330 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



occupies the stern of the canoe, while the younger takes " the 

 post of honour " forward. The murmur of water-falls and rapids 

 drowns their exclamatory ughs, and the frequent splash that 

 would else disturb the pervading stillness. With steady, stealthy 

 speed the birchen boat enters the rapid, and cutting through its 

 white waters, glides smoothly over the fall and into the " tail " of 

 the pool above, or across the quiet " reach." The blazing torch, 

 stuck in a cleft stake, and leaning over the bow of the canoe, 

 glares with dazzling brightness. The flame and shadow, swayed 

 by ripples, conceal the spearers' forms, and bewilder the doomed 

 salmon. Like moths, they sidle towards the fatal light. Their 

 silvery sides and amber-coloured eye-balls glisten through the 

 rippling water. The dilated eyes, the expanding nostrils, and 

 compressed lips of the swarthy canoe men, fitly picture their eager 

 and excited mood. A. quick, deadly aim, a sudden violent swirl, and 

 some momentary convulsive struggles tell the rest. The aquatic 

 captive, with blood and spawn, and slime and entrails, besmear 

 the inside of the canoe. During a single night, from fifty to two 

 hundred salmon may be thus slaughtered, and half as many more 

 lacerated in their efforts to escape ; the pools, at such seasons, 

 being too shallow to afford certain safety in retreat. The bed of 

 coarse boughs, the chill and hungry awakening at sunrise, the 

 mixture of peril and fagging which form the return down a 

 swift stream, broken by falls and rocks and rapids, with here and 

 there a tedious portage, over which several hundred pounds of 

 fish and bruised and blistered canoes must be transported, all 

 these exertions appear but natural to Indians, and not worthy of 

 comparison as against the fruit of so much toil, converted at last 

 into six, eight, or ten dollars' worth of provisions and store-goods, 

 or perhaps, but rarely, a demi-john of home-made rum. The 

 speared salmon are sold to traders at their own price, as the de- 

 terioriating mode of capture so much depreciates the fish. The 

 illegality of the purchase or exchange, also, often is pleaded as a 



