382 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



bark, till I could send across for them in the morning ; 

 but a couple of bears, judging from the different- sized 

 tracks, got at my cache during the night, and had the 

 bad taste to maul and pull about what they did not eat, 

 so that I rejected it as unfit for food. Fish I have 

 always found the most tempting bait with which to 

 attract Bruin into a trap, so I built a bower-house and 

 hung up the bait at the end of it, with my trap nicely 

 covered with leaves ; still all would not do, he and his 

 companion were too wide awake, or had left the neigh- 

 bourhood. This lake I often visited again, and with 

 equal success ; the influences of weather never appeared 

 to affect the fishes' appetites, and they are always a 

 welcome addition to a backwoodsman's fare. In 

 company of a Chippewa Indian, I also tried fishing 

 through the ice. The method adopted is simple ; 

 viz., cutting a hole two or three feet in Diameter, over 

 which is built a small hut to keep out the light and 

 sufficiently large for the fisherman to sit inside, the 

 end of his fish- spear protruding through the top. 

 With an artificial minnow on a few feet of line in the 

 left hand, and weighted so as to make it readily sink, 

 you attract the pike to the surface, when, with a 

 dexterous blow, you drive your leister home. Very 

 much like poaching ; still, where fish are so abundant 

 and wanted for food, this system becomes less 

 culpable. 



At the northern end of Lake Couchachin, the 

 beautiful Severn, after tumbling over a grand fall, 

 starts on its erratic, precipitous course for Lake 

 Huron. To visit this spot was not more than seven 

 or eight miles of water, through a labyrinth of islands, 

 and along the most picturesquely beautiful shore, 



