the largest attain to the weight of about eight pounds.

There was another and still smaller species, which, from its colour, the
voyageurs call the "poisson bleu," or blue fish. It is the _Coregonus
signifer_ of ichthyologists. It is a species of grayling, and frequents
sharp-running water, where it will leap at the fly like a trout. Several
kinds of trout also inhabit the Great Slave Lake, and some of these
attain to the enormous weight of eighty pounds! A few were caught, but
none of so gigantic proportions as this. Pike were also taken in the
net, and a species of burbot. This last is one of the most voracious of
the finny tribe, and preys upon all others that it is able to swallow.
It devours whole quantities of cray-fish, until its stomach becomes
crammed to such a degree as to distort the shape of its whole body. When
this kind was drawn out, it was treated very rudely by the boys--because
its flesh was known to be extremely unsavoury, and none of them cared to
eat it. Marengo, however, had no such scruples, and he was wont to make
several hearty meals each day upon the rejected burbot.

A fish diet exclusively was not the thing; and as our party soon grew
tired of it, the hunter Basil shouldered his rifle, and strode off into
the woods in search of game. The others remained working upon the cabin,
which was still far from being finished.

Basil kept along the edge of the lake in an easterly direction. He had
not gone more than a quarter of a mile, when he came upon a dry gravelly
ridge, which was thickly covered with a species of pine-trees that
resembled the Scotch fir. These trees were not over forty feet in
height, with very thick trunks and long flexible branches. No other
trees grew among them, for it is the nature of this pine--which was the
"scrub" or grey pine--to monopolise the ground wherever it grows. As
Basil passed on, he noticed that many of the trees were completely
"barked," particularly on the branches; and small pieces of the bark lay
scattered over the ground, as though it had been peeled off and gnawed
by some animal. He was walking quietly on and thinking what creature
could have made such a wreck, when he came to a place where the ground
was covered with fine sand or dust.

In this, to his astonishment, he observed what he supposed to be the
tracks of human feet! They were not those of a man, but small tracks,
resembling the footsteps of a child of three or four years of age. He
was abo