XVIII 

 AFTER VIRGINIAN DEER 



1893 



ON a bright morning early in the month of November the 

 daily steamer took me and guide with camp equipment from 

 the little town of Mafctawa, in Ontario, up the Ottawa River to 

 Seven League Lake, where we joined two professional hunters, 

 and I was to be initiated in the art of hunting the Virginian, or 

 white-tailed deer. Mattawa as it gradually receded from our 

 view looked very picturesque among wooded hills at the junction 

 of the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers, with its struggling houses and 

 quaint wooden bridge spanning the latter stream. Formerly 

 simply a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, it now has grown 

 into a town, constructed partly of wood and partly of stone, with 

 many a stately mansion on the outskirts, the whole being over- 

 looked by a well-built hospital and very handsome church. The 

 white houses and stores of the Hudson's Bay Company sur- 

 rounded by their white fences remain where they stood in the 

 days when the occupants of Indian lodges were their only 

 neighbours, and from here the deer and moose hunters, equipped 

 with everything necessary, make their annual start, after 

 thoroughly enjoying the kindly hospitality of the chief and 

 his family. Mattawa is now busy building a branch line from 

 its own station on the Canadian Pacific Railway to lake Temis- 

 camaing, to be continued perhaps to the far away Hudson's Bay, 

 and the trains will run along the Quebec shore of the river 

 Ottawa on a bed of very hard and ever-present rock, which is 

 being rapidly prepared by clearing the ground of trees and by 

 extensive blasting. 



Our little steamer had a hard task to make headway against a 



173 



