210 GUN, ROD, AND SADDLE. 



satisfied to select three or four for present use and 

 hide the others, with my birch-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 cov- 

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

 companion were too wide awake, or had left the 

 neighborhood. 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 backwoodman's fare. 

 In company of a Chippewa Indian I also tried fish- 

 ing 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 



