ing strawberries, and
serving green peas cold for dessert. One day a can of mullagatawny soup
and a can of apricots were handed out to him simultaneously and without
explanations. Edouard solved the problem by opening both cans and
cooking them together. We had a new soup that day, MULLAGATAWNY AUX
APRICOTS. It was not as bad as it sounds. It tasted somewhat like
chutney.

The real reason why food that is cooked over an open fire tastes so good
to us is because we are really hungry when we get it. The man who puts
up provisions for camp has a great advantage over the dealers who must
satisfy the pampered appetite of people in houses. I never can get any
bacon in New York like that which I buy at a little shop in Quebec to
take into the woods. If I ever set up in the grocery business, I shall
try to get a good trade among anglers. It will be easy to please my
customers.

The reputation that trout enjoy as a food-fish is partly due to the fact
that they are usually cooked over an open fire. In the city they never
taste as good. It is not merely a difference in freshness. It is a
change in the sauce. If the truth must be told, even by an angler, there
are at least five salt-water fish which are better than trout,--to eat.
There is none better to catch.

IV. THE SMUDGE-FIRE

But enough of the cooking-fire. Let us turn now to the subject of
the smudge, known in Lower Canada as LA BOUCANE. The smudge owes its
existence to the pungent mosquito, the sanguinary black-fly, and the
peppery midge,--LE MARINGOUIN, LA MOUSTIQUE, ET LE BRULOT. To what it
owes its English name I do not know; but its French name means simply a
thick, nauseating, intolerable smoke.

The smudge is called into being for the express purpose of creating
a smoke of this kind, which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the
black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man whom they are devouring.
But the man survives the smoke, while the insects succumb to it, being
destroyed or driven away. Therefore the smudge, dark and bitter in
itself, frequently becomes, like adversity, sweet in its uses. It must
be regarded as a form of fire with which man has made friends under the
pressure of a cruel necessity.

It would seem as if it ought to be the simplest affair in the world to
light up a smudge. And so it is--if you are not trying.

An attempt to produce almost any other kind of a fire will bring forth
smoke abundantly. But when you deliberately underta