and had to throw away the little one.

We had a very late start the next morning, and the three big flat-boats, headed by a birch-bark canoe with the owner of the limits upon the West Branch, had passed us before we started. We came immediately upon one of the barges struggling in the long rapids. Another was just turning a bend in the river farther up. There was little else but rapids for two miles. The whole crew of the flat-boat were in the river, toiling upon a long rope attached to the bow, or pushing and dragging the boat by its gunwales. The supernumeraries were capering upon the bank or in the current, jumping from rock to rock. Trunks were piled high upon the unwieldy craft, for every man brought his own, containing in most instances all his worldly goods. They are a simple race, these shanty-men, of the good-natured fighting kind, ignorant, respectful, fond of beans. See them straining on the rope ! The red

boat, the white caps of the waters sparkling in the sun, the long procession, the mirth, the silent forest, offer striking contrasts of color, of stillness and life, of labor and repose. It gleams forever in my mind’s eye, this picture of yesterday, but I fail to describe it. Why has not some painter attempted it ?

We soon passed them, Peter and I, and had overtaken and passed the next boat, and the next ; and as they stopped to dine upon the shore we left them all behind and pushed along up stream alone.

Peter had been sick the day before. It was “too-hot,” he said; for the Indian is delicate; and I had been obliged to help him all I could, for fear he would give out entirely. It is no joke for a novice to pole up rapids, and when Peter had put me ashore to lighten the boat I was glad of the excuse to use my legs. Having kept out of sight of the canoe for three hours, 1 sat down at length upon a rock and awaited its appearance.

Peter was sick, or afraid he was going to be. He did not know what was the matter with him, but pulling up beside the bank, in a shady place, said he could go no farther. He felt “ wake,” he said, and sore across his stomach. Upon my conscience, he looked solemn enough, and the whole matter begun to assume a gloomy aspect to me. It was a forlorn hope, the expedition we had started on ; and if he failed me I must go home out of pocket, without having seen any game. It was a hard journey up, Peter said, and hard getting back, and he did n’t want to be sick in the woods. I counted his pulse, and then my own, by my watch. His was four beats slower a minute. I counted again, and this time failed to detect any difference ; looked at his tongue, and told him that I did not think he was going to be sick, but if he was I would get help and have him carried home. A covey of partridges made themselves heard in the brush upon the river bank just then ; and the brotli that night did Peter a wonderful deal of good.

We were yet some three miles below the first carry, which is eighteen miles up the river from where we entered above the fall. There are twenty carries upon the Coulonge, the longest half a mile, the average very much shorter, “ About an acre ” signifies in Canada a dozen rods, more or less, an acre, as a measure of length, being the side of a square field which contains an acre.

Early next morning the shanty-men overtook us again and left us behind for the last time. We were camped below a very long and ugly rapid. It was the thought of this, I suspect, that had made Peter sick the day before. Here, at last, must be fought the great battle of the expedition. We started late, and it was eleven o’clock when we reached it. The canoe was a large one, and had accommodated four men, with their baggage and provisions, upon the previous excursion I have mentioned. Peter was little and easily discouraged, and I entirely inexperienced. He put me off upon the rocks with a long and very stout rope attached to the bow. I was to pull while he guided the canoe. The bed of the river was uneven, rocky, and full of holes waist-deep, while over everything the waters rushed at a great pace. Peter could speak very good English, but he put his accent on in the wrong places. “ Don’t pull now ! ” he shouted, with all the stress upon the last words ; and all I heard above the roar of waters was “pull now and I did pull, with all my might. A Yankee would have sung out “ Stay ! ” or something intelligible. Perceiving from Peter’s frantic and demoniac gesticulation that something was wrong, but utterly unable to make out above the din anything he said, I danced about from rock to rock, and unfortunately letting the rope go slack as I made a long jump over a black pool beneath, I soon had him in the water. In vain he tugged and wrestled with the current, standing over his boots. The canoe swung round broadside to the stream, in spite of all I could do to stop it. The flood overwhelmed it, and sent it to the bottom.

I went in and helped Peter out of his predicament, getting plenty of abuse the while. In fact, several times during the expedition the impression came upon me that I had hired myself out to Peter, instead of his having hired himself to me. If either of us had his own way, from beginning to end of our association, it was Peter. You, who have apprenticed yourself to a hunter, must be of a docile disposition, submissive, and able to put up with any amount of cursing when you do your best and yet fail to carry out your part of the programme. You are not only contending, in such an undertaking, with the forces of nature and the superior senses of wild beasts, but with professional skill enhanced by inherited aptitude and the practice of a lifetime. He will find you game like a dog, your little Indian guide, but you have got to supply nerve, and eye, and heart that never beats but at your bidding.

We spread our blankets and stores upon the rocks. Everything was soaked. The sugar had suffered the most. It was a clammy mass, and had acquired a disagreeable taste after the bath. You soon learn to do without it, and then you cannot eat it. The same with milk. You will not be able to take either in tea or coffee when you get home, but drink the clear infusion, that goes to the spot, and become at the same time a connoisseur of tea and coffee, and the only person in the house who knows how they should be prepared. No flavor can survive a cloy of milk and sugar.

Two hours’ delay in the bright sun set things to rights again. The packs were heavier, and we had many carries to make ; but I showed Peter a broad back and a good pair of legs, and he was ashamed to lag or complain overmuch of the heat; so we came to camp two or three miles below the Fork.

