[84 
MAMMALIA. 
of hut. Here he sits and eats his food, and at the slightest noise, or 
least appearance of danger, disappears in an instant underwater. In 
the winter these feeding-places are readily discovered by a bunch of 
wadded grass, flag, or some other material, about the size of a man’s 
hat, protruding above the ice This little mound is hollow, and is 
only large enough for a single rat, where he sits and eats his food, 
with his lower parts in the water. When the rats were disturbed in 
their house, I found they generally fled to these feeding-huts, where 
they were almost a certain mark for the spearman. 
“ In my next excursion, not many days after, to the same place, I 
had still better success. As the ice had now become too thick to be 
easily penetrated by my spear, I adopted, in part, a different mode 
of taking the game. This time I carried with me, in addition to my 
spear, two dozen steel-traps, and a bundle of willow sticks (cut on 
the way) about three feet long. On arriving at the hunting grounds 
I prepared myself for the day’s sport by putting on my mufflers, and 
with traps and willow sticks slung upon my back, began the work by 
driving my spear into the first house I came to. I could not now 
see the rats as they fled from the house, on account of the thickness 
of the ice and a slight snow that lay upon it. Consequently the sport 
of spearing them through the ice was cut off. But as often as I had 
occasion to cut through the walls of the house to take out my game, 
I set a steel-trap in the nest, slipped a willow stick through the ring 
of the chain, laid it across the hole, slightly stopped it up, and then 
passed on to the next house ; and so on, until my traps were all gone. 
I then started back to the place of beginning, driving my spear into 
every feeding-hut in my course, and killing many rats. Finally, I 
began going over the ground again, first driving my spear into a 
house, then examining the trap, taking out the game and re-setting 
the trap. In this course I was quite successful. I found by setting 
the trap in the right place, near the edge, and a little under the water, 
I was almost certain to take the first rat that returned. In making- 
two or three rounds in this way, I found the rats became somewhat 
