152 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



pied by the barking, gi-owling, howling, and snapping 

 of about a hundred and fifty Indian dogs from an en- 

 campment of the Eed Men. close by, causing, him, in his 

 endeavours to escape from them, to run a capital ring 

 through the bush at the rear of the post, and affording us 

 — while we held our sides with laughter — an excellent idea 

 of a buffalo hunt. The Captain gladly emerged from his 

 concealment, looking very like a seedy river God in a 

 pantomime, and, to the best of my lielief, has abjured 

 scarlet as a fishing costume. 



The third individual comprised in our party on the 

 occasiciU was the Commissioner. The Commissioner was a 

 curiosity. He was the most expensively and the most 

 ill-dressed man on the wide continent of North America. 

 One would almost be inclined to think that he studied 

 incongruity as the model after which he arrayed himself, 

 except that his slovenliness forbid the idea of his having 

 ever bestowed a thought upon the subject. I have seen 

 him at one time promenading a populous city in a dirty, 

 powder-smeared and blood-stained shooting coat, while 

 his nether man was encased in black dress pantaloons, silk 

 stockings and highly varnished french -leather dancing 

 pumps. At another, I have met him with one of Gibbs' 

 most recJierche dress coats, a ragged waistcoat, and worn- 

 out trousers, all looking as if he had slept in them for a 

 week, and lain inside of the bed among the feathers. His 

 shirts never had a button upon them, which constantly 



