THE LITTLE TOWN OF BATHURST, AT MOUTH OF NEPISIQUIT. 

 STARTING-POINT FOR TRIP UP RIVER 



OUTFITTING AND 



XXI 



A BLACK BEAR HUNT 



THE log fire burnt cheerily, shooting aloft showers of red sparks 

 into the velvety darkness of the summer night, lighting up 

 the slanting tops of the pines and the black arrow-heads of the 

 fir trees which girthed the forest camp. The flames, as they greedily 

 fed into the centres of the great rock-maple trunks, hissed and 

 crackled, throwing dancing discs of light over the coarse masses of 

 shaggy black hair and the tawny faces of my two Indian hunters, 

 Noel (Christmas) and Nicola Glode (Cloud), as they sleepily watched 

 the wreaths of blue smoke curling upwards from their pipes, and 

 assumed that grave impressive inscrutable pose of countenance 

 which is characteristic of the North American Indian in his attitude 

 of ease wherever you find him. 



Bounded abruptly on all sides but the river by the naked stems 

 of the forest, our camp was pitched in a clearing on a point of land 

 jutting out into a famous trout pool known as the Devil's Elbow, 

 where, deep in the innermost recesses of the backwoods, the impetu- 

 ous Nepisiquit, most enchanting of all the woodland streams 

 of New Brunswick, hushes its brawling for a brief space and grows 

 calm in an oily sheet of sable foam-flecked still-water. Stern 

 and savage, yet lovely in its wild wayward grace, there stretched 

 around us on every hand the unbroken wilderness which covers 

 the whole of the central portion of northern New Brunswick, attain- 





