54 NORTH AMERICAN MUSTELID^. 



the bait and smelled it, but had left it untouched. He had 

 next pulled up the pine tree that blocked the path, and gone 

 around the gun and cut the line which connected the bait with 

 the trigger, just behind the muzzle. Then he had gone back 

 and pulled the bait away, and carried it out on the lake, where 

 he laid down and devoured it at his leisure. There I found my 

 string. I could scarcely believe that all this had been done 

 designedly, for it seemed that faculties fully on a par with human 

 reason would be required for such an exploit, if done intention- 

 ally. I therefore rearranged things, tying the string where it 

 'had been bitten. But the result was exactly the same for three 

 successive occasions, as I could plainly see by the footprints 5 

 and what is most singular of all, each time the brute was care- 

 ful to cut the line a little back of where it had been tied before, 

 as if actually reasoning with himself that even the knots 

 might be some new device of mine, and therefore a source of 

 I hidden danger he would prudently' avoid. I came to the con- 

 clusion that that Carcajou ought to live, as he must be something 

 *^ at least human, if not worse. I gave it up, and abandoned the 

 road for a period. 



*' On another occasion a Carcajou amused himself, much as 

 usual, by tracking my line from one end to the other and de- 

 molishing my traps, as fast as I could set them. I put a large 

 steel trap in the middle of a path that branched off among 

 some willows, spreading no bait, but risking the chance that 

 the animal would ' put his foot in it' on his way to break a trap 

 at the end of the path. On my next visit I found that the trap 

 was gone, but I noticed the blood and entrails of a hare that 

 had evidently been caught in the trap and devoured by the 

 Carcajou on the spot. Examining his footprints I was satisfied 

 that he had not been caught, and I took up his trail. Proceed- 

 ing about a mile through the woods I came to a small lake, on 

 the banks of which I recognized traces of the trap, which the 

 beast had laid down in order to go a few steps to one side to 

 make water on a stump. He had then returned and picked up 

 the trap, which he had carried across the lake, with many a 

 twist and turn on the hard crust of snow to mislead his ex- 

 pected pursuer, and then again entered the woods.- I followed 

 for about half a mile farther and then came to a large hole dug 

 in the snow. This place, however, seemed not to have suited 

 him, for there was nothing there. A few yards farther on, 

 however, I found a neatly built mound of snow on which the 



