Canadian Wilds Part 9

Never carry all your supply of matches about your person, have a few, even though only a half dozen, in some damp-proof article amongst your blankets. A very good receptacle if you have not a water proof box, is an empty Pain Killer vial. See that it is thoroughly dry, drop in your few matches and cork tightly.

This is for an emergency and can be carried about for months or years, and only opened under necessity, when perhaps one dry match will save your life.

Never leave your gun loaded in camp! The iron draws the dampness and imparts it to the cartridges. Next day they may prove slow fire or not explode at all. Have your cartridges handy if you will, but really there is no necessity. The days of wolves and savage Indians are past and in most parts of the "wild" there is nothing to molest man.

One other axiom I will adduce and not prefix it with the negative "Never," because it is not always possible to adhere to this principle.

It is not generally known that the position one a.s.sumes when making one's bed has a great deal to do with getting a restful night's repose. When possible lie with your head to the north. The magnetic earth currents flow from the north, and thus from your head down through your body. The tired feeling you had when retiring has all flowed out through your feet before morning.

This fact may appear absurd to a person not giving the subject sufficient thought, but it is on the same principle as a person stroking your hair downwards. The result is quieting and soothing, but if he rubs it the contrary way it irritates and is hurtful.

I have proved the truth of this a.s.sertion many times during my nights on the trail. I have purposely rolled in my blanket with my head to the south, and arose the following morning, unrested, and my body "broken up."

The foregoing may be and is rather disjointed, because I have penned each subject as they came to my mind, but the reader may rest a.s.sured they are worth memorizing and were learned by the writer during long years of hardships.

SUMMER.

Suppose your canoe has been turned over on the beach all night, never launch it in the morning without first thoroughly examining the bottom from end to end. If there are rabbits or rats about, the place of a greasy hand is enough to draw them, and they will gnaw a lot of boat for very little grease.

This might be overlooked in the hurry of getting away, and the canoe either sink under you or sufficient water enter to damage your things.

Once my chum and I were making our way up river with our supplies.

Amongst the provisions was a half barrel of pork. When camping the first night we left the pork near the overturned canoe. The rest of our outfit we carried up to our camp on the top of the river bank, thinking nothing would touch a solid hardwood barrel.

Well, in the grey morning, when we went to get water for our coffee we found the staves in shooks and the bricks of pork scattered about the gravelly beach. Rabbits had cut the hoops and the barrel had fallen to pieces. The rest was easy to the rabbit--not to us.

If you are a lone hunter never travel in summer without an extra paddle. You may lug this about all season and never require it but once, but that once you will be glad you have it.

Often when approaching game it is expedient to drop the paddle quietly in the water when taking up your gun. In the stillness of the wild, the noise of placing the paddle inboard is sufficient to scare away the game and the chance is lost. With a spare paddle at hand the hunter can quickly pursue the wounded game or paddle back and pick up the dropped paddle.

If you have a chum a second paddle is not necessary, as he can either forge the canoe ahead or back her to where you dropped yours.

Never talk or make unnecessary noise while hunting. Old hunters never do. It is only about the camp fire they talk, and even there always in a low tone of voice.

Old hunters communicate to one another all that is necessary by a shake of the canoe, a nod of the head or motions of the hands.

When portaging at a carrying place never when you get to the other end, put the canoe down at once, but let the man in front first scan carefully all about each side of the lake or river as far as the eye will carry. Something might be on the surface, standing in the shallows, or in the edge of the bush, which the noise of putting down the canoe would frighten away.

If you wish to avoid the dew of the morning, camp at the upper end of a carrying place, i. e., rapid, but if you wish to have a refreshing slumber camp at the foot of the rapid, have your head up stream and pointing to the north if possible.

Never push on and camp on the border of some small stagnant lake, merely to add a little length to your day's trail. Better camp this side and have living water for your cooking purposes.

If you were hunting in the fall in a beaver country and watching to shoot them in the evening:

Never, if it is a big lodge, fire at the first or even the second beaver that breaks water. If you do, good-bye to the others for that night. It is better to allow the first and second to swim away along sh.o.r.e to their wood-yards unmolested. The next to make its appearance will most likely be one of the old ones. This kill if you can, and then paddle slowly in the direction the first has taken. The chances are you will meet them coming back or see them ash.o.r.e cutting wood.

See that your two or three traps are in good order, and leave the lake for your camp before darkness sets in.

Your camp should be half a mile away and to the leaward of the beaver lake.

In the spring of the year beaver begin to swim early in the afternoon and take to their lodge late in the morning. In the autumn when the nights are long they break water late and are not to be seen after sunrise next morning.

If you see two beaver at one time swimming and shoot one, leave it floating on the water. The chances are the second one will make a short dive, and you want to be ready with your gun when he comes up.

I have often got one with each barrel this way.

By shooting in the evening and leaving three traps set I have cleaned out a lodge of seven beaver in an evening and a night, from 4 P. M.

to 7 A. M. next morning, and this with only a boy of ten years old for a companion.

