Carrier, but often by the Tsekanies. I have before observed that
rabbits sometimes abound. Another small animal, whose flesh is
delicious in season, the marmot, is found in great numbers. In the
neighbourhood of Fort Alexandria, the jumping deer, or chevreuil, is
abundant. To these add dog and horse flesh, and you have all the
varieties of animal food the country affords to its inhabitants,
civilized or savage.

A most destructive little animal, the wood-rat, infests the country,
and generally nestles in the crevices of the rocks, but prefers still
more human habitations; they domicile under the floors of
out-buildings, and not content with this, force their way into the
inside, where they destroy and carry off every thing they can; nor is
there any way of securing the property in the stores from their
depredations but by placing it in strong boxes. When fairly located,
it is almost impossible to root them out. They are of a grey colour,
and of nearly the size and form of the common rat, but the tail
resembles that of the ground squirrel.

The birds of this country are the same as in Canada. I observed no
strange variety, except a species of curlieu that frequents the plains
of Fort Alexandria in the summer. Immense flocks of cranes are seen in
autumn and spring, flying high in the air; in autumn directing their
flight towards the south, and in spring towards the north.

Some of the Lakes abound in fish; the principal varieties are trout,
carp, white fish, and pike. Stuart's Lake yields a small fish termed
by the Canadians "poisson inconnu;" it seems as if it were partly
white fish and partly carp, the head resembling the former; it is full
of small bones, and the flesh soft and unsavoury. The sturgeon has
been already mentioned, but they are unfortunately too rare; seldom
more than five or six are captured in a season; they weigh from one
hundred to five hundred pounds. A beautiful small fish of the size of
the anchovy, and shaped like a salmon, is found in a river that falls
into Stuart's Lake; it is said they pass the winter in the lake, and
ascend their favourite stream in the month of June, where they deposit
their spawn. They have the silvery scales of the larger salmon, and
are exceedingly rich; but the natives preserve them almost exclusively
for their own use. There are four varieties of salmon, distinguished
from each other by the peculiar form of the head; the largest species
seems to be the same we have i