134 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



A long time ago — I remember the woods and waters were very 

 bright in colour then, for I was a boy — there lived a bachelor 

 Muskrat in a small pond not far from my home. After watching 

 him some evenings, I set a trap to catch him, baited with a rosy 

 Spitzenberg. Early in the morning I was at the pond ; the trap 

 was sprung, and peering into it through a small hole bored in the 

 end, I saw crouched in the corner an animal with long whiskers 

 and bright eyes, that appeared to my happy vision as big as a 

 polar bear, but by the musky smell I knew it was my friend the 

 Muskrat. If the woods and waters were bright the night before, 

 they glowed with fire now, and the sun rose in the east. I carried 

 my prize home in the trap, and tying a string to his leg, after get- 

 ting somewhat bitten in the operation, secured him in the shed, 

 and tried to tame him, but quite unsuccessfully. He refused to 

 eat apples or cake, though always ready for a piece of my finger. 

 When I could watch my captive no longer, I went to bed to dream 

 of him, while he, cutting the string with his sharp incisors, gnawed 

 a hole in the door of the shed, and made his escape. I followed 

 his track the next day in the light snow that lay on the ground, 

 and it led in a straight line to the pond from whence he came. I 

 set my trap again, but though I tempted him with the rosiest 

 of apples, he never was induced to enter. At this time the pond 

 in which he resided froze over, and gave me an opportunity of 

 getting out to the centre, where he had built for himself a dome 

 as classically correct as the Pantheon. I confided my secret to a 

 comrade, and we consulted an old work on the Northwest Fur 

 Trade, and there learned the Indian manner of catching these 

 animals. We accordingly provided ourselves with a small net, 

 and going down to the pond with a pickaxe, when school was out, 

 we commenced a regular siege. First we cut four holes in the ice, 

 at opposite sides of, and close by the house ; then with bent sticks 

 pushed the corners of the net through the holes, and my comrade 

 fastened them at the four corners, thus stretching the net beneath 

 the house in such a manner as to prevent the animal diving down 

 in the water. By the time this advance had been effected it began 

 to grow dark, so I hastily with my pickaxe cut a hole in the top 

 of the house and looked in. There was nothing there but the 