Would that I had power to describe the beauties of the wilderness ! the deep peace, which is never still! It is the noise close at hand that is absent, the brute, unmeaning clatter of the street; and through the hush come to you voices from the distance, — the whispers of lofty trees, the sound of far-off waters. Upon the shores of the Coulonge grows a forest that has never known the axe nor withered in the fire, of every kind of hard wood and pine, still young, fresh, and vigorous, after forty-five or fifty years of growth. You pass round a hill following the windings of the stream, and, as you look back, such a burst of green of every shade, freshening to the top, fills your view that the spot seems enchanted. The sparkling river that a child could ford or scale a stone across, the sky, the sun, and the utter absence of hard lines and studied effects form a picture on every side. Here a tall tree has fallen into the water, and, there another has dried up, and looks like a smoke. The white pine bristles, and the red pine stretches out its tireless arms, throwing their dark green into vivid contrast with the lighter foliage of the hard woods. Here and there you see a double spire, like minarets, upon a balsam ; and everywhere the birches, clad in white, stand close together in groups of five or six, a gleaming brotherhood. Above the forest of half a century, which the woodman has spared, towers at rare intervals a lofty pine, and in one place we saw a blackened trunk upon the shore. These are the relics of a greater forest, of pines of older growth, destroyed some fifty years ago by fire. The Indians must tell you about it, for white men have only known the river a few years. Hard woods the moose loves, and will live in them, I am told, the year round.

We have bidden good by to the crow, and good riddance. He likes not the North, nor the wilderness, but the sight of barn-yards, and journeys south in the winter. His elder brother, the raven, is here all the year round, twice as large and twice as black, with a deep, broken note, a bass voice, rather hoarse, but no angry caw. The kingfisher hies quietly to another perch farther off and forbears to scream. The bluejay comes up to your tent to compare notes and make inquiries, and rest awhile. He is a traveller himself. Mother partridge chuckles to her brood in the bush for fear somebody should be going by and not hear her, and the little ones pipe their shrill double-note from the covert. A black duck, the wildest thing that flies, in ordinary latitudes, waits in the middle of the stream for you to come up, with no sign of fear, till you are within a boat’s length ; I have reached my hand within a foot of a partridge on a bough before he flew. They have never seen men and know nothing of guns. On the other hand, you cannot show your head to a flock of black ducks before they are off; for there are always old birds among them which have made the grand tour and been popped at from Key West to Labrador.

Shelldrake breed upon these rivers, and at this season they cannot fly, except the old one, which will not desert her brood. You get sight of a school of them ahead, perhaps a dozen, silver-grays, all in a row. They wait until the last moment, and then they all begin to trot upon the top of the water like so many race-horses, with the noise and wake of a steamboat, till they are out of sight. Fifty rods ahead you start them again ; and so they travel all day, till they are well tired out, going up or down over rapids as the case may be, and scaring all the game within hearing. They are worthless for food at this season and full of lice, but almost as handsome as a canvas-back.

We had delayed so much upon the route that three days had passed, and it was likely to take two more to bring us to Osborne’s Lake, which we had calculated at the outset to reach in four days. Moreover, the shanty-men had passed us, bound for the same place, so that, following in their wake, our chances for getting game were slim indeed. I had allowed but a fortnight for the expedition, and it would not do to spend all the time on the way, so that, when we reached our hunting-ground, we should have to turn round and come back. It was possible to reach the lake by a carry of ten miles, from a point a short distance above the Fork. It is no joke to carry your necessary baggage — guns, ammunition, blankets, tent, and cooking utensils — ten miles through the woods ; but it was the only thing to be done, and Peter made no objection. We made a cachet, concealing the canoe in the bushes, and breaking down trees and letting them fall upon it to cover it. The stores we hid under the canoe, where they were safe from rain ; and if no stray bear came along we should probably find them intact after ten days’ absence. It was pretty warm, but we divided the load, and, as I started ahead, Peter had to follow, complaining of the heat, and proposing every now and then to stop and rest; to which propositions I paid no heed until we had gone two miles, when we both concluded it was time to lunch.

I reached Osborne’s Lake a long way ahead of him, however. We shouted and hallooed and fired guns, when he came up ; and, after an age of waiting, a canoe came over from the opposite shore. Brigham was at his shanty with six or eight of his men, and we must needs go in there. The boys greeted Peter as if he had been their best friend, for he had hunted for them the winter before, and supplied them with meat. Old Brigham — a man of fifty, bred to lumbering in his youth, but of late years the owner of a great farm near Ottawa, which had been taken from him by process of law, compelling him to begin his fortunes again in the woods — was as cordial as I could expect, considering that I had come to destroy the game which he was depending upon for the winter. Two or three moose, at the season when the meat is frozen and can be kept, will go a great way towards providing a shanty for the winter, while anything killed in summer must be left to spoil in the woods, and feed the bears and ravens.

The supper was delicious,— great white flakes of boiled salt pork, deep cuts of bread from an enormous loaf, and green tea of exquisite flavor, without sugar or milk. After something more than two quarts of green tea, finding our blankets spread upon the floor, I was soon fast asleep, not even waking up to fight the fleas.

Peter had disappeared. He had gone to see Raymond, his old friend, who kept a stopping-place close by and a farm to supply the shanties. It pays to farm it near a shanty, for hay is a hundred and forty odd dollars a ton. He came back in the morning, and I did not perceive that he was any worse for his visit. It is my impression that certain springs had run dry. Everything gives out in these woods, after you have got three days’ journey from a settlement, except the everlasting flour and pork and tea. Powder and shot is not to be found at all except in private hands, in quantities of half a pound. Village stores are often destitute of shot. These things, and sugar and butter, are not to be depended upon. The necessaries of life, in the way of provisions, are reduced to three.

