The wolverine had renewed his visits along the line of traps, and broken all which had been reconstructed, devouring the animals which had been caught. Cheadle now adopted a device which he flattered himself would catch the enemy in his own toils. All the broken traps were repaired and set again, and poisoned baits substituted for the ordinary ones in the traps--not in every instance, but here and there along the line. The forest in which we hunted commenced on the further side of our lake, stretching away to the north apparently indefinitely. This was broken only by numerous lakes and swamps, and patches of timber which had been burnt. The lakes are always sought by the trapper, not only because they enable him to travel more rapidly, and penetrate further into the less hunted regions, but also because the edges of the lakes, and the portages between them, are favourite haunts of the fox, the fisher, and the mink. On one of these lakes a curious circumstance was observed. The lake was about half a mile in length, and of nearly equal breadth, but of no great depth. The water had seemingly frozen to the bottom, except at one end, where a spring bubbled up, and a hole of about a yard in diameter existed in the covering of ice, which was there only a few inches thick. The water in this hole was crowded with myriads of small fish, most of them not much larger than a man’s finger, and so closely packed that they could not move freely. On thrusting in an arm, it seemed like plunging it into a mass of thick stir-about. The snow was beaten down all round hard and level as a road, by the numbers of animals which flocked to the Lenten feast. Tracks converged from every side. Here were the footprints of the cross or silver fox, delicately impressed in the snow as he trotted daintily along with light and airy tread; the rough marks of the clumsier fisher; the clear, sharply-defined track of the active mink; and the great coarse trail of the ever-galloping, ubiquitous wolverine. Scores of crows perched on the trees around, sleepily digesting their frequent meals. Judging by the state of the snow and collection of dung, the consumption must have gone on for weeks, yet the supply seemed as plentiful as ever. This circumstance afforded an explanation of the fact that many of the rivers and fresh-water lakes in this country are destitute of fish, as all but the deeper ones freeze to the bottom, and therefore any fish they contained would be destroyed.