now used by the teams that hauled in
their supplies. This would do for the horse; a snug log shanty built by
an old trapper and hunter for use in the winter, a hundred yards below
the bridge, amid the spruces on the bank of the river, when rebedded
and refurnished, would do for us. The river at this point was a swift,
black stream from thirty to forty feet wide, with a strength and a
bound like a moose. It was not shrunken and emaciated, like similar
streams in a cleared country, but full, copious, and strong. Indeed,
one can hardly realize how the lesser water-courses have suffered by
the denuding of the land of its forest covering, until he goes into the
primitive woods and sees how bounding and athletic they are there. They
are literally well fed, and their measure of life is full. In fact, a
trout brook is as much a thing of the woods as a moose or deer, and
will not thrive well in the open country.

Three miles above our camp was Great Lake Jacques Cartier, the source
of the river, a sheet of water nine miles long and from one to three
wide; fifty rods below was Little Lake Jacques Cartier, an irregular
body about two miles across. Stretching away on every hand, bristling
on the mountains and darkling in the valleys, was the illimitable
spruce woods. The moss in them covered the ground nearly knee-deep, and
lay like newly fallen snow, hiding rocks and logs, filling depressions,
and muffling the foot. When it was dry, one could find a most
delightful couch anywhere.

The spruce seems to have colored the water, which is a dark amber
color, but entirely sweet and pure. There needed no better proof of the
latter fact than the trout with which it abounded, and their clear and
vivid tints. In its lower portions near the St. Lawrence, the Jacques
Cartier River is a salmon stream, but these fish have never been found
as near its source as we were, though there is no apparent reason why
they should not be.

There is perhaps no moment in the life of an angler fraught with so
much eagerness and impatience as when he first finds himself upon the
bank of a new and long-sought stream. When I was a boy and used to go
a-fishing, I could seldom restrain my eagerness after I arrived in
sight of the brook or pond, and must needs run the rest of the way.
Then the delay in rigging my tackle was a trial my patience was never
quite equal to. After I had made a few casts, or had caught one fish, I
could pause and adjust my line proper