If the pork was good overnight, the beans, which had been boiled the day before, and baked all night long under the ashes, in a huge iron pot, about as big as you could get your arms round, and six inches deep, were superb. The fire is made upon the ground, a bare space being left for that purpose in the middle of the shanty, and a hole in the roof taking the place of a chimney. Around the hearth is a bulwark of timber, about a foot high, on which you can sit if you choose. The hearth and the hole overhead are about eight feet square. It being impossible to lock up, a man has to be kept in the shanty the year round, to watch the stores which were teamed up in the winter) and must last till the next), roll the flour to prevent it from caking, and keep the pork covered with brine. It is cheerful work to be left in the shanty alone at a time of the year when there is no neighborhood and no travel, and the men take turns at it.

The bread is baked in the same kind of a pot as the beans, and is light, porous, substantial, and evenly done all the way through. It was not very fine nor very white, city fine flour being unknown in the province of Quebec. The gang was blessed with an excellent cook, and a good hunter, Peter ; and I was quite ready to believe what Brigham told me, that the winter before it had been “one continual scene of feasting,” what with beaver and bear and the carcasses of five moose Peter had brought in, and all the small game that runs in the woods. Moose is everywhere spoken of throughout this country as the finest meat a man ever put into his mouth, fatter than mutton, juicier than beef, tenderer than venison, and better than all three. I think I could be prevailed upon to try some of these dainties after swinging an axe round my head about five hours in the frosty air of a Canada winter.

It was hard to get Peter away ; but about twelve o’clock we were off for the silent woods, not to see a human face again except each other’s. I had to offer him extra pay to get him started at all. He abhorred camping out, if he could creep into a house ; while I liked the forest, the uncertain sky, and the longinquity of fleas, the light canoe in the daytime between me and the water, and the white tent by night betwixt me and the stars, the loon’s cry, and the distant howling of the wolf. Off we went at last.

A long, sandy point runs into the lake just at the inlet, whither we were going. A deer had been seen there that morning by two boys who were out fishing. As we approached we caught sight of a wolf which was following the deer’s track. He was ugly, tall, and slim, of a light yellowish brown, and I missed him. There was considerable breeze, the lake was tossing, and he running, and at a distance of twenty rods. 1 had aimed at his body instead of his head, for there was one deep track in the sand, showing where he had jumped when he heard the gun, and the mark of a rifleball directly behind it, somewhat higher up upon the shore. Upon the sand was the fresh track of a noble buck, in the act of running, as was shown by the imprint of the hind part of the hoof, which is small and separate. A deer walks upon his toes, or what answers to toes, and jumps from the whole foot,—just the contrary to what a man does.

When you hunt in a canoe, you sit in the bow, and neither speak nor move. The guide is perched upon the stern and paddles. Your gun lies in front, where you can take it up without the least noise, and the only sound which indicates your approach is the gentle plash of the paddle, not to be distinguished from the splash made by the diving of a muskrat. So you sit and hark, five or six hours at a time, looking on both sides for tracks, and making up your own mind what they are and how long they have been there. Once in a while you speak to each other in whispers, and so continue till the guide, from sheer exhaustion (the hunter is never tired), is compelled to return to camp. No keener pleasure can be found in the world than this silent pursuit, unless it be the startling, brain-turning presence of some monster of the forest. Pale Melancholy, however she may haunt you in the town, has flown away. The very endurance required to keep a cramped position and brace your back against the very narrow thwart which will sometimes enter into the bone, to say nothing of the interest of the chase, serves to keep the fancy inactive, by holding you down to facts. It may be that the beauty of the scene and the adventure you are having satisfies the imagination, so that it is not left to prey upon itself. The keenness of the senses, too, which is required, and the readiness for action at any moment, engross the mind, and render torpid for the time the faculties of reflection. Whatever the reason, I do not believe there is a healthier recreation for a man of intellectual pursuits, for mind and body. He must go, however, where he can find fresh tracks and game once in a while.

People think there is a deal of leisure in camp life ; yet I cannot remember a moment with Peter when we were not eating, sleeping, or hunting, or preparing for one of these things, skinning trophies, or doing necessary work in camp, except once when we were used up and had to lie down on our backs for five minutes. Cards I abominated, for every moment was precious.

Late in the afternoon of the same day, as we were going up a deep part of the river, with a sandy point in full view, the guide said, “ There’s a muskrat on the point,” — a remark to which I paid no attention, being bent on nobler game. Presently he whispered, “It’s a beaver.” I was on the alert in an instant with gun in hand. The beaver had taken to the water, and was swimming on before us, “ Shoot! ” said the guide, and bang went the shot - gun, without doing him any harm. It had been getting rusty of late, and the rust had got into the locks, which made it pull so hard that it was difficult to hold it on the mark. I had made some wild shooting that day, at ducks and partridges, and got excited. This mishap did not tend to calm my nerves. Down went the beaver and up came his mate, a little way off. Bang went the other barrel, with the same result. Up came the first beaver and down went the second. This time the rifle, a close shot. Crack ! “ You can’t shoot at all,” said Peter, in a savage whisper, as the diver went down a second time unharmed. Now commenced a very exciting contest. The beavers were trying to find their way back to their hole, and we doing our best to prevent them. They cannot stay under water any more than a man, and kept coming up, first one and then the other, for breath, hiding meanwhile among the sticks along the shore. The Indian’s sharp eyes would spy them out under the roots in a dark corner of the stream, and he would paddle me up to the spot, and try in vain to make me see them. “ Here he is,” he would say, “ right under that stick. There he is, can’t you see him? He’s gone ” ; fretting and fuming all the while, and swearing not a little. The trouble was, the game was the same color as the roots and the mud; and it was getting dark. Finally I did manage to see the body of one of the beavers among the roots and put a ball through it; and then I gave Peter a piece of my mind. “ Why don’t you talk English,” said I, “and say To the right, or the left, or Straight ahead, and not ‘ Here he is,’ and ‘ There he is ’ ? How can I tell, when you sit behind me, which way you mean ? ” “ Did n’t I say,” said Peter, “ he’s under that stick ? ” “ Is there anything else but sticks,” was my retort, “all up and down the bank? How was I to know which stick you meant ? ” After this blessing, the native, not being able to find any reply, relapsed into his accustomed silence. I was weak from the excitement, which had the same effect upon me as a powerful dose of medicine, and for half an hour after I felt like a wet rag. We camped immediately, with a yearling beaver, weighing some twenty-five pounds, a black duck, and three partridges for supper.

