morris ALGONQUIN DAYS 35 



It was delightful indeed to note this fearlessness among the 

 wild animals. Jerry Muskrat was obviously far more afraid 

 of Billy Mink than he was of me. This was mainly the golden 

 harvest of sanctuary, for in settled parts the muskrat is cautious, 

 if not timid. Last August as we paddled down through the 

 rapids below White's Lake in a very narrow reach J of the Mada- 

 waska, we almost ran into a muskrat. At first we thought it 

 had been taken by surprise and was trying to escape us by diving ; 

 but we soon found it was feeding quite unconcernedly. We 

 stopped paddling to watch the little creature foraging right 

 beside our canoe; the water was so shallow that when the rat 

 reached its favorite patch of cauliflower, the little leaf-rosettes of 

 pipewort growing in the bed of the stream, its tail was still "wig- 

 gling" above the surface with all the animation of an undocked 

 terrier pup's, and so close to us that once in a while it would 

 flip against the side of our canoe. Presently under stress of 

 breeze or current we drifted over it just as it rose to the surface; 

 it dived this time and took shelter under a log; one of the strangest 

 of sights! to watch an air-breathing animal submerge and glide, 

 smooth as a fish, into its aquatic lair. Again it came to the 

 surface, just below us, in deeper water where the channel widened 

 out; and this time when we paddled up, it showed us a clean pair 

 of heels and disappeared with a farewell smack of its tail. 



The mink, of course, is proverbially bold. One day as we 

 were paddling back to camp with our mail, we noticed a mink 

 standing on a little rock, marooned (as it were) in mid channel 

 behind our island. Taking a quiet stroke in its direction, we 

 allowed the canoe to drift up to the rock, expecting the mink to 

 beat a hasty retreat and escape by diving. To our surprise, 

 even consternation, the mink deliberately rose up, snuffed the 

 breeze with enquiring nostril, and then, crawling down the stone, 

 plunged into the water and swam straight for us; on reaching the 

 canoe, it actually tried to clamber up the smooth side and get over 

 the gunwale. This didn't seem to us to be playing the game 

 according to Hoyle, and it was some time before the true solution 

 occurred to me, I had been fishing the day before, and the smell 

 of bass was evidently still perceptible to this sharp-nosed fisher- 

 man of our native waters. 



