I04 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



for the rods and traps. A fine quartet they are French 

 Canadians all, of the voyageur type, with all the skill of 

 the Indian in wood-craft, and ten times his courage; brown 

 and strong from trapping and lumbering all their lives, grave 

 and serious-looking, but with a keen vein of humor; shrewd 

 and hard-bargaining, but thoroughly honest; unable perhaps 

 to write their names, but with a genuine polish of manner 

 which compels respect by its dignified deference. One can 

 make companions and friends of such men as these. Their 

 costume is simple enough: home-made trousers of the home- 

 woven gray woolen etoffe du pays, tucked in the wrinkled legs of 

 the long moccasins tied below the knee, which, in contradistinc- 

 tion from town-made bottcs francaises, are known as bottcs 

 sauva ges ; a flannel shirt with a gay kerchief in a broad fold 

 over the chest; a soft felt hat of Protean shapes and uses, 

 with a cherished fly or two stuck in the crown perhaps, if la 

 blonde is near her cavalier, a feather or wild-flower in the 

 band. 



The volume of the rapids, the swiftness, complexity, and 

 heavy swirls of the currents, make canoeing most exciting, and 

 at times a little dangerous, on these waters. They are too 

 deep for the use of setting-poles, and everything depends on 

 strength and skill with the paddle. Mounting the Grande 

 Decharge, when it is fifteen feet above summer level and 

 running like . a mill-race, is hard work, but, taking advan- 

 tage of every eddy, gripping rocks with hand and paddle, 

 handing along by the tops of the submerged alders, passing 

 between branches of overhanging trees undermined by the 

 current, by sheer dint of hard paddling we got up a mile and 

 a half. Now for the traverse. The canoe sweeps down and 

 across in a beautiful curve, head up-stream and the paddles 

 flashing like lightning, except when a tourniquet catches her 

 and spins her half round a circle, while Joseph, with a sidelong 

 sweep, decapitates a wave which threatens to lop over the 

 gunwale. u Un animal d?un tourniquet'' 1 he says, pointing 



