There is a wonderful fascination in these grand old Canadian woods for sportsmen, whose wildest experiences of their craft, previous to their essay in it there, had been associated with stalking deer upon Highland mountains, or shooting grouse upon the moors. The solitude of woods is of a more impressive character, I think, than that of bare mountains,—in countries, at least, where one may expect to find traces of civilized man. From mountain peaks there is a wide range of view, in which some points of guidance to the traveller are usually visible. Wandering in the woods is much like groping one's way in the dark; and I know by experience how easy it is for an explorer not well accustomed to them to keep moving in circles, until, after hours of what he imagined to be a straight course, he finds himself back again at some wood-mark long since passed, instead of the place for which he was bound. There is something decidedly sensational in this, especially in winter, as anybody who has ever experienced it will allow. The sounds of the forest are impressive, too, while its stillness, at times almost absolute, is painful. In the mystery of its voices lies a good deal of the fascination of the wood. In the clear, frosty air of winter the cry of the great black woodpecker rings out like an elfin laugh, as he wings his curved way through the gray stems in quest of some skeleton tree. Explosions caused by the frost are heard among the branches of the trees. They are sometimes as loud as pistol-shots, and—as I can aver from my own observation—the deer, after they have become accustomed to them, will not bound away at the crack of a rifle, and the hunter will often get several shots at one herd, by keeping close in his ambush. But the slightest sound of a twig beneath his moccason, or the tinkle of the powder-flask against the muzzle of the rifle as he reloads, will send the herd crashing and flashing away. In the stillness of a summer evening there is something very weird in the cry of the loon, or great Northern diver, as it comes vibrating over the surface of a woodland lake. Where the woods are very thick and dark and lonely, the hooting of owls is commonly to be heard in the daytime. Once only—it was in early summer—I heard the wild turkey-cock utter his vehement call. I made my way in the direction whence the sound came, until I was stopped by a river, on the farther side of which I saw a magnificent "gobbler," strutting with drooped wings and expanded tail along the strip of greensward that lay between the water and the woods, while he issued, in very loud and imperious tones, his orders for the ladies of his seraglio to attend. This action, in the case of the domestic turkey, is always provocative of ridicule; but it was absolutely grand and striking as displayed by the large-feathered free bird, parading to and fro there upon the river-bank. I watched him for a while, expecting to see the hen-birds come, but they did not; and so the noble Mormon of the thickets furled his tail at last, and, tucking up his wings, strode moodily into the bush, as if to search for the truants.
To hunters who are accustomed to glide through the forest observantly and with caution, most interesting little scenes of animal life are sometimes revealed. One day, in the snow-time, as I was roaming the woods close by a Canadian river, after wild-turkeys, I noticed a flock of mergansers,—thereabouts usually called saw-billed ducks, or sheldrakes,—swimming in a small air-hole that had remained open in the frozen surface of the river. There were four or five ducks, and the pool might have been about ten feet by six in size. I watched them for some time, as they kept stemming the current, but without any intention of wasting ammunition upon them. My attention was attracted elsewhere for a moment, and I was surprised, on again looking towards them, to see a splendid red fox sitting at the upper edge of the little pool, where he could not have been more than a couple of yards from the nearest of the ducks. Presently he jumped up, and, running to the other end of the pool, stretched out a paw, as if to seize one of them; but they were too quick for him, placing themselves well beyond his reach with a few strokes of their paddles. He was far too cunning to plunge into the water and risk being carried under the ice by the current; and the ducks appeared to be quite aware of this, for they did not make any attempt to rise, nor indeed did they seem to be at all uneasy at the proximity of their natural enemy. It was exceedingly interesting, not to say amusing, to watch the many stratagems of the fox to get at them. Sometimes he would lie down upon the snow and lash about him with his bushy tail, whimpering in a querulous and imbecile manner at being thus outwitted by simple water-fowl. Then a new idea would take possession of him, and he would start up and run round and round the pool at a tremendous pace, probably to try and get a chance at the ducks by flurrying them; but they knew too much for Master Reynard, and always edged away from him just at the right moment. Tired at last of watching these manœuvres, I "drew a bead" upon the fox; but my hands were numbed from keeping still so long, so that, instead of hitting him in a vital spot, as I had intended, I only broke one of his forelegs, and away he went into the woods on three paws with amazing speed, while the ducks rose into the air at the report of the rifle, and flew up the course of the river in search of lonelier water. I followed the track of the fox for a mile or more, but had to give up the chase at last. The snow was flecked with spots of blood where he ran; and although the fox is not usually an object of sympathy around Canadian borders, yet I regretted much that I had not missed this one altogether, instead of maiming him, after all the amusement he had just afforded me by his curious pranks. This little incident of fox and ducks might offer a good subject for the pencil of an animal painter, and I hereby present it either to Mr. W. H. Beard or to Mr. Hays,—whichever of them may first happen to glance over these pages.
