204 ANTICOSTI. 



required, the materials for making them lie close at hand, 

 in the shape of boards of all shapes and sizes with which 

 the beach is strewed. Firewood is plentiful enough, 

 goodness knows, in the Canadian and New Brunswick 

 forests; but then there is the trouble of chopping it. 

 Here the best and driest of firewood, cast up by the sea 

 and dried by the sun, is piled in immense profusion along 

 the beach. In addition to all these luxuries, the traveller 

 or the sportsman is, for the time being, also lord of the 

 manor, and can always keep his larder well supplied with 

 game or fish, ducks, geese, salmon, trout, herrings, cod- 

 fish, capelin, or lobsters. One or more of these delicacies 

 can generally be procured at short notice, and in spring, 

 fresh eggs in abundance. 



" On two occasions in Anticosti I camped entirely by 

 myself for two or three days at a time, my men being 

 weatherbound with the baggage. There are so many little 

 things to be done on these occasions, that one never feels 

 the least lonely. One time I shot and skinned two bears. 

 My bill of fare was usually breakfast, tea and biscuit ; 

 dinner, tea, fried pork or fish, and pancakes, i. e. flour and 

 water fried in pork fat; supper (the meal of the day), 

 boiled black duck or goose, tea, and biscuit. When I am 

 in a hurry I cook a bird as follows : Having lit my fire, I 

 put on a kettleful of water with a slice of salt pork in it ; 

 by the time the water boils the bird is plucked or skinned, 

 as the case may be. Chopping it into quarters, I pop it 

 into the kettle with a little pepper, and if possible an 

 onion and a doughboy. In twenty minutes it is cooked. 

 A black duck thus treated is not a bad dinner for a 

 hungry man ; but a goose is a better one. A man with 