The hardest part was in packing them and my canoe out over five carrying places. But, oh! when the bunch was at the post what recompense, all those fine, rich furs and the luscious and sustaining meat, with a roasted tail now and again as a side bite.

Now penning these lines in my last camp in a town of ten thousand inhabitants, how my mind longs for one more season in the bush, but, alas! I fear it may never be.

CHAPTER XVII.

ANTICOSTA AND ITS FURS.

The island of Anticosta, lying in the mouth of the Gulf of St.

Lawrence, runs parallel with the main land on its north sh.o.r.e and about twenty-five miles distant from it. Notwithstanding the close proximity to the continent and the straits, some winters blocked with ice fields, the martens on this island are peculiar and distinct in this manner, that almost without exception the forepaws and the end of the tail are tipped with white hair.

I traded one year several hundred pelts of Anticosta marten and with one or two exceptions they all showed this distinction from those we got on the north sh.o.r.e or mainland. I found this white ending of extremities even amongst the bears and foxes, and in some instances with the otter. Otherwise the marten are as well furred and as rich and deep in color as the far-famed Labrador ones.

Of bears there are on the island both black and brown; the latter are of immense size and very savage. One skin I got measured seven feet broad by nine feet long and showed the marks of no fewer than eleven bullet holes in his hide. The man from whom I purchased the skin told me he met the monster while traveling along the sea beach and fired at him. The bear dropped, but in a moment arose to his feet and rushed for the hunter. Fortunately there was a high rock near by, up which the man clambered with his gun, out of reach of the infuriated beast and from this "Coin de advantage" a.r.s.enault loaded and fired round ounce b.a.l.l.s into the bear until he was dispatched.

While on this trip I secured two of the finest and purest silver grey fox skins I ever handled. It is not generally known that a pure silver fox is much rarer than black or black silver. What I mean by pure silver is a fox that is silvered from the very head right down to the white tip of the tail. The majority of so-called silver foxes are black from the head to a third of the way down the back; a part of the body and rump alone being silvered.

In the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts, foxes are graded when purchased under the following names: black, black silver, silver grey, black cross, dark cross, ordinary cross, (first cousin to red) bright red, light red, white. I am aware that to make this list complete blue and grey foxes are wanting, but as they are only traded in one or two of the Company's posts and I was never at either, I will say nothing about them, but of the above grades and colors of foxes I have traded and trapped many.

A black cross is so very near a silver that it is only a savant that can tell the difference. A black cross has yellow hairs growing inside the ears and a patch of yellow near each fore leg, whereas a silver has none. Unscrupulous trappers very often try to get over these giving-away marks by plucking the hairs out of the ears and by greasing and smoking the side patches.

The first thing a trader does when a doubtful skin is offered is to look into the ears; if the hairs are wanting, he breathes on his hand and gently pa.s.ses it down over the side. If the hand is blackened this is a proof number two and the smart "Alec" is found out.

Coming back to Anticosta; forty years ago the privilege of hunting was leased by the then owner of the seigniory to a man from Quebec, who each autumn repaired to the island with four or five men who hunted on shares, Mr. Corbett, supplying food, traps and ammunition, got a certain per cent. of the furs each caught.

They laid their small schooner up in a sheltered bay and Corbett used to cook and sweep the shanty while his men hunted and trapped.

Wrecks used to occur nearly every year of some late lumber-laden sailing vessel and in the spring, after the hunt was over, Corbett and his men would load their schooner with copper and iron from the hulls and sail for Quebec in June when the moderate summer winds had begun.

Five or six years ago M. Menier, the French chocolate king, purchased the island from the Seignorial heirs and has converted it into a game reserve. He has cut road, built wharfs and made many other improvements and is trying to acclimate animals that were not found on the island, such as moose, Virginia red deer, buffalo, beaver, etc.

A resident governor lives on the island the year around and has a steamer of a couple of hundred tons at his command that plies between the island and Quebec, as necessity requires. M. Menier, with a party of friends, comes from France each summer and pa.s.ses a month on the island fishing and shooting. There are three salmon rivers, one where the fish are especially large and numerous.

After purchasing the island M. Menier secured from the Canadian Government the right to a three-mile belt of water, so when the owner is on "Anticosta" he is actually lord and master of all that he surveys.

In the _Forest and Stream_ of Feb. 9 I have read the article written by H. de Puyjalon on the pekan or fisher. Mr. de Puyjalon appears to me to have attempted writing upon a subject in which he was very little versed and with no data upon which to base his a.s.sertions. As a matter of fact, prior to about the year 1860, the fisher or pekan was an animal unknown to the trappers on the north sh.o.r.e and Labrador, east of the Saguenay, and it was only after that year that an odd one was trapped in that lower country. In fact, when first the fisher made its appearance the Indians had no name for it, but after it became better known they adopted the Algonquin name it now bears.

When an Indian, in the early sixties, was fortunate enough to have one in his pack he mentioned it as a big marten.