SAKWASEW THE MINK 245 



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 Eussian 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 

 neighbours to a poultry-yard. Forty chickens in a sin 

 gle night will the little 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 cur 

 rent would keep in motion below the waterfall. Care 

 lessly, next day, he threw the fish-heads among the 

 stones. The second morning he found such a multi 

 tude of little tracks dotting the rime of the hoar frost 

 that he erected a tent back from the waterfalls, 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 



