274 



EXPLORATIONS IN THE FAR NORTH 



dragged under when the ice becomes five or six feet thick. 

 Considerable labor is required to dig the deep trenches in which 

 to pass the pole under. Sticks are set up in a circle around the 

 ends of the net, which support the blanket of the fisherman 

 when the net is visited; the shelter being placed on the wind- 

 ward side, nothwithstanding this precaution it is bitterly cold 

 work, handling the net, when the hands are raised out of water. 

 Two persons are required to handle a net under the ice, one 

 attends to the net itself and the other, to the line by which it 

 is reset. 1 



The average fall catch made by the Indians at Grand Rapids 

 is about 11,000. The largest number secured by one family 

 was 1,000, the smallest, 140, the average, only 375. This was, 

 of course, an insufficient supply, and several families were 

 " starving " before February, that is, either living on hares, owls, 

 martens, and other fur-bearing animals from the traps, or steal- 

 ing from the log pens in which their more industrious neigh- 

 bors had cached their fish along the lake shore, to be hauled in 

 by dogs in the winter. 



Two specimens, skeletons, Grand Rapids. 



Acipenser rubicundus Le Sueur. Lake Sturgeon. 



Ni-me-o, C. 



A fair-sized sturgeon is occasionally taken from the nets far 

 off shore in Lake Winnipeg, but since the advent of the steam- 

 boats in 1872, they are never found about the post. Previous 

 to that time they were abundant at all seasons except during 

 the month of March (according to McLean). Richardson 2 

 states that, " The great rapid which forms the discharge of 

 the Saskatchewan into Lake Winnipeg, appears quite alive 

 with these fish in the month of June, and some families of the 

 natives resort thither at that time to spear them with a har- 

 poon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole." 

 " The Saskatchewan sturgeon weighs from ten to twenty pounds, 

 and rarely attains the weight of sixty." It is common in Cedar 

 and Moose Lakes and along the Saskatchewan. 



Sturgeon were caught at the narrows, the outlet of Cedar 

 Lake, throughout the winter of 1892. The isinglass, air blad- 



1 Vide Schoolcraft, Part II, p. 51. 

 i Fauna t p. 280. 



