108 GILPIN ON THE GASPEREAUX. 



which with a dexterous toss he thi'ows upon a silvery heap, tossing 

 and flapping their lives away on the warm grass hard by. The 

 warm setting sun is throwing his beams, athwart rock and tree, 

 and little fires lighted to drive away the black flies, are wreathing 

 the tree boles with scanty smoke. As we pass figure after figure 

 we find them mostly young men or boys, negroes, here and there 

 an old settler with a known love for sport, and at the day which 

 we "write of, numerous Indians. The game is not enough to lui'e 

 the strong man from his farm or his mill ; he leaves it for his boys 

 and his poorer neighbom's. We pass the rogue who stole our 

 last year's best bough apples ; we pass Peter Prince's ragged, and 

 white-teethed progeny, but pause, attracted, as we all are, by the 

 man of the forest, the man of no house, or no key to his front 

 door. He stands before us casting back-handed throws of his 

 bag-net, with true Asiatic grace, so different from the direct 

 Anglo-Saxon plunge of his neighbours, so resembling round hand 

 bowling, the last nobby dodge of the cricketer. In the days of 

 which we speak, he stood bare head and neck, a scarlet-seamed 

 blue hunting frock girt about his loins by a gay girdle, holding his 

 knife and tobacco pouch, scarlet edged leggings shewed fahly his 

 clean curved limbs, and mocassins of his own make covered his 

 firm foot. "Brother," we say, "is the sport good?" "Too much 

 water, all get up before the lakes fall ;" and as he speaks he lands 

 two or three glittermg fish at our feet. As they roll and toss on the 

 warm grass, their large lidless eyes filled with dust, the sun for 

 the first time glinting their sides of molten silver, we handle and 

 examine them. Fresh from the cool water they are covered with 

 slime ; the scales readily come off in our hands. When the scales 

 are entire their colour is silvery from the belly nearly to the back ; 

 along the back there runs a dusky greenish line, a thousand 

 reflections of green and violet break the surface ; the head and 

 cheeks have a yellowish tinge with a little violet ; the fins so 

 lately waving m water transparent are already darkening and 

 stiffening. As in his restless struggles the scales come off, we 

 find the colours of his back deepening, and a black spot showing 

 near his gills. His description in our notes reads: — 



Length from 10 to 12J inches, colour, when fresh from the water and 

 covered with scales, silvery, greenish dusky on back and about an inch 



