212 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



We hunted through that bush every day from morning to 

 night in the hope of finding cariboo. We visited numerous 

 frozen lakes, trusting to see them feeding on their favourite 

 moss, which grows close to the edge; we went to all places 

 where cariboo were said to have been plentiful lately, and where, 

 according to the hunters, they ought to roam in herds now, but 

 nothing could we find. The total absence of this, said to be 

 so common, animal puzzled the men greatly they could not 

 make it out at all it was truly extraordinary! It is very 

 disappointing this tramping about all day long and seeing 

 nothing, not even old tracks much less new ones, and so tiring ; 

 there is no excitement to make one forget fatigue, no stimulus 

 to turn on a fresh supply of nervous force. So ruffling to one's 

 temper, too, to have it constantly dinned into one's ears that the 

 game has never been known absent before, as if now it were 

 elsewhere with the sole and only purpose of grievously annoying 

 you. 



We tried our best, stumbling and slipping about all and 

 every day in the snow; we crossed innumerable lakes all 

 surrounded by dense bush where apparently the men expected 

 to find cariboo skating parties, and altogether we wasted no 

 time, but the game was no doubt far, far away. Following 

 immediately behind the hunter I fervently hoped that no puff 

 of air would blow from him to any cariboo whose nose might be 

 within reach, for that would immediately have been fatal to 

 any chance of a shot. One day he suddenly became very restless 

 and a new odour of a strangely compound nature strongly 

 pervaded the air ; with a cry he plunged a hand into his 

 trouser pocket and drew forth a smouldering mass of miscel- 

 laneous articles, among which I can now only recollect seeing 

 a pipe, matches which had caught fire, biscuit, tobacco, string, 

 a fishing-line and hook, a knife and a rosary. 



We returned every evening very disappointed to our com- 

 fortable shanty, and after supper the men played cards with 

 my matches as prizes ; a glass of hot grog finished the day. 

 Mr. Brissou, who suffered daily from violent cramps in the 

 stomach, due, no doubt, to frequent draughts of ice-water when 

 hot, at last gave it up as hopeless ; he declared that " la chasse 

 au cariboo est de la cochonnerie; ils en sont pas." We put 

 our traps upon the jumper and returned trophyless to the 



