His business at this season was to examine and clear the portages, several of which are blazed along the river-side at points made impassable for canoes by the roughness or sudden fall of the rapids. The rapids vary greatly as to depth, height, and length. Some cover a rod of slightly broken water with small stones; some race for a quarter of a mile in surges over clay bottom, scooped and beaten as hard as rock, while others toss and dash on a sharp descent for twice that space out and in among a maze of granite bowlders. Up and down these last, Up and down these last, and around some steep falls, the canoe must of course be coaxed with a line, the guide either wading and steadying her, or stumbling alongside ashore. Running a rapid is really piloting, for the natural fall, the lay of the rocks, and the best water between them, remain always nearly the same. Many a jagged old sunken lump or bowlder-head just above the surface, worn glassy smooth, with long weeds streaming like hair from it, looks familiar to the angler year after year. Most of the rapids may be waded across at very low water, but with considerable risk, on account of the irregular slippery foothold and the tearing current. The ascent or

descent of a rapid is exciting, even without the trifle of danger it brings. The whispering ripple of the water deepens into an angry rush as you approach. At the head or foot the pitch looks much sharper than it really is, the eye taking in the foreshortened incline. Down among crowded clusters of rocks, now seen, now swept under,

the flood comes bounding, coiling, and shattered. Every epithet in Southey's particularly foolish piece of nursery drivel, the "Cataract of Lodore," might find reality and echo here.

In this sort of surf, half stone, half water, a common wooden boat would be bumped to pieces in five minutes. The only thing that can float in it, the birch canoe, is one of those marvels of clever adaptation that look like genius. Such a canoe is really nothing but a basket with pointed ends and stiffened sides. You sit, float, and toss in her as you would in a basket, and without most watchful perpendicularity and tiresome tension of nerves in balance, you tip out of her as you would out of a basket. She is a mere single skin of bark sewed together with deer-sinews, rimmed with slight ash or birch strips, and connected across at top by five slender thwarts, or "bords," modeled in all her lines so that the deepest point is

along the middle bottom, and she turns in the water every way as on a pivot. The draft, with two men aboard, is three to four inches. Buoyant, of elastic frame, unsteady to the lightest touch, endways or sideways, she answers to skillful control like a sentient thing, and throws a clumsy rider like a mustang. With her light grace and delicate color she is the lady of water-craft. The skill of these canoe-men is wonderful, only gained by long practice from early childhood. Nearing the foot of the rapid, while yet in still water, the guide drops the paddle, stands erect with his setting-pole in the extreme stern, his boy in the same attitude at the point of the bow, and studies the eddies and stones intently.

In a

whirls her tail down stream, under the lee of another rock a few feet

higher up. She is again held hugging the granite by main force, and edging forward till the beat of the water boiling up astern of her center helps to lift her on, and with another powerful send she shoots across upward again to the next covering point. She threads her intricate way among the bowlders by repetition of these zigzag dashes, sometimes missing the aim and crashing back against a rock, sometimes beaten aside by the pole slipping on the bottom, with the guide's eye quick at every turn, and his muscles steadily braced. The men's pose, alertness and strength form a study. times she must be thrust up by sheer power against the dead rush of the torrent, gaining inch by inch. David's cries to his boy rise above the noise of the water-"Pousse! arrête! lance l'eau! hale l'eau ! autre bord! pousse, pousse au loin!" Accidents occur, but seldom from miscalculation. If a pole

At

should snap while the stress of the flood beats on her, the canoe may be whirled broadside on, and capsized. Then there is a rolling and tumbling among the rocks, struggling for a footing, sometimes with hard bruises, or if near the foot of the rapid, one may be swept into deep water and must keep a clutch on the point of the canoe till she drifts into shallows. Except in the larger rivers, there is not much danger of drowning. The guides prefer ascending to going down a rapid, as the risk of the canoe getting beyond their control is much less when the water drives against her in sight. They are very cautious too, to avoid straining or bruising the boat. "You act as if this canoe belonged to you," David would reproach his boy at a careless movement.

'Well handled, a good birch may last for four years; or she may be banged into uselessness by an inexpert in one season of low water. The red bark is stouter and more dura

ble than the smoother yellow. Two years ago fires ravaged the

MAKING A PORTAGE.

birch woods about the upper Saguenay, where much of the material is obtained, and forced the Indians to seek their bark at great distances, increasing the price of their work. A new canoe of the size used in these streams costs with equipment from eighteen to twentytwo dollars. These are eighteen feet long, three and a quarter across, and fifteen inches deep, weighing about forty pounds. They are Montaignie canoes, built by Indians of the north shore. The larger ones, used in the St. John's and the greater rivers, will carry

nine men, or a freight of nearly a ton. They are made by the Micmacs of the south shore and have higher peaks, and flatter bottoms, with less roll than the former.

