LET US GO AFIELD 



may be imagined that in the spring these men would 

 be apt to fancy wildfowl and wildfowl eggs. 



The report was common on the Mackenzie that 

 the whalers had discovered where the white geese 

 nest and that in the spring they used a good many 

 of their eggs. The very color of this bird, like that 

 of the white fox, seems to mark it as the most north- 

 erly example of its family. We may fairly say, 

 therefore, that the white man has, to some extent 

 at least, gotten in on the most northerly breeding 

 grounds of our wildfowl. The last secret is known, 

 the last natural sanctuary is invaded. 



And it is the white man who is to be dreaded. In 

 old times, when the natives of this continent lived 

 altogether on wild game, they never wiped out or 

 perceptibly decreased a wild species. They had no 

 cold storage and no endless market; and they were 

 lazy and lived from hand to mouth; they did not 

 waste and they did not kill for the sake of killing. 

 These same traits exist today among the natives of 

 the north all the way to the Arctic Ocean. What 

 they kill may be called negligible as a factor of 

 decrease in migratory fowl. They kill fish, moose, 

 caribou, big stuff, and live along the lines of least 

 resistance. It is folly to accuse them of destroying 

 the wildfowl, for they do not. This is the judg- 

 ment of all the white men who live in that country 



192 



