CHAP. XXVI!. INDIAN MODES OF FISIIIXG. 107 



poi-cupiue, and small birds, is very lieavy, and resembles 

 in every particular the Montagnais arrow. Tliey make 

 their nets and fishing-hnes of caribou skin, and tlieir 

 hooks are formed of wood and bone, or wood and 

 copper, or altogether from the bones of the deer, and con- 

 sist of two pieces about four inches long, tied together 

 at the middle, which, when the fish bites and the fisher- 

 man strikes, separate and stretch across the jaws of the 

 huge trout which are found in the great lakes of the 

 table-land. These trout, often sixty pounds in weight, 

 are eagerly sought after by the Indians when the deer 

 are scarce. They catch them under tlie ice, but it is a 

 weary work, requiring great patience and long endurance, 

 for the 'Wagumesk,' as they term them, do not bite 

 freely in the winter months, and they very rarely succeed 

 in netting them. A couple of brace of these fish taken 

 by a party of six during several hours' patient attention, 

 and many trials in different parts of the lake, is considered 

 a successful hunt. If they could always depend upon 

 taking as many during the inclement season of the year, 

 the chances of starvation would be greatly lessened. But 

 fishing in winter is attended with much severe labour and 

 exposure. Ice not unfrequently five or six feet thick has 

 to be broken through and the hole kept open, a work in 

 itself laborious in the absence of proper boring tools or 

 ice-chisels, and always discouraging when the chances 

 of taking fish are doubtful. They cannot, like the Ojib- 

 ways of Eainy Lake, rely on the free-biting and voracious 

 pickerel or wall-eyed pike, which can always be secured 

 in the country about Lake Superior. 



There exists in the ' Memoirs of Sebastian Cabot ' a 



