le paws braced, rolling down on their backs like lads
upset from a toboggan, otter after otter, till the man learned that the
little beasts were not fishing at all, but coasting the snow bank like
youngsters on a night frolic. No sooner did one reach the bottom than up
he scampered to repeat the fun; and sometimes two or three went down in
a rolling bunch mixed up at the foot of a slide as badly as a couple of
toboggans that were unpremeditatedly changing their occupants. Bears
wrestle. The kittens of all the cat tribe play hide and seek. Little
badger finds it fun to run round rubbing the back of his head on things;
and here was nekik the otter at the favourite amusement of his
kind--coasting down a snow bank.

If the trapper were an Indian, he would lie in wait at the landing-place
and spear the otter as they came from the water. But the white man's
craft is deeper. He does not wish to frighten the otter till the last
had been taken. Coming to the slide by day, he baits a steel-trap with
fish and buries it in the snow just where the otter will be coming down
the hill or up from the pool. Perhaps he places a dozen such traps
around the hole with nothing visible but the frozen fish lying on the
surface. If he sets his traps during a snow-fall, so much the better.
His own tracks will be obliterated and the otter's nose will discover
the fish. Then he takes a bag filled with some substance of animal
odour, pomatum, fresh meat, pork, or he may use the flesh side of a
fresh deer-hide. This he drags over the snow where he has stepped. He
may even use a fresh hide to handle the traps, as a waiter uses a
serviette to pass plates. There must be no man-smell, no man-track near
the otter traps.

While the mink-hunt is fairly over by midwinter, otter-trapping lasts
from October to May. The value of all rare furs, mink, otter, marten,
ermine, varies with two things: (1) the latitude of the hunting-field;
(2) the season of the hunt. For instance, ask a trapper of Minnesota or
Lake Superior what he thinks of the ermine, and he will tell you that it
is a miserable sort of weasel of a dirty drab brown not worth
twenty-five cents a skin. Ask a trapper of the North Saskatchewan what
he thinks of ermine; and he will tell you it is a pretty little whitish
creature good for fur if trapped late enough in the winter and always
useful as a lining. But ask a trapper of the Arctic about the ermine,
and he describes it as the finest fur that is