In some of the districts where game is yet plentiful, and where the maskinonge—prince of the pike tribe—reigns supreme in the woodland lakes, and the speckled trout haunts the eddies of the clear streams, men who cannot be called settlers, in the proper sense of the word, are often to be met with. They have been attracted thither by the free, wild romance of the forester's life, the Bohemianism of which is a kind by itself, although based, like other phases of that philosophy, upon impatience of the formalities by which society is cramped. On one of these lakes, in a picturesque and not very remote part of Upper Canada, there was generally a little knot of such men to be found,—men who had forsworn the gay world, and come from beyond the sea to live among Indians and make havoc of the wild beasts and birds that still abounded in the region. Sometimes they would come to the cities, and return for a brief time to the usages of civilized life. After their arrival, their affectation was to despise such luxuries as chairs and beds. Of an evening they spread blankets on the floor, and sat there with their pipes and "fire-water," like gentle savages as they were. I have met with several who, for the first few nights, declined to avail themselves of either house or bed, resorting in preference to some open shed or garden, where they wrapped themselves in their inevitable blankets, and slept the sleep of wild men upon the hard ground, with their knives and rifles at hand, ready to resist any attack that might be made upon them by hostile tribes during the night. Once in the streets of a city I remarked a couple of Indian stragglers, such as are common in Canadian towns. They were dressed in blanket coats, handsomely ornamented, and bound at the waist with sashes of gay colors, in which long knives and tobacco-pouches of marten fur were stuck, and they smoked black pipes as they strolled leisurely along. One of them was a Chippewa of the half-breed stamp, and rather a good specimen of his caste. His companion, who wore a Scotch bonnet, was far too light in complexion to be an Indian, for, though his face was tanned to a healthy brown by exposure to the weather, his hair, which fell down in long ringlets to his shoulders, was of a fair, yellowish hue, and I observed, besides, that he did not turn his toes inward when walking, as Indians invariably do. On inquiry I found that this romantic young man was an English baronet of moderate fortune, who had been living among the Indians at the lake for two or three years. He had been a Guardsman in his time, and a man about the clubs, and, having drained society to the dregs, had taken to Canadian woods and waters as a change from the comforts and inconveniences of too much civilization. Some time afterwards I saw him again, but in far different guise. He was once more a swell, and was driving a smart English "trap," with a handsome team, in the streets of the same town. Not long after this he returned to England, I believe, and is none the worse, probably, for his adventures by the shores of the pleasant lake of the woods.
Farther down the St. Lawrence, where Lower Canada stretches away to the northeast until it reaches melancholy Labrador, lies an immense field of exploration. More picturesque in its features than the upper or western province, this offshoot of old France offers peculiar attractions to persons who would escape, for a while, from the turmoils and cares of the too-busy world. On the south side of the river, within thirty or forty miles of the picturesque fortress of Quebec, moose are still plentiful, and during the winter months their venison is always to be found in the markets of the old town. The caribou haunts the wildernesses of timbered mountains that rise away back from the north shore. Parties of hardy sportsmen set out every winter from Quebec for the chase of these noble deer. It is only upon snow-shoes, the raquettes of the French Canadians, that this sport can be pursued; the snow generally lying to the depth of three or four feet on the level in the woods. The practice of walking upon these contrivances is general throughout Lower Canada. On fine afternoons, when the snow is well packed, hundreds of young men, and not unfrequently young ladies, may be seen scudding across the country, in every direction, outside the walls of Quebec. The fences are covered by the snow, so that no obstacles are offered to pedestrians unless they are bold enough to enter the woods. Walking upon snow-shoes is a regular part of the training of soldiers in garrison here and at Montreal. There are snow-shoe clubs, which have races during the season, sometimes over hurdles three feet high. I have seen a good performer jump higher than that upon his snow-shoes. This training enables the sportsman to range the forest with ease, and to follow the tracks of the moose until he brings it to bay,—for the animal is heavy, and sinks deep into the snow at every plunge. With the caribou it is not so easy to come up, the hoofs of that animal being so arranged as to spread out and offer some resistance to the snow. When the hunter goes about his work in earnest, the hardship and fatigue attending this kind of sport are very great. In the little churchyard at Rivière-du-Loup, one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec, there is a tombstone to the memory of Captain Turner, an English officer who went there many years ago to hunt moose. I made inquiries about him from the people of the village, who told me that his death was caused by over-fatigue in running down moose, and afterwards conveying the venison, together with the immense heads and horns, on trebogans through miles of the wild bush. One of two Indians whom he had with him as guides died from the same cause. Sometimes hunters are seized with what is called by Canadians the mal-aux-raquettes, which is a kind of cramp caused by the pressure of the snow-shoe thongs near the instep, not unfrequently obliging the sufferer to set up camp and rest for several days before resuming his journey.
