ittle
time in watching them. To my great surprise I found out that they were
fishing on their own account. This was something new to me, and so I
watched them with much interest.

On the side of the river on which they were was a shallow, reedy marsh,
where the water was from a few inches to a foot in depth. In these
shallow waters, at certain seasons of the year, different varieties of
fish are to be found. The principal is the Jack fish, or pike, some of
which are over three feet long. As they crowd along in these shallows,
often with their back fins out of the water, they are observed by the
dogs, who quietly wade out, often to a distance of many yards, and seize
them with such a grip that, in spite of their struggles, they are
carried in triumph to the shore, and there speedily devoured. Sometimes
the dogs will remain away for weeks together on these fishing
excursions, and will return in much better condition than when they
left.

During the winter of the first Riel Rebellion, when all our supplies had
been cut off, my good wife and I got tired of dining twenty-one times a
week on fish diet, varied only by a pot of boiled musk rats, or a roast
hind-quarter of a wild cat. To improve our bill of fare, the next
summer, when I went into the Red River Settlement, I bought a sheep,
which I carefully took out with me in a little open boat. I succeeded
in getting it safely home, and put it in a yard that had a heavy
stockade fence twelve feet high around it. In some way the dogs got in
and devoured my sheep.

The next summer, I took out a couple of pigs, and put them into a little
log stable with a two-inch spruce plank door. To my great disgust, one
night the dogs ate a hole through the door and devoured my pigs.

There seemed to be a good deal of the wolf in their nature. Many of
them never manifested much affection for their masters, and never could
be fully depended upon. Still I always found that even with Esquimaux
dogs patience and kindness went farther than anything else in teaching
them to know what was required of them, and in inducing them to accept
the situation. Some of them are naturally lazy, and some of them are
incorrigible shirks; and so there is in dog-driving a capital
opportunity for the exercise of the cardinal virtue of patience.

As my Mission increased in size, and new appointments were taken up, I
found I should have to be on the move nearly all the winter if those who
longed fo