Next day, after some labor upon the carries, about noon we came to the creek that goes up into Windfall Lake, and, leaving the river, we took the narrower course, hoping that there might be water enough to permit its navigation. There were three carries, overgrown with brush, for the place had been visited only once this season, by a party of Brigham’s men to look for timber, the week before. The last carry is the only long one, half a mile through the woods ; and here the partridges flew up into the nearest trees and waited half an hour for us to go back and get our guns. The day before Peter had knocked one down and killed him with his paddle. He looked in vain for a stick or a stone ; for we dared not fire, lest we should startle larger game which might be near. We were coming back, empty-handed, for our second load (for we had to make two trips upon each carry), and when we returned to the spot where we had treed the birds they were there still. We had worked hard, and Peter began to tire ; but, about the middle of that beautiful summer afternoon, we shot out from the creek in which we had struggled all day into a broad, peaceful lake, circular in form, and two to three miles in diameter, with islands and bays and sandy beaches, and smooth surface shining like a mirror in the sun, and all around its shores a virgin forest, in which the light and dark were everywhere intermixed, — a perfect picture, a single canoe, a gunner, an Indian, and never a painter. Everything whispered an end to toil, and even the perpetual sighs of the forest were still, and the spell of silence held the place. The water was shallow, and we got aground once or twice as we skirted the shores to seek for game. It was Sandy Lake.

Peter had kept his promise, or, rather, satisfied the expectations he had raised, for he had not committed himself directly. Windfall Lake was but two miles away, up a narrow creek, which he pointed out; and at the end of the sixth day we were upon the huntingground. There was time for a hunt, if we chose to camp here for the night, up a creek at the farther end of the lake, which Peter had never explored. We followed it till it began to grow dark, starting black ducks singly and in flocks, but never shooting at them. As we were returning, in the early twilight, there was a splash round a bend of the creek, “There’s something,” whispered Peter; and we rounded the turn in a state of delicious expectation as to what the something was, when a black head appeared upon the darkened surface. “ Shoot!” says Peter; for a sportsman never stirs until the word of command. Crack went the rifle. “ Don’t shoot again,” said Peter, when I had reloaded. The beaver was kicking in the water, and it was enough to make a man die laughing to see the Indian struggling to lift him into the boat. He was an old one, about as large as they generally grow, forty-five pounds in weight, possibly fifty. I noticed Peter looked at his head to see where the ball went in, and said nothing. Neither did I, but I thought to myself, “ No swearing this time.” There was a hole behind his right ear, and another beside his left eye, where the ball entered and went out, after passing through his brain.

Next day, which was Tuesday, we followed up the creek for several miles. Upon a steep bank, where there was a fresh track, Peter got out, with the information, in a whisper, “ The moose are not far off.” We climbed the hill and plunged into the woods, where we looked for fifteen minutes in different directions. There was no trace upon the leaves, and I must own that I had no idea Peter could find the game where he could not follow the track. Presently, however, after we had made a tack, and had turned about to the left, he looked round at me with his hand raised, to enforce silence, and then pointed ahead, to an object among the trees. How my frame trembled, and my arms quivered and shook ! I could not hold my gun steady. The game moved, and we had to creep forward to catch sight of it again. Crack ! No effect. “ Load again,” whispered Peter. It was a calf. “ Stop,” said he, as I was going to fire, “ here’s the big one. They are looking round at us. Shoot!" The animals were perpetually disappearing behind the trees, first one part of their bodies coming in sight and then another, as they slowly walked away. “Can’t you hit anything as large as that?” said Peter in scorn, as I fired and missed again. “ They won’t wait for us now.” And back we went to the boat.

I was hungry that night when we got back to camp, and Peter was cross, and refused to cook. There was beaver meat in camp, but he wasn’t going to be kept up till nine or ten o’clock every night. If I wanted meat, I might cook it myself. I had never tried it, but had seen it done, and was not going to be stumped by a guide. So while he was munching his cold bread and butter, and pouring out his tea, I chose a couple of solid pieces of the old beaver, washed them clean, and put them on to boil with a moderate-sized piece of salt pork. At the end of an hour I had an excellent soup, but the meat was a little too strong. The tail, which is broad and thick, is a mass of fat and gelatine, entirely white, and free from any particle of muscle,—rather a delicacy than a substantial article of diet.

