A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



cooked the tenderloin and marrow-bones for luncheon'. The 

 meat proved quite palatable, as this caribou was a much 

 younger animal than the first one shot. 



Across a short portage was another long, narrow lake, similar 

 to the one where we had seen the caribou, and in paddling down 

 this sheet of water Howe shot a bull moose. Delayed by the 

 skinning and cutting-up of these two animals, we did not reach 

 our camping-place, on a small wooded island in Lac Caousa- 

 gouta, until after dark. The next afternoon, while Howe was 

 watching a small pond in the vicinity of the lake for game, a 

 bull caribou walked out into the open only a few yards distant 

 and promptly went down at the first shot. It proved to have 

 a head of about the same size as the first bull caribou shot at 

 Lac Louis Gill. 



As it took two seasons to float logs out of this country, the 

 pine had never been touched, and groves of these magnificent 

 trees were scattered here and there through the forests of 

 spruce, balsam, and birches. After hunting two days in the 

 vicinity of the lake, and finding our provisions practically ex- 

 hausted, we paddled through a series of lakes to the head of 

 MacLaren's Creek en route for civilization. For a day and a 

 half we cut through alders and pulled the canoes over beaver 

 dams until we finally emerged into the Pabelognany River. 

 We followed this through a long lake of that name, and started 

 along a rudimentary lumbering road across a nine-mile portage 

 to Lac Souci. That night we were obliged to camp in the 

 midst of a swamp, and were about to turn in supperless when 

 a spruce-grouse lighted in a tree above the tents. Its head 

 was promptly shot ofE with a rifle, but one bird did not make 

 a satisfactory meal for five hungry men. 



.We reached the lake about noon, and paddled along it to 

 Steamboat Rock Lake. We were now in territory leased by 

 the Laurentian Club, which owned a collection of cabins on 

 this lake. Here we met several friends and acquaintances . 



62 



