230 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



upstream through shallow, rapid and pool with a 

 marvellous ease and deftness, had eyes like hawks 

 for game or game- sign, and were as keen for sport as 

 anyone could wish. 



Their habits were of the simplest kind. I had 

 spent part of the afternoon in fishing for the sea-trout 

 that were running up a rising water, and had excel- 

 lent sport, getting about a dozen good fish, up to 

 4 pounds in weight, on large loch flies. My Indian 

 companions were much interested in the process, and 

 helped me to land the fish ; but when supper-time 

 came, instead of fresh fried trout, they preferred, 

 strange to relate, the carcass of a deceased and 

 apparently diseased salmon picked up on a bank en 

 route. Everyone to his taste, thought I. The rather 

 tedious work of frying our supper over a fire of damp 

 wood at the mouth of the tent may possibly have 

 influenced their choice. Cookery is not a strong point 

 with the typical Red Indian. 



On our way up the river, and a few miles from the 

 mouth, we had passed a natural barrier of fallen and 

 drifted spruce-trees, that necessitated a portage of 

 about half a mile through the forest to another canoe 

 above the barrier. A wilder scene of natural con- 

 fusion I have seldom, if ever, witnessed than that 

 presented by this mass of huge monarchs of the 

 forest, some of them at least 9 feet in diameter, and 

 from 150 to 200 feet long, lying heaped in a tangled 

 mass for some hundreds of yards along the river- 

 bed in every imaginable position. This barrier had 

 evidently been the work of years, and was a startling 

 testimony to the strength and height of spring floods. 

 Some great fallen tree had once, no doubt, stuck in 

 its passage down on a flood, and every season had 