After eight or ten days spent at the home camp, all the pools within range have been several times whipped over, and the run of large trout sensibly slackens. At a point seven miles higher up (measured through its crooks,) the river rests, after its earlier wanderings for seventy miles through untrodden forests, and expands into a basin, between two and three miles across in either direction, deep set among craggy hills. Through this lake, and to the far regions beyond, all the fish, salmon and trout, pursue their pilgrimage. Just opposite the home camp a well marked portage opens, cutting off the bends, and bearing straight over a mountain and through dense woods to the lake by a rough course of three miles. Sunday, a leisureday, is usually chosen for this march, and most of the hours of it are required to make the carry and settle the new camp. At one trip the men carry over tents and a week's provision, returning to bring the canoes on a second. Sixty or seventy pounds for each makes up a load, and with this settled compactly on the shoulders, and steadied by a broad strap passing over the forehead so as to leave the arms quite free, they climb the steep hill-crest, often cutting steps in the wet clay, and press through the woods at a quick gait, making the distance within two hours. Portaging the canoes is much more difficult and delicate work. They are turned

over, hoisted on the head, and carried poised with the two hands at the edges, a little forward of the middle, giving the bearer at a distance among the trees the look of an ungainly two-legged elephant. This walk is an introduction to a stage of advance in the savage state. For a time ax and knife must be depended on for tools, sapin for beds, and birch bark for furniture. As we go on the thicket grows denser, and the solitude deepens. Very little animal life disturbs it. A few squirrels, and a partridge with her brood, will chirp and flutter; at the lake we shall see swooping fish-hawks, and hear the kingfisher's metallic cry. Occasionally in these woods, as on the stream, a fresh bear's track is crossed, but the silence here is seldom broken except by the ceaseless under-song of the mosquito's hum

"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing."

This minim of insects must have a word. Since fishing began, he and his stinging kin have been the angler's pest. Herodotus thinks him worthy of mention, and describes the Egyptians' device for protection against him,-that of spreading a net over a shaded cleft in the rocks, through the meshes of which he will not pass unless the sun shines in.

The Sicilian fisherman of to-day contrives precisely the same refuge from his attack. But after the experience of many years on many streams, the assertion is confidently made, that all masquerading in veils, helmets, goggles and capes, brings mere vexation and impediment, and that the most effective and least troublesome protection is gained by rubbing every exposed surface thoroughly and often with a mixture of three parts of sweet-oil and one part of oil of pennyroyal.

At the lake it is always cold. The sunsets over its rugged shores doubled in the crimson water, the frequent aurora flashing and streaming across the whole breadth of sky, and the clear stars looking down on a mirror as still, touch the the feeling like beauty wasted since so rarely seen, if nature knows any waste. Through all the year that twilight grace of rock and sky and wave has floated

blending into one harmony, then dissolved unseen, till now. Or do we bring and bear away that image with us, projecting it as sensation upon space, else formless and rayless? Fichte, thou reasonest well. Nevertheless, a puzzling instance of the "not I" is a fighting four-pound trout at summer sunset on such a stream.

A variation of sport may be enjoyed here, if one condescends to capture the great pickerel abounding in the lake, either by casting a spoon with a stout rod among the lily-pads, or by lazily letting ten fathoms of line trail from the canoe while the guide paddles slowly, till one of these pondsharks, striking, gorges the gaudy bait, and is hauled up alongside, and knocked in his grim head with a short club. A couple of hours of this rude sport yielded to one line a hundred and twenty-two pounds, the largest fish weighing eight. This is merely justice pursuing murder, since the pickerel is a destroying terror to trout and salmon. They lurk in shoals around the outlet to seize the fish passing up, and wage havoc among them for a mile down the stream. Escaping these waylayers, the fish have still many miles to run before reaching the spawning-grounds. The intervening water above the lake is too free from rapids to afford good fishing until a tributary is reached, too far away to be attainable in the few days remaining. Pointing the flotilla peaks south out of the lake, we turn our backs upon nothing between it and Hudson's Straits, except the dreary solitudes of Labrador, with a few peaceable Indian tribes scattered through them. In its fall of two hundred feet through seven miles between the outlet and the home camp, the river breaks into magnificent pools, drained by sharp, rough rapids, with long intervening stretches of deep-water lurking-places (even

