80 G1LPIK PORPOISES AND DOLPHINS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



them well. It shows well, in that waiting, patient, but fiery 

 glance — taking in everything in a moment — in that double instinct, 

 or two men acting as one like a machine, and in that absorbing 

 love of sport, devouring hunger and cold, and making age for a 

 time spring to labour, forgetting what it has lost, and youth to 

 anticipate that strength it has never yet attained, A sweet rural 

 lane from the town of Digby, insensibly losing its cart ruts, then 

 changing into a bridle path, then obstructed by brush fence, ending 

 in a sheep walk, winds under the brow of the north mountain, and 

 brings you out upon Fishing beach, looking broadly out upon the 

 Bay of Fundy. Here the ruins of countless ages and continual 

 landslides from the steep mountain side, have formed at its foot 

 a terrace level, now well clothed by alder and spruce pine, the 

 rough shingly beach lying seaward far beyond with its ceaseless 

 roar. Here the red man has pitched his tent. It is only a sum- 

 mer one, and you miss the neat birch bark wig- warn with its 

 conical form of poles tied at a centre. A curious patch of old rags, 

 dead bushes and broken boards, picked up in the landwash serve 

 as a substitute. You have come down to see a porpoise hunt ; the 

 whole place reeks with oil ; the stones themselves are slipping with 

 it, and the smoke fires poison the very air. All is quiet. The 

 lords of the soil lie sleeping in the hot July sun — the dogs are too 

 lazy to bark, and the children are playing on the shingles to 

 seaward. You ask a squaw, invariably using their terse tongue, 

 " Sister no porpoise to-day?" and she answers you shorter, " Too 

 much wind." As you turn to depart, you notice the sleeping men 

 almost simultaneously starting up, glancing around, and with light 

 hand and lighter foot, noiselessly but rapidly preparing their guns, 

 lances, paddles and canoes. The wind is rapidly falling, and looking 

 seaward large patches of simmering calm are forming in the rapid 

 tideway, and yet those sleeping fellows found it out before you. 

 Carefully as if it were a baby, their frail canoes are launched, and 

 the little flotilla is at sea. . A school of porpoises have been break- 

 ing water far to seaward, and each Indian seeks the place where he 

 thinks they will break next. 



Each canoe has a standing figure forward. He is a poor fellow, 



