206 GUN, ROD, AND SADDLE. 



agreeable to have to draw a charge of snipe-shot, 

 and thus lose time, to substitute B B, or perhaps ball, 

 small game being expected and large game found. 

 The locality of which I am about to speak is at the 

 extreme northern end of Lake Simcoe, where one 

 uninterrupted forest extends northward for several 

 hundred miles to the banks of the Upper Ottawa, 

 except when an occasional lake or river occurs to break 

 the monotony of this ocean of timber. In wandering 

 about the neighborhood of my temporary residence, 

 about two miles from home I came upon one of those 

 beautiful little sheets of water so frequently found 

 upon the northern portion of the American continent. 

 This soon became a favorite retreat, for wild duck 

 were numerous on a portion where wild rice grew 

 luxuriantly, and wood pigeons and spruce grouse had 

 adopted it as a watering-place, owing to its freedom 

 from intruders. All devoted admirers of nature know 

 what a pleasure it is to be alone where none of man's 

 work mars the prospect, where every object the eye 

 rests upon is as it came from the Creator's hands, unsul- 

 lied and unchanged. As I sat on a rocky promontory to 

 seethe sun dip the horizon, perhaps visions of my distant 

 land and far-off friends flitting before me, I was struck 

 with the immense numbers of fish that kept breaking 