But summer is, after all, the season in which to enjoy best the wild scenery and sports of the Lower St. Lawrence. On the north shore, especially, rivers of wondrous grandeur succeed each other at intervals all along the rock-bound coast. About one hundred and thirty miles below Quebec the savage, gloomy Saguenay rolls between its walls of rock into the St. Lawrence, which here is nearly twenty miles in width. A wild and beautiful spot is the little bay of Tadousac at the mouth of the Saguenay, with its curved beach of white sand. When I last visited the place there was a post of the Hudson's Bay Company there, established chiefly for the purpose of the salmon fishery. Since that time, however, all these rivers have been taken under the immediate protection of the government. Laws have been passed for the protection of the fish, and they are rigidly enforced, too, under the direction of a Superintendent of Fisheries. The result of this is, that within a few years the salmon have gradually returned to many splendid rivers from which they had been driven. The system of netting has been regulated so as to favor the fish, although, as I am informed, there is much room for improvement in this respect yet. It is incumbent upon owners of saw-mills now to furnish their dams with "passes" of peculiar construction, up which the fish can travel by a succession of leaps. The Indians are forbidden to devastate the waters with the destructive negogue, or fish-spear; with which weapon they used to mutilate more fish than they killed. One dark night, as I lay on the bank of the Escoumain, one of the most beautiful of these rivers, I was surprised to see a number of lights flashing out suddenly over the dark pool below the lower fall. A horde of Milicete Indians had silently paddled their canoes past us under cover of night, and were now busily engaged in spearing the salmon. It was a curious and beautiful sight to see these ragged savages, by the light of their torches, darting their long spears into the water with wonderful quickness and precision, bringing up every now and then a bright-sided salmon, and knocking it off the barbs into the canoe. The perfect wildness and remoteness of the place added much to the impressive character of the scene. But it was mortifying to think of the wholesale slaughter that was going on, and of our incapacity to put a stop to it, for our party consisted of but four, and would have been of no avail against twenty red savages armed with rifles and spears. It is true that we had brought with us a letter from the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company at Tadousac to the net-keeper at the Escoumain, enjoining that functionary to give us every assistance and information in his power. One of the instructions contained in that missive ran, as I remember, "chasses les sauvages"; but the chase of twenty armed savages by one small and smoke-dried old Canadian, like the net-keeper, would have been a futile, not to say ridiculous, proceeding. And so the Indians had the pool to themselves on that dark July night, and at gray dawn they drifted past us down the stream, their canoes loaded with salmon, to which we had fondly, though delusively, fancied that we had an exclusive right.
One of the "gamest" and most beautiful fish for which angler ever busked artificial fly is the sea-trout that comes up with the summer tides into all these tributaries of the Lower St. Lawrence. Seldom under one pound in weight, and often weighing as much as four pounds, these fish are so similar in appearance to the common brook-trout, that many experienced fishermen declare them to be one and the same species, the slight difference between the two being accounted for by the influence of the salt water and the peculiar feeding to be found in it. In color they are rather more silvery than the brook-trout, but they are marked, like that fish, with brilliant spots of red and blue along the sides. The best place to fish for them is where the sea-tide meets the clear, fresh water of the river, near its mouth. There are times when the salmon becomes unaccountably reserved, and will not condescend to reply to the line of invitation wafted to him by the angler across the eddies of the pool. It is then that the sea-trout is found to be a valuable substitute for his larger congener of the river, to whom he is only second in affording excellent sport. In casting for the trout it is advisable to use but one fly. Once, in the Saguenay, I used a casting-line with three flies attached to it, as for ordinary trout-fishing. At the first cast three sea-trout, each apparently over a pound in weight, were upon my tackle at once, and the consequence was a tangle which resulted in the loss of my casting-line and flies.
