It seems that very few of these people are well. In spite of their healthy forest lives they are far less sound than an average white community. They have their own troubles, with the white man's maladies thrown in. I saw numberless other cases of dreadful, hopeless, devastating diseases, mostly of the white man's importation. It is heart-rending to see so much human misery and be able to do nothing at all for it, not even bring a gleam of hope. It made me feel like a murderer to tell one after another, who came to me covered with cankerous bone-eating sores, "I can do nothing"; and I was deeply touched by the simple statement of the Chief Pierre Squirrel, after a round of visits: "You see how unhappy we are, how miserable and sick. When I made this treaty with your government, I stipulated that we should have here a policeman and a doctor; instead of that you have sent nothing but missionaries." CHAPTER XIV RABBITS AND LYNXES IN THE NORTH-WEST There are no Rabbits in the north-west. This statement, far from final, is practically true to-day, but I saw plenty of Lynxes, and one cannot write of ducks without mentioning water. All wild animals fluctuate greatly in their population, none more so than the Snowshoe or white-rabbit of the north-west. This is Rabbit history as far back as known: They are spread over some great area; conditions are favourable; some unknown influence endows the females with unusual fecundity; they bear not one, but two or three broods in a season, and these number not 2 or 3, but 8 or 10 each brood. The species increases far beyond the powers of predaceous birds or beasts to check, and the Rabbits after 7 or 8 years of this are multiplied into untold millions. On such occasions every little thicket has a Rabbit in it; they jump out at every 8 or 10 feet; they number not less than 100 to the acre on desirable ground, which means over 6,000 to the square mile, and a region as large as Alberta would contain not less than 100,000,000 fat white bunnies. At this time one man can readily kill 100 or 200 Rabbits in a day, and every bird and beast of prey is slaughtering Rabbits without restraint. Still they increase. Finally, they are so extraordinarily superabundant that they threaten their own food supply as well as poison all the ground. A new influence appears on the scene; it is commonly called the plague, though it is not one disease but many run epidemic riot, and, in a few weeks usually, the Rabbits are wiped out.