244 THE HALCYON IN CANADA. 



doubtless a fisher or lynx, as Joe had seen an animal 

 of some kind about camp that day. 



I must not forget the two red squirrels that fre- 

 quented the camp during our stay and that were so 

 tame they would approach within a few feet of us 

 and take the pieces of bread or fish tossed to them. 

 When a particularly fine piece of hard-tack was 

 secured they would spin off to their den with it 

 somewhere near by. 



Caribou abound in these woods, but we saw only 

 their tracks, and of bears, which are said to be plen- 

 tiful, we saw no signs. 



Saturday morning we packed up our traps and 

 started on our return, and found that the other side 

 of the spruce-trees and the vista of the lonely road 

 going south were about the same as coming north. 

 But we understood the road better and the buck- 

 board better, and our load was lighter, hence the dis- 

 tance was easier accomplished. 



I saw a solitary robin by the road-side and won- 

 dered what could have brought this social and half- 

 domesticated bird so far into these wilds. In La 

 Grand Brulure, a hermit-thrush perched upon a dry 

 tree in a swampy place and sang most divinely. We 

 paused to listen to his clear, silvery strain poured out 

 without stint upon that unlistening solitude. I was 

 half persuaded I had heard him before on first enter- 

 ing the woods. 



We nooned again at No Man's Inn on the banks 

 of a trout-lake, and fared well and had no reckoning 



