CAMP LIFE. 297 
preserve them over a month. They should be packed in 
barrels with layers of bark between, and w^ill prove more 
edible than when simply smoked ; by smoking they may 
be kept for years, and the fisherman long have the proud 
pleasure of offering to friend at breakfast a little of the 
salmon he killed and smoked himself the previous Sum- 
mer in Canada. 
In warm weather, fish merely salted cannot be kept 
long, and pickling in brine utterly destroys their flavor ; 
but if the latter method must be adopted, a pickle of two 
parts salt and one part common brown sugar will keep 
them forever. Before cooking, however, they should be 
well soaked. Pickling in vinegar with a few cloves is 
probably the best mode where it is possible. 
The gum for mending the canoes — and it is surprising 
liow large a hole it will fill — is made of one part rosin 
to three parts balsam gum, fused together. If the aper- 
ture is very extensive, a j)iece of linen saturated w^ith 
melted gam should be applied. In E'ew Brunswick and 
Maine it is usual to mix rosin and grease, which answers 
every purpose. 
To smoke fish, it is necessary to salt them in a tub, 
w^iere they can form a brine, and leave them thus for 
three days, and then hang them in a smoke-house, not 
too near the fire, for as many more, when they are to be 
packed in layers, separate. Fish are soused by being 
partially boiled, and having vinegar boiled in copper 
kettles mixed with allspice and poured over them. Iron 
turns the vinegar black, and hence this mode cannot be 
pursued in the woods. Small fish may be headed, 
cleaned and packed in a jar, which is then filled up with 
13* 
