560 The Halcyon in Canada. 



fish worse. I struck, but not with enough decision, and before I 

 could reel up, my empty hook came back. The trout had carried it 

 in his jaws till the fraud was detected and then spat it out. He 

 came a second time, and made a grand commotion in the water, 

 but not in my nerves, for I was ready then, but failed to take the 

 fly and so to get his weight and beauty in these pages. As my 

 luck failed me at the last, I will place my loss at the full extent of 

 the law, and claim that nothing less than a ten-pounder was spirited 

 away from my hand that day. I might not have saved him, netless 

 as I was upon my cumbrous raft ; but I should at least have had 

 the glory of the fight and the consolation of the fairly vanquished. 



These trout are not properly lake-trout, but the common brook- 

 trout ( S. Fontanalis), The largest ones are taken with live bait 

 through the ice in winter. The Indians and the habitans bring 

 them out of the wood from here and from Snow Lake on their 

 toboggans, from two and a half to three feet long. They have 

 kinks and ways of their own. About half a mile above camp, we 

 discovered a deep oval bay to one side the main current of the river, 

 that evidently abounded in big fish. Here they disported them- 

 selves. It was a favorite feeding-ground, and late every afternoon 

 the fish rose all about it, making those big ripples the angler delights 

 to see. A trout, when he comes to the surface, starts a ring about 

 his own length in diameter ; most of the rings in the pool, when 

 the eye caught them, were like barrel-hoops, but the haughty trout 

 ignored all our best efforts ; not one rise did we get. We were 

 told of this pool on our return to Quebec, and that other anglers 

 had a similar experience there. But occasionally some old fisher- 

 man, like a great advocate who loves a difficult case, would set his 

 wits to work and bring into camp an enormous trout taken there. 



I had been told in Quebec that I would not see a bird in the 

 woods, not a feather of any kind. But I knew I should, though 

 they were not numerous. I saw and heard a bird nearly every day 

 on the tops of the trees about, that I think was one of the cross-bills. 

 The kingfisher was there ahead of us with his loud clicking reel. 

 The osprey was there, too, and I saw him abusing the bald eagle, who 

 had probably just robbed him of a fish. The yellow-rumpedwarbler 

 I saw, and one of the kinglets was leading its lisping brood about 

 through the spruces. In every opening, the white-throated sparrow 



