engaged, Louis by name (for most of the Indians living on the coast are converted and baptised by the Roman Catholic missionaries), was a good-tempered man, a bit of a character, not fond of work or very sure with his gun, but thoroughly capable of managing a canoe. Mr. Hind relates the following domestic incident in connexion with him :

"Do you see that handsome squaw there ?" said a Nova Scotia fisherman to me the morning before we started from the mouth of the Moisie. "Yes," I replied, "I see her-what of her ?"

That's Louis's wife, the Indian you engaged."

"Louis's wife. Why, she doesn't live in his lodge."

"No," said the fisherman, with a smile, "she don't, and, what's more, she won't: she won't have anything to say to her husband, and, what's more, she's ashamed of him."

"What has he done to offend her ?" I asked, both surprised and curious. 'Well, the fact is, he can't hunt."

Can't hunt? Do you mean to say that that handsome woman married Louis knowing he could not hunt ?"

"That's where it is; she didn't know he could not hunt-you've just hit the other side of it," said my facetious informant, with a smile. "Now, I'll tell you," he continued. "These Indians on the coast are strange people. I was here fishing last summer when she came with her father, the old man in the tent yonder, near those squaws skinning the seal; the priest was here baptising, marrying, and I don't know what. Louis saw the girl, and asked her to marry him: they had no time to lose; the priest was going away in a couple of days, not to come again for a twelvemonth, so the girl consented, they spoke to the priest, and were made man and wife in a jiffey. Well, two days after this wedding, Louis went out with his wife to hunt seals: she steered and he took the gun-the way these Indians do. Louis fired at the seals one after the other, and missed them. His wife then turned the canoe in disgust to shore, and stepped straight to her father's lodge. After much bother, Louis prevailed upon her to come with him again to hunt, and give him a chance. So she agreed to go again, and on the following day she steered him close to a seal: he fired, and missed. She brought him up to another: he fired again, and missed a second time. She looked-so Louis told his people-just looked, said nothing; but that look made Louis nervous. She brought him to a third sealclose to it-he missed again. She said nothing, but paddled to shore, and then ran to her father's lodge. She says she'll never live with him again. Up to this time she's kept her word; but they say the priest will make her when she goes to Seven Islands next month-we shall see.

I turned to look at Louis's wife. She stood near to the place where we were talking;- -a handsome, determined woman; lips full, but tightly closed; a dark, intelligent eye, which, when it met yours, rested upon you with a tranquil, selfpossessed gaze. Her arms were folded beneath a shawl she drew tightly round her waist. Her hair was neatly bunched up, Montagnais fashion, on each side of her face; she wore the picturesque Montagnais cap of crimson and black, ornamented with braid round the edges; neat moccasins and mistassins peeped from beneath her dress as she stood motionless, watching her sisters cutting up a seal, and apparently paying no attention to their jeers and scoffs, which the interpreter near at hand said they were "throwing at Louis." Altogether, she seemed to be a very unfit life companion for the indolent and careless Louis, who always wore a look of happy or stupid indifference to all the chances and changes of this world.

It was the 10th of June when the expedition started up the Moisie, yet at that period of the year in this wild, desert, sub-arctic region, frozen snow capped the distant mountains in brilliant masses, and although the sky was cloudless and the sun hot, the water was cold and turbid, and

patches of ice still lay in every sheltered nook on the banks of the river, where snow had drifted deep during the long winter months. A few Brent geese flying to the north, salmon here and there rising high at June flies, a solitary kingfisher, and a flock of golden-legged plover, were all the signs of life that were seen during the first five miles. On the borders of the spruce forest, which came down almost to the water's edge, the birch was just putting forth its delicate green leaves, but the larch scarcely showed any indications of returning vigour. In damp and shady nooks the ferns were cautiously unfolding their earliest fronds, and on the willows, half bathed in the flood, hung the catkins of spring. Although the Brent geese were on their way to the lakes in the central Labrador upland, which they would find still full of ice, the temperature, kept down by the winds from the sea, improved as they ascended the river, and vegetation was found to be more forward.

A start is always a ticklish affair. The means of transport, the men, tackle and gear, are all put for the first time upon their trial, and there are generally many mishaps ere all gets into working order. With Mr. Hind it was a canoe that went wrong first, the sides where the bark is fastened with watap or sinew to the frame gave way; it also leaked where the bark was sewn together, and they had to stop, and not only to "gum" the canoe, but also to readjust the baggage, before they could proceed on their voyage. Master Louis took advantage of this contretemps to make an attempt at escape. He does not appear, although so unhappily wedded, to have relished the idea of an excursion to rocky, barren, and yet damp and icy uplands. Mr. Hind had taken advantage of the delay to send back for some provisions, to take the place of those that had been spoiled by the leaky canoe:

Just as the canoe was about to start back (he relates) to the station to fetch the flour, which I was anxious to obtain to replace the wetted biscuit, Louis came to me with a desponding look, and said he had forgotten his blanket"Would I let him go in the canoe and fetch it ?" But Louis was not to be trusted so near home. He might repent having come, as Indians often do during the first day or two; I therefore told the other men, whom I could trust, to bring Louis's blanket with them. Louis gave them very indefinite and confused directions where to find his blanket, and I am still under the impression that the article in question was more imaginary than real, for we never heard of it afterwards; and Louis, when seen enveloping himself in a capacious but rather dirty rug before choosing his ground for the night underneath a canoe, replied to the questions,

Why, Louis, what did you want two blankets for ?"

