THE FRENCH TRAPPER 53 



Fox Elver, overland to the Wisconsin, and down-stream 

 to the Mississippi. (4) Up the Ottawa through &quot;the 

 Soo &quot; to Lake Superior and westward to the hunting- 

 ground. Whichever way he went his course was mainly 

 up-stream and north: hence the name Pays d en Haut 

 vaguely designated the vast hunting-ground that lay 

 between the Missouri and the MacKenzie River. 



The French trapper was and is to-day as different 

 from the English as the gamester is from the merchant. 

 Of all the fortunes brought from the Missouri to St. 

 Louis, or from the Pays d en Haut to Montreal, few 

 escaped the gaming-table and dram-shop. Where the 

 English trader saves his returns, Pierre lives high and 

 plays high, and lords it about the fur post till he must 

 pawn the gay clothing he has bought for means to ex 

 ist to the opening of the next hunting season. 



It is now that he goes back to some birch tree 

 marked by him during the preceding winter s hunt, 

 peels the bark off in a great seamless rind, whittles out 

 ribs for a canoe from cedar, ash, or pine, and shapes 

 the green bark to the curve of a canoe by means of 

 stakes and stones down each side. Lying on his back 

 in the sun spinning yarns of the great things he has 

 done and will do, he lets the birch harden and dry to 

 the proper form, when he fits the gunwales to the rag 

 ged edge, lines the inside of the keel with thin pine 

 boards, and tars the seams where the bark has crinkled 

 and split at the junction with the gunwale. 



It is in the idle summer season that he and his 

 squaw for the Pierre adapts, or rather adopts, him 

 self to the native tribes by taking an Indian wife 

 design the wonderfully bizarre costumes in which the 



