A TBICK UPON THE MABTTN TRAPPERS. 331 



and a few -of the larger bones, and they'll be picked mighty 

 clean at that. You've seen a martin trap, or if you hav'n't, 

 I'll try and describe one so that you'll understand it. It's a 

 very simple contrivance, and if a martin was not a good 

 deal more stupid than a goose, he'd never be caught in one 

 of them. We drive down a couple of rows of little stakes, 

 plantin' the stakes close together, and leaving between the 

 rows a space of six or eight inches. The rows are may be a 

 foot and a half long. We then cut and trim a long saplin', 

 say five or six inches across at the butt, and leaving one end 

 on the ground, set the other, may be two feet high, with a 

 kind of figure four, so that when it falls, it will come down 

 between the rows of stakes. We fix the bait so that a mar- 

 tin in getting at it, will have to go in between the rows of 

 stakes, and displace the trap sticks, when down comes the 

 pole upon him and crushes him to death. We talk about a 

 line of traps, because we blaze a line of trees, sometimes for 

 miles, and set a trap every twenty or thirty rods. I've had 

 a line of a dozen miles or more, in my day, in a circle 

 around my campin' ground. In minding our traps, we fol- 

 low the line of marked trees from one to the other, and so 

 never miss a trap, nor get lost in the woods. 



' I mind once, a good many years ago, Crop and I was 

 over towards the St. Eegis, on a cruise after martin and 

 sable, and anything else in the way of game we could pick 

 up. I'd laid out my trappin' arrangements on a pretty large 

 scale, and was doin' a little better than midlin', when 1 

 found that my traps were sprung by some animal that helped 