"Don't want two blankets—one enough."

"Then why did you want to go and fetch the other blanket ?"

"Like it best," answered Louis.

"Do Indians ever have more than two blankets ?"

No; one blanket enough for Indian."

r Do you

think the men will find yours at the fishing station ?"

"Tink not; tink they will have very hard work to find other blanket," said Louis, with a comical laugh.

cr

Perhaps the blanket around you is the one you thought you had left behind ?"

"May be," said Louis, brightening up, and turning his head to survey the rug. "May be; it looks very much like it."

"Then you have not got another blanket, Louis?"

"No!"

Young seals were heard calling during the night, and their dams were feasting on salmon struggling in the nets stretched half across the river close to the camp. As they proceeded up, the balsam-poplar and birch were nearly in full leaf, and grew in graceful clusters on the precipitous sandy banks, and the spruce and birch were gradually attaining the size of handsome trees. About two miles below the first rapids was a salmonfishing station, leased by two American gentlemen, but at that time deserted in consequence of the civil war raging in the States. At the foot of the rapids was another fishing-station, formerly tenanted by one of the most successful salmon fishermen in Canada, Captain James Strachan, of Toronto. His spruce-bark lodge still remained on the bank where it had been pitched some years before, and near it were the rude but ample comforts and conveniences with which sportsmen in Canada often surround themselves in the woods, when time and means are at their command, and which contribute in no small degree to the enjoyment of a camp in the wilderness. We have already had an opportunity of calling attention to the wonderful resources of Eastern Canada to the angler when noticing Colonel Sir James Alexander's delightful little book "Salmon-Fishing in Canada," in which the Waltonian will find full instructions as to how he is to proceed to reach the numerous streams that flow down from the interior to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and what he is

to do to secure good living and plenty of fish. It is not at all an expensive proceeding. Mr. Hind now opens new country, and, as we shall afterwards have occasion to show, one of unlimited piscatorial resources. In the present day, when all the best rivers in Norway are rented year by year by the same tenacious anglers, and not even space for the cast of a line remains at any favourable spot throughout the length and breadth of the land, Mr. Hind's work will be found well worthy of perusal, were it for this single circumstance alone. There is also not only no danger in these wilds, but in this particular instance all that Captain Strachan had left behind him had been respected by the few Indians who come down the river, or by the solitary trapper who now and then passes the same way during the winter season to hunt for the highly-prized martens. A few Indians were met with at this point, but these were only Indians of the coast, who had been seal-hunting, and among them, indeed, was Louis's father-in-law.

The path was found to be rough at the first portage, but with a little cutting the canoes and baggage were passed over it. A precipitous hill had to be clambered over, beyond which the path was carried over level rocks or down steep hills. Rain coming on, large pieces of bark were stripped off the spruce-trees, with which an impervious covering was at once extemporised.

The Moisie Rapids are very grand. A river one hundred and thirty to one hundred and eighty yards broad leaps through a chasm of zig-zag form in six successive steps. The fall does not exceed sixty feet in a distance of three and a half miles; but the body of water in the spring of the year is immense, and being pent up in a comparatively narrow channel between rocks and hills about four hundred feet in height, it serves well to convey to the mind those impressions which are always created by Nature in her wild and stormy moods.

A singular feature also first presented itself at these rapids, which we

afterwards find constituting one of the most remarkable characteristics of
the interior, and even of the rocky and lacustrine uplands, and this was the
numbers of boulders, or large rounded masses of rock. Here they lay in
long rows of huge rounded and polished masses, piled one above another
at each turn of the river, wherever lodgement could be found.
"They
are," Mr. Hind says, "imposing monuments of the power of water and
ice; but, as we afterwards found in the upper country, the boulders of the
Grand Rapids are few and diminutive when compared with the infinite
number of colossal erratics which lie scattered over the valleys, the hill-
sides, and the mountain-tops, as the table-land of the Labrador Peninsula
is approached."

