NARRATIVE. 77 



He was a huge fellow, with a great head, covered with dishevelled hair, 

 yet not ill-shapen, and having something of the picturesqueness of a 

 bowlder of granite. The woman had on a sort of cloak of white hare- 

 skins, with a hood attached, which was drawn up over her head. Some- 

 body gave the man a cigar, and showed him which end to put into his 

 mouth and how to light it, which he did, and smoked away very clev- 

 erly. Signs were made to him to give the woman a puff, but she un- 

 luckily put the lighted end into her mouth, and after that good- 

 naturedly but firmly declined to have anything to do with these new- 

 fangled pipes. 



The wind meantime had risen, and coming out from the lee of the 

 islands into an open bay, we found the head wind and sea too strong 

 to be contended with, and so put back into a cove, the entrance of 

 which we had just passed. Passing through a narrow strait we came 

 into a quiet bay that seemed like a land-locked lagoon, but was in 

 fact separated from the lake only by a couple of islands. The sides 

 of the cove rose steeply from the water's edge with only a narrow 

 circlet of sand between the water and the trees, in some places hardly 

 leaving room to pass outside. Thus protected, the little bay, with its 

 fringe of birches and arbor-vitses, as unruffled as some inland pool of 

 a still September afternoon, presented a strong contrast with the 

 turbulence of the weather without. I climbed up the steep bank, 

 which was everywhere covered with deep beds of moss, and penetra- 

 ted with some difficulty to the outside of the island, for an island it 

 was, and the reader must understand that at the " Petits Ecrits" we 

 quitted the shore, which here trends to the northward, and pursued 

 a westerly course among the almost continuous islands, intending to 

 pass outside of St. Ignace. 



The spruce woods here were very dense, and encumbered with 

 fallen birch trunks, as if the spruces had usurped the place of a 

 birch forest. Part way a sort of path was broken, and fresh tracks 

 of some large animal, sinking a foot deep into the moss; prob- 

 ably a lynx, as they abound here. Hare tracks in all directions. 

 Snares were set in the evening, and two hares caught. The method 

 of setting these snares, which is extensively practised by the Indians, 

 is this. A well-frequented hare-path being selected, is blocked up 

 by a fence of sticks, leaving only a narrow passage over which a 