But for the mosquitoes and black-flies, which are very troublesome in all this region, there can be no pleasanter summer resort for the angler and the overworked city man. In winter there must be an awful, arctic dreariness upon the place, and I can hardly imagine any person not a French Canadian or an Esquimau taking up his abode there. And yet upon one of the most savage of these rivers—the Mingan, I think—an angler with whom I am acquainted fell in with a man of ancient Scottish family. He bore a distinguished name, and had probably once been an ornament to the social circles in which he moved. When my informant saw him, he had ceased to be ornamental in any sense of the word, and had long been a dweller in the wilderness. In appearance he differed but little from the dirty half-breeds of the coast. Like them, he lived in a wigwam, with a squaw, and had around him a family of children so numerous and dirty that they were a wonder to see. He had been there for many years, and did not seem to think that he should ever go back to England again. Society had galled him with its harness, and the "raw" was visible yet. He was in occasional communication with his relatives at home, had a small, but independent income, and was heir, I think, to a much larger one. Occasionally he would make his way to the nearest settlement or Hudson's Bay post, where he sometimes found letters and newspapers awaiting him; so that, although a little backward as to dates, he had still some general idea of how matters were going on in the great world. Strong indeed must be the fascination of the free Indian life, thus to work its spells upon a man of education and refinement like this eccentric dweller by the waters of the rugged Mingan.
Among the creatures that visit the Lower St. Lawrence is the white whale,—beluga of the naturalists. On a fine summer's day, when the water is blue and calm, these curious rovers of the deep may be seen basking with their backs just over the surface, looking so like small icebergs that they convey an agreeable sense of coolness to the observer. At other times, and especially just about nightfall, they are very active, tumbling and splashing and spouting in every direction, as if in play. Often have I been startled by one as it rose, suddenly, and with a loud snort, close by the little yacht, while we lay at anchor for the night. I was told here, that the calf, or young, of this whale utters a kind of bleating cry, and that the mother whales frequently carry their young ones upon their backs. Some few years ago I had an opportunity of verifying the truth of these statements by observing the habits of a white whale and her calf that were exhibited by Mr. Cutter, of Boston, at Jones's Wood, near New York. The calf used to throw itself upon the back of its dam, with a peculiar squeal, and remain there till carried several times round the tank. Brush wears are built by the inhabitants of these coasts for the capture of this kind of whale, which is generally called the white porpoise here. These wears are merely hedges of stiff brushwood, arranged so as to enclose a wedge-like space, with its wide end open to the river. The whales wander up into them, when they soon become embarrassed by the obstacles on either side, losing their reckoning at last, and "coming to grief" by being stranded upon the beach when the tide ebbs. They are not uncommonly from sixteen to twenty feet in length, and specimens have occasionally been captured which had attained the great length of forty feet. One of average size will yield about a hundred gallons of oil. A soft and excellent leather, well adapted for shoemakers' and other work, is now manufactured from their skins, which were first discovered to be available for this purpose by an enterprising Canadian named Têtu, residing, I think, at Kamouraska, on the southern bank of the river.
The chase of the pourcil—a small species of whale, not often exceeding five or six feet in length, and of a sooty color—affords good sport, hereabouts, to those who are skilful and hardy enough to follow it. In calm, clear weather only the hunter dares to pursue this creature in his frail canoe, and even then he runs the risk of being caught in one of the squalls that arise so suddenly on this part of the St. Lawrence. One hunter sits in the stern of the canoe, and paddles, while the other, armed with a long duck-gun, loaded with buck-shot, kneels in the bow. Now and then the pourcil emerges partly from the water, and the canoe is kept swiftly upon his course until a chance offers for a shot. Sometimes the creature is killed by the shot, but more frequently only stunned, so as to enable the hunters to approach near enough to despatch him with their harpoons.
Seals in great numbers haunt the mouths of the tributaries here, attracted by the travelling salmon, upon which they commit sad depredations, often following them even into the fishermen's nets. The hunting of seals is carried on chiefly in the winter time, when the great river is partially blocked up with ice. About twenty-five years ago, at a place called Trois Pistoles, on the south bank, an immense number of seals made their appearance upon the ice just after it had become fixed along the shore. Seals are reckoned valuable game in those parts, and the inhabitants of the parish, armed with clubs, turned out to chase them, under the direction of six priests. They had killed some four hundred, when suddenly the ice parted from the shore, and went drifting down with the tide, priests, habitans, seals, and all. Down they drifted, past dreary shores, the sparse inhabitants of which did all they could to aid them, but succeeded in taking off only a few in their canoes. On, on, still they floated, past other parishes, where people knelt and prayed loudly for them on the shore; then past other parishes, again, where the canoe-men were more adventurous, and picked the poor fellows off the ice in detail, until every one of them was brought safely to land, yet not before they had suffered great hardship from cold and fright. The old French Canadian from whom I heard this was one of the hunters on the occasion; and although he expressed exceeding gratitude to le bon Dieu for the rescue of himself and his companions, yet he had words of lamentation for the loss of the seals, not one of which was recovered.