y some destructive animal and appropriate its coat.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: _Amisk_, the Chippewyan, _umisk_, the Cree, with much the
same sound. A well-known trader told the writer that he considered the
variation in Indian language more a matter of dialect than difference in
meaning, and that while he could speak only Ojibway he never had any
difficulty in understanding and being understood by Cree, Chippewyan,
and Assiniboine. For instance, rabbit, "the little white chap," is
_wahboos_ on the Upper Ottawa, _wapus_ on the Saskatchewan, _wapauce_ on
the MacKenzie.]

II

_Sikak the Skunk_

Sikak the skunk it is who supplies the best imitations of sable. But
cleanse the fur never so well, on a damp day it still emits the heavy
sickening odour that betrays its real nature. That odour is sikak's
invincible defence against the white trapper. The hunter may follow the
little four-abreast galloping footprints that lead to a hole among
stones or to rotten logs, but long before he has reached the
nesting-place of his quarry comes a stench against which white blood is
powerless. Or the trapper may find an unexpected visitor in one of the
pens which he has dug for other animals--a little black creature the
shape of a squirrel and the size of a cat with white stripings down his
back and a bushy tail. It is then a case of a quick deadly shot, or the
man will be put to rout by an odour that will pollute the air for miles
around and drive him off that section of the hunting-field. The
cuttlefish is the only other creature that possesses as powerful means
of defence of a similar nature, one drop of the inky fluid which it
throws out to hide it from pursuers burning the fisherman's eyes like
scalding acid. As far as white trappers are concerned, sikak is only
taken by the chance shots of idle days. Yet the Indian hunts the skunk
apparently utterly oblivious of the smell. Traps, poison, deadfalls,
pens are the Indian weapons against the skunk; and a Cree will
deliberately skin and stretch a pelt in an atmosphere that is blue with
what is poison to the white man.

The only case I ever knew of white trappers hunting the skunk was of
three men on the North Saskatchewan. One was an Englishman who had been
long in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company and knew all the animals
of the north. The second was the guide, a French-Canadian, and the third
a Sandy, fresh "frae oot the land o' heather." The men were wakened one
night by