If there is one idea that has always associated itself in our minds more than another with Labrador, it is that of the Labrador felspar, or Labradorite, with its beautiful play of iridiscent colours; blue, green, yellow, brown, and red, and its pseudo metallic lustre; but we certainly did not expect to hear that it is so common as not only to constitute a feature in the country, but actually to play a part in its legendary lore. "As I stood," says Mr. Hind, "upon a Cyclopean pebble of brilliant Labradorite, brought no doubt by ice from the upper country, and worn into a polished rounded form by ages of exposure to running water, I was able to create a mental picture of the flashing fire-rocks of the Montagnais, the fire-mountains which the Nasquapees told us existed far towards the height of land, seen only green and bright by sunlight and moonlight, but never when the Manitou, who dwells in these mountains, is displeased with the wandering and helpless children of the forests and lakes of Labrador. This dream was scarcely realised to its full extent. I saw the 'fire-rock,' but not flashing, as the Indians described; but I do not doubt that small areas of Labrador felspar exist, which glitter with the brilliant play of colours characteristic of this beautiful mineral."

The Indians call these rapids Skatchewan-that is, "swift river," just as the Bow rivers are called Saskatchewan, or, "swift as a bow ;" and the river itself they call Mista-shipu, which means "great river," like Missi-sippi, so closely does the Montagnais dialect of the Cree language on the Gulf of St. Lawrence resemble those at the foot of the Rocky Mountains three thousand miles distant.

Beyond the Grand Portage the country has been hitherto undescribed, although there is reason to believe that the early Jesuit missionaries had a station on the summit of this stupendous barrier. The stones and fireholes for the vapour-bath were also seen in the neighbourhood of old Indian lodges, showing that, along the rivers and lakes from the Rocky Mountains to Labrador, we find the favourite remedy for sickness adopted and cherished by all the ramifications of the great Cree nation.

No bird, or squirrel, or rabbit was seen in the fine woods of the deep sheltered valleys leading to the summit of the Grand Portage. Bare rock, or larch, succeeded by thin clumps of stunted spruce, or half a dozen larch just coming into leaf, with a rich undergrowth of Labrador tea-plant, and mosses or lichens of every hue and depth of colour, are the features of the ground over which the well-worn Montagnais postagepath runs. In the rapids themselves salmon were passing up the river by tens, and hundreds, and thousands, swimming over the shoals or lying on them, gathering strength to force their way farther on. Every spot

T

on earth has its own peculiar charms, and here, as elsewhere, though the weather was variable, the air is spoken of as delightfully pure and exhilarating. The distant mountains looked green and tranquil, the winding river sparkled brightly in the noonday sun, delicate white flowers blossomed in every hollow where a little soil had accumulated, and in the shallow depressions of the surface rich mosses and lichens formed a carpet green and grey, red or pale yellowish white, according to the species which most prevailed.

There were also marten traps from one end of the portage to the other, and these had been constructed during the previous winter by Pierre, the Abenakis Indian, who was one of the guides.

"How long is your line of traps, Pierre ?" I inquired of the Abenakis Indian. "Thirty miles," he replied.

Thirty miles! How do you attend to them all ?"

"I built my winter lodge about twelve miles above the Grand Portage, and made the traps for about fifteen miles above and fifteen miles below the lodge." "How long did it take you to visit your traps?"

One week."

"And how many martens did you take last winter ?"

"Twenty-two; but a hunter on the Manicouagan took fifty-seven. I came too late in the fall, and the winter was half over before my marten road was finished."

"What did you get for your skins ?" "Five dollars apiece."

"Tell me how you set to work in the fall of the year, when you have made up your mind to build a line of marten traps, or marten road, as you call it ?"

Pierre took out his pipe at this question, slowly filled it, went to the fire and put an ember on the tobacco, and after a few puffs he returned to where we were sitting under an oil-cloth to shelter us from the rain, and, reclining on the ground, began his description as follows:

"The winter before last I was hunting on the Manicouagan, but so many Indians came on the river that I made up my mind to try some other ground. In the fall I brought my wife to the Moisie. I got together some flour and pork, and took my canoe up the river, leaving my wife in a little house I built on the Moisie Bay. I found a spot which we shall pass the day after to-morrow, put up a lodge, made a strong câche for my flour and pork, to keep them from the carcajoù, and set to work to build my traps. It was already late in the season-too late, for the snow was more than a foot deep and the river had taken strong. I worked hard, but it was nearly Christmas before all my traps on the line were finished. I set out early in the morning to visit my traps for about eight miles in one direction, and then returned to my lodge. The next day I went the same distance in the opposite direction, always getting home about dusk. The day after I took my blanket with me, some bread, pork, and bait, and walked in snow-shoes straight to one end of my line of traps; here I had a little sleeping-place made of spruce-bark, where I stayed the night. On the following day I went back visiting all the traps and putting in fresh bait when they had been disturbed; I did the same in the other direction, but sometimes went on to the Bay to see my wife. In this way I spent three months, until the snow began to go and the ice in the river to give. only got twentytwo martens; the country hereabouts has been hunted too much; but I think I should have got more if the carcajoù had not taken my bait."

Some one asked Pierre whether carcajoux or wolverines were numerous on the Moisie, and how many of his traps they spoiled.

all

"There are not many carcajoù here," answered Pierre, "but one fellow took my bait-from my lodge to the farthest end of the line up the river. He followed me from trap to trap, and when I came back I found that he had been at every one and taken all the bait."