The next day was Wednesday, and about the middle of the forenoon Peter proposed a trip to Windfall Lake. The creek, two miles in length, was low, and in many places obstructed by trees that had fallen into it; but early in the afternoon we shot out into the lake,—a fine lake indeed, but rocky, more heavily wooded and rougher in its features than Sandy Lake. Peter said the shores were not good for moose to feed, and I had resigned myself to the situation, — for the day was unusually hot, producing sleepiness and heaviness of the head, —and had given up all hope of game. We had started too late, although I had hinted to Peter the night before—it was of no use to do anything more than hint — that he might wake me up any time in the night to get an early start. He had remarked, at the time, that he generally went out early in the morning when he was off hunting. It was extremely unlikely that any game would come out of the shelter of the forest into so hot a sun. We made our way to a small island, with some idea of watching the shores. Somebody had killed a bear, and the bones were bleaching under the trees, where I was glad to stretch myself out upon my back, and rest, for a moment, free from the cramping of the canoe, and the constant necessity of balancing myself upon the water. A few moments passed, and Peter had disappeared, but as I rose from the ground he came running from the woods. He told me afterwards that he had a presentiment he was going to see some game, and was afraid I would get sight of it first. “Did you see anything?” asked he. I replied that I had not, and he sat down upon the bank, looking far out across the water. Presently he cried, “ I see one moose ! ” and we scrambled into the canoe. The wind had risen, and there was considerable tossing of the surface, making it difficult to guide the canoe. Peter, put to his mettle, paddled like mad, without once stopping to take breath. On we went, across the lake, towards a bay a mile and a half away upon the other side. “ Look right over that rock,” said Peter, “that is the moose.” And sure enough there was a huge, ungainly, misshapen bunch of a dingy color visible close to the shore. “ How near can we get to him ?” I inquired. “ About as near as those rocks,” said Peter in reply, pointing to a spot within forty yards of us. Presently he said, “ I don’t think we can get very near him.” We were then a quarter of a mile away, and thereupon I fixed my sights for a dead shot at a long distance. I had been striving, ever since the start, to master my emotion, and show Peter I could shoot; but when he said, in an exciting whisper, “ He’s got horns on hi him,” I very nearly gave it up ; for a bull moose, of all the deer that roam in the woods, had been my dream for a month ; and here was this lumbering, elephantine creature, slowly turning about his unwieldy bulk as he cropped the feed that grew about him in the water, monstrous beyond all my imaginations of his kind, and showing, as he raised and lowered his head, a pair of horns that surpassed anything I had ever seen for size and beauty.

The dead sights were up, with which I had frequently hit a dollar at ten rods. The splash of the paddle had given place to the noiseless movement, without taking the blade out of the water, with which the hunter approaches game. We were going nearer, nearer !NEARER!! It became evident that we were to have a close shot, but I did not dare to alter my sights, for fear the beast would look round and catch the motion of my arm. A sudden thought had struck Peter. He had paddled across the bay, to the leeward of the beast, and was approaching him from the direction of the sun. He would naturally feed with his back to the sun, to avoid the glare of the reflection from the water ; and if he looked round, towards the figures which were gliding down upon him like messengers from the spirit world, he would get the sun in his eyes, already sinking towards the water, it being a little past the middle of the afternoon, and what with that and what with the glare of its reflection upon the surface, he might not see us until we were very near. “ Don’t shoot him about the head. Shoot him about the heart,” was Peter’s last advice ;

“ and don’t shoot till I tell you to shoot. " My gun was at my shoulder, but it was with great difficulty that I could get the fine sights upon him. I must peep through a pinhole, and put the head of a pin upon his shaggy hide. He was dark, and the sights did not show. “Shoot!” whispered Peter. I could not see the sights. “Shoot!” said Peter again. I would not pull the trigger till I was dead sure of my game. Meanwhile the moose was turning from right to left, feeding at his ease, occasionally looòking up and stooping to feed again. At length, after what seemed to me and no doubt to Peter an age of hesitation, and after the command to shoot had been three times repeated with ever-increasing emphasis, I got a sight upon his dingy coat just as he turned his broadside away from us, and his hind quarter came round in range. “ One,” spake the little barrel, and there came back, a second after — sweet sound to a hunter’s ear — the soft thud of the ball in the yielding flesh. Slowly he turned, and looked upon us like a lamb. Then slowly turning again he commenced to walk with gentle steps towards the shore.

“ Shoot again,” said Peter, and this time I had more trouble than at first.

“ Shoot ! ” said Peter ; and I fired in utter desperation. A second thud.

“ Don’t shoot now,” said Peter, as I drew up my rifle for a third time, “ he’s down ! ” And lo ! in a moment the immense beast, turning his head towards us, rolled over upon his side. There he lay kicking as we cautiously approached, and in half a minute he was dead. The game was up.

We drew up the canoe upon the shore, and as I looked back 1 thought I had never seen so huge a carcass as the one which lay floating, back to us, in the water. The immense horns were covered with velvet; and the whole body — head, horns, and all — was of a dingy gray color. Peter sent me in to pull him into shoal water, saying that it was too deep there for him. “ Is he dead ? ” I inquired. He made no reply, but just as I had waded within reach he shrieked “Look out!” and, as I looked round at him, went into convulsions of laughter. The unwieldy carcass soon touched bottom, when Peter came to my assistance. I grasping the precious horns, and Peter the hind legs, we managed to draw him in a few steps farther. The bottom was shallow and shelving and somewhat soft. Presently we came to a stop. We could get no farther. We only drove our boots deeper into the mud ; and after fifteen minutes of exhausting effort and many repeated trials, we were obliged to give it up. It was very desirable to get him ashore to skin him ; and I proposed cutting off the head, as the horns impeded our efforts more than anything else. We cut it off with knife and axe low down on the neck, and it was no light load for two men, with a hand under a horn on either side, to carry ashore. Repeating our attempts upon the beheaded carcass, lightened still further by the loss of a vast quantity of blood, at the end of half an hour we had it high and dry. The skin, which came hard on the under parts and about the joints, ripped and tore in huge patches from his back, like the clear bark of an old birch. The horns were covered with house flies, as thick as they could stand, feeding on the velvet ; and as we dipped them under water they rose in such a swarm as fairly frightened Peter. The velvet, which comes off in September, was so rotten that we tore it off in strips, leaving the horns white like a seashell. They turned a lovely pink in the sun, a beautiful blush spreading all over them, but lost their color again in a day or two. Peter took the hide, and meat enough to last us a week, and at the end of two hours and a quarter the whole job was done. The first ball had struck him in the hindquarter, a foot deep from his backbone, traversed his body lengthwise and crosswise, and we picked it out under the skin of the left fore-quarter, unaltered in shape, except by a slight dent on the butt-end. Peter had seen him lift his leg when I fired. He said that the second ball had first struck the water, and glanced into the body of the moose. We found where it went in, just in front of the middle of the side, within four or five inches of the backbone, where it had buried itself.

