merge with them are choked with solid stands of aspens; the 

 somber dark green spruce stand upon the slopes; while here and 

 there some of the more exposed hillsides are devoid of trees but 

 are instead clothed in mosses and lichens of a most strange soft 

 olive-green-gray color. Upon these soft faces there are also often 

 great swaths of those stunted bushes common to the upland 

 muskegs which are of an intense rust-red color. As yet, there is 

 but one road that penetrates this land, and it migh^ appear to 

 anyone tearing along its gravel surface, enveloped in a cloud of 

 dust, that these forests are indeed lifeless and almost of a 

 oneness throughout. But if you walk into them you will find 

 they are quite otherwise. Before the coming of the airplane most 



The American Marten or Sable, famous for its valuable fur, 

 is a large relative of the weasels and of the Mink, Fisher, 

 and Pine Marten of Europe. 



travel was, of course, by water, but how anybody could find his 

 way through that maze of wandering channels and connecting 

 lakes is almost incomprehensible. The Hudson's Bay Company 

 and Catholic missionaries, however, did so over a century ago. 

 and there are considerable outposts all along the bigger rivers 

 and around the great lakes. Four of these lakes- the Great Bear, 

 Great Slave, Athabasca, and Winnipeg — are miniature inland 

 seas with long stretches of narrow sandy beach on which the 

 little cold waves break in miniature foamless surf. These look 

 singularly "dead" though they teem with fish. Most of the wild- 

 life gathers in the mouths of the rivers that pour into or flow out 

 of them, and a number of these are often black with ducks of all 

 kinds. 



HUNTERS IN THE SKY 



The second most noticeable group of birds in this province are 

 sea gulls. It is, of course, absurd to be startled at the sight of 

 these birds far from oceanic coasts and in the middle of a large 

 continent, but I must admit to experiencing a considerable shock 



when I come across them standing on rocks in deserts, pecking 

 about on prairies, perching on fir trees in mountain gorges, or 

 especially tearing up a dead hare on a muskeg slough in a spruce 

 forest five hundred miles from the nearest seacoast. Pattering 

 about the roofs of log cabins and paddling about the smaller 

 tree-girt ponds in the depth of the taiga spruce they seem alto- 

 gether out of place. It makes one wonder whether gulls have 

 always been as prevalent inland as they are today or as wide- 

 spread. It is certain that they have within the memory of man 

 considerably extended their ranges inland in many areas, but if 

 they have done so in the sub-Arctic, man has had nothing to do 

 with the matter. The commonest gull in this territory is the Her- 

 ring Gull, but there do occur a few Black-backed, and occasionally 

 some lone individuals of the great white Glaucous Gull of the 

 Arctic. 



The gulls seem to maintain a somewhat precarious existence 

 in this area, having two armies of rival killers and scavengers 

 to contend with. On the one hand are really extraordinary num- 

 bers of eagles and hawks (in the wider sense of that word) 

 several of which get their living principally along the rivers and 

 the shores of the lakes; on the other are even vaster battalions 

 of ravens of really startling size. We look upon the Raven as a 

 comparatively rare bird throughout large parts of the United 

 States, and it is almost everywhere regarded as a lone fellow and 

 as keeping to the more rugged and out-of-the-way places. In the 

 sub-Arctic they are perhaps the commonest birds, at least among 

 those that are readily seen, and in the Northwest Territories 

 their numbers are fantastic and, very unexpectedly, they operate 

 in large flocks like crows. They are enormous creatures with 

 huge gorgets that splay out from their chests way beyond their 

 folded wings when at rest. How so many manage to maintain a 

 living not even the local Amerindians can explain satisfactorily. 

 While it is true that all manner of carrion-eaters tend to gather 

 along roads on which many animals are customarily killed by 

 human traffic, I have passed along a two-hundred-mile stretch 

 and never been out of sight of a flock, one batch after another 

 rising before me at intervals of a few hundred feet. When, 

 however, we traveled even far away from any road by water or 

 on foot, we encountered the same multitudes in every open 

 place. Ravens will kill anything they can catch and overcome, 

 but for the most part they have to rely on the carrion left by 

 predators, and although they are omnivorous, they thrive most 

 on flesh. Just who kills enough of what animals in that country 

 to maintain these hungry hosts is more than 1 would attempt to 

 explain. 



Golden Eagles are common all over, as far as 1 have been 

 able to ascertain from bush pilots, the police and others who 

 spend their lives traversing this country; but there are places, 

 especially among rocky outcrops or gorges, where they positively 

 swarm. The bird called the "Osprey" in North America (namely, 

 Pandion haliaetus) is also found in this region but rather in the 

 eastern areas around the Hudson Bay. The variety and aggregate 

 numbers of other birds of prey is equally astonishing. Possibly 

 due to being unused to man as a whole or, contrarily, having 

 over millennia come to a sort of understanding with the local 

 Amerindians, these birds usually behave in a most surprising 

 manner. They will sit on the ground, on a rock, or a bough at 

 low level and just blink at you until you almost touch them, and 

 those perched on the tops of trees often have to be literally 

 shaken off before they consent to glide to the nearest available 

 vantage point. This gives one a splendid opportunity to observe 

 them at the closest ranges but leads to many frustrating experi- 

 ences because of the long list of species all resident together, all 

 of which seem to vary widely in both general tone and arrange- 



J 



