ences is the part that gives most trouble.
Sometimes the timber for the stakes is not easily had; and even when it
is plenty, it is no easy matter to drive the stakes into the bottom and
wattle them, while seated in a vessel so crank as a birch canoe.
Sometimes, in the rivers where the water-fowl most frequent, the current
is swift, and adds to this trouble. Where the lakes and rivers are
shallow, the thing becomes easier; and I have seen small lakes and
rivers fenced in this way from shore to shore. In large lakes this
would not be necessary, as most of the water-birds--such as the swans
and geese--and all the ducks that are not of the diving kinds, are sure
to come to the shore to feed, and are more likely to be taken close in
to land than out in the open water.

"The Indians often snare these birds upon the nest, and they always wash
their hands before setting the snare. They have a notion--I don't know
whether true or not--that if their hands are not clean, the birds can
smell the snare, and will be shy of going into it. They say that all
these birds--and I believe it's true of all fowls that make their nests
upon the ground--go into the nest at one side, and out at the opposite.
The Indians knowing this, always set their snares at the side where the
bird enters, and by this they are more sure of catching them, and also
of getting them some hours sooner.

"Besides snaring the water-fowl," continued Norman, "the Indians
sometimes catch them in nets, and sometimes on hooks baited with
whatever the birds are known to eat. They also shoot them as the white
hunters do, and to get near enough use every sort of cunning that can be
thought of. Sometimes they decoy them within shot, by putting wooden
ducks on the water near their cover, where they themselves are
stationed. Sometimes they disguise their canoes under brushwood, and
paddle to the edge of the flock; and when the moulting season comes
round, they pursue them through the water, and kill them with sticks.
The swans, when followed in this way, often escape. With their strong
wings and great webbed feet, they can flap faster over the surface than
a canoe can follow them. I have heard of many other tricks which the
Indians of different tribes make use of, but I have only seen these ways
I have described, besides the one we have just witnessed."

Norman was one of your practical philosophers, who did not choose to
talk much of things with which he was not th