We had the lake to traverse with our load, and had hardly entered the creek when daylight failed us. The banks were muddy and heavily wooded, but we made our way back to the lake, and, feeling along the shore, finally found a place that was open enough to build a fire, and dry enough to sleep on, with dry wood near by. No blankets or provisions, but raw meat. Peter had one match, and in a moment we had a flame, then a blaze, and then a bonfire fit for the occasion. The meat we cut in half-pound pieces, out of the tenderloin, and, running an alder stick sharpened at both ends, through two or three of them, drove it into the ground so as to overhang the fire, every now and then giving it a turn. When it was done we sat down in state, pulled out the sticks, stuck them up beside us, and with our hunting-knives helped ourselves to great mouthfuls of juicy meat, a little underdone. I think I must have eaten a pound and a half, and we had nothing else. As for Peter, his appetite was pretty good. A headache, which the heat of the sun, the labor and excitement of the day, had occasioned, passed away under these refreshing influences. As I looked about into the shadows of the forest which overhung us, upon the crackling logs we had heaped up, and the ground which must be our bed with no covering but the sky, and reflected upon the triumph of the day, it occurred to me that this was something like a hunt; and if there was such a thing as camping out and roughing it, we were probably doing it in the most literal manner. The face of my guide glistened like bronze in the reflected light, and his eyes gleamed like two great black diamonds. That night will ever be fresh in memory, and merits, perhaps, the name of an adventure. It came up cold, and we did not sleep much. All night we kept up an enormous fire, our naps lasting while the heat continued, and coming suddenly to an end when it abated and needed replenishing.

In the morning we returned to camp by way of the creek, looking sharp for bears, whose fresh track had been seen in several places the day before. But the wind was from us and carried our scent ahead all the way. There was not much done after our return that day. Your guide will always insist upon frying every kind of meat, and on my producing my broiler from the baggage, where it had lain idle thus far during the trip, Peter said he didn’t understand “that rigging,” and bluntly refused to have anything to do with it. So I sat down and broiled and ate three steaks in succession, while he was frying a mess for his supper. My meat was tender and his inconceivably tough, but he would not be induced to learn the difference by tasting.

Next day we were prisoners in the rain, which came down in torrents ; and the following day, which was Saturday, we moved our camp. Returning the way we came, we found five or six of Brigham’s shanty-men making hay at the Fork where the creek from the two lakes we had left comes into the river, and, leaving them behind, pushed up the Coulonge, encamping on a glorious plateau, where you could sit and watch the whole country on both sides of the river. Wild cherries, very pleasant to the taste, grew in handfuls, upon bushes as high as one’s head. Even blueberries were abundant, although it was the first of September, for the season is late upon the Coulogne. I was told that there was snow on the ground yet since spring. A few wild gooseberries and currants, and the absence of man helped to make the spot a great resort for bears. There was fresh moose track likewise all along up the stream.

Next day, it being absolutely necessary to move on, in order to carry out our plans and return by the appointed time, Peter sat himself down on a log immediately after breakfast, and took out his pipe. Hoping he would take the hint, I packed up one of the loads, Indian fashion, — a thing I had never done before,—whereat he turned to and packed the other. Everything being ready, he sat down again for a smoke, and, having smoked his pipe out, put it into his pocket, and sat still. Fuming inwardly, but not knowing what to say,

I walked to and fro and sat down to rest by spells. So it continued until I had been through all the stages of indignation, from a moderate heat to the boiling point, and recovered my temper again, knowing it was of no use to lose it upon such a subject. For an hour and twenty-five minutes the Indian never spoke. At the end of that time, I inquired what he was going to do. “ I don’t know,” was the gruff reply. “ I don’t suppose any game will come to us here,” said I. “ I suppose not,” he returned, in the same tone. We were entirely out of meat, having left our supply with the shanty-men. My next move was to offer Peter something extra if he would work, at which he picked himself up with the remark, “Very well, say when you’re ready.” To which I replied, “ I’ve been ready this last hour and a half.”

On the following day we visited a lake, remote from the route, by carrying the canoe through the woods half a mile where, perchance, no human foot had trod for a year. Upon its solitary shore we startled an old loon with two young ones, males, with white rings round their necks and the usual display of plumage. No game, however, rewarded our search. The season had changed ; it was cold and damp ; and all that day the moose kept the woods. No fresh tracks were visible where we had seen several the day before ; and our time being up, we were fain to start upon our return.

At night we had rejoined the shantymen, having shot no game but an unfortunate skunk ; and in the morning, having put up with impudence enough from Peter respecting myshooting, I sent him to a tree just ten rods off, with a charred stick, to make a mark. He laid on a black spot the size of a dollar, while I rested my gun across a knife, which the cook had stuck in a tree, and fired. Peter walked to the tree. “ Did he hit the tree ? ” resounded from the camp. “Yes,” said Peter. “Is it in the spot ? ” was the next inquiry. “Yes,” was the reply, in a tone of perfect indifference, upon which announcement the whole camp rushed over in a body, and found the hole made by the ball well inside the spot, just above the centre. It was now Peter’s turn ; and the mighty hunter, Who had killed almost every year since he was born more moose and bears than he had fingers and toes, missed the mark, as I had told him he would, striking the tree a couple of inches below the centre of the spot and to the right. A second shot followed, with a similar result; after which Peter refused to shoot again, with the remark that he was better for shooting at game; and we packed up, and started again on our way home.

