a relish of crackers and cheese. We were in a
hurry to be off for an afternoon's fishing, three or four miles down the
river, at the Ile Maligne.

The island is well named, for it is the most perilous place on the
river, and has a record of disaster and death. The scattered waters of
the Discharge are drawn together here into one deep, narrow, powerful
stream, flowing between gloomy shores of granite. In mid-channel the
wicked island shows its scarred and bristling head, like a giant ready
to dispute the passage. The river rushes straight at the rocky brow,
splits into two currents, and raves away on both sides of the island in
a double chain of furious falls and rapids.

In these wild waters we fished with immense delight and fair success,
scrambling down among the huge rocks along the shore, and joining the
excitement of an Alpine climb with the placid pleasures of angling.
At nightfall we were at home again in our camp, with half a score of
onananiche, weighing from one to four pounds each.

Our next day's journey was long and variegated. A portage of a mile or
two across the Ile d'Alma, with a cart to haul our canoes and stuff,
brought us to the Little Discharge, down which we floated for a little
way, and then hauled through the village of St. Joseph to the foot of
the Carcajou, or Wildcat Falls. A mile of quick water was soon passed,
and we came to the junction of the Little Discharge with the Grand
Discharge at the point where the picturesque club-house stands in a
grove of birches beside the big Vache Caille Falls. It is lively work
crossing the pool here, when the water is high and the canoes are heavy;
but we went through the labouring seas safely, and landed some distance
below, at the head of the Rapide Gervais, to eat our lunch. The water
was too rough to run down with loaded boats, so Damon and I had to walk
about three miles along the river-bank, while the men went down with the
canoes.

On our way beside the rapids, Damon geologised, finding the marks of
ancient glaciers, and bits of iron-ore, and pockets of sand full of
infinitesimal garnets, and specks of gold washed from the primitive
granite; and I fished, picking up a pair of ouananiche in foam-covered
nooks among the rocks. The swift water was almost passed when we
embarked again and ran down the last slope into a long deadwater.

The shores, at first bold and rough, covered with dense thickets of
second-growth timber, now became smoother and