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 passes 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 passes 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 assertions. 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 shore 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.
For many years the Saguenay River appeared to have been the boundary line for moose, red deer and pekan, none being known on the east side, while fairly numerous on the west bank. As the fisher was never very plentiful on the Labrador, and when found was only in the wooded part, it is not strange that a person of Mr. de Puyjalon's sedentary habits should have trapped only two.