Jan. 21, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
89 
good (lucking or worse, however, if he is misled. 
Once one goes through with snowshoes it is 
almost impossible to get out unassisted. If the 
-damage is no more than a sousing of the feet, 
and the water has not had time to soak in, pack¬ 
ing quickly several times in dry snow will draw 
the dampness all out, but if one gets thoroughly 
wet, the only thing to do is to stop and build 
a roaring fire with all dispatch, change all one’s 
garments if possible, or at least take off mocca¬ 
sins, socks and outer clothing and dry out thor¬ 
oughly, for wet feet do not take many minutes 
to freeze. But duckings fortunately are rare, 
and personally I have never seen a fatal acci- 
-dent, though such have happened where people 
have gone into a rapid with snowshoes on and 
have been drawn under by the current. 
To those who know how to read it, the snow 
along the banks and on the river is an open 
book—a perfect record of the life and move- 
trees have fallen in December. A pleasant con¬ 
trast in a world almost white. 
Round tracks about three inches across—one 
almost in front of the other—are the lynx’s, but 
you may go to the woods many winters without 
seeing him, unless you set a trap and bait it 
with a rabbit skin or a partridge wing. 
Here two caribou have crossed the river, but 
the tracks are not fresh and you do not follow, 
and so the day slips away and it is time to stop 
and tent, which operation in winter will need 
a good hour or more of daylight. 
However tired the tyro may be, let him do 
some of the light work in connection with tent¬ 
ing, say gathering the balsam boughs for the 
beds, tramping down'the snow for the tent site; 
anything, in fact, so long as he keeps moving 
till everything is ready and the tin stove is roar¬ 
ing in the tent. If he sits down or stands around 
waiting, he will lose the healthy glow and the 
by name—with an elevation of about 3,500 feet. 
I he rugged, forbidding, rocky, treeless desola¬ 
tion of their upper reaches and the precipitous, 
twisted, distorted character of their sides speak 
eloquently of the fierce upheaval that brought 
them into being. On clear days in summer the 
Shickshocks can be seen by travelers on steam¬ 
ers of the St. Lawrence transatlantic route, pro¬ 
vided of course that the steamers are far enough 
out from shore. Some of these mountains have 
a laige area of fairly level barren summit, with¬ 
out any vegetation save arctic moss, shrubs and 
flowers, and at times are swept by the wind with 
such velocity that even in mid-winter there is 
not sufficient snow to necessitate the use of snow- 
shoes. On fine days caribou in large numbers 
used to climb to these barrens to paw away the 
snow and feed on the moss underneath. 
At the time of my winters of hardship I was 
lumbering in the Gaspe Peninsula. As Pascal, 
A trapper's CAMP IN THE WILDERNESS. 
THE RIVERS AND STREAMS BECOME NATURAL HIGHWAYS. 
ments of all the wild inhabitants of whose pres¬ 
ence one sees scarcely any sign in the summer. 
Except for the hibernating bear and for the 
moose now in their yards on the mountain, they 
are all here, these wild creatures, from the cari¬ 
bou to the tiny wood mouse. 
Perhaps in traveling over the ice you come 
upon a round hole about a foot in diameter. 
Near this opening you suddenly discover a half- 
eaten salmon which must have weighed all of 
twenty pounds. The otter has evidently been at 
work here, and if you keep a careful watch far 
ahead as you go further up the river, you may 
possibly see him near one of his other holes. 
Perhaps there will be two otters rolling or slid¬ 
ing in the snow on the banks, but you will not 
be likely to get a shot at one, unless at a dis¬ 
tance of several hundred yards, for the otter has 
the sharpest nose of any of the whole woods 
tribe. 1 he Indian’s method of burying himself 
up to the middle in the snow near one of the 
holes and of waiting, blanket-covered and gun 
in hand for one or perhaps two days till the 
otter pops up, would probably not appeal to 
you. 
A little further on you stop for a moment to 
look at the brilliant clusters of red berries of 
the cormier or service tree, hardier than any of 
its fellows, for the berries of all the other service 
sense of warmth and repose that would have 
been his had he kept going till the last minute. 
It seems a long time before the smoking sup¬ 
per is ready, but what an appetite greets it when 
it finally does arrive, and how complete the 
after joys—the sense of comfortable repletion, 
the pipe, the old yet ever new stories of hard¬ 
ships endured, of encounters with or glimpses 
of wonderful beasts, of deeds of extraordinary 
prowess, till at last the traveler sinks back on 
the balsam boughs and sleeps as only one who 
has passed such a winter’s day in the open can 
sleep. 
About five or six years ago I encountered the 
only actual hardships I have ever known in the 
bush in winter. On two hunting trips during 
two successive winters, disaster followed us, and 
in each case the same place was our objective. 
On the first trip my guide was the sufferer. This 
same man accompanied me on the second trip, 
when we were both victims of various mishaps. 
As if by way of compensation, however, these 
trips were the most prolific of curious incidents, 
the most instructive, and the most satisfactory 
from the standpoint of reminiscence that I have 
ever taken. 
In the interior of the little known Gaspe 
Peninsula is a range of mountains—Shickshocks 
the man who accompanied me in all my bush 
work, gave enthusiastic accounts of the sport to 
be obtained and the number of caribou to be 
seen in fine weather on the barrens of these in¬ 
teresting mountains, I determined to visit them. 
Pascal was a powerful six-footer with a tre¬ 
mendous capacity for roughing it and for heavy 
wOrk. He had hunted for years with Indians 
on the North Shore and was a mine of infor¬ 
mation. He was very fast on snowshoes, a 
regular bull moose of a man, but intelligent and 
quite well educated. 
One of his curious characteristics came to light 
when he informed me with a savage relish that 
the sight of running blood gave him most pleas¬ 
ant sensations. As I enjoy doing my share of 
work on a hunting trip, I took no other man 
than Pascal with me. 
Three days on the river brought us to the foot 
of the mountain which Pascal had in view. He 
went directly to a deserted Indian cabin, which 
we managed to make habitable, thus avoiding 
the trouble of pitching the tent. 
During the evening I got Pascal to tell what 
he knew of the former inhabitants of our camp. 
Some years before my advent several families 
of Indians had come from across the gulf and 
made Gaspe their hunting ground for a con¬ 
siderable time. The hut in which we were had 
