218 HUNTING CAMPS. 



the beaver. For some considerable time past in the prov- 

 ince in which we were hunting, beaver have enjoyed com- 

 plete protection, and up to a date that is still some years 

 ahead no beaver pelts may legally be sold. This law is, 

 of course, occasionally evaded, and here and there a family 

 of beaver is destroyed, their skins hidden or carried out of 

 the country, rolled in the centre of a pack, to be offered 

 at half their value to some not too scrupulous fur-trader. 

 In the country through which we were travelling, how- 

 ever, no such poaching had taken place, with the result 

 that each stream was dammed, pools spread upon the 

 tracks, and every other alder swamp carried a full head of 

 water. Although there appeared to be a super-abundance 

 of beaver, one rarely saw the animals themselves, but their 

 houses, and the trees, often of astonishing girth, which they 

 had felled, lay in every direction. Sometimes just after 

 sunset, when the musk-rats were out, you caught sight of 

 a beaver or two on their way to their nightly tasks. More 

 frequently, returning late in the canoe along the shore of 

 some lake, you might hear two or three reports, like minia- 

 ture pistol shots, as the creatures, surprised by the gliding 

 craft, dived with a splash of their immense flat tails. 



Having up to this time had no experience with caribou 

 except in Newfoundland, it was difficult to allow at once 

 for the different conditions now to be encountered. Most 

 of our hunting led us into woods where, in Newfoundland, 

 one would never look for caribou, but would endeavour to 

 pass through them as quickly as might be, in the hope of 

 finding barrens or open ground above. But here all the 

 high ground was densely wooded, and caribou-hunting for 

 the first week resolved itself into the watching of marshes, 

 none of which were more than a mile in extent, and all of 

 which gathered around the inlet and outlets of a chain 

 of lakes. After spending some fruitless days at this dull 

 form of sport, I decided to leave the marshes, upon which 



