has a messenger to
carry the pelts marked with his name to a friendly trading-post, he may
not build a lodge; but move from hunt to hunt as the game changes
feeding-ground. In this case he uses the _abuckwan_--canvas--for a shed
tent, with one side sloping to the ground, banked by brush and snow, the
other facing the fire, both tent and fire on such a slope that the smoke
drifts out while the heat reflects in. Pine and balsam boughs, with the
wood end pointing out like sheaves in a stook, the foliage converging to
a soft centre, form the trapper's bed.

The snow is now too deep to travel without snow-shoes. The frames for
these the trapper makes of ash, birch, or best of all, the
_mackikwatick_--tamarack--curving the easily bent green wood up at one
end, canoe shape, and smoothing the barked wood at the bend, like a
sleigh runner, by means of the awkward _couteau croche_, as the French
hunter calls his crooked knife.

In style, the snow-shoe varies with the hunting-ground. On forested,
rocky, hummocky land, the shoe is short to permit short turns without
entanglement. Oval and broad, rather than long and slim, it makes up in
width what it lacks in length to support the hunter's weight above the
snow. And the toe curve is slight; for speed is impossible on bad
ground. To save the instep from jars, the slip noose may be padded like
a cowboy's stirrup.

On the prairie, where the snowy reaches are unbroken as air, snow-shoes
are wings to the hunter's heels. They are long, and curved, and narrow,
and smooth enough on the runners for the hunter to sit on their rear
ends and coast downhill as on a toboggan. If a snag is struck midway,
the racquets may bounce safely over and glissade to the bottom; or the
toe may catch, heels fly over head, and the hunter land with his feet
noosed in frames sticking upright higher than his neck.

Any trapper can read the story of a hunt from snow-shoes. Bound and
short: east of the Great Lakes. Slim and long: from the prairie. Padding
for the instep: either rock ground or long runs. Filling of hide strips
with broad enough interspaces for a small foot to slip through: from the
wet, heavily packed, snow region of the Atlantic coast, for trapping
only, never the chase, small game, not large. Lace ties, instead of a
noose to hold the foot: the amateur hunter. _Atibisc_, a fine filling
taken from deer or caribou for the heel and toe; with _askimoneiab_,
heavy, closely interlaced, membraneous fi