114 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE OUANANICHE 



acquainted with it from the time of their earliest 

 visits to the great lake. Of this the mention of it 

 in their literature leaves no shadow of doubt. Nearly 

 two and a half centuries ago, De Quen, the Jesuit mis- 

 sionary, who was the first white man to set foot upon 

 the shore of Lake St. John, described it, in his Relation 

 of 1647, as a salmon ; and we have already seen in the 

 chapter on the philology of the fish, that in the oldest 

 book of the Moutagnais mission at Betsiamitz, written 

 by Rev. Father Masse, a contemporary of De Quen, 

 its Indian name, " ouananiche," is given. It is true 

 that not many American anglers visited Lake St. John 

 to fish for ouananiche before the construction of the 

 railway, though a number of British officers did so, 

 and so did many Canadians. It is also true that Hal- 

 lock and Creighton were among the first to make 

 known the game qualities of the fish to American 

 anglers. But it is probable that very few of those 

 who angle for ouananiche, even as far north of Lake 

 St. John as Tschotagama, Lac a Jim, or the Fifth Falls 

 of the Mistassini, have any idea of the wide distribu- 

 tion of this particular member of Salmonidce, even in 

 the waters that are tributary to Lake St. John. I 

 have discovered no Indian and no surveyor who will 

 undertake to set a northern limit for the occurrence 

 of the ouananiche in the valleys of the Ashuapmou- 

 chouan and Mistassini rivers. But there is abun- 

 dant evidence that they are found at least two hun- 

 dred and fifty miles north of Lake St. John, in the 

 Peribonca ; and Lake Manouan, the headwaters of one 

 of its principal branches, contains large numbers of 

 them. Their existence there has been reported by Mr. 



