INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 93 



looking for rat houses. Practice and experience 

 taught him to get over the ice in the least noisy 

 way. Instead of striking out one foot after the 

 other, he skated as the people of Holland do 

 by a motion of the hips. It is not a graceful 

 way, but it is easy on the skater of long distances 

 on new glare ice. Sliding, as it were, down to 

 one of the mud cones with spear firmly grasped, 

 he would drive it down into the center, and very 

 rarely missed transfixing one and at times two 

 of the highly perfumed little animals. 



The interior of a rat house is a saucer-like 

 hollow in the center, just a little above the level 

 of the water. From the edge of this there may 

 be three or four slideways into deep water. At 

 the least alarm the rats tumble down these in 

 a minute and only return when all danger is 

 past. When the inhabitants of a single house 

 number eight, ten or twelve and they huddle 

 together for warmth, they are often one on top 

 of another, and thus the spear passes thru two 

 at one thrust. The yet unfrozen mud is torn 

 away and the spear with the rats lifted out, dis- 

 patched and placed in the bag, and the hunter 

 bears down to another house and so on thru the 

 day. When the bag becomes too heavy it is 

 emptied out on the ice and the hunt continued. 

 Towards night the Indian retraces his road and 

 picks up the piles he left earlier in the day. His 



