FISHING IN NEWFOUNDLAND 245 



river would soon be too shallow to float the canoe, 

 and she would have to be dragged over many 

 miles of gravel and rock. To protect her we shot 

 a couple of caribou and laced the hides tightly 

 across the bottom of the canoe, thereby giving her 

 a new lease of hfe. With this added weight it 

 became necessary to reduce the load as much as 

 possible, so each of us had to carry a pack and 

 make our way as best we could back to the mouth 

 of the river. It was a hard day's march across 

 country, over soft spongy bogs where the wild 

 geese greeted us with their musical honking, 

 through beaver swamps where the tangled alders 

 tripped us and the insect pests devoured us, 

 through dense forests of diminutive firs and 

 spruces, and so on down to the bay in which the 

 river we had fished with such pleasure lost itself in 

 the vastness of the sea. 



No one who has once tasted of the joys of 

 salmon fishing wiU question the statement that of 

 all game fish the salmon easily takes first place. 

 And yet, if the majority of enthusiastic fishermen 

 were asked why they did not indulge in this 

 thrilling sport, they would say that it is too expen- 

 sive, or that open rivers are not to be found except, 

 possibly, in regions too remote for their time and 

 purse, and so, labouring under this delusion, they 

 continue to amuse themselves with bass, muska- 

 lunge, and other interesting but nevertheless 

 inferior forms of fishing. So far as salmon water 

 in the eastern part of Canada is concerned, there is 

 very little that has not been leased by clubs or by 

 those fortunate individuals who have the means with 