Nothing of importance happened further until past the middle of the afternoon, when we reached Osborne’s Lake again in a high wind, and got to Raymond’s stopping-place, just above Brigham’s winter quarters, Peter in the canoe, and I along the shore. A new acquaintance turned up here, — a young fellow of very light complexion and blue eyes ; six feet high, and weighing, as he said, from one hundred and ninetyfive to two hundred and five pounds, who teased me with questions about my gun, looking it over meanwhile, and dividing his admiration between that and a young lady who had grown up in the woods, a niece of Raymond’s, a slender girl of twenty or so, very well worth looking at. The shanty beyond had been left in charge of one man,— Bolton I believe they called him, — with three cross dogs, to see that the neighbors did not steal the stores. Raymond was a Frenchman, middle aged, dark, with oily curls parted in the middle, and perfectly sober for want of spirit. It was six days’ journey to the Ottawa villages and back; and two men who had been sent down some time before, to fill a two-gallon jug, had drank It all up before they got back.

Peter, having a roof over his head, replied to my proposal to push on, in the following words, in his blandest tone : “ I won’t go to-night, I ’ll go in the morning.” Whereupon I offered any money to Johnny Frost, the young fellow above mentioned, and then to Bolton, for relief from his tyranny, but to no purpose : Bolton could not leave his post, although willing enough ; and Johnny would not offend Peter by starting off with me that afternoon, and leaving the Indian to his meditations. I had two days at most to get out, and he would be glad to start in the morning, for ten dollars and do his utmost to get me out in season. This being the best arrangement I could make, it was communicated to Peter, and I had to swallow my resentment.

Bolton was lonesome, as might be expected, so I went over and shared his tea, all three dogs charging upon me as I approached the shanty. We found thread and needles, and passed the time after tea sewing on buttons, which had disappeared from my clothing. A more dilapidated suit never came out of the woods, even the boots being slit to get them on.

Next day, when we had been put across the lake at half past seven in the morning, and my two men had taken on their loads, Johnny struck into the woods at a tremendous pace upon the ten-mile carry which we had made coming up, and which he said was only eight. The horns were strapped upon his back upon the top of the roll of blankets, making him look like their original owner. When he stopped for breath, at the end of two miles, we were both astonished to see Peter making the turn in the road behind us. All the way across Peter kept up and never grumbled, so that in less than four hours we had reached the cachet upon the river, where we found our canoe, stores, and all uninjured, excepting that mice had stolen all the rice, five pounds, carrying it off no doubt to the spot where they laid up their winter’s provisions. A bear, if one had come along, would have eaten the flour, butter, pork, and sugar, and everything else that was edible, at one meal, and torn to pieces what he could not eat.

Johnny, being disencumbered of his burden, enlivened us by turning a hand-spring and whirling his body about at the same time, which he called his “ circus performance,” and coming to some carries, three together, called the “trois portages,” he took the canoe — for four men, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds perhaps, and full of sand — on his shoulders right through the whole of them, while we trudged on with the packs. We made some thirty miles down stream after twelve o’clock, and all the portages, Johnny never ceasing his exertions, but paddling like a Trojan and talking all the time. He had the stern, and I sat facing him, whirling down rapids backwards with the foam seething all around us, or pushing along shore with the horns on my shoulder where it was necessary to lighten the canoe. My young giant was a Scotchman, the youngest and smallest of eight who had been reared at the mouth of the river by emigrants from the old country. The father, now an old man of seventy, had been a champion in his day, and settled in these forests when they were inhabited only by game.

With curiosity greater than a Yankee’s, and great powers of observation joined to an active mind, the boy had gathered up into his memory a store of facts that might have furnished a youthful Daniel Webster. The velocity of sound and the theory of musical vibrations were familiar matters to him. He was full of information respecting the river, and the character and habits of the settlers, men and women. The wilderness, so solitary at this season, when the tide of enterprise sets in is a scene of busy life. Gangs are continually going up and down, felling and drawing and driving logs, drinking, frolicking, and fighting. Crowds of lively girls, from the whole country round, flock to the banks and settle wherever they can. Washerwomen line the deserted shores. All sorts of adventures, of the most unheard-of descriptions, with frequently fearful and fatal results, with logs, and men, and officers of the law, are of everyday occurrence. If the sheriff makes his appearance, the culprit has only to run out upon the loose logs floating in the river, where the officer would drown if he attempted to follow. And if the offence laid to his charge happens to stand excused in the opinion of the gang, they will be sure to raise the alarm in season when they see the officer approach. A kind of rude public opinion governs the place. Goodnature abounds, and they have a ready and unfeigned respect for any man among them who is really their superior in education or any other substantial distinction. I think the poor wretches, who can seldom read or write, and know arithmetic and geography only by their names, have a more sincere regard for education than anything else. They talk like children about going to school, how they mean to do it some day or other, and have always meant to do it, and lay plans for the future when they shall have a little money and a little wife in some civilized community. Rum, whiskey, and gin are their greatest enemies, with whom they keep on the best of terms. After all, it must be remembered they are a race of pioneers, and do a large portion of the work of the world.

