Quickly unloosing Cuffy, one of my favourite Newfoundland dogs, I sent her after the bird, which had lit down on a great ice field about five hundred yards away. But although disabled, the bird could still fight, and so when my spirited dog tried to close in upon her and seize her by the neck, the brave goose gave her such a blow over the head with the uninjured wing that it turned her completely over and made her howl with pain and vexation. Witnessing the discomfiture of my dog, I could easily understand what I had been frequently told by the Indians, of foxes having been killed by the old geese when trying to capture young goslings from the flocks. In these annual goose hunts all the Indians who can handle a gun take part. The news of the arrival of the first goose fills a whole village with excitement, and nothing can keep the people from rushing off to the different points, which they each claim year after year, where they hastily build their nests and set their decoys. I well remember how quickly I was deserted by a whole company of Salteaux Indians one spring, on their hearing the long-expected call of a solitary goose that came flying along on the south wind. I had succeeded, after a good deal of persuasion, in getting them to work with me in cutting down trees and preparing the soil for seed sowing, when in the midst of our toil, at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, the distant "aunk! aunk! aunk!" of an old grey goose was heard, the outskirmisher of the oncoming crowds. Such was the effect of that sound upon my good hunters, but poor farmers, that the axes and hoes were hastily dropped, and with a rush they were all off to their wigwams for their guns and ammunition, and I did not see them again for a month. Success in the goose hunt seems to elate the Indian more than in anything else. Why, I could never find out. It may be because it is the first spring hunting after the long, dreary winter, and there is the natural gladness that the pleasant springtime has come again. Whatever it may be, I noticed for years more noisy mirth and earnest congratulations on success in the goose hunt than in anything else. Loaded down with his game, Oowikapun returned to his wigwam, and instead of cheerily responding to the congratulations of the inmates on account of his success, he threw himself down on his bed, silent and gloomy, and refused the proffered meal, and even the lighted pipe which his mother brought him.