woods also skirting the river furnish large supplies of rabbits,
which even the Indian children are taught to snare. Beavers too are
most numerous in this district, and are excellent food, while their
furs are an important article of trade with the Hudson Bay Company;
bringing to the poor Indian his much prized luxury of tea or tobacco,
a warm blanket or ammunition. As the Spring comes on the women of the
camps will be busy making "sirop" from the birch trees, and dressing
the skins of moose or deer which their husbands have killed in the
chase. There are also the canoes to be made or repaired for use
whenever the eight months' fetters of ice shall give way.

Thus we see the Indian camps offer a pleasant spectacle of a
contented and busy people; and if they lack the refinement and
luxuries of more civilized communities, they have at all events this
advantage,--they have never learnt to need them.

Michel, the Indian, was a well-skilled, practised hunter. Given a
windy day, a good depth of snow, and one or two moose tracks on its
fair surface, and there was not much chance of the noble beast's
escape from Michel's swift tread and steady aim. Such is the
excitement of moose-hunting; and such the intense acuteness of the
moose-deer's sense of smell and hearing, that an Indian hunter will
often strip himself of every bit of clothing, and creep stealthily
along on his snow-shoes, lest by the slightest sound he should betray
his presence, and allow his prey to escape. And Michel was as skilled
a trapper as he was hunter; from the plump little musk-rat which he
caught by the river brink to the valuable marten, sable, beaver,
otter, skunk, &c., &c., he knew the ways and habits of each one; he
would set his steel trap with as true an intuition as if he had
received notice of the coming of his prey. Many a silver fox had