IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



of the reel. He and a companion setting 

 themselves to it, and their tackle not suc- 

 cumbing under excitement, would load two 

 men in the course of an afternoon with some 

 forty dozen trout — resting forever content 

 with the feat, one may hope. It is quite a 

 little knack by itself to avoid hooking the 

 small ones; we had good occasion to prac- 

 tise it. For some reason, hidden from our 

 eyes and intelligences, the heavy trout do 

 not harbour in this superb pool. It was 

 intimated to us as plainly by the great 

 plenty of the lesser fish and their reckless 

 demeanour, as by our failure to see a broad 

 back or attract a rise. 



Slopes that are not very perceptible under 

 the heel are easily detected when you 

 face about, and a thoroughly wetting rain 

 never made a pack seem lighter or a march 

 shorter; wet from without in and from with- 

 in out, tired and hungry, we felt it. a volup- 

 tuous release — so relative a thing is happi- 

 ness — to throw off our packs at Lac Cran 

 Rouge and limber up necks that were 

 stiffened in the posture of carrying. 



One last item stood on the program, — 



a digression of a few hundred yards 



through sodden caribou-barrens to the 



shallow sandy-margined Petit Lac des 



174 