so late) for salmon. Many of them of large size are passed lying at the bottom motionless, as if cased in ice, or heard breaking at night. A small one now and then absorbs the fly. In no part of the river are the seatrout so large, bold, and strong. They are no longer the gray trout that sailed in with the tide. Their color is rich and high beyond description,-backs a glittering bronze, shot with gold, and crooked, dark streaks; bellies like pearl, and fins a fan of strong crimson, purple, and black spines. Their dazzling vermilion spots "bid the rash gazer wipe his eye." gazer wipe his eye." As a new puzzle for naturalists, some of the largest taken blush all exquisite rose wherever white usually shines. The beginning of the fishing and the verge of the pirate-pickerel's range is marked by a grand bald crag, towering four hundred feet, and sinking sheer into water, christened the Palisade Pool, where very large trout usually lie. The next few miles are a favorite preserve, always stocked in the season with a succession of splendid fish. The banks, still thickly wooded with larch, spruce, sycamore, and small shrubs, show less of clay than those lower down, and more of pebbly ledge and short sandy beaches, so that fishing afloat is exchanged for wading, which insures a longer, truer cast, and more ease in landing the fish. The long summer days of a week may be filled with excitement in whipping this range of twenty or thirty pools. So satisfactory is the work, indeed, that they are usually gone over several times on successive days, from a new camp established near half-way down to the great fall,

which separates them from the lower range of water, accessible from the original camp. This is pitched near a curve, just below which the river receives two or three cool streamlets into a circular basin, parted from its main course by a little stony tongue, fringed with bushes, and about thirty yards across. This spring pool is a favorite restingplace for trout on the way up, and they have been seen literally paving its sandy floor, though its clearness and exposure to the sun render them very shy. From this pool one

THE OUTLET.

hundred and six fish were taken by one rod in three days, thirteen of which weighed over three pounds, and the largest five.

Sunshine seldom interferes with the sport in this region seriously. Days of sullen, cold rain come on, leaving only an hour or two for work outside the tent. Sudden thundergusts break over us while afloat, driving us to the shelter of thick épinettes (dry spruces), or even to a pent-house under the canoe, turned bottom up, and propped on sticks.

Sometimes a strange cloud of thin mist fills the valley, that seems to tingle with electricity, and is pungent with the smell of ozone. So sensitive the nerves become to that mysteriously charged vapor, that one glances at the twig-tips, almost expecting to see them lit with St. Elmo's fire, like yardarms at sea in an electric storm. Only some seasons, however, and some days in each, are free from one of the two extremes of too much or too little rain. Last summer, for instance, the weather continued so hot and dry, and the stream ran so low, that for long stretches not a fish was to be found at all in the pools, all having resorted to the mouths of little inlets, where they hung clustered like a swarm of bees. Down from the middle camp the canoes go deeply loaded with tents and fish, dipping only now and then into an inviting pool, and taking some hours to reach a great rapid which seizes the river at the opening of a gorge and hurls it furiously along half a mile of tangled rocks, to plunge it over à steep, picturesque fall, thirty feet high. Down this rapid the guides will slowly, cautiously pole or lead the canoes, sending the passenger to scramble along a rough path among the cliffs, from which he looks down on their dwindled, struggling figures, and faintly hears their shouts. They meet again at the fall, round which, of course, the canoes are portaged, or slid down through a side chute, and we have passed the portal of the upper stream, and bid it farewell.

Three days of the best work for one rod in the upper waters, noted on the score in separate years, are,-37 fish of 79 pounds, 41 fish of 831⁄2 pounds, 39 fish of 86% pounds.

If the day of coming down to the home pool has been properly timed, its evening will be prolonged over the camp-fire to watch the full moon rise above a clump of pointed spruces fronting the tent. She brings the promise of a new run of fish, filling the pools after their week's rest, with occasional fine trout among them, lingering behind the seniors on their way up. A sweet sense of civilization attends the return from the deeper forests to bed and board, and the camp seems even neat and spacious after rougher quarters. The black flies are gone, and the mosquitoes only weakly wicked. Sometimes at morning frost sprinkles the ground, the days grow cooler, and the nights cold, till we sympathize with the man of old who cried, "Aha! I am warm; I have seen the fire," and enjoy the mere animal pleasure of heat.