234 HUNTING CAMPS. 



having searched over a good many acres of ridge and 

 marsh, we failed to find any more material sign of 

 caribou than was afforded by a rare track, and once, 

 in a thicket of spruce, a single tree stripped of its bark 

 and branches some seven weeks previously by a stag 

 cleaning the velvet from his horns. 



For the rest, the woods were not wanting in occasional 

 squirrels, ruffed grouse, called in Canada the hardwood 

 partridge, the Canadian grouse, which also owns the 

 local name of spruce partridge, porcupines, and hares. 

 Yet for the most part the Canadian woods are silent, 

 so silent that on a still day you may sit for an hour at 

 a time without hearing or seeing sign of life. One 

 animal only is omnipresent you come across its work 

 many times a day the beaver. For some considerable 

 time past in the province in which we were hunting, 

 beaver have enjoyed complete protection, and up to a 

 date that is still some years ahead no beaver pelts may 

 legally be sold. This law is, of course, occasionally 

 evaded, and here and there a family of beaver is 

 destroyed, their skins hidden or carried out of the 

 country, rolled in the centre of a pack, to be offered at 

 half their value to some not too scrupulous fur-trader. 

 In the country through which we were travelling, how- 

 ever, no such poaching had taken place, with the result 

 that each stream was damned, pools spread upon the 

 tracks, and every other alder swamp carried a full 

 head of water. Although there appeared to be a super- 

 abundance of beaver, one rarely saw the animals them- 

 selves, but their houses, and the trees, often of astonishing 

 girth, which they had felled, lay in every direction. 

 Sometimes just after sunset, when the musk-rats were 

 out, you caught sight of a beaver or two on their way 



