3o 4 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



that little ball of down to have understood. He told it he would 

 come back for it next winter and to be sure to have its best black 

 coat on. For the little first-year minks wear dark coats, almost as 

 fine as Russian sable. Yes — he reflects, poking it back to the 

 hole and retreating quickly so that the mother will return — better 

 leave it till the winter ; for wasn't it Koot who put a mink among 

 his kittens, only to have the little viper set on them with tooth and 

 claw as soon as its eyes opened ? Also mink are bad neighbors 

 to a poultry-yard. Forty chickens in a single night will the mink 

 destroy, not for food but — to quote man's words — for the zest 

 of the sport. The mink, you must remember, like other pot- 

 hunters, can boast of a big bag. 



The trapper did come back next fall. It was when he was 

 ranging all the swamp-lands for beaver-dams. Swamp lands often 

 mean beaver-dams ; and trappers always note what stops the 

 current of a sluggish stream. Frequently it is a beaver colony 

 built across a valley in the mountains, or stopping up the outlet of 

 a slough. The trapper was sleeping under his canoe on the banks 

 of the river where the swamp tumbled out from the ravine. Before 

 retiring to what was a boat by day and a bed by night, he had set 

 out a fish net and some loose lines — which the flow of the current 

 would keep in motion — below the waterfall. Carelessly, next 

 day, he threw the fish-heads among the stones. The second morning 

 he found such a multitude of little tracks dotting the rime of the 

 hoar frost that he erected a tent back from the waterfall, and 

 decided to stay trapping there till the winter. The fish-heads 

 were no longer thrown away. They were left among the stones in 

 small steel-traps weighted with other stones, or attached to a loose 

 stick that would impede flight. And if the poor gyrfalcon could 

 have seen the mink held by the jaws of a steel-trap, hissing, snarling, 

 breaking its teeth on the iron, spitting out all the rage of its wicked 

 nature, the bird would have been avenged. 



And as winter deepened, the quality of minks taken from the 

 traps became darker, silkier, crisper, almost brown black in some 



