234 CANADIAN WILDS. 



ilies cutting wood ana choring about their 

 abodes they then went to work in the lumber 

 camps for February and March. On April 15th 

 they made a start for the interior once more, 

 this time each hauling a flat sled loaded in equal 

 weight with the following provisions: 80 Ibs. 

 pork, f 10.00 ; 10 Ibs. butter, $1.50 ; 180 Ibs. flour, 

 |3.20; 3 Ibs. tea, fl.05; 12 Ibs. sugar, 60 cts; 

 1 Ib. soda, 5 cts.; salt and pepper, 10 cts; $16.50. 



With their other things this made a dead 

 weight of about one hundred and eighty pounds 

 per sled. On mixed ice and bush walking at 

 the season when the snow is crusted a man will 

 average, with such a load, twenty-five or thirty 

 miles a day. 



There are many hunters that are quite su- 

 perstitious about parting with a single skin 

 until the hunting or trapping season is over and 

 then the whole collection is sold 'en-blac.' Other 

 hunters again will sell their fall hunts less a 

 skin. This reserved skin may be only a mus- 

 quash. They keep this, as they say, to draw 

 other skins when next they go trapping. The 

 men I am writing about had no necessity to sell 

 in the winter, and therefore kept all till the 

 spring. The commencement of June is still con- 

 sidered spring in the North country. 



The total catch and the prices realized are 

 as follows: 38 martens at $10, $380; 10 mink 



