much liberty with the spirit flask. After a hard day's work on the trail, they are deserving of a glass of whisky and water, but let it be one and no more. Moose and cariboo hunting is a hard, tiresome, and occasionally a very exciting amusement.

While on the moose trail the hunter comes across a variety of other game, beasts as well as birds, and thus he is enabled to form an interesting and sometimes valuable collection.

Duck shooting is to be had in every part of Canada. The birds come north in the spring of the year, and make their homes for the summer in the numerous small lakes to be found in the interior of every province. They hatch their young on the shores, bringing them up on the wild rice and other food with which the lakes abound. In the autumn they are to be seen in countless thousands. Two men well up in the sport may easily bring down three hundred brace in a day. Such shooting does not compel one to go beyond the confines of civilisation. Many of the best lakes for the purpose can be reached from the large towns in a few hours by rail or coach. At or near the lakes there are clean, comfortable, wellkept hotels, where one may be accommodated for four, six, or eight shillings per day, everything included. Wild geese are frequently killed in these lakes, though as a rule they spend the summer farther north; while in the woods near the lakes a day's shooting is almost certain to bring the sportsman a well-filled bag of miscellaneous game. It is essential, however, to have one or more well-trained dogs, and these are not readily procured in the country.

The best and most exciting sport on the American continent is buffalo hunting, and the best fields are the grand prairies of the North-West. The party should be provided with good breech-loading rifles, a revolver each, and an abundant supply of ammunition.

The hunting grounds may be reached by Canada Pacific railroad from Prince Arthur's Landing Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, or by way of Sarnia and Collingwood and the Great Lakes to Duluth; thence by the Northern Pacific to Glyndon; and thence by the St. Paul and Pacific Railway to Winnipeg. There is also the choice of an allrail route via Chicago and St. Paul, in the United States. The Lake route will be found particularly pleasant, and the time taken is very little longer.

There is a class of men in Manitoba known as “plain hunters," from the fact that they live chiefly by buffalo hunting. They are nearly all half-breeds, a cross between French or English and Indians, and are undoubtedly the most expert and successful buffalo killers on the American continent. The services of a few of these men can be secured without difficulty and at a moderate cost. Their horses, an active, wiry breed, are trained to the sport, and appear to take as much pleasure in it as do their masters. At Winnipeg, men, horses, tents, camp furniture, and everything else necessary for a hunt over the prairies, can be either hired or purchased.

It is not intended here to describe a buffalo hunt, with all its excitement, danger, and novelty. Enough to say that it is the perfection of hunting; and as horse, rifle, and revolver are brought into service, it will at once be seen that it has special attractions for Englishmen, accustomed as they are to both hunting and shooting. To the genuine sportsman nothing can be more enjoyable; and he returns after his two months on the plains feeling that he has at last, for a time, been in reality a dweller in "the happy hunting grounds."

Those who have time and who have made the necessary preparations may extend their trip westward to the Rocky Mountains in search of bears and other large game. They may even pass onward into British Columbia, the

forests of which afford splendid sport; or northward to the land of the musk ox and the reindeer.

Prairie fowl may be killed in any number on the plains, while the lakes swarm with ducks and geese.

Canada has the best fisheries, inland and marine, in the world. A recent pamphlet issued by the Nova Scotian Government says:

Lob

"In some seasons our bays and harbours teem with fish of various kinds-mackerel, herring, cod, haddock, halibut, hake, pollock, shad, smelt, perch, eels, etc. sters are abundant, and are usually sold in the Halifax market at about one shilling per dozen. Good sport is afforded in spearing lobsters at night by torchlight. We have a plentiful supply of shell-fish, viz. oysters, scallops, clams, quahaugs, mussels, etc. Indeed, no country in the world can produce a greater variety of sea fish, or in greater abundance; while the rivers and lakes afford salmon, trout, and grayling. Any boy with a bean-pole,

a half-dozen yards of twine, with a hook on the end of it, and a few angle worms or grasshoppers, may go out in the morning and kill as many trout as will supply a large family for breakfast. In some lakes they are quite large, and are taken as heavy as four or five pounds. In other lakes they are small, seldom weighing more than one pound. The little brook trout is an excellent pan fish. The prince of all the trout tribe is the sea trout; this fish is taken in large numbers at the mouths of rivers emptying into the Atlantic."

All the rivers in Canada connecting with the sea, on the Atlantic as well as the Pacific coast, contain splendid salmon. The fish were taken indiscriminately and at all seasons up to a few years ago, when the Government stepped in and put a stop to the slaughter. The best salmon streams are in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and British Columbia. In the upper lakes there

sport.

are numerous other varieties of fish which make capital Some of the salmon rivers on the Lower St. Lawrence are leased from the Government; but permission for a week's fishing can be readily obtained. and rivers up the country are all free.

The lakes

Brook trout may be taken in all parts of Canada, but the trout-fishers' paradise is to be found in the rivers on the north shore of Lake Superior, especially the Nipigon. This is a large, clear, cold, and rapid stream, affording splendid fishing from its mouth to its source. The fish run from one to seven pounds in weight; they are firm and hard, beautifully marked, and always "die game."

To reach the Nipigon the fishermen go to Collingwood or Sarnia from Toronto by rail, thence by steamer to Red Rock at the mouth of the river. At Sault Ste. Marie, on the way up, it is well to engage a couple of half-breeds and a canoe, having previously laid in the necessary camp furniture and provisions at Toronto. From Red Rock the party proceeds up the river about eight miles and there camps out.

As the country is in and live under canvas. make glad the heart

a state of nature, one must rough it Three weeks on the Nipigon will of any disciple of old Izaak Walton. It is glorious sport, and, as the surrounding scenery is grand in the extreme, the student of nature will find much to admire and think of in after days. The fish that are taken need not be wasted. The half-breeds know how to cure them so that they will keep for months.

IT is a matter of great difficulty to obtain reliable information respecting the Indian population; their migratory habits, and the great extent of country over which they are spread, misleading all calculations. Most of the estimates of the aboriginal population made by both early and modern writers, from information given by Indians themselves, or by travellers and traders, are doubtless over-estimated, so difficult is it to realise the fact of the enormous extent of territory necessary to supply man with food by the chase.

The question as to the past and present Indian population in what is now the Dominion of Canada has been clearly stated in the "Census of Canada, 1870-1," and it is there explained that, taking the whole of the aboriginal population of British North America, including the few tribes who live chiefly by agriculture and industrial pursuits in the older provinces, as well as the tribes placed in exceptionally unfavourable conditions in arctic climates, the mean inhabited superficies is thirty-four square miles