184 STURGEON-SPEARING. 
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. 