In the fall, before this invasion takes place, it is the custom for neighbors to help any one of their number who may require it to finish his season’s work, by collecting at his house and having what is called “ a spree,” helping him with his work by day, and with his whiskey after dark. All the teams in the region will be busy these days, bringing company from far; and all the young girls make it a point to illuminate the scene with their presence. At it they go, and drink and dance all night long or as long as the whiskey lasts, the girls going in for the dance, but not for the liquor. How they get home, or when, is nobody’s business ; and you would not expect a literal account of all Johnny Frost had seen or heard of such adventures. For myself, I only regretted that the shortness of time would not permit me to witness such a scene of folly. There were two sprees the night we came out, within five miles of each other, and Johnny was exceeding sorrowful because he could go to neither of them.

A -little after dark we were again at Amyot’s, where we were received with unbounded enthusiasm. As 1 approached the door, whom should 1 see running to the yard and back, at a pace that was more fly than run and would have done credit to a fawn, but my little Philamène ? It was the ordinary speed with which she obeyed her mother’s bidding. Mother Amyot, smiling like a cabbage, led the way into an inner room, whither I had the curiosity to follow my men, and found the group gathered round a table, engaged in some very interesting ceremony in which I was invited to take part. The invitation was politely declined, and I went off about my business. All through the meal, which was far the best we had partaken of in any house for a month, the table being garnished with omelette and raspberry preserve, butter and cream, besides the omnipresent bread and pork and tea, Mother Amyot stood at my elbow and poured forth apologies in the purest and most unbroken native jargon, after this fashion : “ If it was n’t so for to a market, and a body could get a scrap of anything to cook, one might have a decent meal of victuals to offer a Christian ; but this miserable apology to a hungry man is all that we can procure.” Johnny had come to the table with the remark, “I’m not tired a bit. I’m as fresh as a bee.”

We slept the sleep of health, on the floor in the corner, four thicknesses of the heaviest blankets yielding luxurious rest; and in the morning before we got up it was sport to hear the mother order her two girls up and down to prepare our entertainment. “Fee' la men'! ” sounded with prodigious emphasis every instant; and thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, with not a moment’s cessation, went Philamène’s little bare feet on the hard floor. Occasionally the two girls, when they happened to meet in trotting about the room, would snap at each other like a couple of bantams, with the ejaculation, delivered in about a second, “ I ain't a going to do all the work ! ” and be off again for something else. The woman acted the part of boiler, and the children of motive apparatus, to a steamengine ; and the engine worked, with a little puff of steam once in a while from the safety-valve, till the work was done ; when Mother Amyot, wreathed in smiles, gracefully invited us to sit down at her humble board in a neat speech made up on the spot, exactly fitting the occasion.

At parting, when I gave Philamène a silver shilling, as she was sitting with the family at the table, with the remark that she might buy something with it, her mother replied, “ She will keep it to remember you by ” ; and 1 thought that I really owed her much more for the pleasure which she had conferred, and the activity, symmetry, and grace which she exhibited in this forest.

If we ever came that way again we must be sure to make her a call, was the last farewell of Mother Amyot.

The name of the Coulonge, my guides informed me, is corrupted from “ cou long,” the name of a neck of land and a fort that in former times was built upon it, near the mouth or somewhere else upon the river. Just below the landing I have mentioned, some four or or five miles from the mouth, is a tremendous fall. Wild and white, it roars and plunges into the depths, through a black, winding, rocky, rugged, and awful chasm between overhanging walls of rock. No timber or logs could ever pass it without being ground to pieces, and made valueless for the market; and the government have built, at great expense, a slide three quarters of a mile in length, to supersede a shorter one which in old time avoided the principal fall. With Johnny Frost for my guide, I went down the whole length of this slide. The slide is a trough, built of pine, five or six feet wide, and from about five feet in depth at the upper end tapering to three at the lower, where it overhangs a deep pool of still water quite below the rapids, into which the logs make their final plunge. It has a gradual declination, with shelving sides, widest apart at the top, and along the edge on each side a dizzy footing of a foot in width for the miserable wretches who have to walk upon it when it becomes necessary to start a log which has got wedged in with another. Underneath yawns at a frightful depth the black bed of the torrent; and the structure I have mentioned is built up from the bottom upon an immense frame-work of timber, loaded inside, for many feet in height, with stone, to give it stability, and clasped to the rock which it follows on the left bank in a line as straight as possible, by long iron rods stout enough to hold a lighthouse. It was dry inside, but in the run there is a foot or more of water in it at the mouth, deepening to three at the top, where the logs are let in one by one ; and the whole slide is slippery with water and slime. Johnny did not fail to point out an oak plank here and there and exhibit it with his knife, by cutting off the outer layer of mould at those points where, from a slight bend in the slide, it was liable to knocks on the side from the logs as they came down. It was not possible to make it absolutely straight without very much additional labor and expense of blasting, and it seems to answer every purpose, as, after a dozen years, it shows very little signs of wear.

A team, which was difficult to get on account of the spree, being at length obtained, we were once more upon the broad current of the Ottawa, where I soon bade good by to Johnny Frost. Safe at Havelock that night, we had an early start in the stage, and the next day were at Sand Point, where we dined and I got my baggage together, waiting for the train. At the last moment Peter came up to me from the bar-room, with his face three shades blacker, and looking more like a devil than anything human, blandly remarking, “ I have n’t had nothing extra.” I had intended to pay him for a day over his time, and had given him everything that was left except the tent; but he explained to me that I had made a mistake in reckoning, and I handed him a couple of dollars, and reminded him of a dollar which he had borrowed in going in at the grocery in Portage ; whereupon, and only then, he expressed his satisfaction at the treatment he had received, and remarked — what I had again and again suggested to him — that we might arrange a trip for another year. Good by to the best hunter upon the Ottawa !

George W. Pierce.