184 STURGEON-SPEAKING. 



sturgeon five or six hundred pounds in weight, 

 with only a frail canoe, which the slightest in- 

 equality of balance will upset in an instant, 

 requires a degree of skill, courage, and dexterity 

 that only a lifetime's practice can bestow. 



I have already said the Fraser has no falls 

 below Fort Hope, but a great many stiff rapids ; 

 below these rapids it widens out into long slowly- 

 running shallows, generally speaking having large 

 sand and gravel-banks bars, as the miners call 

 them, and on these bars the Indians live during 

 the fishing-season. The time for fishing being 

 generally soon after sunrise, four canoes, each 

 manned by two Indians, usually start for stur- 

 geon-capture ; the paddler, who squats in the 

 stern, looks in the direction in which the canoe is 

 to go, not, as we sit in rowing, with our backs to 

 the bow, but facing it ; he is always chosen for 

 his greater strength, tact, and dexterity with the 

 paddle, for on his skill depends in a great degree 

 the safety and success of the spearman. 



The spearman stands in the bow, armed with 

 a most formidable spear the handle,* from 

 seventy to eighty feet long, is made of white pine 

 wood ; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point, 

 in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing 



* Vide Illustration. 



