Physique and Health.--Before the Indian came in close contact with the whites he lived on the produce of the country and remained close to nature. He was of a wirey and healthy stature and lived to a ripe old age. Now from their acquired taste of the white man's foods, love of liquor, insufficient clothing and early marriages, the "white plague" has taken firm hold in every band and a few decades will see very few of the Government wards to be cared for. How few of the thousands of immigrants now flowing into the country pause to consider that once these beautiful lakes, rivers, prairies and mountains were the resort and homes of a race of God's primitive children. Their wants were supplied with a lavish generosity by a Great Spirit and pagans tho they were said to be they cast their eyes heavenwards and thanked that Great Spirit for blessings received. And the translation after death that they looked forward to, to the Happy Hunting Grounds, what are these but our God and our Heaven? Poor, fast disappearing race! I have lived with them, hunted with them and walked the long trail and from my city home I often yearn for the old life in that North Country. CHAPTER VIII. WHOLESOME FOODS. Men are governed, or prejudiced very much for, or against, things by appearances or names. And this I find holds even with practical men as are hunters, traders and trappers, men who as a rule reason much, and are endowed with considerable common sense. There are many food meats that the woods furnish that are tabooed from the hunter's bill of fare simply by the name of the animal that furnishes it. The skin is taken but the flesh is cast away, and this for no other reason but the name the beast is generally known under. Take, for instance, the water rat, musquash, or the more generally used name of musk rat. Here we have certainly nothing against it but the name. Because did we of the fraternity of hunters pause to consider, and reason, we must see that a musquash ought not, and cannot be different from a beaver. They are identically the same in every detail except the formation of the tail. They live on the same food, roots, grasses, and twigs, as the beaver does and to the eye they are (barring the tail) a small beaver in miniature.