FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 57 



of circumstances, when you often have your pole snapped, by 

 being caught between rocks &c., and have to pick up your spare 

 pole, without losing your balance, and in time to keep swing, and 

 perhaps to fend off from some dangerous rock or snagg. 



As a general rule you work your poles on the same side of 

 the canoe, by a delicate touch drawing the canoe towards the 

 " hold " you get in the bottom, or edging it away from it, as 

 occasion requires. 



In the same way in paddling you steer and direct your 

 canoe by slightly turning, orrather " cutting" outwards or inwards 

 the blade of your paddle. By this means when paddling alone 

 and on one side of the canoe only, you send the canoe straight 

 ahead, or even turn it towards the side you are paddling on. 



There were two kinds of birch-bark canoes which we used, 

 according to the tribe of Indians we were with. The Micmac, 

 belonging to the tribe of that name, were used chiefly on the 

 Northern rivers — the Restigouche, the Metapedia, (along the 

 valley of which the Canadian Pacific Railway now runs, but which 

 was then little known) the Nepisiquit, and the Miramichi all 

 falling into the Bay of Chaleur and Gulf of St. Lawrence. These 

 canoes were larger, heavier and better sea boats, but slower and 

 not so handy in a rapid river as the other. 



The other the Milicete was used by the Milicete 

 Indians of the St. John river and its tributaries, and was 

 extremely light, fast, and hand)'. 



My own pet canoe (Milicete) was made of one single sheet of 

 birchbark without a single patch, about 18 feet long, was so 

 light that I could take it up by the centre bar, swing it on to my 

 shoulders, and carry it bottom upwards, across a " portage " ; and 

 yet was rooomy enough to carry four men and some baggage. 



In these are stowed guns, fishing rods, baggage and cooking 

 things, and the provisions for the trip — generally consisting of 

 little else than flour, salt-pork, tea, (in large quantity) and sugar 

 and molasses or syrup, for we depended almost entirely on our 

 fishing-rods and guns for everything else. One thing the Back 

 Woodsman or Indian Hunter never forgets and never goes 

 without and that is his axe. The axe there takes the place, and 

 more than the place, of the cutlass of the Trinidad hunter. 



With it the North American ^ oodsman cuts down the trees 

 for the night's fire and the poles for I In' camp, and with the aid of 

 the piece of wood (speedily cut out on the spot for the purpose) 

 peels the- large sheets of bark generally used to cover the camp with 

 and make canoes of, &c. 



Thus equipped we used to start off, it might he for a week, 



it might be for a month or two, to follow the course of 801 t' 



these magnificent rivers for hundreds of miles, generally ascend- 



